Before this trip, I had never been to Adana, and so never to the considerable Adana museum. This city may ring a bell since we have an airbase there, Incerlik and that Turkey is a member of NATO. The holdings of the Adana museum are considerable, so multiple blog posts are in order, My one complaint is this museum should be air conditioned! It was brutally hot both outside and inside this museum, with the visitors dripping on the antiquities! Not good.
Let’s start with their illustrations, which are good, including an elaborate description of the various types of Roman clothing….but first a map to orient you on the location of Adana, a major city of several million (compared to nearby Tarsus, which is a small town)
Note as well the city of Iskenderun where we had our Peter and Paul conference, since the Antioch hotel wasn’t available.
The Romans tended to cremate the deceased, hence the funeral pyre in the upper left of this picture. Then the ashes would be collected and put into a jar, but occasionally Romans preferred to be buried like the Greeks in sarcophagi or burial boxes (a quaint word meaning flesh eater).
Here are some descriptions of Roman clothing.
Formal attire would be expected at a major banquet in someone’s house….
There are a couple of nice well preserved Roman milestones found in the area…. Note the name of Vespasian on the top of this one.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In