The Museum in Tripoli

Letter from Tripoli / Luke Harding | Comment is free | The Guardian

Contrary to silly Russian claims yesterday, it's safe and has been guarded by the rebels - and no NATO bombs have been dropped anywhere near it

The 1810 Cookbook

I wrote a foreword, so obviously I recommend The 1810 Cookbook:

"a cookbook of 155 recipes and remedies compiled by Jane Winnington-Ingram from 1810 onwards and published, 201 years later, by her great-great-great-grand-daughter Verity Walker"

It's fascinating mixture of recipes from curries to face-creams to cholera cures - and whilst most old cook books are just lists of ingredients, this one gives measurements and instructions, which was very unusual. I love the way it was handed down from mother to daughter.

Gaddafi villa pool statues ...

Apparently there were a dozen of these around a pool in the Gaddafi compound, which the rebels smashed once they'd taken it. The various Ben Ali relatives in Tunisia had Roman garden statuary, but this piece ... The head is not ancient for sure, nor are the hands, but the body might be (I can't tell from the photo on my tiny Blackberry screen).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2030233/Gaddafi-playboy-luxury-Seafront-villas-booze-jet-skis-hot-tubs-steel-doors.html

Iconoclasm in Libya ...

Is this damnatio memoriae in action?

Poachers and Gamekeepers ...

I get slightly fed up sometimes of the obsessive propaganda of a couple of so-called archaeologists / cultural property bloggers.

They flipped when I pointed out that their hero Donny George had a mixed history as a 'saviour' of cultural property. He did a great job trying to get looted Iraqi items returned, but let's not forget that was it under his watch that Baghdad Museum was looted on three separate occasions both before and after the American forces arrived in the city. He was also the man in charge of looting the museums and collections of Kuwait under Saddam Hussein.

I also mentioned that Michel van Rijn might be adored by those same bloggers because van Rijn claims to be a crusader against looting - but ... actually has a rather murky past, and his web site had some outlandish claims. Attempts by courts to force it to close because of libel failed, as he simply moved it to another server. He was arrested in January 2005 in Switzerland "for alleged blackmail". Although van Rijn no longer has a web site, he is still dipping his fingers in looting issues. A few journalists and law enforcement personnel have said he claims to have proof X or Y looted the Sevso Treasure / Baghdad Museum / insert other ... and that one academic or another gave him the proof.

So it's nice to see that Derek Fincham is also picking up on van Rijn's past in this post:
Illicit Cultural Property: Did Marion True Ever Catch a Looter or Dealer?

Michel van Rijn was convicted of forgery (he was responsible for the 'Avar Treasure') and very much involved in smuggling Byzantine mosaics out of Cyprus - see the court case here. To top it all, Fincham points out that Marion True, the bête noire of those opposed to collecting, helped get the Kanakaria mosaics returned to Cyprus ...

The sanctuary of Hecate at Lagina

Lagina is an interesting Carian site. It had a Hellenistic temple with a 'short' plan like the ones at Labraunda and Priene, which shows it was an old Carian religious site probably with a Hecatomnid temple. The altar of Hecate in front of her temple was found a long time ago, and now archaeologists have announced they've found the monumental house of her priests, which at some point according to inscriptions on the walls, was inhabited by the high priest named Menestes:

A house unearthed in ancient city of Turkey's Mugla | General | World Bulletin
(the date is a typo in the English story, they mean 2,200 years old)

Archaeologists also found this little bronze depiction of Hecate at Lagina, the first found at the site. Although we tend to associate the many "breasts" with Artemis at Ephesus, it was also a feature of many Carian deities such as Zeus of Labraunda - and clearly Hecate of Lagina.

The breasted Artemis may have evolved out of the goddess assimilating local cults with this feature, as a syncretism, and there was certainly a cult of Hecate within the sanctuary of Artemis of Ephesus (Strabo Geographia 14.1.23). The heavy rope around the neck of the Artemis Ephesia, mentioned in ancient sources (see Eustathius etc JSTOR) and depicted on her statues, is also visible on this miniature Hecate. According to several ancient accounts Ephesus was founded by Carians (Pausanias 7.2.7;)

For new statue see: Ay Tanrı�ası bulundu - Arkeoloji- ntvmsnbc.com

Early Images of the Crucifixion

Early depictions of the Passion of Christ tended to omit the crucifixion, and there are very few representations of it in the Early Christian and Early Byzantine period. The Basque Crucifixion was shown to be a modern fake created by Basque separatists; who's represented in the Alexamenos Graffito will never be certain, nor can it be dated with much certainty; and the fresco in a tomb on the Esquiline pre-dates the Christian period by several centuries. Several graffiti from Pompeii mention crucifixion but as a Roman insult or punishment (source). Although the Romans used crucifixion regularly, again in pre-Christian art it was very rarely depicted. There are very few images of crucifixion, and not all can be linked to Jesus' crucifixion.

In Early Christian art they went out of their way not to depict it. So for example in the circa AD 400 century mosaic in the apse of Santa Pudenziana (here), a jewelled cross is shown at Golgotha, not the crucifixion. In fact, there is rather little evidence for the use of a cross as a symbol by Christians before the time of Constantine. On early Christian sarcophagi, such as the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (dated by inscription to AD 359) or the Dogmatic Sarcophagus, scenes from The Passion were represented - just not the episode of the crucifixion.

The solution fond by the designer of the mid-4th century Passion Sarcophagus (Vatican, image) was to replace the crucifixion with the Chi-Rho:

This ivory plaque is one of four made to decorate a reliquary around AD 420 (The Maskell Ivories, British Museum). It's the earliest depiction of the crucifixion which depicts Jesus for certain, as indicated by the inscription on the titulus crucis: REX IUD[AEORUM]

This box was a probably a private commission, and not necessarily shown in public. It is interesting as it shows also the suicide of Judas and the centurion Longinus. Jesus is shown neither dead nor in pain, and this seems to be a key point of early iconography - Judas is dead, but Jesus is not.

The doors of Santa Sabina on the Aventine in Rome show one of the few public depictions of the crucifixion. The doors seem to be original to the church, which was constructed by Celestine I (AD 422-433) according to its inscription.

Like many early crucifixions, Jesus and the thieves are shown in the orans pose, their arms outstretched and palms up, a pose associated with prayer - the orans pose was not new to Christian iconography, but seems to originate in popularity with images of Artemisia II of Halicarnassus, which were in turn used as a type for depictions of Roman empresses. The figures are all shown 'standing' on the base of the panel, and the crosses are barely visible, so the fact that they were being crucified was not emphasised. This orans or orant pose is also described in sources as having been used in prayers, such as a letter describing the martyrdom of Blandina, as being a deliberate emulation of Jesus' pose on the cross.

There were no earlier images of the crucifixion to serves as examples, but Sheckler and Leith in their study of the Santa Sabina doors suggested as a prototype depictions of the Three Boys in the Fiery Furnace (Daniel 3). They give the example from the Catacombs of Priscilla, where several popes were buried, including Celestine who constructed Santa Sabina:

And it is also depicted on the Passion Sarcophagus mentioned above:

Although scholars like to create Darwinian evolutions of iconography, it's interesting to note that in the contemporary ivory and doors Jesus is shown with and without a beard. I also wanted to show that the orans pose was used to show deification, for example on this coin Domitian issued on the death of his infant son:

The next images of the crucifixion that survive are not until almost two centuries later. The inside of the lid of a 6th century box from the Sancta Sanctorum of St John Lateran that held relics from the Holy Land (now in the Museo Cristiano, Vatican):

Also from the Holy Land are a whole series of ampullae from the altar at Monza Cathedral and S. Colombano in Bobbio, given by Queen Theodelina of the Lombards in AD 603 and AD 613 respectively (Monza below):

On the vast majority of these Jesus is shown in a bust above a naked cross. There is a similar depiction for example in the 520s mosaic in S Stefano Rotondo in Rome, where two saints flank a cross symbolising the crucifixion, but the actual crucifixion is not depicted. The ampullae can be dated by the gift of Theodelina and by the fact that the Holy Sepulcher they depict was destroyed by Chosroes II in AD 614. The most common ampullae, such as this one of c AD 600 in Dumbarton Oaks, show the two thieves in the orans pose, flanking a cross above which is a bust of Jesus:

The inscription in Greek tells us what the little flask originally held: "Oil from the Wood of Life from the Holy Place of Christ" - the Wood of Life was the True Cross re-discovered by Helena, the mother of Constantine. A later ampulla found at Sant Pere de Casserres, Catalonia, shows the full crucifixion, but dates not before the 8th century (here).

The first preserved manuscript with a depiction of the crucifixion is in the Rabula Gospels, created in Syria in the 6th century - the Syriac text is signed by Rabula and dated AD 586 at the Monastery of St. John of Zagba.

What's interesting is that some scholars, such as Massimo Bernabo, now believe that the illustrations are earlier, and were taken from another Greek Gospel and inserted into the Rabula Gospels.

Egyptian monophysites tended to avoid depicting the crucifixion, but there is a Coptic magic papyrus of the 6th century with a sketch of the Crucifixion (British Library Oriental Manuscript 6796, image):

There are some other possible depictions of the crucifixion on small gems, but these are difficult to date, and seem to have been linked to the Nestorians - and so were seen as heretical by mainstream Christians. I'm going to start with the "Orpheos Bakkikos" seal which was lost during the war, but used to be in the Bode Museum in Berlin:

This shows a man crucified on a sort of anchor and is sometimes cited as 'proof' that Jesus was based on Orpheus - whether you believe Jesus was the son of God or not, he sprang from the Jewish religious milieu, and as I've pointed out repeatedly Orphism was a modern 19th century creation by scholars opposed to the power of the Vatican (here). Although conspiracy theorist like to show images of this hematite seal as proof of assorted theories, I don't know any serious scholar who does not believe it's a fake.

There are a number of magical amulets which, like the Coptic papyrus, show a crucified man, such as this bloodstone seal in the British Museum (inv MME 1986.05-01.1) allegedly found in Gaza, and possible made in the 2nd or 3rd century:

The problem with this amulet is that although the inscription says "Son, Father, Jesus Christ" it also has quite a few pagan terms on it and it seems to be a pagan exorcism object which happened to invoke anyone and everyone available, including Jesus ... rather like the Coptic Magic papyrus above, and the Jewish exorcist in Acts 19:13-17 ...

In short, the object was probably not made for or by a Christian. I discussed some evidence for the use of crucifixion nails in Jewish and Christian healing here, and there is also a spell found in the Cairo Geniza (here p. 183) ... and this was nothing new, as can be seen in Apuleius (3.17), Pliny (NH 28.6) and Lucian (Philops. 17). Jesus is invoked not as the Son of God but as a magician, something seem also in the text of a second century gold lamella which mentions assorted other pagan figures (left, Private Collection, London).

Another carnelian in the British Museum (inv MME 1895.11-13.1) is more clearly identified as Jesus by the inscription "Jesus Christ Son of God the Saviour" - it was found at Constantia in Romania, and is Christian, but probably made in Syria:

A second very similar gem from the Nott Collection is preserved in a cast at the DAI in Rome, "Jesus Christ":

Although the 12 figures flanking the crucifixion are generally described as Apostles, these were neither present at the Crucifixion nor numbered 12 after the suicide of Judas. Instead they might represent a procession of clergy, the bishops asserting their claim to temporal power because of the crucifixion and sacrifice of Jesus, which would suggest these seals were made for religious leaders. Some people would like to see these two seals as early, but they are probably 5th to 7th century (Mastrocinque)

A fourth gem seems to be later, but when it was created in the Byzantine period is far from certain, although bent knees are a late feature:

Although from Constantine onwards Christianity became the dominant religion of Rome, Christians for several centuries continued to avoid depicting 'bad' events from their history in their arts, whether it was the Crucifixion or the torture and martyrdom of their saints.

UPDATE - I got some of the images of the intaglios from a web site so wacky I didn't even want to link to it. I hadn't realised that they had in turn been scanned from Jeffrey Spier's brilliant study Late Antique and Early Christian Gems (Spatantike-Fruhes Christentum-Byzanz), or obviously I would have credited it. For those who are interested, and don't want an academic study, see also his contribution in the Kimbell's Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art (Kimbell Art Museum). I just threw this post together from images I'd been gathering for a while, but know little about, so I really recommend looking at Spier's work if you're interested in the subject as he's an excellent scholar and specialises in this area.

Western Influences Art in the East

I thought I'd post some images from Afghanistan and Pakistan which seem to be influenced by Greek and Roman art.

A Satyr from the Apsidal Temple at Sirkap now in Taxila Museum. The temple was sacked by the Kushan in AD 65, so we can confidently date the sculptures to the decades before this, and after the destruction of the city by an earthquake in AD 30 (photo):

Sirkap was founded by Demetrius I of Bactria, but flourished under the Parthians from c. 100 BC onwards. Although many of the sculptures show 'Greek' influence, much of that influence would have been indirect and through the Parthians - Taxila, on the opposite bank of was part of the Achaemenid empire after it's conquest by Darius. Apollonius of Tyana visited, and described it as a Greek style city (text), although when these sculptures were carved it was the capital of the Indo-Parthian kings.

A satyr is just a satyr, but a woman in a helmet wielding a spear is Athena. This figure now in the museum in Lahore is almost shocking as it looks as if it could have been imported from Rome - but the schist shows it was made in Ghandara in the 2nd century AD (photo):

This stucco head from Hadda in Kabul is often described as Mithras because of the bonnet, but this was also worn by the Dioscuri, who were regularly depicted in Central Asia (photo):

And have you ever wondered what a Roman personification of a river god might look like re-interpreted in circa AD 100 Pakistan? Well here's one now in Karachi museum ...

And this is what happens when you send marine figures to Gandhara .... (relief in British Museum);

One of the few early examples of Buddhist small arts to survive is this reliquary from Bimaran now in the British Museum. It was made in the first century to hold a bone of the Buddha, around which Stuppa 2 was constructed. What's interesting as it's a well date example of an early image of Buddha, and he is shown, as he was regularly in Gandhara sculpture, in an arcade.

This idea of showing figures in an arcade is familiar in Early Christian art, as on this sarcophagus in Arles:

The Christian sarcophagus post-dates the Buddhist reliquary, and copied earlier pagan Roman sculptures. The image of Christ, like that of the Buddha, has it's origins in earlier depictions. So these two palliatus-clad religious leaders ... (source)

Have their origins in earlier figures such as the Lateran Sophocles ...

And although it's too easy to see Greek or Roman influences on the heavily draped 'classical' Buddhas of Gandhara, this influence is more likely to have come through Parthian and Syrian figures such as this one from Ksar El Abiad in Syria (source):

Hatshepsut's flacon ....

In 2009 German scientists decided to test the contents of a 4.7 cm sealed flacon that belonged to Hatshepsut and is now in Bonn. They had assumed that it contained perfume but the test results suggests that it was a fatty substance which is more often used to treat eczema - palm oil, with some nutmeg oil imported from the Far East (see here).

Unfortunately certain ingredients may be carcinogenic, such as the creosote ... but they are still used in prescription medications for psoriasis to this day (my medicine cabinet is full of them).

What's interesting is that nutmeg comes from Indonesia, and Hatshepsut sent a famous expedition to the Land of Punt for spices, as commemorated in the reliefs of her mortuary temple. 

The Sign of an Old Collection ...

I've discussed how some pieces on the art market come from old collections (here). Sometimes the record of a provenance is written, and can get lost (see here), or sometimes collectors mark items in the collection. When there is an inventory number on an antiquity it can be hard to tell where that number came from.

It's unusual to see a Roman sculpture with a seal of a Renaissance collector, but they do sometimes come onto the art market. The seal on this head at Galerie Chenel proves that it was once in the Venice collection of Giovanni VI Grimani, who was Patriarch of Acquilea (1545-1550 and 1585 to his death in 1593). The Grimani collection was one of the best collections of antiquities in the Renaissance (JSTOR), and some of it was brought to Paris by Napoleon. Some pieces ended up in the Louvre, this one in a French private collection.

What's interesting is the Grimani's collection is quite well documented, since he gave some of his sculptures to the Republic of Venice in 1586 (JSTOR) - and in 1594-6 the Republic had leads seals attached to the sculptures to commemorate his gifts. But this Antonine head is neither in the 18th century catalogue of the collection nor in the accompanying drawings of it according to Chenel ... But I do wonder if this engraving after Zanetti in 1740 on a Renaissance bust might not be the Chenel head:

And not the Claudian Man, or so-called Julius Caesar in Venice (inv. 199 see below), as usually identified ... although frankly it could be either one in the engraving:

My FCC disclaimer is that I have nothing to do with Galerie Chenel. This is the second piece they have I've blogged about recently, but I'm only doing so as they have interesting heads for sale - they ain't paying me nowt.

Ancient Roman Jar Riddled with Mystery

My opinion? It's not unique, and I have similar old French vessels at home ... which were used for soft cheese, separating the curd and the whey ...

http://www.livescience.com/15629-ancient-roman-artifact-mystery.html

Updated - well, I clearly had food on my mind, just the wrong kind of food ... via David Meadows' explanation / update it's clear that it was for catching fish as seen in this Tunisian mosaic in Sousse:

David seems to believe it was for catching octopus, but in other mosaics they were speared ... so many squid or small fish?

Hobnail footprint in a tile ...

This is super-cool to find the footprint of a hobnail boot - and this one was just found at Caerleon. The norm in digs of battlefields and military camps is to find lots of nails from boots randomly scattered around ... This impression made in a tile shows what they were like when still whole.

http://twitpic.com/67xf58

Roman Chain Mail

This image of a soldier comes from the Ludovisi Sarcophagus, possibly made for Hostilian the son of Decius who died in AD 251 having very briefly been emperor ... If so he's the general shown fighting the barbarians in the center of the sarcophagus (bottom of post), but I find the figure to the right end more interesting, for he's wearing chain mail.

The Romans got chain mail from the Gauls, but it had been around longer. The oldest example comes from a Scythian tumulus at Zhurovka, dated to the early 5th century BC by the red figure pottery, presumably obtained through trade via Olbia. It is described in the 3rd century BC by Polybius (6.23.15), but only began to be used more regularly in the 2nd century AD.

Very few examples of actual mail survive from either Roman or Celtic graves, which is why the few depictions in Roman sculpture are so interesting.

This fragment was found at the Temple of Bel at Dura Europas (source):

The problem is that excavators later found a whole skeleton wearing mail at Dura Europas (source), but ... he seems to be a Sassanian who died mining under Tower 19 in AD 256 to set off poison gas according to research by Simon James:

What we do have surviving examples of is the fish-scale armour, for example from Trimontium (Newstead):

Chain mail, or lorica hamata, was worn by junior officers and standard bearers primarily in the later Imperial period, and only by those that could afford it during the Republic.

Romulus: What Would Jews Say?

In the commentary on the the marriage of Solomon to the gentile Pharaoh's daughter in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 21b says:

R. Isaac said: When Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter, Gabriel descended and stuck a reed in the sea, which gathered a sand-bank around it, on which was built the great city of Rome.

God created Rome to punish the Jews for Solomon's actions and their ancient sins.

But when one checks the commentary in the Jerusalem Talmud this passage is expanded upon with some variations (yAZ 1.2, 39c; see):

R. Levi said: On the day when Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh Necho, the king of Egypt, Michael came down from heaven and struck a staff into the sea, and pulled up a heap of mud which became a great forest, and this was the location of the great city of Rome. On the day when Jeroboan set up two golden calves, Romulus and Remus came and built two huts in Rome. On the day when Elijah disappeared, a king was appointed in Rome - "And there was no king in Edom, a deputy was king" (I Kings 22:48)

The passage makes it clear that the foundation and development of Rome was due to a series of sins by a number of Jews - not just punishment for the Jews for the sin of Solomon. Jeroboam, he "who made Israel to sin" (I Kings 14:16), erected two Golden Calves to his pagan gods and the one God sent two brothers as punishment to found Rome.

In Midrash Psalms 10.6 R. Yudan quotes R. Judah on a story of Romulus and Remus being abandoned by their mother and suckled by a wolf, as a comment on Psalms 10:14.

In the of the midrash of Canticles in the the Jerusalem Talmud (see), Romulus and Remus are not mentioned, but their reed huts are. These keep falling down until they seeks the advice of Abba Kolon and mix in the waters of the Euphrates, according to Rabbi Judah. More on this and other stories about the founding of Rome can be found here.

In another midrash Solomon and the king of Rome meet, so I'm not going to pretend these are genuinely useful sources for the study of the foundation of Rome. The passages are interesting as an explanation for the way Jews in Late Antiquity and the early Byzantine period viewed the loss of their lands to Rome.

The First Stirrups ...

A conversation I've had with Adrian Goldsworthy and Adrian Murdoch is about the introduction of stirrups in the West. The Greeks didn't have them, nor did the Romans, and this must have affected their ability to ride. The Chinese developed the stirrup, which did not appear until the 6th century in Europe.

For example, the horses at Luxor, which was an Imperial cult with frescoes from the time of the Tertrarchs, were saddled but had no stirrups (here; image):

This may be one of the earliest excavated examples, from an Avar grave in Hungary, where people from Mongolia emigrated and settled (source):

Excavations in Mongolia have confirmed that as their origin through similar finds there. The Avars settled in Hungary in AD 567, and we know they had contact with Justinian II at Constantinople by 560. The Avars proved to be formidable foes, so the Byzantines soon adopted the stirrup as noted in the Strategicon of Maurice c. AD 600 (skala; 1.2 and 2.9). Stirrups are first certainly shown in Western art on the Madara Rider in Bulgaria, dated by an inscription to AD 710 (source):

There are several other images of stirrups in use in the west in the 8th century. This fragment of Byzantine silk shows an emperor hunting; it was given to the Abbey in Mozac for the relics of St Austremoine by King Pippin the Short in AD761, providing a terminus ante quem (source p. 28 and Lyons):

The stirrup is shown in a Lombard Capitulare Evangeliorum, and was known by the late Merovingians and Carolingians, although it seems to have been used only by the elite. A Coptic ivory set into the ambo of Henry II (AD 1002) at Aachen shows stirrups in use by the Byzantine emperor ruler - it is generally dated to the 6th century which would make them the earliest depiction of stirrups if this is correct:

 The frescoes from Qasr al-Hayr al-Gharbi built by the Umayyad caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik around AD 727 show that they were using stirrups in Syria (source):

Although stirrups were not used by the Sassanians, they are shown on in Kushan art from the 2nd century BC onwards (seal of Adsho, BM; source):

What's interesting is that the Kushan / Indian stirrups or leather 'toe stirrups' did not catch on. Similar leather slings used for holding the feet are shown in art from the Steppes, such as the Chertomlyk Amphora (Hermitage), but again did not enter general use amongst their neighbours.

We know that the Franks were aware of stirrups, but initially did not use them widely. In AD 732 Charles Martel and his men fought on foot against the mounted Muslims at the Battle of Poitiers. By the Battle of Louvain in AD 891 the Franks were fully mounted, using stirrups, and this is how they routed the Vikings there. When and why they chose to adopt the stirrup is not known - the Alemanni whom the Franks absorbed had used them for some time -  but this is when it became the norm in the West.

The use of the stirrup sometimes seems to be a personal choice - for example in scenes from the Apocalypse of Valenciennes some riders use them whilst others do not (dated by some to c AD 800, others to 900: source):