Endymion and the Cotton Castle
In western Turkey, near the headwaters of the Menderes River, an uplift in the earth has created a series of cliffs that rise about 60 meters above the plain. Today, these cliffs are noted for their distinct, white terraces. The Turkish residents of the area call it “Pamuk kale” or “cotton castle,” a name that has been condensed to the name of the town that lies at the base of the cliffs, Pamukkale.
I visited last summer and wrote about the geology and history of the area, as well as a more detailed account of the “Way of Death” I found there: a memorial marking the place St. Philip was martyred, a Temple of Hades (which features in this tale), and the sprawling necropolis west of the city.
This tale began during that visit to the site and the clever, mythical explanation it gives of the white, travertine cliffs. It is part of an ongoing series of tales, set in and around Izmir, that I am publishing as part of this newsletter. Special thanks to Tuğkan Türkkan for the illustrations he created for this project.
Endymion was a shepherd who pastured his sheep on the cool, grassy, uplands of the Meander River. He would take the flocks there for weeks at a time, particularly in late June, when the shimmering heat made the valley uncomfortable for his animals. At night he would gather his sheep into a circular stone corral. Once they were secure, he would lie in a soft bed of clover nearby and look at the heavens. He loved to look at the night sky, tracking the path of the Evening Star, tracing the outlines of constellations, and staring at the moon in all her phases.
In fact, Endymion spent so many evenings staring at the sky, he developed the habit of sleeping with his eyes open. A friend from the village below the cliffs, strolling along the cliff tops on a summer evening, once greeted Endymion and asked of his health, only to see the boy suddenly blink his eyes, yawn and sit up as if he had awoken from a deep sleep.
“Greetings,” the shepherd told his friend. “Did you say something?”
“I disturbed you. I thought you were awake. I’m sorry.”
Endymion yawned. “I must be alert, even when asleep, lest something threaten the sheep.”
“Of course,” replied the friend. “But how am I to know if you are awake or asleep? I do not wish to disturb you.”
Endymion’s friends weren’t the only ones beguiled by his open eyes. Selene, the moon herself, had looked down on Endymion in her nightly journeys through the skies. His open eyes captivated her.
One night as Endymion stared at a full moon, his sheep murmuring in slumber nearby. As he gazed, it seemed to grow brighter, larger, until it had become a face.
Now Endymion had often seen a face in the moon – the eyes, the nose, the chin, the huge grin – but this was a different face. It became the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Long, white hair surrounded it, and its eyes were night-blue.
Endymion blinked, thinking he must be dreaming. The face was still there. It smiled at him, eyes shimmering like stars.
The face spoke. “I see you tracking me. I see you every night as I pass by.”
“You mesmerize me,” Endymion replied. “Sometimes I fall asleep watching you. When I awaken, my head has turned toward the horizon where you have gone, as if my eyes followed you without my control.”
“This I, too, have seen,” said the face. “I am Selene.” As she whispered her name, her lips paused to shape of the cutest smile Endymion had ever seen.
“And I am Endymion.” He rose, reached up, and touched Selene’s glowing cheek with his hand. Strange. It was cold to touch. Selene’s face closed its eyes. Endymion’s hand left a mark in the powder of her cheeks.
Endymion reached out his hand, a hand gripped his own. Selene’s. She wore a black dress, studded with diamonds, a thin belt of light-pink, cottony clouds cinched at her waist. They walked to the edge of the plateau and looked down on the village at its base.
Endymion was full of questions. How far did the stars linger away from Selene in her place in the heavens? Where did she go on the nights when the moon was new? Did her half and crescent shapes mean that she was looking elsewhere on those nights?
Selene laughed. She was all alone in her route above the earth, she said, and the stars seemed as far away to her as they were to Endymion. The planet, Venus, seemed closer to her, if smaller. They were friends, as humans could tell by their morning and evening conversations throughout the year.
She blamed the half, crescent, and new moons on the sun, who was slow to rise on those nights when she was already making her circuit – or already finished in the case of the new moon. She completed her circuit every day, she assured Endymion, whether the sun was on time or not.
“I look for you on those new-moon nights,” she told Endymion, “and I have seen you corralling your sheep. At those times I regret that I will have passed into the hills by the time you looked for me.”
Endymion smiled. “We have tonight.”
Selene had many questions for Endymion as well. Why were there so many more people outside in the day than at night? What was the purpose of a roof – and what did people hide below them?
When dawn announced itself with trumpets and sunbeams, Selene bade farewell to the boy, leapt into the sky and raced back to her journey.
Did the people living westward of Pamukkale notice the moon racing faster than normal through the early morning hours? Of course not, they were all fast asleep.
The next evening was overcast, Endymion closed his eyes and his mind brought back the glowing face, the white hair, the midnight-blue eyes, her deep voice: caring, questioning.
He opened his eyes and looked up. He was looking for Selene, somewhere above the dark clouds. He tried to guess her exact position. Heat lightning flickered in the distance, drawing his gaze.
He fell asleep, and when he awoke, his head was looking toward the western horizon. Mysteriously, while he had slept, his open eyes had found and followed her across the sky.
The next night it began to rain. Endymion found a cave above the cliffs and filed his flock inside. He settled down upon his cloak at the cave entrance. He looked out and watched the clouds churn above the plateau.
Towards morning, they pulled apart for a moment, and he saw her – Selene – looking back at him. He reached for her, but the clouds huddled together again and blocked him.
The third night, the skies cleared. Endymion waited. High, wispy clouds dusted the sky. They drew back like curtains. Selene appeared, waning. She rushed down as soon as she saw him.
Endymion smiled. He reached out and touched her hair, fine and white as moonbeans. She closed her eyes, smiled, and pressed her cheek against his hand. The cheek was still cold to Endymion’s touch. She opened her eyes, looking into his, beckoning.
Endymion leaned forward, and they kissed. It felt cold. At least that was how Endymion experienced it. A shiver left his lips as they touched hers and made his whole body shake.
He felt her hands in his. He held her arms and slid his hands around her back. They embraced. Then they kissed again.
Above the lovers, a meteorite shower swept the heavens.
“They don’t make a sound,” Endymion said, looking up. “Do they explode?”
Selene smiled. She pointed at a couple of marks on her arms and chest. “They don’t explode, but they can hurt,” she said.
Endymion reached out and caressed the pock marks. He had heard that the moon was eternal, but Selene’s marks proved that immortality was not without its scars. Selene’s arms were warm, and he rubbed them gently. “These scars. They make you beautiful,” he said.
From that night, Endymion and Selene were lovers. Her nightly course through the heavens usually detoured over the Meander Valley, and her delayed settings blushed her white face, as Dawn chased her towards a delayed setting with its first rays, and her lover’s sheep bleated, calling for a milking.
Did the people in the village below the cliffs recognize the nightly visits of the moon? Had they peered through the starlight, they may have seen Selene’s dark side among the shadows atop the cliffs. They would not have recognized it.
Sailors on calm, tideless seas guided their crafts beneath a sky ablaze with stars and hardly missed the moon.
One morning just after Selene had leapt into the heavens to finish her course through the skies, the plateau twisted and bucked in a powerful earthquake. Endymion was thrown onto his back. Struggling to his feet, he saw a chasm open up in the earth. He grabbed a lamb and led the flock uphill, noting the trees swaying, and dodging boulders that rolled down the slope toward the cliffs above the village.
When Selene appeared that night, she reported on the destruction. Every home in the village below the cliffs had collapsed. Cities throughout the valley were destroyed. Three nights later they walked with Endymion’s flock to the open chasm. It emitted a dull, sulfurous smell.
The years wound on, and the lovers reunited every night. In winter, Endymion sheltered his flock near the village, but every night at sunset, he climbed the cliffs to the tableland. He had neither roof nor bed in the village. And in late spring, he led his flock along a stream that climbed a gulley and spent nearly every moment of the next seven months away from the company of men.
Endymion and Selene had thirteen daughters, one for each of their mother’s full rotations through the year, and they had one son they named Poseidos for the month that featured the winter solstice, the longest night of each year
The children grew and, one by one, made their way down the cliffs and into lives of their own in the village. They reunited twice a year on the winter and summer solstices.
One early morning, as the couple lay together, dreading dawn’s first rays, Selene reached out and pulled a hair from Endymion’s beard.
“Ouch!” he said, pressing his hand to the place on his cheek. “What was that for?”
Selene held up pinched fingertips. “It’s a white hair.”
“Yes, I know. Hair turns white as we age. My mother told me that my hair was white when I was a boy. It darkened as I grew older. I expect my beard will be full of white hairs in a few years.”
Shadows appeared on Selene’s face. “You will grow old and, and, and you will…”
“I will die.”
Selene’s face darkened.
“It is the way for us mortals,” Endymion continued. “You will not die. As long as there is heaven you will soar through it – you with your changing faces."
Selene frowned. "I don't like it."
"Your hair is already white," Endymion urged. “It looks beautiful.”
Selene sat up and flicked the white hair into the grass beside their blanket. “My hair has always been white.” She paused. “My hair has always been…”
She pulled her knees up to her chest and rubbed her shoulders, suddenly feeling a little cold. “It always will be white.”
“We humans are like meteors,” Endymion continued. We blaze. We burn out.” He smiled. “We don’t explode.”
“You don’t explode, but you hurt!” Selene looked back at him, her eyes teary. “You will leave a scar. A deep one.”
Endymion smiled. He put his arms around her shoulders and rubbed warmth into them, rubbed at the pock marks there. He placed his chin on Selene’s shoulder. “I do not wish to burn out,” he whispered.
She beamed. She turned and looked at him. “You don’t?”
“I wish to stay with you. Forever”
Selene leaped into the sky. “You will,” she called behind her. “I will ask great Zeus. Tomorrow, while the sun rules the heavens. He will grant my wish. You will stay with me forever.”
Mortality lies in the hands of the Fates, against whom even the gods themselves may not contend. But Zeus offered Selene a compromise. Endymion might live forever only if he fell asleep – and never awakened.
Selene thought of those long nights on the mesa above the village. She thought of Endymion’s eyes, open both in and out of slumber, that had watched her so many nights on her course through the heavens. She waited three moons to share Zeus’s judgment with her lover.
“I will do it,” Endymion told her. There was no hesitation. More white hairs peppered his beard, and he had walked with a limp when she had approached him that evening – “just a sore foot,” he had said, “I will rest it.” The sheep slept in their corral.
“You must sleep in a safe place,” Selene told Endymion. “People will steal your sheep. They will do harm to you while you are unconscious. A serpent could slither up and bite you. A vulture might tear your flesh.”
“I know a place,” Endymion said. He took her to the yawning chasm that the earthquake had made. The slope into the darkness was now covered with grass. “I will guide the sheep there. There I will lie down and go to sleep.”
“And there will I visit you night after night forever,” Selene said.
The next morning Endymion milked his sheep, walked to the edge of the cliffs, and looked down on the village at its base. He had four skins full of milk. But he would make no exchanges that day. He had no need of food. The next night he would sleep forever. Selene would feed and care for him.
He opened a skin of milk and poured it on the ground at the edge of the cliff. He watched the milk ooze along the stone, splitting into smaller and smaller streams as it made its way to the valley. He noticed, here and there, white particles gathering among the stones, congealing, arrested in their descent. These clusters were bright white. He reached down and picked one up. Strange. It looked like curd but felt like stone.
He poured out the other three skins of milk. More pieces clung to the rock, forming a shape like the rim of a small bowl. He spread out the empty goat skins on the edge of the cliff to dry. He would need them no more.
That evening he ushered his flock of sheep into the chasm and followed them inside. The sheep wandered deep inside, found an open chamber, huddled together, and went fast asleep.
Endymion lay down among rays of moonlight between the sheep and the cave entrance, his face turned toward the sky. In his hand he still held the tiny stone formed by the milk and the mesa.
His eyes filled with moonbeams. He stretched his arms wide. He yawned. He reclined and fell asleep.
When Selene arrived at the cave, she found her lover, eyes wide open, breathing in a soft, easy rhythm, awaiting her. And they loved there. They love still, nightly, on that moonlit hill.
The next morning, Endymion did not awaken nor did his sheep. They didn’t bleat, even though their udders were full of milk. With no one to milk the sheep, their milk oozed out anyway and began to gather in pools. Trickles formed and made their way to the cliffs, then seeped down into the valley. The streams were milky white – they are milky white even today, and you can see them on a visit to Pamukkale.
Over the years since Endymion and his flock went to sleep inside the cave, the milk-white waters have left residue on the cliffs, making them white as wool. The white, travertine crystals create rounded, white terraces down the sides of the mesa, shaped like the circular corrals in which Endymion housed his sheep during his nightly meetings with his lover, Selene.
And on clear nights, when the moon is full, the cliffs of Pamukkale glow in moonbeams, and for a moment it seems like the side of the mesa is a flock of sheep grazing on the hillside, while somewhere nearby a shepherd boy looks with open eyes at the moon in all her glory.
Other Ionian Tales:
Achilles in Colophon: a daring raid by the great warrior
Narcissus and Echo: set at a spring just 60 km from Izmir
Artemis and the Holly Shrub: a tender origin story about the Aegean’s prickliest plant.