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Sultaniye
In
July 2002 we started a most interesting project in a very small
settlement called Sultaniye on the shore of Lake Köyceğiz. This
place, not so far from the ancient city of Caunos, and actually
a kind of thermal resort with only a bathhouse, a few
bungalow-like huts and a coffee shop, is believed to have been
once the summer residence of rich Caunians. My late grandfather,
who had been excavating in Caunos since 1967, became interested
in this site and asked Serdar Akerdem, a long time member of the
Caunos team, to dive into the lake for the first time in 2001.
Serdar discovered some architectural remains under the lake,
part of which can be seen from the land as well. Following the
death of my grandfather, Serdar decided to excavate the site. So
that’s how it all started.
In late May of
last year I got a phone call from Serdar, saying, “get ready, we
are going to excavate underwater at Sultaniye!”. We scheduled
our work to start on the 1st of July. My first duty
was to transport a huge compressor from Antalya to Köyceğiz, and
then to Sultaniye. The compressor, kindly lent by Tosun Sezen,
one of the pioneers of industrial diving in Turkey, was to
Ozan after a dive
be used for our
air supply. At this point it would be useful to inform the
readers that divers get their air supply in two ways: by SCUBA
or hookah (Turkish- nargile). Our low-pressure
compressor was to help us in the latter way.
This system
consists of a low-pressure air compressor and a couple of long
hoses which distribute air to divers. The hookah, widely
used by sponge divers in Turkey differs drastically from the
SCUBA (self-contained underwater breathing apparatus) which
frees the diver underwater.
With the hookah
you are dependent on the surface. Nonetheless , for our work at
Sultaniye the hookah was the best solution, because we
were going to work at a maximum depth of 12 meters. This means
we had a big advantage be-cause we could spend a lot of time
underwater without the risk of decom-pression sickness. Indeed
the SCUBA system offers the same thing, but unfortunately the
tanks can be filled with a limited amount of air only, contrary
to the hookah which gives you unlimited air! However, for
some reasons at the first stage of our work we had to use SCUBA
tanks instead of our hookah system.
Sultaniye, visited
by people for the sulphur-containing hot water pools and the
so-called “miracle mud baths”, was to be our home for one month.
The mayor of Köyceğiz gave us two of the huts intended for the
visitors. These two huts were more than enough because we were,
I think, the smallest underwater excavation team in the world:
Serdar Akerdem, Sabahat Erdönmez and myself. As I said before at
the beginning we were unable to use the compressor due to some
technical difficulties and we had to rely on the good old SCUBA
tanks (it’s a bit ironic because, SCUBA was developed
much later than the
hookah, but since none of us has ever dived with this
system before, it was something completely new for us.) The
obligation of using SCUBA tanks presented another difficulty:
one of us had to take the tanks everyday to Dalyan, the holiday
town neighboring Caunos. There was only one way to get there:
crossing the lake by a boat. Fortunately the Caunos team had a
boat at their disposal for daily use.
On the third day of
the dig I made my first dive in the lake. It was unbelievable
for the water was extremely hot and the visibility was very
poor. The color of the water was yellowish green and the bottom
was covered with thick and dense aquatic plants. Also, believe
it or not, the water was smelling sulphur. For the ones who do
not know that smell, I’ll explain: it’s that well-known,
disgusting smell of a rotten egg.
The first job to
be done was to clear the lake bottom from the weeds over a
certain area. Easier said than done,
this job took
almost one week to complete and made us very tired. For the
first time in my life I was sweating underwater because I was
wearing my 5 mm thick wetsuit designed for cool water diving. I
could not dive nude either, because the lake was full of
stinging and scratching organisms or broken bottles or sharp
stones.
We dived two times
a day: in the morning and in the afternoon. When we were not
diving we were busy with technical details, such as getting the
compressor ready. With SCUBA tanks our dives were limited to
one hour but after we activated our compressor
we extended our
bottom time to no less than 90 minutes.
The second, but
technically far more challenging task was to drive iron spikes
into the lake bed for measuring purposes. These iron spikes were
made by ourselves by cutting very long water pipes into 50 cm
long pieces. The water pipes were thrown out as junk at the
Caunos excavation house, where luckily there was also that
machine called the “spiral”. This machine resembles a chain saw
in its operating principle and is designed for cutting iron.
Anyway it is definitely a dangerous machine, please don’t try
this at home!
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When the spikes were ready it was time to drive them into the
bottom of the lake on certain points. This, again, turned out to
be a very difficult task because one of us had to hold the
spike in place while the other was hitting on it with a heavy
sledgehammer. Since the visibility was very poor, sometimes down
to even 10 centimeters, there was the danger of hitting each
other’s head or hands. We were lucky, nothing
bad happened.
A couple days after
we started driving the spikes, a gifted ironsmith, who has been
working for Caunos excavation for many years, came to our help.
When Serdar told him the difficulties we faced while driving the
spikes, he got the idea of designing a device for us, and then
he made it in 1 hour! The device was simply another iron pipe,
just a little larger in diameter than our spikes.
To this pipe was
attached an iron weight which can move through the pipe. Its
operating principle was so simple: You attach the device to the
top of the spike to be driven, then you lift the weight to the
top of the device and release it. It falls quickly and drives
the spike with its own weight. This simple but innovative tool
was not only a pleasure to use in itself, but also offered
safety and saved time and energy.
Then we attached
long nails on top of spikes. For achieving this we employed
small clamps and screws. Though not
Submerged wall
tiresome as the
previous tasks, this was not easy either because of the poor
visibility. I could hardly see those tiny screws and the tip of
my screwdriver. The biggest problem was the soil covering the
lake bottom which included sulphur. With every stroke of my fins
the water was turning to dark grey from yellowish green. Try to
get the picture, it was so dark when the sun was shining on the
surface and I was sweating underwater! I felt like an astronaut!
The photographs might be misleading, because these are digital
photographs, later processed for better viewing.
For the last week
of our stay at Sultaniye, Serdar’s cousin Çağrı who was an
accomplished diver joined us as a volunteer. With his help we
did some more bottom cleaning and began to make the
measurements. We used standard measuring tapes like the ones
used in terrestrial excavations. Yet again using them was not
easy thanks to the muddy waters of Lake Köyceğiz. We could not
see each other and the tape got entangled very often.
Apart from these
tiresome but highly enjoyable (!) activities the life at
Sultaniye was so simple. During the day many tourists visit the
sulphur bathhouse but in the evening we were all by ourselves
along with some temporary residents who came there for a cure.
Anyway at the end of the day we were also very tired and , after
a nice hot bath, we went to bed very early. This pre-bedtime
bath in sulphur containing water pool also protected us from
those dreadful mosquitoes. Keep this in mind, sulphur is an
excellent insect repellent, even those terrible monsters cannot
stand that horrible smell!
So, this was the
very first season of Sultaniye excavation, actually we had no
time to start digging the site. We were only three people and
the preparations took a very long time, so they say the first
season of a dig is the hardest one. But we will resume our work
this summer. We hope that the site will yield so many splendors
of the ancient world. That’s enough of tech-talk for now!!!!
Text: Ozan Çelik
Photos: Serdar
Akerdem
Newsletter No. 2
- 2003, Pg. 32
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