Background Check

It occurred to me today that I have been incredibly lax and oddly incurious about the geography of Anatolia. This was brought to ahead when rereading Saxetorph's blurb on 6thC Anatolia and I realized that I could not pinpoint Lake Van and didn't know anything about it. So, off to google & google maps and now I know where it is have zoomed around the surrounding mountains & valleys (virtually speaking), know that it is a large salic, sodium endorheic (having no outlook) lake. Hmmph!  Goes to show what you can miss by not looking. Sounds like something right out of one of those Conan stories which is why this next bit took my fancy, a video clip of the Lake Van monster! :



Well, what land locked lake doesn't have one? The Ogopogo, Nessie, have long loved 'em all and here is my very own monster in the midst of my very own not very historical ancients campaign. Haven't figured out quite how to work it in yet but its nice to know its there.

Now what I'd really like to find is easy, free access to more pictures of Greek vase paintings, old ones.

Kerkenes Dag

That's Pteria to Herodotus. Whilst killing time on the web, I came across a site on an archeological dig in Turkey on the Kerkenes Dag. There is good reason to believe that this may have been a Mede stronghold during the war with Lydia. Now, I'm not likely to build a huge fortress city on a mountain but its nice to have a  name for the advance base of my Mede army. Herodotus calls in Pteria but I like the sound of Kerkenes Dag. I also like the green colour in this shot, very close to the colour of my table!

picture of Kerkenes Dag taken from the website http://www.kerkenes.metu.edu.tr/kerk1/index.html

btw for a minute I thought I had found a Google Books online copy of the volume of Hermathena containing Cobbe's  article "Alyattes ‘Median’ War"  but it turned out to be Issue XV when Issue CV is what is needed. Guess I have to wait another 100 years! 

Hermathena