First Travellers in Cappadocia

First Travellers in Cappadocia

The Cappadocia region, where many diverse civilizations lived, was discovered by Europeans at the beginning of the 18th century. In 1744 Paul Lucas, who was commissioned by King Louis XIV of France, had declared that he had seen strange, pyramid-like houses near Halys that had charming doors, stairs and large windows to illuminate the rooms.
He imagined the fairy chimneys as hooded priests and the rocks over them as the Virgin Mary holding the baby Christ. In 1719 when Lucas resumed research in Cappadocia, he defined these fairy chimneys  as the graveyards that belong to Caesarea ( modern Kayseri ).
Lucas’s fantastic description was greeted with both suspicion and interest in the west. C. Sexier, two travelled in Cappadocia between. 1833 and 1837 after Paul Lucas , stated that  ” nature had never showed itself to a foreigner’s eyes so extraordinarily”.  The English traveler Ainsworth, who arrived in Cappadocia in 1837, described his impression this way : ” Turning up a glen which led from the river inland, we found ourselves suddenly lost in a forest of cones and pillars of rock that rose around us in interminable confusion, like the ruins of some great and ancient city.
At times, these rude pinnacles of rock balanced huge unformed masses  upon their pointed summits but still more frequently the same strangely supported masses  assumed fantastic shapes and forms. At one moment , they suggest the idea of a lion and at another of a bird  and again of a crocodile or a fish.”
Scientific research and publication began toward the end of the 19th century.
The French researcher / priest G.De Jerphanion, who made observations for the French union of Churches in 1907-1912, investigated the memorial rock churches, monasteries and the wall paintings in them systematically.