Medieval Memorial Day for Cleopatra

Cleopatra as 'The Virtuous Scholar'

Who? Cleopatra? Do you mean our Cleopatra, divine queen of Egypt and lover of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony?  That Cleopatra?

Yes, the very same.

But better known to those who wrote about her scholarly temperament as Qilopatra, Qilpatra, Qalupatri, Qilawfatra, Qulfidar, Qarupa, Kilapatra, Elawpatra, Elawatra, and even Aklaupatr.  Not the ten little dwarfs but the queen's name in medieval Arabic.  All of which mean, or so we are told, 'The Weeping Rock' or 'The Weeping Woman'. 

Which makes a kind of sense, I suppose, if you were a medieval Arab historian looking for meaning in names.  But why should she weep?  According to their memories, she had nothing to cry about.

Memorial Day in Medieval Egypt

It all began with the Coptic Christian bishop, John of Nikiu (a town in the Nile Delta), who lived at the time of the Muslim conquest of Egypt, the very fraught years 639-41 CE.  John wrote a Chronicle of the History of the World (in Greek, perhaps also partially in Coptic; now lost, it was translated into Arabic and survives today only in an Ethiopian translation from 1602 CE).  Though John was an Egyptian, his memory of distant history was foggy, to say the least.  Cleopatra, he tells us, was 'a very beautiful young virgin':

[Julius] Caesar fell in love with her and married her and begat a son by her. And he gave her the kingdom of Egypt. And he named that son Julius Caesar. He was also named Caesarion.

So far, so good (if you ignore her two previous marriages, possibly unconsummated, to her brothers, Ptolemy XIII and P. XIV). But Bishop John soon loses track of Julius Caesar and knows nothing of the Mark Antony episode nor of Octavian's defeat of Antony + Cleopatra.  Rather, the good bishop drifts off into a long aside extolling Cleopatra's courage and her strength, and lauding her building projects in Alexandria, the likes of which had never been seen before.  These, he says, included a magnificent palace built on an island -- with a causeway to reach it across the bay; the draining of a large area of sea which she turned into dry land; a contrary project of digging a canal and diverting a river so that ships could come right up to the city; and yet another water management project that supplied the city with an abundance of fish. 

And she executed all these works in vigilant care for the well-being of the city. And before she died she executed many noble works and (created) important institutions. And this woman, the most illustrious and wise amongst women, died in the fourteenth year of the reign of Caesar Augustus. Thereupon the inhabitants of Alexandria and of (lower) and upper Egypt submitted to the emperors of Rome.

Clearly, and despite centuries of Roman rule, native Egyptians as late as the 7th century continued to cherish Cleopatra's memory.  In fact, we know from a graffito on a temple at Philae that her divine statues were still being cared for at least as late as 373 CE, when Egypt, and indeed the whole of the Roman Empire was officially Christian.  By John of Nikiu's time, nonetheless, her history was grossly 'misremembered', and simply riddled with errors and omissions.  Yet that was the tradition, for better and for worse, that would be further shaped by Arab historians.

"Incomparably Above All Others"

The first Muslim to write about Cleopatra was the native Egyptian Ibn 'Abd Al-Hakam, in the early 9th century* -- about 150 years after the Muslim conquest -- and he got it spectacularly wrong on two counts.  He tells us that the world-famous lighthouse of Alexandria

was built by [Queen] Daluka... It is also said that the builder of the Lighthouse of Alexandria was Qulpatra, the queen who dug the canal into Alexandria and paved its bottom.

No one knows who this Queen Daluka is so we've no idea how she comes into the story (unless she is a doppelganger of Cleopatra).  According to Al-Hakam, the two queens were credited with building the Lighthouse -- although certainly neither did.  Equally, both ladies were supposed to have erected an entirely fictitious Great Wall around Egypt to protect it from invasion.  Real or imagined, Cleopatra's building projects continued to impress medieval Arab writers.  In a way, it's easy to understand: somebody had built the massive monuments that still dominated the landscape -- the pyramids, Sphinx, and ancient temples.  If the Copts and Philo of Alexandria (the Hellenized Jew who described her great Alexandrian temple as "incomparably above all others") agreed on Cleopatra, so be it. 

But what really turned them on was her devotion to alchemy and philosophy.

Yes, you read that right.

She was a sage, a philosopher who elevated the ranks of scholars and enjoyed their company.  She also wrote books on medicine, charms and cosmetics in addition to many other books ascribed to her which are known to those who practice medicine.

Those are the words of Iraqi-born Al Mas'udi (who died in Egypt ca 956 CE).  He was the first to tell us, too, about Cleopatra's interest in the higher and rarefied scholarly spheres, such as alchemy.  He might even have had in his library her reputedly great work on the subject, 'The Book of Queen Cleopatra', in the form of a dialogue between the queen and a group of scholars.  In it, the Muslim alchemists and fellow philosophers invite her to illuminate them with her knowledge on alchemical matters and, perhaps too, on secret symbols and devices that she invented for use in alchemical investigations.  Al Mas'udi called her "the last of the wise Greeks" -- and who would argue?  As time went on, still more learned books were credited to the queen, including one on poisons and antidotes, another on mathematics, and a legal tome entitled 'The Abridged Law of Cleopatra', described as "a simple law that is easy to understand."

Indeed 'A Virtuous Scholar'

Alchemist, accomplished mathematician, medical doctor, able monarch and a scholar who was comfortable among philosophers and men of science: that is the medieval Arab tradition of Cleopatra.  There is nothing of the hedonist, sexy seductress, nor a deceiving and over-ambitious queen.  In short, this is not the Cleopatra of our classical Graeco-Roman sources:

... a frenzied queen plotting ruin against the Capitol and destruction to the empire, with her polluted crew of creatures foul with lust -- a woman mad enough to nurse the wildest hopes and drunk with Fortune's favours  (Horace Odes I 37)

So, who is right?  Does the medieval Arabic memorial 'correct' the lascivious western tradition -- which descends all the way from Horace (sucking up to Augustus) right down to Liz Taylor?

First, it must be said that the contrast between Arabic and Graeco-Roman images of the queen is somewhat overdrawn: they are not entirely on opposite ends of the pole.  Even Horace admits her courage (waxing bolder as she resolved to die... no craven woman she!).  And Plutarch, who has left us the most detailed and relatively balanced story of her reign, declares that her irresistible charm had not so much to do with physical beauty but more with her character and "the persuasiveness of her discourse", and thus with her intelligence (Life of Anthony 27). 

What is Remembered?  What is Historical Memory?

As an Egyptologist put it, "Neither representation says much about the real Cleopatra."**

"It is not unusual for people faced with cultures which they experience as 'exotic', to stereotype these other cultures as either 'dark' (with barbaric bloodthirsty males and loose ensnaring women) or as 'paradisical' (with noble warriors and all-knowing priestesses).... 

"Such models say much of the ones who adopt them and hardly anything of the cultures that they are concerned with. That the Romans, for political reasons, picked a model of the first type (Cleopatra as a shrewd seductress) should not surprise us, nor that the Arabs, for esoteric reasons (alchemists wanting to see Egypt as the land of secret science and hidden wisdom), preferred a model of the second type (Cleopatra as virtuous scholar)." 

While medieval Arab historians were just as fascinated by Cleopatra as everyone since, their picture of Cleopatra was no more real than that of our Graeco-Roman tradition.  Alas, their story was not built on original Ptolemaic facts but rather on medieval fantasies that made sense to them. They had no privileged access to genuine ancient knowledge somehow preserved and transmitted to medieval seekers of ancient secrets.  In the end, their vision was no more factual than the  biased version of events spread by the Romans and beloved of Hollywood.  Why the Arabic sources chose to emphasize and exaggerate certain aspects of her 'life' -- already very cloudy and distorted -- is in itself a fascinating study. 

But that is for another post, another time.   My Memorial Day tribute to Cleopatra's memory is done.  R.I.P. Liz Taylor.



*The medieval Arabic image of Cleopatra was brought into scholarly discourse by Okasha El Daly, an Egyptologist at the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology.  His book, The Missing Millennium, Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings," (2005) analysed previously untranslated Arabic texts referring to early Egyptian history.

>** Review of Okasha El Daly's Egyptology: The Missing Millennium submitted to the Egyptologists' Electronic Forum (EEF) by A.K. Eyma, 28 June 2005. The whole review is available here.

Illustrations

Upper left:  A fanciful illustration of an Egyptian-Arab queen and her ladies, unknown source (perhaps lifted from a turn-of-last-century German book, thence let loose on the web); via BarefootSpringNet.  If anyone knows of a proper credit, I'd be glad to hear of it.

Centre left: From an exhibit at the British Museum, Cleopatra: From History to Myth, 12 April - 26 August 2001 (Via BBC News/Reviews, 11 April 2001). Introductory text by the show's curator, Susan Walker at Fathom, The Source for Online Learning

Lower left: Via University of Oregon: 'The Age of Caesar' website.
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The Death of Dura-Europos (Updated)

Dead  Warrior or War Criminal?

And why does it matter now?

This is a Sasanian-Persian soldier, probably a ranking officer (his upper body was protected by iron mail armour and he carried a sword with a pommel of jade, a semi-precious stone that can be tracked to Chinese Turkestan).  He died a gruesome death in a claustrophobic tunnel below the walls of Dura-Europos in a fire that he may have intentionally set.  His men were mining under Tower 19 (not far from the Palmyra Gate) when a Roman countermine broke through and enemy soldiers entered the tunnel.

What happened next is hotly contested.  

In fact, it almost caused a diplomatic incident when Dr Simon James of the University of Leicester presented a new theory to an American archaeological congress in 2009.  He argued that the soldier was a victim of 'friendly fire' as a poison gas attack against the Romans backfired on him.  The Islamic Republic of Iran denounced his story as a deliberate defamation of its history linked to western pressure on Iran over its nuclear program.  But wait a minute!  This guy died (and Dura fell) in 256 CE -- almost 1,800 years ago.  Why get hot under the collar in 2009? 

It's complicated.

But now that Dr James has fully published his 'Gas Warfare' hypothesis in the American Journal of Archaeology,* you can judge for yourself.

The Story So Far

The fortress city of Dura-Europos lies on the Middle Euphrates at what was the eastern edge of the Roman Empire (for background, see my post, Gods at the Crossroads).  Founded by the Seleucids in ca. 300 BCE, it was taken by the Parthians in 141 BCE and it remained in their hands, almost continuously, until captured by the Romans in 165 CE, after which it was garrisoned by Roman and Palmyran troops (the latter, a cohort of horse-mounted archers, the XXth Palmyrorum).  They held it until 256/7 when it was destroyed by the Sasanian-Persians after a gruelling siege, its inhabitants either slaughtered or sold into slavery, after which the city was abandoned, covered by sand and mud, and disappeared from sight.  

Four years earlier, the Sasanians had invaded Syria, one of Rome’s richest provinces, taking the capital, Antioch, before withdrawing from the region.  In response, the Romans massively strengthened the defences of Dura to block the Euphrates road into the province.

Area of Tower 19 prior to siege

They reinforced the vulnerable western wall (facing the dead-flat plains) against rams, artillery, and undermining by building a steep mudbrick glacis to its front and a huge rampart to its rear.  The plan of the original wall, tower, and adjacent buildings are shown left. 

Area of Tower 19 with full defensive works

Fearing the worst, the Durenes demolished all nearby buildings and dumped a huge mass of material on the wreckage, thus burying everything along the inside of the wall.  The result (left) was an extended rampart roughly 20 m (60') wide, with an easy gradient to permit troops to run up to any point on the battlements. 

The anticipated attack came in 256, probably in the spring, and it must have lasted at least several months since it involved major Sasanian engineering works. The Sasanians used the full range of ancient siege techniques to break into the city, including mining operations to breach the walls and bring them down.  Roman defenders responded with countermines to thwart the attackers.  The determined resistance put up by the inhabitants forced the assailants to adopt various siege tactics, which eventually resulted in conquest of the city; the defensive system, the mines, and the assault ramp were left in place after the deportation of the population.

The Persian Offensive

Several points of assault have been identified along the western defences, probably pushed forward in parallel to overstretch the defenders (red arrows in aerial view above and left).  

Ferocious but apparently unsuccessful attacks took place in front of the great Palmyra Gate.  At the southern end of the wall, a massive siege ramp was constructed 40 m long (120') and 10 m (30') high against the wall to permit troops to enter; it consisted of a mass of rubble packed between two walls of bricks and paved with baked bricks, which made it possible to move a siege machine close to the wall.  Two tunnels, each wide enough to permit several men to advance abreast, were dug near the body of the ramp.  Attacks also involved sapping and tunnelling to get troops into the city under nearby Tower 14.

The remaining known target of attack was around Tower 19. 

 The Battle for Tower 19

One of the French excavators of Dura in the 1920s and 1930s,** Robert du Mensil du Buisson, himself a military officer, concentrated especially on the remains of the final siege.  In a narrow, low gallery under Tower 19, he discovered dramatic evidence of combat and death underground:

Here, lying in a Roman countermine intended to disrupt Sasanian attempts to undermine or sap the city defenses, du Mesnil found a tightly packed tangle of up to 20 bodies he identified as Roman soldiers, still with their equipment and their last pay in their purses, and nearby another armored skeleton interpreted as one of the Sasanian attackers.*
 
This is the 'crime scene' (left) that Simon James has now re-examined in an attempt to understand exactly how these Romans died, and came to be lying where they were found.

Persian Tunnelling

Their objective was to create a large breach in the city defences by undermining part of the wall, making a gap wide enough for their troops to charge from the Persian lines across the open plain to pour into the town.  The miners would sap Tower 19 at the same time in order to eliminate Roman defensive fire in that area.  To reach the walls, however, the Persians first had to dig a 40 m (130') long narrow, timber-propped approach tunnel from their own lines facing the city.  When the tunnellers got under Tower 19, they cut an upward shaft to reach the foundations of the defences, which they began to undermine.  

Roman Countermining

As the Persian miners came closer to the walls, the defenders could hear them at work (and also probably see their spoil heap rising on the plain) and so began to dig a countermine -- equally propped with timber posts and lintels -- intending to break into the Persian sap and halt their operations.  This countermine was dug through their own earth rampart behind the city wall and ran along the north side of the tower.  As discovered by Dr James, this tunnel was about 3 m (10') above the level of the Persian mine. 

The Romans were out of luck that day.  When they broke into the Persian tunnel, instead of capturing and holding it, their own tunnel was taken and destroyed, allowing the Sasanians to fire the mine: filling the tunnel with straw and bundles of wood, they ignited it, adding incendiary elements such as sulphur crystals and bitumen (a naturally occurring tar-like substance) to make it burn hotter, traces of which were found by the excavators in the tunnel.  The blazing fire incinerated the wooden struts, causing the wall and tower to slump into the Persian mine -- severely damaged, but neither collapsed thanks to the supporting mass of the glacis and rampart [when removed by the archaeologists, the effects of the mining were brought to light; above].  

The Persians would have to start all over, elsewhere.

The underground battle at Tower 19 ended, leaving in the tunnel 20 dead Romans and 1 dead Persian.  The burning question: How did they die? 

Here's du Mesnil's reconstruction of events (with some commentary of mine).

1.  When the Romans broke into the Persian tunnel, there was a fight and the Romans were driven back into their own gallery, the Persians in hot pursuit.  The Persian officer was killed in this skirmish.

2.  The Romans inside the town, seeing their miners fleeing from the tunnel (surely shouting something like "Aaagh, the Persians are coming!"; in any case in panicked disorder) hurriedly blocked up the entrance to the counter-mine, not noticing -- or caring -- that they shut in some of their own men.

3.  The Persians were too few to enter the city; they would have been fools to try as they would have been cut down as they emerged one-by-one from the dark, cramped tunnel, barely high enough for a man to stand upright. Instead, they set fire to the countermine and rapidly withdrew.  The trapped Romans, judging from the tangle of their bodies near the blocked entrance, were either killed in combat, suffocated by the fire, or died in the flames or when the roof of the tunnel collapsed.  Not a pleasant fate, in any case. 

No, says Simon James: that's not the way it happened, not at all.

Dr James has gone back and (figuratively) untangled the 'body stack'.  Rather than sitting or standing when they died, his drawings show 

a number of the lowest bodies sat up against the sides of the gallery with their legs outstretched across it -- not defensively contracted as we would expect if other, hobnailed comrades were standing over them.  Other bodies lay on top of these, mostly stretched across the mine on top of others.  How could these have ended up in such a posture, if crammed among comrades collapsing together from a standing position?

James argues that they had been deliberately dragged to this point and piled up,  stacked at least three or four bodies high.  In his scenario, the Romans did not block the entrance.  Rather, the Persians, finding about 20 dead or dying Romans on the floor of the Roman tunnel, with brutal practicality, "turned these obstacles to advantage by carrying the bodies and shields toward the countermine entrance, where they piled them into a barrier, hindering any further Roman attack...."  In other words, they used them to build what the British army calls 'organic sandbags' -- and then went about preparing their fire.

How Did These Romans Really Die?

It seems inconceivable, says James, that they could all have fallen in hand-to-hand combat in such a confined space ... nor does the disposition of their bodies suggest that they were trapped by their own side (as du Mensil supposed).

What happened, he says, was this: 

Just as the Romans heard the noise of the Sasanians working beneath the ground as they neared the walls, so the Persians heard the Roman counterminers approaching and planned a nasty surprise for them. 

As pictured left, they placed a brazier (a pan for holding hot coals) in their own tunnel below the shaft leading up to the tower (where they had started removing foundation stones).  As the Romans broke through, the Persians retreated into their approach tunnel and threw onto the brazier "some of the bitumen and sulphur crystals we know they had because they were using them, probably just minutes later, to set fire to the Roman tunnel."

When these chemicals are burned in a controlled fire, the highly inflammable bitumen and sulphur crystals combine to create sulphur dioxide, a poisonous gas, that turns to acid in the lungs when inhaled.  

Whether the Sasanian engineers pumped these fumes up into the Roman tunnel with bellows (as he thinks probable) or a natural chimney effect drew the hot gasses upward from deeper Persian tunnel into the higher Roman gallery, the result was the same: those who inhaled the deadly fumes would have been choking to death in a matter of seconds.

I think the Sasanians placed braziers and bellows in their gallery, and when the Romans broke through, added the chemicals and pumped choking clouds into the Roman tunnel. The Roman assault party were unconscious in seconds, dead in minutes. Use of such smoke generators in siege-mines is actually mentioned in classical texts, and it is clear from the archaeological evidence at Dura that the Sasanian Persians were as knowledgeable in siege warfare as the Romans; they surely knew of this grim tactic.

"Any Roman soldiers waiting to enter the tunnels would have hesitated, seeing the smoke and hearing their fellow soldiers dying," James said.  "It would have almost been literally the fumes of hell coming out of the Roman tunnel." 

Meanwhile, down in their approach tunnel, the Persians needed only to wait until the noise above them stopped and the smoke cleared.  Then they went up, found the dead and dying, stacked them, and started the fire that collapsed the gallery.  But one man paid the price for their invention of chemical warfare: the Sasanian officer who started the fire (perhaps he knelt to ignite the combustibles and accidentally inhaled a mouthful of noxious fumes) collapsed backward, grasping desperately at his chain mail shirt as he choked, and the fire partly consumed his body before the roof fell in on him and the Roman dead.

Where There's Smoke

The Tunnellers' War 1914-1918

No wonder the Islamic Republic of Iran took exception to this story.  They accused Simon James of deliberately spreading hostile, politically motivated anti-Iranian propaganda.  Not to be outdone, western media jumped all over 'the Dura Gas Warfare' dossier (Ancient Persians Who Gassed Romans Were The First To Use Chemical Weapons)  as if it were World War I over again.  Right-wing message boards and blogs used it as proof of the exceptionally lawless and violent nature of Iranians.  Completely witless.

Aside from that, it's a very satisfying story.  But is it true?

The elements are all there: the configuration of the two tunnels, the body stack, the dead Sasanian soldier, and, above all, the sulphur crystals and bitumen. It could have happened that way, but did it?

I have my doubts.  

First of all, the success of the operation would surely have led to it being repeated by the Sasanians.  We have 400 more years of almost constant warfare between Persia and Rome (and later Byzantium), regularly punctuated by devastating sieges, and not a single mention of the devilish Persians using poison gas or even smoke machines.*** And if they had used it, the Roman military would have adopted it sooner or later, too.  So we would be fairly likely to hear rumours of poisonous smoke attacks.  We don't.  Fire, yes; burning naphtha, yes; poisons, yes; poison gas, no.

Second, it depends how idiotic we think that Sasanian officer was.  Knowing that he was lighting a fire with noxious chemicals, he takes off his helmet, puts aside his sword (as if he had all the time in the world), ignites it ... and takes a deep breath.  I don't think so.

Third, James suggests that the Roman officers outside the tunnel did not block their tunnel entrance, thereby trapping the 20 men, "because they could not or because they contemplated a renewed assault."  But wouldn't they have been oddly negligent if they did not have blocking materials to hand? They couldn't know how large a tunnel the Persians had dug until they broke into it.  Rather, picture wounded men coming out after a skirmish in nightmarish dark (possibly already thick with smoke) and it's not difficult to imagine a rapid decision to block it.  It's no worse, I suppose, than closing the gate on men still fighting outside the walls and leaving them to their fate.  Cruel stuff happens.

Alternatively, I suggest a modified du Mesnil scenario.  Most Romans were backing out of the tunnel when the Sasanian officer starts to light the fire.  A Roman soldier stabs him and runs to the exit to find his escape blocked.  All the men trapped inside would naturally cluster at the blocked exit, shouting for help, the wounded stretched on the tunnel's floor, the fit standing until overcome by smoke, falling one after the other, this way and that, exactly as they were found -- and indeed as they appear in Dr James' drawing.   The roof falls in before the Persians can retrieve their dead comrade.  

I'm not saying this happened, of course.  It could have been entirely unexpected that the gas released by the fire turned poisonous and killed the Sasanian officer as well as the 20 men hovering near the blocked exit.  If so, the Persians didn't realize what had happened and the identical circumstances never arose again.

We'll probably never know.

Update 11 June 2011

WWI underground: Unearthing the hidden tunnel war

Archaeologists are beginning the most detailed ever study of a Western Front battlefield, an untouched site where 28 British tunnellers lie entombed after dying during brutal underground warfare. 

When most people think of WWI, they think of trench warfare interrupted by occasional offensives, with men charging between the lines. But with the static nature of the war, military mining played a big part in the tactics on both sides.   What happened at La Boisselle in 1915-16 is a classic example of mining and counter-mining, with both sides struggling desperately to locate and destroy each other's tunnels.  The tunnel networks (seen here, above left) extending far from the trench system to reach enemy territory were complex and extensive. Though they could not see each other, in places the two sides were just metres apart.

Archaeologists, historians and their French and German partners now aim to preserve the area - named the Glory Hole by British troops - as a permanent memorial to the fallen. Digging does not start until next year, but the first practical steps of mapping the tunnels and trenches using ground-penetrating radar, and exploring the geophysics are under way.

Peter Jackson tells this fascinating story on the BBC News Magazine.



*  S. James, Stratagems, Combat, and 'Chemical Warfare' in the Siege Mines of Dura-Europos, AJA 115 (2011) 69-101.

** Initial archaeological exploration of the city was carried out by the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of Paris in 1920-22.  From 1929 to 1937 Yale University and the Academie sponsored the excavations.

*** During the siege of the Greek city of Ambracia in 189 BCE, the Romans were driven from a mine that already reached under the city wall by acrid smoke from a jar filled with feathers and hot coals which was blown into the tunnel by means of a bellows (See Paul B. Kern, Ancient Siege Warfare [Indiana UP, 1999] 275-7).  In the 4th C BCE, Aeneas Tacticus wrote a treatise on war which specifically mentions using smoke to drive enemy troops out of a tunnel or even suffocate them (ibid 182).  On this subject, see now Adrienne Mayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows & Scorpion Bombs: Biological and Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World (Overlook Press, 2003).

Sources for this post (in addition to Simon James' AJA article and his Dura webpage)  include Pierre Leriche, current director of excavations, on Dura-Europos, at CAIS;  Jordan Lite writing in the Scientific American; and Stephanie Pappas at LiveScience.

Illustrations

Top left: The body of a Sasanian attacker, still clad in his iron mail shirt, helmet and sword near his feet. Image credit: Yale University Art Gallery, Dura-Europos Excavation Archive (via InSciencesOrg)

Middle left 1: Aerial view of the walled city of Dura-Europos (modified by blogger).  Photo credit: IoArch.it

Middle left 2: Newly reconstructed sequence of construction of rampart and glacis at mine site (Tower 19) prior to siege (modified by blogger): from Simon James website.

Middle left 3: Plan of the site under Roman rule (modified by blogger): from Simon James' website.

Middle left 4: New composite plan of the Roman countermine, showing the stack of Roman bodies near its entrance, the area of intense burning marking the gallery’s destruction by the Persians, and the skeleton of one of the attackers (photo: Simon James, via InSciencesOrg).

Middle left 5: Damaged walls and tower structure (Tower 19): from Simon James' website.

Bottom left: Diagram of proposed gassing of Romans at Dura-Europos (photo: Simon James, via Scientific American)
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"I Am Not My Body. I Am My Mind" (Updated)

Raise a glass of bubbly along with Professor Rita Levi-Montalcini!*  She was 102 years old last week.  And is a Nobel Prize winner (Medicine, 1986) to boot.  As  only the fourth woman ever to be awarded the Nobel Prize, and the oldest living Nobel laureate, she deserves all honours, to put it mildly. 

“Italy -- and quite possibly the world -- has never seen a scientist quite like her,” the journal Nature wrote on the occasion of her widely celebrated 100th birthday.

Inspired Intuition

I do believe that I confront life not as a scientist, but as an artist, she declared in a video event aired on her birthday on the website Rita101+.   The night-long online program celebrated her massive accomplishments in a wired event shared by hundreds of researchers on social networks.

A feisty life

Born into a well-to-do Jewish family in Turin in 1909, Rita Levi-Montalcini  fought hard for her career from the beginning.  First there was her father, who didn't believe in higher education for women:

Both parents were highly cultured and instilled in us their high appreciation of intellectual pursuit. It was, however, a typical Victorian style of life, all decisions being taken by the head of the family, the husband and father. He loved us dearly and had a great respect for women, but he believed that a professional career would interfere with the duties of a wife and mother....

"I said I won’t be either a wife or a mother, but I will go on my way."

She entered the medical school of Turin where she studied under the famous Italian neuro-histologist, Giuseppe Levi.  He gave her a superb training in biological science and introduced her to her first passion: the developing nervous system.  Under Levi's attentive eye, she mastered a technique that would be key to her own successes, that of silver-staining nerve cells.

In 1936 she graduated with a summa cum laude degree in Medicine and Surgery, and enrolled in the three year specialization in neurology and psychiatry, still uncertain whether she should devote herself fully to the medical profession or pursue basic research in neurology. 

"My perplexity was not to last too long."

In a sense, Benito Mussolini made the decision for her.  In 1936, the Fascist dictator issued his 'Manifesto per la Difesa della Razza' (Manifesto for the Defence of the Race).  Racial laws soon followed, barring non-Aryan citizens from academic and professional careers.  All Jews -- including, of course, Levi-Montalcini and her maestro, Levi -- were ejected from Italian universities and public institutions.

The two alternatives left then to us were either to emigrate to the United States, or to pursue some activity that needed neither support nor connection with the outside Aryan world where we lived.  My family chose this second alternative.  I then decided to build a small research unit at home and installed it in my bedroom.

Nerve fibres in the bedroom

Levi-Montalcini had recently come across a paper telling of experiments by embryologist Viktor Hamburger of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri.  He had removed the growing limbs of chick embryos and found that doing so reduced the size of the ganglia, tiny structures that cluster together the nerve fibres emerging from the spinal cord and direct them on to their final destinations.  Her research challenge was decided: to work out how nerves emerging from the embryo's developing spinal cord find their way to the budding limbs they will eventually innervate.

Armed with a regular supply of fertilized hen's eggs, and using tiny scalpels and spatulas fashioned out of sewing needles to do her dissections, she repeated Hamburger's experiments in her bedroom laboratory, adding to it the silver-staining method which allowed her to see the nerve fibres in much greater detail.  She discovered that the ganglia did not, in fact, wither immediately. The neurons actually proliferated, differentiated and started to grow towards their targets -- but died before reaching them.  She concluded that the problem was the lack of some growth-promoting factor that would normally be released by the budding limbs.  Despite the upsets of war and having to go into hiding in Florence, she managed to publish her results in a Belgian scientific journal.**

When the war ended, Levi-Montalcini returned with her family to Turin where she resumed her academic position at the University. In 1947, Prof. Hamburger, who had read the Belgian paper she had published, invited her to St Louis for a semester to repeat and extend her experiments.

She had planned to remain in St. Louis for ten to twelve months,  but her stay extended to 26 years.

Nerve Growth Factor (NGF)

One of Hamburger's graduate students had grafted a lump of mouse sarcoma tumour onto a chick embryo and found that nerve fibres grew and invaded the tumour mass more abundantly than the limb bud.  This experiment made her  antennae vibrate.  She became convinced that the transplanted tumour tissue was releasing the same sort of factor she claimed the developing limbs released.  She repeated the experiment, ingeniously placing the tumour outside the sac containing the embryo: although physically separate, this area shares the embryo's blood supply. It was a killer experiment.  Nerves sprouted and grew wildly, supporting her theory that the tumour was releasing a factor that diffused into the blood and travelled to the embryo.  

Two Mice in a Handbag 

Now, she had to learn how to culture isolated chick-embryo ganglia, and knew of only one laboratory that could do so. So she put two live, tumour-riddled white mice into her handbag and boarded a plane for Rio de Janeiro, where another of Levi's former students was running a big tissue-culture facility. In Rio she learned to culture ganglia and grew them close to pieces of mouse sarcoma. After 24 hours of culture, she was thrilled to see haloes of nerve fibres growing from the ganglia like suns (left), with their highest density facing the tumour.

Returning to St Louis, she worked together with a new associate, Stanley Cohen, for six years, trying to identify the factor released by the tumour.  Both were determined to provide the solid chemical evidence that the nerve-promoting factor was a reality.  As it was, the scientific establishment refused to believe in the existence of a nerve growth factor (NGF).  It required too great an imaginative leap to accept this unlikely soluble factor, which was supposed to diffuse from one tissue and then potently affect specific processes in nerves.  Such a mode of biological action was not accepted in those days.  And, perhaps, the fact that a woman was proposing it made it easy to believe that it was not serious biology.

But it was the discovery of of NGF that eventually won Levi-Montalcini the 1986 Nobel Prize in Medicine (shared with Stanley Cohen). "That discovery was huge — it opened up a whole field in understanding how cells talk and listen to each other," says neuroscientist Bill Mobley of Stanford University in California. 

Levi-Montalcini had to endure a great deal of scepticism in the early days but her later discoveries faced no such obstacles.  She showed, for example, that NGF had major effects on the immune system, yet another unexpected finding that became a major turning point in biology.

In 1962 she established a research unit in Rome, dividing her time between Italy and the U.S.A.  From 1969 to 1978 she held the position of Director of the Institute of Cell Biology of the Italian National Council of Research (CNR).  She retained her faculty status at Washington University in St Louis until 1977, when she became professor emeritus. After 1978, she continued her research at the Institute in Rome, collecting innumerable awards from institutions around the world. 

A life-long socialist in politics, she was made an Italian senator-for-life in 2001 for her work in science and for the promotion and defence of civil rights. She has always championed social issues related to research, such as ethics and women in science. The Rita Levi Montalcini Foundation supports education for more than 6,000 African women — "to improve their chances of becoming scientists", she says.

In 2005 at age 96, Levi-Montalcini founded the European Brain Research Institute which aims to understand the molecular basis of neurological diseases.  At the EBRI she runs a research project to see how far back NGF goes in evolution. Several young scientists are helping by trying to find out whether the factor exists in a series of invertebrates.  They are gratified to be able to speak with her most days.  And they, in turn, make her happy. "I am not afraid of death — I am privileged to have been able to work for so long," says Levi-Montalcini.  "If I die tomorrow or in a year, it is the same — it is the message you leave behind you that counts, and the young scientists who carry on your work." 

On her 102nd birthday, EBRI posted this exclusive video (in English with Italian subtitles) on YouTube, Rita Levi-Montalcini in Conversation with Eight Researchers -- eight young women scientists, and one very old, sharp lady discussing the world of scientific research and the role of women. 

 

“I do not care about dying,” she says in the video. “The most important thing is the message you leave.  This is immortality.” 


Updated on 30 December 2012.

With great sadness, I report that the Italian Nobel prize-winning neurologist Rita Levi-Montalcini has died today at the age of 103 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20871120).  The message she left to us will be read by all who care about women, science, and civil rights.  What an inspired life!

*  Father: Adamo Levi, electrical engineer and mathematician; mother: Adele Montalcini, a talented painter.

** Levi-Montalcini, R. & Levi, G. Arch. Biol.Liège 54 (1943) 189–200.

I am grateful to Dr Dorothy Lobel King for alerting me to Rita's 102nd birthday celebrations and its significance.

Main sources were Rossella Lorenzi , 'Oldest Living Nobel Laureate Turns 102' on Discovery News; Alison Abbott, 'Neuroscience: One hundred years of Rita' on NatureNews; her Autobiography on the Nobel Prize website; and her dedicated page on the EBRI website.

Photo Credits

Upper left:  Discovery News

Upper middle: Halo effect: of nerves sprouting from chick ganglia.  Photo credit: Rita Levi-Montalcini, via Nature News.

Lower middle: Rita Levi-Montalcini receiving the Nobel Prize, 1986.  Photo credit: her Facebook page

Lower left: EBRI website.

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The Fate of Saudi Witch, Fawza Falih Muhammad Ali (Updated)

In 2006, Human Rights Watch (HRW) petitioned King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to halt the execution by beheading of a witch who was convicted a year earlier of "witchcraft, recourse to jinns [supernatural beings], and slaughter of animals". Despite a world-wide outcry (and a great deal of ridicule), Fawza Falih languished for years in Quraiyat Prison, having exhausted her appeals against the sentence. The illiterate defendant had been arrested back in 2005, and allegedly beaten and obliged to fingerprint a confession that she couldn't read.

According to the petition by Human Rights Watch,

the court of did not define the meaning of “witchcraft”, but instead cited a variety of alleged actions, stated intentions, and “tools” for “witchcraft” in a weak attempt to suggest that “witchcraft” had indeed taken place. The court cited one instance in which a man allegedly became impotent after being “bewitched.” In another, a divorced woman reportedly returned to her ex-husband during the month predicted by the witch said to have cast the spell. The court failed to probe alternative explanations for these developments which appear to be ordinary phenomena.

Following Fawza Falih's conviction in April 2006, an appeals court ruled that she could not be sentenced to death for 'witchcraft as a crime against God' because she had retracted her confession. However, lower court judges then sentenced her to death on a 'discretionary' basis, for the benefit of 'public interest' and to 'protect the creed, souls and property of this country.'

After that, nothing more was heard of her fate and the international media -- as is their wont -- lost interest.*   If someone's life wasn't at stake, we would just laugh at this happening in this day and age, and move on.  But silliness and sneers aren't really appropriate when someone is threatened with beheading.

A little background to the case.

Islamic Witchcraft

There is much in the Qur'an to suggest a mystical and occult world of unseen spirits (the jinn, or genies), the 'Evil Eye' and other powerful sinister forces.  Throughout the Middle East, one popular Quranic verse carried as a talisman to ward off the jinn and witches and conjurers, reads: 

I take refuge in the Lord of the Daybreak, from the evil he has created, from the evil of the darkness as it spreads, from the evil of those who blow on knots, and from the evil of the envious.

The evil eye, the conjurers who blow on knots, a dark, mystical place of black magic from which only God provides refuge.  

With the help of Saudi judges, of course.

The Crime of Witchcraft

The learned judges had to ask themselves whether the woman had committed a scriptural crime (the hadd), or what are known as 'discretionary' crimes.  Scriptural crimes are specifically linked to Holy Text: that would make witchcraft a form of apostasy, which carries a sentence of death.  Discretionary crimes are those that are close to the scriptural crimes in nature but, strictly speaking, are outside their parameters.  In that case, witchcraft isn't quite apostasy (meaning, she wasn't necessarily denying Islam by being a witch), so her punishment would be up to the judge's discretion; hence the term and hence the problem: discretionary crimes by their nature are uncertain as to precise contours. 

In Fawza Falih's first trial, the judges ruled that she had committed a scriptural crime, a hadd: that is the apostasy one which carries a sentence of death.  When her confession was retracted, however, the appeal judges no longer had scriptural proof, which requires two witnesses or a confession.  The judges in the lower court then employed the discretionary principle and decided that witchery was close enough to apostasy (a man was impotent and a divorced woman went back to her husband; what more proof could you need than that!)and therefore it was a discretionary crime for which death was the right punishment.

What could be fairer?

Fast Forward from the Middle Ages to 2011

On the 4th of April 2011, Arab News  reported that 30 officers of the religious police -- known to their many fans as the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the Hai'i -- had just completed a training session (left) in the Eastern Province city of Al-Alsa on how to deal with cases of black magic.  The officers were justifiably on a roll:

The Commission has achieved remarkable success in combating black magic in various parts of the country. It has set up nine specialized centers in the main cities to deal with black magicians.

They had their work cut out for them, too.  It was reported that just a single centre had dealt with 586 sorcery cases in 2010 -- which shows the enormity of the problem.  With so many witches running about, the Riyadh governorate launched a campaign against evil magicians and those who illegally treat people by reading from the Qur’an.

Illegally reading from the Qur'an? 

Yes indeed.  It seems that only qualified Saudis are allowed to practice Qur’anic treatment methods.  Expatriates practising such treatments, the Commission warned, would be caught and deported. 

Lucky expats: at least, not beheaded.

Just a few days after their training session, the religious police of Al-Alsa bagged their first quarry: they arrested a sorcerer who dealt in magic and provided services to several men and women, who turned to him out of a lack of religious motivation and ignorance.  They had hardly pulled in this fiend when two more witches were arrested in the same city, 

being accused of leaving egg and salt on an acquaintance’s doorstep in an attempt to put a spell on him.  The 21-year-old accuser informed the police who took the pair into custody and handed over the case to the Commission for Investigation and Prosecution to proceed with inquiries.

Needless to say, with two such cases within as many days, witchery became the talk of the town. 

Nailing Witches

So we are relieved to learn from the Saudi Gazette that Sheikh Adel Faqih, director of the Hai’a branch of sorcery in Riyadh (the capital), is an expert in black magic matters.  He was able to tell us how the Hai'i worked in such cases:

We deal with sorcerers in a special way. No one should think that we mention the name of whomever files a report about sorcery. We protect the identity of informants. We merely receive the information and thank the individual for his help without involving him in any kind of confrontation.

Sheikh Faqih said that they do not arrest a sorcerer simply because someone has filed a report against him.  Of course not!  Proper procedures must be followed.  Investigations have to be made and information collected before an arrest can be made. 

They scrupulously follow up all clues.

Sheikh Faqih explained that a sorcerer can be identified when he asks for the name of a patient and for the name of the patient’s mother or if he is seeking to buy an animal with certain features. He can also be identified if he asks for a sheep to be killed without mentioning Allah’s name and asks to stain the body with the animal’s blood or if he asks for similar unusual things.  

You couldn't make this up; could you? 

And the Fate of Fawza Falih?

Did anyone over the years say, "Don't be silly. Lots of men are impotent and women go back to their divorced spouses for reasons other than spells."

No.  They didn't.

And King Abdullah?  You may remember he was asked to reprieve her.  Did he?  No, apparently not.  At the end of 2009, she was still on Death Row at Quraiyat Prison.

But at least she hadn't been beheaded.  No, they merely left her to rot.

HRW did not make the news public but what happened was this:

Fawza Falih died in prison early last year, choking on her meal as her health had greatly deteriorated during her imprisonment.**

I don't suppose her guards "blew on the knot" and simply strangled her.  That wouldn't be proper procedure at all. 

It makes me sick.

R.I.P. Fawza Falih, Saudi witch.



*  Zenobia's first report on the Saudi witch was on 15 February 2008, updated on 15 March 2008.  Thereafter, despite frequent searches for more information, there was no news until late 2009 (see below) ... and silence until this week.

** Their last report of her was on 24 November 2009, to wit: "Minister of Justice Abdullah Al al-Shaikh responded that Human Rights Watch had a preconceived Western notion of shari'a, but did not answer the organization's questions about Falih's arbitrary arrest, coerced confession, unfair trial, and wrongful conviction. She remains on death row in Quraiyat prison, close to the border with Jordan, and is reportedly in bad health."  As Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director, then said:

"Saudi courts are sanctioning a literal witch hunt by the religious police...The crime of ‘witchcraft' is being used against all sorts of behavior, with the cruel threat of state-sanctioned executions."

I am grateful to Ms Whitson for finally getting me the information as to Fawza Falih's fate, and to Christoph Wilcke, HRW researcher for Saudi Arabia, who sent me the sad news.

I have made much use of Haider Ala Hamaoudi's discussion of the Saudi Witch case on his blog,Islamic Law in Our Times (or Foam From a Camel's Mouth, Spewing and Subsiding). 

Updated 7 May 2011: Islamic sorcery is (almost) a gender free-fire zone.

Off with the heads of male witches, too! 

And so, according to the Guardian newspaper, this is the hot story from Iran:

President Ahmadinejad allies charged with sorcery

Because it isn't enough that you attack your political opponents. No, they must be destroyed as god's apostates.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's closest allies have been accused of using supernatural powers to further his policies amid an increasingly bitter power struggle between him and the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

 Several people said to be close to the president and his chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, have been arrested in recent days and charged with being "magicians" and invoking djinns (spirits).

Sound familiar? It's those footloose djinns again.

Ayandeh, an Iranian news website, described one of the arrested men, Abbas Ghaffari, as "a man with special skills in metaphysics and connections with the unknown worlds".

Metaphysics, huh? 

That sounds serious.  But, then again, it couldn't happen to nicer people; could it?



Illustrations

No photograph of Fawza Falih exists, as far as I know. I've had to make do with other images.

Upper left: Photograph via Bare Naked Islam.

Upper middle left: A 75-year-old Syrian woman sentenced to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the kingdom for having two unrelated men in her house.  Photograph via Jihadwatch.

Lower middle left: photograph of training session from Arab News via The Memri blog .

Lowest left: Photograph from 'Save the Women' blog. 
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Zenobia's Triumphant Return to Palmyra (Latest News)

Zenobia the ibis, that is.

Further updated in March 2012 (see below)

A miffed-looking Zenobia (left), self-appointed queen of Palmyra's Northern Bald Ibises, after being tagged in 2006, shortly before taking off for her annual winter migration to Ethiopia.  

Since then, she's been recorded as returning to her Palmyra breeding grounds each year in March.  And now, just days ago, right on time, she flew back again, the first of her tiny flock to come home -- exactly as you'd expect of an uppity queen-bird.

The ibis' annual migration route takes them across seven countries, flying more than 5,000 km [3,800 miles], to spend the winter in the Ethiopian highlands.

For those who haven't been following the story on my blog since 2007, here's the scoop: 

The Palmyran ibis colony was only discovered in 2002 and its numbers have never risen above 13. They are thought to be the last of a Middle Eastern population that formerly numbered several thousand; and the bird is now classified as critically endangered – the highest level of threat there is. The northern bald ibis, Geronticus eremita, is a large bird with black plumage that flashes irridescent purple and green when the light strikes it, with a bald red face, red bill and legs and a strange crest of long feathers on the back of its head, which makes it look as though it is wearing a feather wig. It is usually silent but hisses and grunts (like an angry queen) when at its nest and in display.

Gianluca Serra, undoubtedly the top specialist on the northern bald ibis, representing the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has just updated us on the latest desperate efforts to forge a stable population of these red-list endangered birds, now one of the rarest birds in the world.* 

Syria’s tiny population of ibises was doing well at its protected breeding site, but the young birds were not returning to the colony after their migration. The Ethiopian Wildlife and Natural History Society determined that there was no short-term threat at the wintering grounds in Ethiopia.  The problem for the ibis, it seems -- and for a number of soaring birds which use the African-Eurasian flyway – is what kills them off during migration:

Hundreds and thousands of migratory birds, including many that are protected under international wildlife treaties are destroyed by man-made barriers such as power lines, tall buildings, wind turbines and communication masts. Using satellite tracking and, with National Geographic support, IUCN has recently identified the two most likely severe causes of the huge mortality of immature ibises along western Arabia: hunting and electrocution by electric cables.

This discovery has important and general conservation implications, as the ibis migratory route along western Arabia is a major flyway used by other threatened long-range migratory birds as well.

Nice as it is to know what is killing them, it may already be too late to save the northern bald ibis.  The Syrian birds have raised 24 young since 2002 but breeding totally failed in 2008 and, by 2009, the bird was just short of extinction: the seven adults discovered in 2002 had dwindled to three individuals, plus one juvenile reared that year.

Last throw of the dice for Zenobia's brood

In summer 2010, scientists managed to carry out a test at the breeding grounds in Palmyra, the first of its kind.

Semi-captive Turkish Northern bald ibis from Birecik

In a deal symbolically negotiated by the Syrian and Turkish first ladies (Mrs Asma al-Assad and Mrs Hayrünnisa Gül), it was decided that the Palmyra birds should be supplemented with juveniles taken from the expanding semi-wild population at Birecik in Turkey, belonging to the same genetic stock.  The Turkish ibises are free-flying for five months, breeding on natural nest sites and nest-boxes on cliffs, but are taken into captivity after the breeding season to prevent them from migrating.

The gift that keeps on giving: six little birds

The Turkish Government donated six juvenile ibises from the Birecik population in the hope that they can prevent the extinction of the wild Syrian birds.  Two of these have been fitted with satellite transmitters and have been carefully introduced to the wild birds in the hope they will follow them and, ultimately, join the adults on their migration and become part of the colony.  On the face of it, it seems straightforward to do, but the birds are socially particularly complex, and there are always risks of disease.

Two chicks born in captivity in Turkey were slowly introduced into the wild colony in Palmyra. The remaining four Turkish birds will be kept in aviaries for breeding to bolster the colony's numbers by releasing their offspring in future years.

An amazing video (below) by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds/BirdLife shows the getting-to-know-you process between the three Syrian birds (Zenobia, Odeinat, and Salama) and the two Turkish juveniles (Ishtar and Amina) as well as remarkable scenes of a bird's life in the Syrian desert.  When the juveniles are finally released, you see them joining the adults foraging for food. 


Northern bald ibis release in Syria from The RSPB on Vimeo.

Astonishingly, on release, the two youngsters followed one of the wild adults for almost 1,500 km [950 miles] along the migratory route up to southern Saudi Arabia.  But, in Saudi, their trail went cold.  According to the RSPB, "We've already found out that the adult ibises travel to Ethiopia for the winter, but we're not totally sure where the youngsters go." 

The adults were followed this year all the way to Ethiopia -- where Salama was discovered hobnobbing with two unknown ibises (perhaps Syrian juveniles from 2007 that never returned to the breeding grounds; presumed dead, but truly, no one knows what teenage ibises get up to!).  The good news is that, as of last week, Zenobia, Odenait, and Salama have returned to their breeding grounds near Palmyra, each by separate routes (confirmed by the RSPB blog that has been tracking them via satellite transmitters since they left Syria) ... but there is still no sign of the little Turks.

Are they alive? Will they make it back to Palmyra?  Fingers crossed that they appear quite soon and boost the breeding population!

Latest News 2012 Below

* Barbara Moffet of the National Geographic Society interviews Gianluca Serra, in 'New Hope for a Rare Bird in the Syrian Desert' at NATGEO News Watch.

For more information, see the RSPB Community webpage on the Northern bald ibis (updated regularly), and the BirdLife International website.

Illustrations

Top left: Female Zenobia during satellite tagging at Palmyra in 2006. Photo courtesy of G. Serra (via NATGEO News Watch).

Middle left: Close-up Northern bald ibix.  Photo by J. Crisali (via Zenobia: Empress of the East).

Lower left: Turkish juvenile ibis.  Photo by Andy Hultberg; www.rarebirdsyearbook.com (via BirdLife International)


Update 7 March 2012

Three Birds Back

This year again, Zenobia, Odenait, and Salama have returned safely from their long migration.  RSPB reports (2 March 2012):

We've just heard from the team in Syria that all three adults....are safely back from migration on the Syrian breeding grounds today! This is particularly pleasing since Salama had not transmitted since late last year, but this now seems to simply be tag failure rather than anything worse. Still no sign of the other two untagged birds that were seen on the Ethiopian wintering grounds, so where those birds go is becoming a source of speculation. Or perhaps they will appear at Palmyra one of these days?

Salama is the lone adult female whose partner never returned from the 2010 migration.

An unpaired adult Turkish male from the aviary was introduced to her last year in the hope he might adapt to the conditions and breed with her:

The release aviary was put in place and he and Salama did show a lot of interest in one another, even offering twigs (nest material) to each other through the wire. So it was agreed to let the male go. Unfortunately, he spent just an hour with the wild birds after release before they flew off together, but he then disappeared during a sandstorm, and no longer stayed with Salama or the others.

He was eventually recaptured and put back in the aviary.  Salama remains mate-less and now migrates on her own. 

Juvenile Deliquents

The two untagged juveniles that fledged in 2011 have not been seen, but where youngsters go to after they fledge remains a mystery as they have never been observed with the adults in Ethiopia.  Both seemed healthy when they left on their migration last year. The two other juveniles that were taken from the semi-captive tagged Turkish birds set out from Syria, but both disappeared some time ago and their fate is unknown.

As of now, that leaves just one single breeding pair in their old stamping grounds near Palmyra.  Come on, kids, come home!
 

Illustration ibis chick and egg: Photo Credit: International Advisory Group for the Northern Bald Ibis
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