Amphipolis is mentioned only once in the Bible in Acts 17:1: “Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue of the Jews”. The word Amphipolis is derived from “amphi” (on both sides, or around) and “polis” (city) and re…
Assos is a city on the coast of the western part of what is now Turkey. It is only mentioned in the Bible in Acts 20:13-14.
A famous resident of Assos was Aristotle, who lived from 384-322BC. According to Britannica, he was a philosopher, psychologist, logician, moralist, political …
Samothraki is an island in the northern part of the Aegean Sea measuring 21km east-west and 13km north-south and is mentioned only once in Scripture, in Acts 16:11 where it is called Samothracia.
Paul had received a vison at Troas in which a man from Macedonia had appealed to him to a…
Samos is an island in the eastern Aegean Sea only 1.6 kilometres from what is now called Turkey and is only mentioned in the Bible once, in Acts 20:15, when Paul was travelling to Jerusalem.
The island itself is 43 kilometres long (east to west) and 13 kilometres wide (north to south) with …
Kos is a Greek island in the south eastern Aegean Sea, four kilometres from the coast of mainland Turkey. The island measures 40 by 8 kilometres and only appears once in the Bible in Acts 21:1, where it is translated as Coos. Today the principal town of the island and seat of the municipal…
In the far western Iranian province of Khuzestan, just 50 km from the Iraqi border and on the outskirts of the city of Shush (ancient Susa, Shushan in the Bible), runs the river known in ancient times as the River Ulai, but in modern times as the Karkheh. Fed by the melting snows of the Zagr…
Ecbatana, located in the midst of the Zagros mountains and on the strategic Silk Road caravan route from Mesopotamia to the Persian plateau, was once the capital of the Median Empire. With its pleasant summer climate, it was known as a resort city but in early January we found it heavily cov…
At Pasargadae, on the dusty yet fertile plain of Morghab in southern Iran, lie the remnants of the first great Persian garden constructed by Cyrus the Great, once filled with exotic plants and animals.
Gardens hold a hidden story: they reminisce of the fall of man but whisper from every cor…
Rising out of the sands of time in the western Iranian province of Khuzestan, (not far from Shushan) is a unique ziggurat known as Chogha Zanbil. It dates back to 1250BC and was only discovered in the 1930s and is one of the largest, oldest and best-preserved ziggurats that may be visited in…
Chogha Zanbil Ziggurat Read More »
Situated on the celebrated Silk Road, modern Hamadan was once a place of magnificent splendour, an Achaemenid royal capital known in antiquity as Ecbatana.
Little evidence of that former glory remains. Today a visitor finds a town centred around a memorial to the Iran-Iraq war. One of the longest…
The Tombs of Esther and Mordecai – Hamadan Read More »
