In Cappadocia nothing meets the eye. As we hike through the valleys, we frequently find carvings in the rock formations that resemble honeycombs. They are the remnants of pigeon houses—a feature of the landscape from modern times back to antiquity. Housing pigeons is crucial for the agriculture of this region, as their droppings are used by farmers in order to lower the acidity of the volcanic soil.
Yesterday, on our way along the road winding from Avanos to Göreme we stopped near the village of Çavuşin. On the outskirts is a rock-cut church that was used as a pigeon house up to the early twentieth-century. Many of the abandoned churches in Cappadocia that we study were converted into such pigeon houses. After climbing up the entrance of the church we stepped inside and let our eyes adjust to the dim light. Frescoes carpet the walls of the naos with rich reds, bright greens, and dark blues. The frescoes are executed with great skill. The wings of angels gracefully extend above figures and even melt into the surrounding architecture. While we allowed ourselves to be awed by the beauty of the interior, we spent our time inside noting the similarities of the visual program between Çavuşin and Meryemana. Our examination led us to make some exciting discoveries and prompted us to reconstruct an apse of Meryemana in an unusual way surrounding Dr. Jones's bathroom door, which we will post here shortly.
While the church at Çavuşin later served as a pigeon house, it is the only rock-cut church in the region with portraits of the Byzantine imperial family. Nikephoros Phocas, a tenth-century Byzantine emperor, and four of his family members are depicted in the north apse of the church. Çavuşin is the perfect example of the surprises that can be found in every darkened corner of every remote rock-cut church. In Cappadocia an emperor and pigeons can reside in the same rock-cut church, and as we scale up into the more inaccessible rock-cut churches, we now expect to find nearly everything in between.
