I show one entrance to a ruined basilica named after John the Apostle, resting on Ayasuluk Hill in the modern nation of Turkey. I stylized this image hoping to reach a more transcendent meaning. A more primitive place of worship preceded this brick and stone construction. The former church was also dedicated to the The Theologian, John, because the apostle was the one who described the nature of God in a true manner, beyond the unaided power of the human mind. Here you see doors-within-doors and marble columns which supported in antiquity massive domes. The compounding of portals in this fashion might have had symbolic and spiritual importance. For me the receding gateways signify the layering of history I found in Turkey.

Everywhere past cultures reveal themselves: a ruined Trojan city, abandoned Greek temples, Roman aqueducts still proudly standing. Before the empires of Islam arrived, fledgling believers in Christ lived here, where in the first century they heard the preaching of Paul the Apostle. In the deeper past Bronze Age Hittites thrived, and before them Neolithic farmers occupied the land, built the first cities and established enduring trade routes.  Going back further in time the encampments of Neanderthal peoples show up. No doubt Homo Erectus beings, our footloose prehistorical antecedents trekked across the Anatolian peninsula too, perhaps a million years ago. This has been a crossroads — a turbulent place of mixing — as far backward as the scholars can deduce and the prosthetic eyes of science can see.