Sanliurfa museum

This morning we were supposed to take a trip to a town called Harran, but we opted out. The sites in the town were damaged in the earthquake and are either rebuild anew, or levelled and built over. Half of our group went anyway, but we had a pleasant morning in our room reading and doing crosswords, which seemed a nice relaxation after all our recent site visits. When they came back we all went out for lunch at local restaurant with some really good turkish food, followed by the city museum.

This museum is only 9 years old, and is excellent, but absolutely HUGE. Amongst other things it contains the finds from the excavations at Gobekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe so there was lots to see and really we could have stayed all day, but we needed to also visit the mosaic museum.

The mosaic museum is based around the mosaics found from a roman Palace dating from the 1st and 2nd centuries A D, . The mosaics are still shown in place where they found. They are exquisite, and made from very small and fine tessera, and show animals, birds and scenes from mythology.

Finally we went to see the cave where Abraham was supposed to have been born and the pool where he was thrown into the fire and saved by God by creating the pool of water.Read more