The Baker's Daughter and the Artemidorus Papyrus (with multiple updates)

What has Margherita Luti (left), a baker's daughter from Siena, to do with this lively giraffe (right) drawn on a papyrus in the late first century BC -- the so-called Artemidorus Papyrus?

Known as La Fornarina * ('little baker girl'), Margherita's portrait was painted c. 1518 by the 'prince of painters', Raphael -- who was undoubtedly her lover. Appropriately, it is one of Raphael's most seductive portraits. Marguerita gazes prettily to one side, presumably at the artist himself; a smile plays at the corners of her lips. We can well believe, as Giorgio Vasari tells in his Lives of the Artists, that Raphael “could not give his mind to his work because of his infatuation for his mistress”.

Aside from a fashionable silk turban, all she wears is jewellery: a tiny ring on her left hand and a blue armband that bears the artist's name—Raphael of Urbino—in gold letters. She pulls a diaphanous veil over her belly with a gesture derived from classical sculptures of the Venus pudica (modest Venus), and suggestively cups her left breast. Her other hand rests between her legs, the fingers splayed and outlined in a deep red.

That's the hand we want!

The splay of its fingers may be thought to offer a blatant suggestion of sexual possibility -- or it may just be a way a hand lies, relaxed. Like one of the several hands (below), carefully drawn and shaded, and seen from a variety of angles, on the spectacular 1st C BC papyrus roll which also hosts the giraffe; specifically, the limp hand appearing centre left.

How can that be BC? It's a very Renaissance-looking hand; isn't it?

In fact, all these sketches of hands and feet could easily pass for Renaissance drawing exercises.

'Aha' cried the Italian classical scholar Luciano Canfora,* clearly someone was copying La Fornarina's hand on the papyrus! Needless to say, if true, there is only one possible conclusion: the papyrus is a forgery.

Is this papyrus a fake? And what is this all about?

The case for the defence.

The story begins mid-first century BC, when a scribe in Alexandria, Egypt, began working on a very big piece of blank papyrus (nearly 32.5 cm [13 "] tall and over 2.5 meters [8'] long). His task was to copy the geography of the Mediterranean world from the 11 books written by Artemidorus of Ephesus, who lived at the turn of the 1st century BC. He got as far as writing a preface and the beginning of Book II (about Spain), neatly leaving a space between the third and the fourth columns where two maps were to be inserted.

He probably didn't plan to draw the maps himself but took the papyrus to a painter's workshop to have the job done. Alas, 'tis many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip -- and what would have been (and, in a way, still is) the earliest Greek map to survive was never finished. It does show roads and rivers, but none of them have names, and, anyway, it seems to be the wrong part of Spain; at least it's not the place described in the text.

The stupid painter had ruined the papyrus ... and consequently stopped working on it. But papyrus is expensive and you don't throw it away .

What was to have been an édition de luxe became instead an exercise book for the workshop's artists practising their draughtsmanship. The whole of the left-hand margin and any empty spaces were completely filled with sketches of hands, feet, and heads. The heads are extraordinarily vivid (left), presumably based on, or even copied from, statues of gods, philosophers, and perhaps even prospective patrons.

At much the same time, the entire back of the papyrus was covered with small drawings of birds, fish and animals, real and imaginary. Some are extremely lifelife and strongly reminiscent of a medieval bestiary -- such as the haughty giraffe above, the rampant tiger below, elephants, and griffins (if a mythical creature can be described as 'lifelife'), a winged horned lion (below left) and a strange crocodile-like monster and a dragon biting each other's tails (way below, centre). The drawings were presumably displayed as a 'pattern book', an index of mosaics and frescos that the painters would offer to their customers.

After using it for decades (the roll was mended after the animals were drawn), the papyrus was sold as pulp to be turned into mummy-cartonnage -- torn or cut up, and glued together like a kind of papier mâché.

Almost two millennia later, local excavators recovered and sold the mummy wrapping to an Egyptian collector who owned it until the mid-20th century. After passages around Europe, a German collector bought it, opened the cartonnage (soaking it an enzyme solution, which dissolves the glue) and recovered about 200 fragments of papyrus. Fifty of these have been pieced together to make the Artemidorus roll.

The case for the prosecution

Not only has the forger copied La Fornarina's hand but the animals, according to Luciano Canfora, are copied as well -- in this case from drawings of constellations in early modern star-maps.^ Hence, the papyrus which combines an ostensibly early script (the animals are dated to the end of the first century BC by the written names which accompany them) with demonstrably later drawings, must be a fake.

But who could have faked both the script and these graphics?

Canfora has a culprit in mind -- a man whose name "deserves a whole page in the golden book of chutzpah", Constantine Simonides, Dr. Ph. (Moscow).

He was undoubtedly the greatest forger of the last century (1820? - 1867?). Even 19th century critics, who knew styles of writing Greek, the colours of the ink and paints of different times, and the kinds of parchment and papyrus used, were often fooled by his skills. Simonides combined intellect with versatility, and industry with ingenuity, such as is rarely found. His stock-in-trade was a large number of both genuine manuscripts, many obtained from Mount Athos, and of forged ones written by himself. In 1846, he was reportedly in possession of 5000 manuscripts, which he exhibited to savants at Athens.

His known scams include an incredibly ancient copy of Hesiod's Theogony, marked up with pseudo-ancient musical notes plus three indecipherable 'ancient' poems; a parchment which carried a hitherto unknown history of the kings of Egypt by Uranius of Alexandria; a papyrus with an early and 'corrected' copy of Hanno's Voyage Round Africa; and a text of St. Matthew's Gospel dictated by the apostle himself to Nicholas the Deacon. Finally, in a triumphant display of chutzpah, Simonides falsely claimed to have forged the genuine Codex Sinaiticus (the Book from Sinai: one of the two earliest Christian bibles, 694 pages of which were acquired by the British Museum in 1933 for £ 100,000).

Even if he didn't forge the fabulous Codex Sinaiticus, had he the skills to create the drawings and recreate the text of a shadowy geographer in first century script?

Peter Parsons, for many years director of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project, and unquestionably one of today's cannier experts , sees no compelling reason to doubt the papyrus (Forging Ahead, TLS 22 Feb. 2008): To my eye the script of 'Artemidorus' looks unexceptionable, both in quality of line and in delicacy of execution, and much more accomplished than any sample of Simonides that I have yet seen.

His judgment got an unexpected boost with a letter published in the TLS on 14 March from a Greek architect, Ms. Haris Kalligas:

...as my family originates from the same island (Symi, near Rhodes) as Simonides, I had the fortune to come across some new material, including his father’s will, when I was writing a short article on his family house, of which some parts are still standing....

Simonides forged his own descendancy, claiming that his ancestors originated through a direct line of eighty-eight generations from Stageira, the city Aristotle came from, and gives lots of other false facts. Apparently, as a young man he tried to poison his parents, and this was the reason he had to leave the island around 1840. He also forged Symi’s past, having composed a totally imaginary history: “Symais, or History of the Apollonias School in Symi … ” (1849), claiming that the author was a certain monk called Meletios, from Chios.

During my term of office as Director of the Gennadius Library in Athens, I had the chance to examine in detail various holdings of the Library referring to Simonides. To my great surprise his forgeries are so evident and so clumsy that I was really mystified as to how it could have been possible for him to fool eminent philologists of the nineteenth century, who should have been familiar with authentic manuscripts.

Luciano Canfora shot back an angry reply (published in the TLS on 11 April):

It was with great surprise that I read the letter on Simonides from the architect Haris Kalligas. Her assertions strike me as faintly comical....

... I must, anyway, confess to being greatly impressed by the palaeographic skills which, as an architect, Kalligas demonstrates in her letter.

The Scoop

But time had already run out for Prof. Canfora. On 12 March, 2008 , it was reported that the Laboratory for Cultural Goods (LABEC), Florence, Italy, of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics had dated the Artemidorus Papyrus. According to the analyses, the Papyrus dates back approximately 2,000 years.

LABEC used the ultrasensitive technique of accelerator mass spectroscopy to perform carbon-14 dating on three tiny fragments from different points on the Papyrus. The analyses consistently showed that the fragments are from around the 1st century A.D., with a 95% probability that they date back to between 40 B.C. and 130 A.D.

And the ink, too is consistent with ancient inks:

Another important analysis conducted by LABEC was that of the ink used to write the Papyrus, performed using Ion Beam Analysis. According to the results, the Papyrus was definitely not written with iron-gallic ink (which is based on metal salts and was commonly used in the 19th century) but with an ink with a purely organic base.

Why this matters


The drawings on the Artemidorus Papyrus, while not in themselves masterpieces, are the first solid evidence of the quality of draughtsmanship that underpinned the easel paintings of the famous painters of the Greek and Roman world. The celebrities of classical and Hellenistic Greece -- Zeuxis, Parrhasios, Apelles, Protogenes, Sosos -- are but names today, their works known only from glowing accounts by ancient writers.

While we need not believe (with Quintilian) that a single man, or even a single generation of painters were responsible for creating the illusion of 'space enveloping light and air', there's little doubt that this is what happened in Greek art around the time of Zeuxis (c 464 - 397? BC) and Parrhasios (d. 388 BC):

Of these, the first invented the systematic calculation of light and shade, the second, according to tradition, brought great refinement to draughtsmanship.

Zeuxis was responsible for a chiaroscuro that, like Parrhasios' linear method, suggested both the three-dimensionality of the parts we see as well as the continuation into space of the parts we do not see. So the sketches from the Artemidorus Papyrus are like living fossils, missing links between the lost masterpieces of ancient painting and the generally workmanlike pictures that 'till now have actually survived.

We End As We Meant to Begin


The Artemidorus Papyrus sketches come so close to quattrocento art that one almost believes that the painters of the Renaissance must have known and studied ancient prototypes -- and that these prototypes have, somehow, again vanished into dust. But, in truth, they had nothing to guide them besides the same written descriptions that we have today, plus some ancient reliefs and a few carved gems -- and their own genius.

And vice versa.

So when we see this incredibly Raphaelesque head of a woman in this painted stele of the 3rd C BC (left) from a site near Verria in Macedonia,^^ we can only marvel at the coincidence.

As a good Tuscan, Marguerita would have cried out, "Madonna Patata!"


Given a similar canon of beauty, is it true that the solutions that emerge are somehow natural and inevitable?



* Wikipedia wrongly describes Margherita as his "semi-legendary Roman lover". Of course she did exist -- and her family was Sienese, not Roman (which counts in Italy), though her father's bakery had moved to Rome at the time she met Raphael; more at Raphael's other woman.

** The True History of the So-Called Artemidorus Papyrus (Bari) 2008.

^ There are certainly some striking resemblances -- but I'd wager that the winged horned lion, at least, is an amalgam of Greek and Achaemenid-Persian images and styles. Winged lions are of ancient Babylonian lineage, but the horned variety, afaik, first appears in the Persian period (for example, a gold plaque from the Metropolitan Museum, and another gold jewel from the Oriental Institute collection). So this post is very slightly on-topic after all: although I've been unable to work into the story Zenobia or Palmyra, try as I might, I'm at least back in almost the right time and place with this Persian note.

^^ Stele found near Verria, Macedonia. Photo (and musings) from Vincent J. Bruno, Form and Colour in Greek Painting (London) 1977, Pl. 5a.


Update 23 May 2008:

An Artemidorus Papyrus One-day Conference will be held at St John's College, Oxford on Friday, June 13th, 2008.

The conference aims to bring together specialists on all aspects of the papyrus - the text, the map, and images. Scholars from Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the UK and the USA have agreed to participate. Luciano Canfora, should he be unable to come, will send a written statement. The aim of the conference is to study the artefact, and its text, map, and images, as "gobbets"* first (in a well-established Oxford tradition), thus contributing to a deeper understanding of what the papyrus presents, before discussing probabilities and authenticities.

*For those who do not know Oxford-speak, 'gobbets'are raw lumps of texts cut into bite-sized chucks, which can then be munched by scholars; they become morsels to be analysed as to (1) the source: what has the document or picture to "say" and how is it "said"? (2)who produced it ? What is being said/shown? Who was it intended for?

Update 17 June 2008:

An excellent close-up of one of the heads (above) drawn on the Artemidorus papyrus; via PHDiva.


Update 15 July 2008:

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Artemidorus Papyrus

Il papiro di Artemidoro : (P.Artemid.) has just been published. Six hundred and thirty pages, with full reproduction of the scroll in the original Greek, a translation into Italian, reports on all scientific tests, plus illustrations of the drawings in 40 folded leaves of plates. This important, finely produced work (edited by Claudio Gallazzi, Bärbel Kramer, and Salvatore Settis), is the complete critical study of the papyrus of Artemidorus.

You can read part of the study on the web.

And enjoy a few of the illustrations, such as this excellent reproduction of the two battling monsters:


Of course, the accompanying text also has a learned discussion of what the draughtsman thought he was drawing. The left monster is labelled as a Xiphias -- the usual word for swordfish; the snout may be vaguely right but a fish is hardly a quadruped. The dragon-like creature coiling about the Xiphias is called a Thunn[o] Prist[is], a combined tunny sawfish (if ever there were such a thing). Yet, the artist was not entirely wrong: to my surprise, there once were sawfish in the Mediterranean, though they are long extinct in such waters. If, as I imagine, the artist lived somewhere in the Nile valley, he must have heard of such beasties but, to him, they were just as much a part of fantasy as dragons and chimeras.

That doesn't mean that they are not accurately drawn -- down to every detail. And I wouldn't want to tussle with either of them.

(Via What's New in Papyrology, where you can find more information; and gasp at the price)


Update 13 November 2008:

Luciano Canfora Strikes Back

Backed into an academic corner by the sheer weight of Il papiro di Artemidoro published in July (discussed above), Professor Canfora has come out fighting, wielding heavy cudgels of his own -- and in English, this time, so that his arguments will be read by the whole international papyrological community.

He hasn't backtracked one bit.

Translating from the publisher's blurb (why in Italian only?), he declares the big papyrus in every respect dubious (inverosimile): its script, its contents, the pictures of humans and animals, as well as the famous "first-ever Greek map" of an unidentifiable country -- the lot. In short, the papyrus cannot be Artemidorus in any shape, way, or form.

The True History is the "definitive word" and is intended to put an end to the passionate quarrel that has consumed reams of paper in cultural supplements in Italian and foreign newspapers.

Fat chance!

But buy it by all means: it's a very modest Euro 18. A snip compared to the opposition's Il papiro di Artemidoro, at a hefty Euro 480.

My thanks again to What's New in Papyrology for alerting me to this new book.

Double Update 1 November 2009

An online review of Il papiro di Artemidoro by Arthur Verhoogt has just appeared in The American Journal of Archaeology. Prof. Verhoogt neatly sums up the significance of P. Artemid.

"This papyrus reminds us that our knowledge of antiquity is incomplete and based on sources that have survived....Whenever something falls through the cracks of selection and survival, so to say, we may not like what we see because it does not fit what we have, but we have to deal with it."

In other words, it's not a forgery: get on with studying it even if that means changing some long-held assumptions.

And that's exactly what is happening. Just yesterday, I received this report from What's New In Papyrology :

The book of the conference at St John’s College, Oxford (see my update of 23 May 2008) has now been published. Read all the lively and impassioned debates by the international panel of scholars as they discuss the artefact, the images, the map and the texts on the papyrus. And, yes, it does include the promised papers by Luciano Canfora and other opponents of authenticity although they did not attend the Oxford conference.

Kai Brodersen &Jas Elsner (eds.)
Images and Texts on the "Artemidorus Papyrus"
Working Papers on P. Artemid.

You can buy the book at Franz Steiner Verlag, € 50,00

The book also contains, courtesy of the original publishers, black and white photographs of the whole papyrus -- which makes it a very good deal compared with the whacking price of € 480 for the major publication.

 Update 7 October 2010

An excellent on-line review of Images and Texts on the "Artemidorus Papyrus" by Stanley M. Burstein appears today at Bryn Mawr Classical Review: "Papyri always produce something new and surprising, but surely nothing was more unprecedented and unexpected than the Artemidorus Papyrus...."  For those who can't or won't read the book, this review will bring you up-to-date on the state of scholarly play.  An important shift: it now seems unlikely that the papyrus was originally intended to be a deluxe edition of Artemidorus, but instead its layout is more compatible with it being a notebook created by several scribes with varied interests.

An Amsterdam All-Zenobia Day

Attention Dutch-speaking readers of this blog!

(the linguistically-challenged should scroll down a paragraph or two for other English fare)

An all-Zenobia Day is coming to Amsterdam. And what a gloriously indulgent day that will be. The title says it all -- Queen Zenobia between East and West: Zenobia of Palmyra in Arab and European Literature, Archaeology, Music and the Visual Arts from Antiquity to Now. Whew, the Netherlands Classical Association and Ex Oriente Lux are not missing much. I advise anyone in or near Amsterdam to get an invitation by hook or by crook (Zenobia2405@yahoo.com) and then hurry over to the Academic Cultural Centre on Saturday 24th May.

We've already touched on some of the same subjects -- the lecture entitled "Zenobia to Zenobia: Two Dethroned Queens on Canvas" will surely cover our glorious queen and the Armenian Other Zenobia, while "Zenobia as Opera Star" must hum along with Johann Adolph Hasse; but there are many more Zenobia operas and I am eager to listen. "Zenobia Lives! The Modern Arab Reception of al-Zabba" will undoubtedly cast the queen as anti-colonial Arab fighter (as in the massive Mansour Rahbani musical play in Dubai , which I also discussed in Zenobia's terrible curved sword). The day also promises many sparklingly new topics that I haven't even started on: from "Zenobia on Coins" to the traditions preserved in Tabari's History of Prophets and Kings and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It will be a veritable feast.

The organizers very kindly sent me an invitation (as I happen to be in NL for quite other reasons*) and I plan to be there ... and shall report , in English, after the event.

But, for today, I am struck by the image the learned institutions have chosen to adorn their invitation, Zenobia's Last Look on Palmyra by the unfortunately named Herbert Schmalz (1856-1935). I know we must not make fun of people's names (and as a 'Weingarten', I wouldn't dare) but he's such such a schmalzy** artist, it's not true). Take a better look at the picture (left). Painted in 1888, Zenobia is almost a parody of High Victorian art. As Richard Stoneman describes it in Palmyra and its Empire, the queen

looks down from a high balcony over a fantasy scene of spreading temples, porticoes, and colonnades. Noble melancholy suffuses her brow as the sun goes down behind the wheeling desert birds. The picture, overblown as it is, might easily be a stage set for Cecil B. DeMille.

Actually it is one of Schmalz's better efforts. He painted a host of subjects from classical and biblical history, choosing episodes which offered opportunities for elaborate and exotic architectural settings.

And nudity.

At least Zenobia is dressed. There was little Schmalz liked better than to get his models to take off their clothes. All in the name of art, of course.

And piety.

A Great Moral Lesson

This painting from 1888 looks like a cinematic vision of the blood-thirsty crowds in the Coliseum, with a group of nude young women, all pretty, all tied up, all in pseudo-classical poses, waiting for the lions to maul and devour them.

Their various poses obviously have been chosen to show their bodies to maximum effect. For Victorian lovers of bondage, their bodies in restraint must have been a real thrill. A little torture and suffering go a long way to expose virtue and bare flesh.

But these Victorian viewers were still piously and justifiably able to deplore the savagery of the Romans in making martyrs of these adorable, snowy white Christians. The painting offered a Great Moral Lesson about Christian Sacrifice. To make sure no one missed the point—and to free it from any hint of sexual titillation—it was titled: Faithful Unto Death: "Christianes ad Leones!"

Only a sourpuss could fail to be uplifted.

Schmalz's paintings frequently involved the tying-up of nubile women and a lot of execution and death by various means -- and one might expect that his works would have raised questions of taste. Yet it's hard to know how to read a critic, writing in the Strand, when he describes how Schmaltz had used his 15-year old model for Faithful Unto Death:

No one can fail [in looking at the painting] to notice how the bonds which bind the girl to the post seem to cut into the soft flesh of her arms. This was realised absolutely by the model, for Mr Schmalz had a post erected in his studio and bound the girl to it exactly as represented. Within the limited area of the panel it will be noticed how the whole spirit of the large picture has been retained, even the mark in the foreground of the chariot-wheel, which has thrown to one side the thigh and the shin-bone of some long dead-and-gone martyr who had perished for the sake of her faith.

The detail was admirable. And, come on guys, a bit of high kitsch never did anyone any harm.

Keep it in the family

I 'm not sure if this 15-year girl was his favourite model and mistress, Dorothy Dene (whose real name was Ada Alice Pullen), who also modelled for Frederic Leighton, a close friend and mentor. Here she is (left, posing as a demure Iphigenea, though the flowers don't quite hide the carelessly exposed breast). Dorothy was widely admired for her "'splendid growth and form such as the ancient Greek never saw." But ties do not always bind (or not tightly enough) -- a year after painting Faithful Unto Death, Schmalz married Dorothy's sister, Edith Pullen.


Sensation! The Nude in High Art

The credit -- if that's the word I want -- for bringing nudity into English art belongs to the aesthetic movement of Leighton, Watts, Poynter, Albert Joseph Moore and Burne-Jones. They ushered the nude back onto the walls of the Royal Academy, but decently draped, and with a suitable classical title. The naked young maidens, shackled to a rock or draped over the oars of a ship or riding horses or just standing there with a tumescent serpent wrapped around their bodies were Andromeda, the Sirens, Godiva and Harmonia. One recognizes the high moral narratives combined with exposed breasts.

The nude evokes a classical era, a remote past without pubic hair or a hint of cleft. Venus and other classical allusions were allowed; but a naked lady was not, as Alma-Tadema found out when he exhibited a nude female figure, a girl with no waist and rather thick ankles, and called it "A Sculptor's Model". Alma-Tadema was severely rapped over the knuckles by the Bishop of Carlisle; thereafter he was careful to avoid nudes altogether.

Schmalz had better luck. His sculptor's model passed muster (albeit a little later). In 1900 he showed this painting at his biggest one-man show at a Bond Street gallery. It is called the Dream of Fair Women.

Perfume and underwear advertisers today have nothing on the kinky Victorians.

I can only imagine that it is Schmalz himself, the sculptor, at her feet.

Words fail me.

But they didn't fail Oscar Wilde, who knew Schmalz slightly.

Schmalz was just leaving one of Lady Wilde's salon gatherings when Oscar stopped him.

Wilde: "Ah, Schmalz! leaving Mamma so soon?"

Schmalz: "Yes, I have a picture I must get on with."

Wilde: "Might I ask, what subject?"

Schmalz: "A Viking picture."

Wilde: "But my dear Schmalz, why so far back? You know, where archaeology begins, art ceases.





* I'll be helping to install Gerti Bierenbroodspot's new exhibition of paintings and sculpture, Atlantis Rising, at the Museum van der Togt in Amstelveen; opening 25 May. A catalogue, written by yours truly, is available.

** Schmalzy is another New York word of Yiddish origin, meaning maudlin, sentimental, slushy or mushy effusiveness. Above all, if applied to a painter it means really kitschy. In 1918 Schmalz changed his name to Carmichael – after his maternal grandfather, the marine painter John Wilson Carmichael. But that was too late to stop people like me from making bad jokes.

Laurel and Hardy Meet Zenobia

1939

Skinny, British-born Stan Laurel and fat American Oliver Hardy began appearing together in movie shorts in 1926. Their incredible chemistry took hold immediately: two supremely brainless, eternally optimistic men, secure in their perpetual and impregnable innocence. They are life's innocent bystanders who run afoul of irate landlords, pompous citizens, angry policemen, domineering women, antagonistic customers, and apoplectic bosses. But, no matter how disastrous the consequences, they faced the world together....

Albeit not in Zenobia.

Originally developed for the comedy duo, Zenobia ultimately teamed Hardy with silent screen legend Harry Langdon when Laurel had a falling out with Hal Roach studios. The result is a well-meaning comedy, one which shows Hardy’s talents as a “leading man” yet isn't very funny. The title character — a testy female elephant named Zenobia — is the film’s primary claim to fame.

Yes, I know that the headline claims 'Laurel & Hardy' and Zenobia, but I misspoke.

Forget that for a moment, and let me muse.

This teaming of Oliver Hardy with someone other than Stan Laurel was the result of a contract dispute between Hal Roach and Stan Laurel. Zenobia (based on the story, Zenobia's Infidelity by H.C. Bunner) was Roach's attempt to create a new comedy pair without Stan Laurel, and a series of films with Hardy and Langdon was planned. The dispute was short-lived, however, and Laurel and Hardy were reunited soon thereafter (though, of course, they couldn't know this at the time).

Hardy was cast in the semi-serious role of John Tibbitt, a 19th century Mississippi doctor whose heart is bigger than his bank account. When Hardy is summoned to come help someone who is sick, he races across town only to find that the patient is an elephant (Zenobia) in a travelling carnival. "I am a doctor, and I work mainly with humans..." says Hardy, "but when you see an elephant in distress I want to help." Not the snappiest of lines, but Zenobia's owner (Harry Langdon) and Hardy figure out how to treat the elephant.Zenobia is so grateful, she falls in love with Hardy and refuses to leave his side. Attempting to say 'thanks', Zenobia relentlessly follows the good doctor and there is no place to hide: Zenobia even crashes a society party to be with him. Langdon gets mad and sues Hardy for alienation of Zenobia's affections.

The ensuing scandal plays right into the hands of Mrs. Carter, the town's richest and snobbiest woman (whose family put the 'Carter' into Carterville, Mississippi), who has long opposed the romance between her son John and Tibbitt's daughter Mary. During the climactic courtroom trial, despite occasional interruptions by Zenobia, all problems are resolved and Mrs. Carter finally gives in. She agrees to pay for any damages to the circus and consents to the marriage. And they all live happily ever after.

So far, so slight.

The Hidden Message?

I wonder how many people who saw the film in 1939 understood that Zenobia was also a symbol -- quite literally the 'elephant in the room'. What else was big and always present like an elephant in the heart of the Old South?

Three of the actors are black: Stepin Fetchit, Hattie McDaniel, and Philip Hurlic. Stepin (spelled Step'n in the credits) is Zero, the butler. You can see him either as a horribly stereotyped black actor playing someone dumb and lazy, or find him quite funny talking under his breath about his thoughts every time he gets ordered to do something. Hattie McDaniel is the cook. Her name, too, is misspelt (last name has an 's' added in the credits), not that she would have minded very much because, that same year, she became the first black ever to win an Oscar -- for her role as Mammy, Scarlett O'Hara's servant, in 'Gone With the Wind'. That's her (left) receiving the award for Best Supporting Actress in 1939.

But it is Zeke (Philip Hurlic -- sorry, I can't find a picture of him anywhere on the web) who almost steals the show from Zenobia. Playing Hardy's child servant, he is smart and cute. Hardy attempts to explain race to Zeke as being the difference between white pills and black pills. As he puts it, the Declaration of Independence is made up of black, white, red and yellow pills. When Hardy asks the child if he understands, Zeke answers back, "No, Suh". Hardy finally offers him a quarter-dollar (no mean amount in 1939) if he can memorize the Declaration of Independence. He does and recites it aloud -- in what is obviously meant to be the film's highlight. It's impossible to imagine that a black child speaking those stirring opening words (We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal) could fail to make an impression on the audience. Even in Mississippi.

Zenobia is telling us that the elephant in the room is bigotry and inequality. For Hardy, black, white, red (Indian) and yellow (Oriental) pills are created equal. At least, that's how most modern film buffs read the underlying story. For some, it's even it too obvious: the film "tries desperately to force feed its audience a plate of moral fiber for digestion." Others, however, are offended by Stepin Fetchit's "hideously racist performance". The black community has always had a love-hate relationship with Stepin Fetchit. One can see why (that's him on the right in Carolina, 1934).

Still, let's not project our current ideas in a rear view mirror. In 1939, it wasn't 'self-evident' -- not in Mississippi, not in Hollywood -- that a film would have a black kid reciting the Declaration of Independence ... and some of the credit, I think, should go to Hal Roach.

Here's why.

Our Gang

The idea of creating a series starring real children came to Hal Roach as he was watching a group of young boys fighting over a pile of sticks. As he stood there laughing, he thought that if he could capture that natural youthful energy on film, he might have a hit.

The result was Our Gang, one of the longest-lasting short subjects series of all time (1922-1944). Roach always believed that the most successful comedians are childlike (like Laurel & Hardy, really 'children' in an adult world), and the Our Gang series took his theory one step further, making children themselves the comedians.

The "Our Gang" shorts are heartwarming and funny. They featured the Gang stuck in a world with mean step-mothers, irritable neighbors, heartless dog-catchers, shotgun toting chicken farmers, befuddled cops, and, once in a while, a kindly old grandma. The Gang was always remarkably diverse, featuring white kids, black kids, Oriental kids, fat kids, skinny kids, tough kids, wimpy kids ... always hanging tough together and rising above their troubles through their wit, spirit and creativity.

Our Gang had more integration between races than the feature pictures being filmed in the same era. Whereas in most feature films, black men were almost always porters or janitors, in the world of Our Gang, the black members, like Stymie and Farina, were always on an equal footing with their white counterparts.

There was no distinction between the white pills and the black pills.

But let's not get carried away, folks. In a country where a current contender for the Democratic presidential nomination (speaking through the teeth of his team) is hurling about accusations of racism, we can hardly pretend that there is no distinction between pills. Still, I think that Hal Roach was basically on the side of the angels. How else can you explain that he lived long enough to be honoured at the Academy Awards of 1992 (his second honorary Oscar) -- and looked at least thirty years younger than his actual age of 100?

"Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into."

This was Laurel and Hardy's catchphrase and it has passed into the American language.

A kindly critic might call the comedy duo precursors of the Theatre of the Absurd. Certainly, two tramp-like men bewildered by the simplest elements of life irresistibly leads to Samuel Beckett, himself a fan, who was unquestionably influenced by the characters in Waiting for Godot.

ESTRAGON: I can't go on like this.

VLADIMIR: That's what you think.

If any of my readers have 69 minutes to waste, you can 'go on like this' and see the whole of Zenobia. After all, it's the only time that Oliver Hardy is the thin one of the comedy pair:

"Well...." says an impatient Hardy.

And Laurel replies, "Here's another nice mess I've gotten you into."


Next week, back to ancient history.

Hillary Proposes No-moderator Debate with Obama

GO HILLARY.

I do love uppity women.

* Thank you Needlenose: you made my day. Headline from AFP.

Panthea, the "all-divine" girl and Emperor Lucius Verus, Part II

Please take a moment, scroll down, and read Part I first.

Just after we left our two friends Polystratus and Lycinus (Lucian's alter ego), in Part I, they had the bright idea to turn their conversation into a book. Let us, says Polystratus,

put our portraits together, the statue that you modelled of her body and the pictures that I painted of her soul; let us blend them all into one, put it down in a book for everyone to admire, not only those now alive, but those that shall live hereafter.

This timeless book is On Images and Polystratus, who is acquainted with the Emperor's mistress, repeats the whole dialogue to Panthea from memory (2nd century sophists did not have attention deficit disorders). Lucian's second dialogue, Defending 'On Images', begins with his reporting to Lycinus how she responded to the eulogy. She is not happy. The praise, she declares, is much too high for her:

My own attitude, please understand, is this. In general, I do not care for people [who flatter], but consider consider such persons deceivers.... Above all, in the matter of compliments, when anyone in praising me employs immoderate extravagances I blush and almost stop my ears, and the thing seems to me more like abuse than praise.

You said, she chides him, that I was modest and free from vanity, yet you set me "above the very stars, even to the point of likening [me] to goddesses. " I would be committing a sacrilege and a sin, she goes on, if I let myself be compared to a goddess. That's not because he compared her to Aphrodite of Cnidus (above left) -- who is perfectly naked [the verbal portrait gives her the seemly drapery of another statue]. No, it is because she is a mere mortal: "Just praise [me] if you will, "she says, "in the ordinary, human way, but do not let the sandal be too large for [my] foot, for ... it might hamper me when I walk about in it."

So she instructs Lycinus to change those parts of his book and resubmit it to her for her approval. This puts him in a pretty pickle. The book is already in circulation. He has no choice but to defend himself ... and he begins as he means to go on:

Noblest of women, it is true I praised you, as you say, highly and immoderately; but I do not see what commendation I bestowed as great as the [praise] which you have pronounced upon yourself in extolling your reverence for the gods.... So in that particular at least I not only did not go beyond bounds, it seems to me, with my praises, but actually said far less than I should. So if the speech absolutely must be revised and the portrait corrected, I should not venture to take a single thing away from it, but will add this detail to cap, as it were, and crown the complete work.

And so he turns his so-called defence into still higher tribute. Anyway, he argues, I didn't compare you to the goddesses themselves but just to statues and paintings of goddesses; and, if that is wrong, many good poets before me have already committed this sin. The worst offender was the most esteemed -- your fellow-citizen Homer, and so, if I am guilty, he himself will be convicted along with me:

I shall therefore ask him, or, better, ask you in his stead, since you know by heart -- and it is greatly to your credit -- all the prettiest of the verses that he composed.

In short she knows her Homer inside out. But Homer is not the only label that Panthea is sporting.


What's Wrong With This Picture?

There is no doubt that Lucian spent some time in Antioch at the court of Lucius Verus when the emperor was in supreme command of the Roman forces during the years of the Parthian War, from 163–166. If this praise of Verus' mistress is really indirect and sycophantic praise of the emperor, he would hardly be the first literary type trying to get ahead in the power game by writing eulogies of an emperor's fair love (remember how the poets Martial and Statius celebrated Domitian's eunuch lover in their quest for imperial patronage).

But such a reading contradicts everything we know (or think we know) about Lucian. He is, as he tells us, a friend of open discourse and truth: "A man who will call a fig a fig, and a spade a spade. [Who] will simply tell it how it was."

After all, Lucian devotes an entire work (On Salaried Posts) to lambast those educated Greeks who hire themselves out to wealthy Romans , abandoning both their freedom and their dignity in the process. "In my own individual case," he states forthrightly, " I would not accept even being the Great King's companion and being seen as such if I gained no moral benefit from the association."

That seems clear enough.

Yet here he is, devoting two dialogues to the beauty and virtue of the Great King's mistress. Is it, in a nutshell, that Lucian, "the mocker of flatterers, beats all flatterers hands down"?

Of course, you could argue that Lucian doesn't really mean it: it's all a courtly world of masks and illusions. He just wants to please Lucius Verus by insincere but clever flattery of his mistress. The Historiae Augustae warned us that Verus (a good-looking guy [above right] -- and, anyway, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac), "when he came to Antioch ... gave himself wholly to riotous living". Perhaps Lucian, the clever satirist, abandons laughter to go with the flow.

Must I accept that one of my absolutely favourite ancient authors is a hypocrite?

Not yet. There's another, more misogynist explanation.

Selling oneself as educated in this period (the 'Second Sophistic') meant manipulating literary allusions to the past in increasingly witty ways; your audience of equally educated sophists would appreciate just how well you played on ancient sources. If you get it right, you are held in high esteem. As Lucian says about himself: "Everyone who sees you will nudge the guy next to him , and point to you with his finger saying, 'That's him!"

So, reading between the lines, what looks on the surface to be sincere praise is really withering irony -- and that would be understood as such in Lucian's hyper-educated circle. If so, when Lucian praises Panthea's learning, the precision of her language, her ready wit, culture and wisdom -- it is all part of the joke. To put it bluntly, "the idea that Panthea was an intellectual would have been bizarre," according to a recent essay by Professor Keith Sidwell.* Lucian's audience of male sophists would have giggled like mad.

Let's look at the main points that would have them rolling in the aisles:

1. That she was educated.

Prof. Sidwell: Women were not educated -- so the claim would be a source of hilarity "because it is absolutely contrary to fact".

But Lucian aptly compares Panthea to Aspasia of Miletus, the consort of the great Pericles, who was reputed to be an astonishingly educated women and of "rare political wisdom". This flatters both Panthea and Lucius Verus (= Pericles), which would surely have backfired if it was just rib-tickling fantasy. And that little detail of the scroll she was holding when Lycinus first saw her -- with both ends of it rolled up, so that she seemed to be reading -- has the ring of truth.

2. That she thought such flattery of herself was inappropriate.

Prof. Sidwell: The "teasing irony" is that Panthea claims to know the rules of eulogy. Lycinus/Lucian must thus patiently disabuse her of the notion that he has done anything not sanctioned by literary tradition.

But she knows Lucian well enough (at least through his work) to know that he was a "mocker of flatterers", so she says to him: "Do away with all that is excessive and invidious, Lycinus -- that sort of thing is not in keeping with your character, for you have not as a rule been ready and quick to praise.... you who were so niggardly before have become a spendthrift in compliments!"

Polystratus, too, is convinced by her arguments; is he now an uneducated nincompoop as well? "When I heard it first, I did not see a single fault in what you had written, but now that she has pointed them out, I myself begin to think as she does about it."

3. That he compared her to goddesses and that he must change his work because of her religious scruples.

Prof. Sidwell: Panthea doesn't understand the difference between the gods themselves and their statues ... and is ignorant of poetic tradition.

But this is not quite true, for in On Images he did say that she vies with golden Aphrodite in beauty and equals Athena herself in accomplishments.

Not statues, goddesses. We'll let that pass in the spirit of poetic license.

How would these jokes have been received?

Panthea, speculates Prof. Sidwell, "had probably grown used to receiving and enjoying the grossest of flatteries" . If so, I presume that she did not object to Lucian's similar (if wittier) exaggerations. But he says she did object and compliments her upon this very fact. If, instead, she had lapped it up, this surely would have been an unpardonable affront.

Finally, Lucius Verus, who was very well educated himself, might have twigged what was going on. It is one thing not to suck up to power, quite another to insult it.

Could it just be possible that Panthea deserved some of Lucian's extravagant praise?

Marcus Aurelius has his say

Lucius Verus died, probably from plague, in 169. Soon after his death, Marcus Aurelius (who was also Verus's father-in-law) asks himself in his Meditations

Are Panthea and Pergamos still sitting beside the tomb of Verus?

It was certainly a sign that he recognized her devotion, even if, as a stoic, he thought it ridiculous. Lucian, in turn, gives evidence of her devotion to Verus. Perhaps, after all, at their court in Antioch, he found some "moral benefit from the association."

And that is the last we ever hear of her.



* A specialist in Lucian studies. DAMNING WITH GREAT PRAISE: PARADOX IN LUCIAN’S IMAGINES AND PRO IMAGINIBUS, in Pleiades Setting: Essays for Pat Cronin on his 65th birthday (Cork 2002).

Panthea, the "all-divine" girl and Emperor Lucius Verus

An old joke from pre-digital days -- when newsprint was still set in metal type -- was that newspapers kept some headlines permanently typeset, instantly ready for inevitable reuse: one such headline was

"Italian Government Falls".

Today, when Italy is going to the polls yet again, I can put a better slant on that old joke with a new headline :

"Italian Police Seize Stolen Archaeological Treasures".

The police are doing so well in retrieving stolen antiquities that they are about to display some of their spoils in the papal fortress Castello Sant'Angelo (aka Hadrian's Tomb) in Rome from 24 April - 19 June.* The latest addition to this bravo show is a rare head of Lucius Verus, co-emperor (r. 161-169 AD) and adoptive brother of Marcus Aurelius, part of a stash seized this very week from a boat garage in Fiumicino, near the airport of Rome.

So far, so good. But I wonder why the news report insists on calling Lucius Verus the 'shy' emperor, attributing to him an unlikely "desire to stay out of the limelight". Well, I, for one, am surprised.

Lucius wasn't especially timid. I don't want to get into the debate about his role in the Parthian War, but a bit of background is needed before I get to his erotic history.

In 161 AD, the Parthian king Vologaesus IV thought he saw a window of opportunity and installed his own candidate on the Armenian throne (more on the 'Great Armenian Game' in The Other Zenobia). A Roman legion promptly marched from Cappadocia to restore the pro-Roman king but fell into a Parthian trap: "then shooting down and destroying the whole force, leaders and all; [Vologaesus now advanced], powerful and formidable, against the cities of Syria." Armenia is one thing, Syria quite another. Marcus Aurelius acted, dispatching Lucius Verus to oversee the war. The Historiae Augustae claims that Verus was more inclined to enjoy himself on the trip than to prepare for war -- and that his generals did the real fighting. Cassius Dio, however, tells us that Verus was a "vigorous man, well suited for military enterprises,"

and that he went to Antioch and collected a large body of troops; then, keeping the best of the leaders under his personal command, he took up his own headquarters in the city, where he made all the dispositions and assembled the supplies for the war.

Whatever the truth, the Romans got their act together and counter-attacked, reaching as far as the Parthian capital Cteisiphon (near modern Baghdad), which they burnt and sacked in 165.

The campaign against Parthia proved to be as decisive as any war in recent Roman history, and surely some credit belongs to Varus. A Roman-backed king once again sat the Armenian throne and Parthia had been thoroughly defeated.

Yet I confess that when I think of Lucius Verus, the Parthian War is not the first thing that comes to mind, but rather the story of Panthea, his mistress (whose name means "all-divine") and the rumours of what they got up to together.

The Negative

The Historiae Augustae is in full censorious mode:


When he set out for Syria, his name was smirched not only by the licence of an unbridled life, but also by adulteries and by love-affairs with young men.... It is said, moreover, that he used to dice the whole night through ... and that he so rivalled Caligula, Nero, and Vitellius in their vices as to wander about at night through taverns and brothels with only a common travelling-cap for a head-covering.

Tchah! How utterly un-imperial.

To get him back on the straight and narrow, the saintly Marcus sent him off to war. Let the army make an emperor of him -- or, at the very least, get him away from Rome "that he might commit his debaucheries away from the city and the eyes of all citizens." But the lure of the sensuous East was strong and, in Syria, Verus committed the Hist. Aug.'s ultimate sin:**

he shaved off his beard while in Syria to humour the whim of a low-born mistress; and because of this many things were said against him by the Syrians.

That mistress was the luscious Panthea.

The Positive

We are lucky to have two complete dialogues by the satirist Lucian devoted to Panthea, On Images, and Defending 'On Images'. So we know a lot about her, or think we do. On Images begins when the hero Lycinus (who is Lucian himself -- at least in part) tells his friend Polystratus that he's just seen the most perfectly beautiful woman -- and was "struck stiff with amazement and came within an ace of being turned into stone" by the sight.

I can't say who she is, but she received much attention, kept splendid state in every way, had a number of eunuchs and a great many maids, and, in general, the thing seemed to be on on a greater scale than accords with private station.

He then paints a most glorious word picture of her and the feelings she inspired, using the iconography and bodies of famous Greek statues by Praxiteles and Pheidias as well as quotations from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey (especially apt as this great beauty came from Smyrna, the birthplace, it was believed, of Homer himself).

He begins by describing her head as like that of Praxiteles' Aphrodite of Cnidus, the most celebrated Greek statue of the ancient world (above, thought to be its best Roman copy), and in the eyes also, that gaze so liquid, and at the same time so clear and winsome. And then goes on to build up every part and colour from art and epic, until he's put her together again. Finally Polystratus recognizes who she is and shouts out:

It is the Emperor's mistress, you simpleton -- the woman who is so famous!

Lycinus then begs for a description of her soul. Most important for a Greek (and Lucian, though born in Samosata on the Euphrates, is steeped in Greek literary conventions) is her virtue -- in the Greek sense: "Beauty," he stresses "is not enough unless it is set off with its just enhancements, by which I mean, not purple raiment and necklaces, but those I have already mentioned -- virtue, self-control, goodness, kindliness, and everything else that is included in the definition of virtues."

She has these, too, in spades.

Lycinus: This, then, is what sculptors and painters and poets can achieve; but who could counterfeit the flower of it all -- the grace; nay, all the Graces in company, and all the Loves, too, circling hand in hand about her?

Polystratus: It's a miraculous creature that you describe, Lycinus; 'dropped from the skies' in very truth, quite like something out of Heaven. But what was she doing when you saw her?

Lycinus: She had a scroll in her hands, with both ends of it rolled up, so that she seemed to be reading....

So Panthea is literate and, one can imagine, reasonably educated -- at a time when it was still uncommon even for elite women to be learned. Lucius Verus was himself extremely cultured. The disapproving author of the Hist. Aug. is forced to admit that he cherished a deep and abiding affection for his teachers in rhetoric and philosophy and "in return he was beloved by them." As a youth, "he loved to compose verses, and later on in life, orations", although with the nasty aside that "he had no natural gifts in literary studies".

Even given such a background, I find it remarkable that Lycinus/Lucian feels strongly enough to end with this surprising reversal: it is entirely "in keeping that our Emperor, being very kind and civilized, along with the rest of the good fortune which he enjoys, should be so honoured by Fortune as to have such a woman born in his time and that she should be his mistress and desire him."

Quite de bas en haut.

The Inscrutable

We get the chance to hear Panthea's own voice and opinions in Defending 'On Images', Lucian's second dialogue about her. But I'm afraid this post is already too long. We'll listen to what she has to say -- and what her modern male detractors say in reply -- in the next post.

I'll be in Rome for the rest of this week, certainly seeing the Rosso pompeiano show at the Palazzo Massimo. Part II of Panthea, the "all-divine" girl thus follows next weekend.


Update 18 April 2008: David Meadows has a great photograph of the recovered bust of Lucius Verus on his blog rogueclassicism. The emperor looks sadder, if perhaps wiser, than on the image at the top of this post. And notice (David did!) his Syrian-style moustache.


* I've written about other recent police successes at Poppaea's Painting in Paris and Stolen Oplontis Fresco on Show in Rome.

** Hist. Aug. very much on their high horse, too, about the purportedly beardless Emperor Elagabalus: Hairiness Makes the Man and The Curious Case of Elagabalus' Beard.

The engraving of "The Dance of the Pleiades" is by the American symbolist painter, Elihu Vedder (1838-1923); image courtesy of Art Connections.

Verbosity? Who Says?

On average, Zenobia's blog posts are around 2079 words in length.
This is 449 percent longer than other bloggers who took this test.

Created by OnePlusYou

I can't help it. I like adjectives. Especially uppity adjectives. And circumlocution.

Plutarch (who should know -- given the incredible wordiness, prolixity, and perhaps even occasional windiness of his Moralia) consoles me thus:

Do not fight verbosity with words: speech is given to all, intelligence to few.

Stolen Oplontis fresco on show in Rome

Huge Roman landscape mural on display after 40 years abroad

Rome, March 27 - A Roman fresco recovered by art police from a private house in Paris last month went on show to the public for the first time in Rome on Thursday. This is the painting (now in lamentably fragmentary condition) that I wrote about in the post Poppaea's Painting in Paris, when the police operation, dubbed Operation Ulysses,

uncovered a haul of more than a thousand archaeological finds and a series of outstanding Impressionist forgeries. The trail initially led investigators to Milan and then eventually abroad, first to Switzerland and later onto Paris. The fresco was finally tracked down to an elegant house in the French capital..

But whose "elegant house" in Paris was then unknown. The latest news names him (and should shame him) -- Jacques Marcoux, "a publisher and art collector" and his house is in the undoubtably swish Place Vendome in the centre of Paris. But who, really, is Monsieur Marcoux? Googling brings up no information at all. That's strange. Who is unGoogl-able in this day and age?

The News Report

Archaeologists believe the painting was illegally removed during the 1970s from the walls of a villa in Oplontis, one of the towns covered in ash and cinder during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. Dating to the first century AD, the painting shows a bower of vines, a satyr riding a mule, and a cloaked woman making a sacrifice at an altar.

The three-metre long fresco is the largest landscape-themed painting ever found in the Vesuvian area. ''It's rare to see a landscape fresco of these dimensions,'' said government archaeology chief Stefano De Caro. ''Usually they are small pictures showing ports or wild nature scenes. But here we have a rural landscape, with rows of vines and a big shrine - perhaps that of Dionysus (the Greek god of wine),'' he added.

Although archaeologists have yet to work out exactly where the fragmented fresco comes from, De Caro said it may once have decorated exterior walls overlooking a garden.

Italian art police worked with Swiss, Belgian and French investigators to track down the painting, which they knew had been in Geneva in the early 1980s. The fresco hung for some time in the house of a rich industrialist in Brussels before eventually finding its way to Paris. Investigators discovered the painting in the house of French publisher and art collector Jacques Marcoux in Place Vendome in February.

After its 40-year trip abroad, the fresco has gone on display at Palazzo Massimo as part of an exhibition of wall paintings Rosso pompeiano from Pompeii, Herculaneum and other Vesuvian towns that runs until 1 June.

De Caro said the fresco would be returned to the Pompeii archaeology superintendency when the show ends.


The report in English at the website of ANSA.it (update: link expired) and with a little more information in Italian via Archaeoblog

The Blue Burqa Band

This Afghan girl rock group appears as three blue ghosts floating through the streets of Kabul,* singing about how they feel about wearing burqas:

You give me all your love
You give me all your kisses
Then you touch my burqa and don't know 'who is it'?



Just like the 19-year-old Afghan track star and only female on Afghanistan's four-member Olympic team, Ahdyar -- who runs dressed in a headscarf, long pants and a long-sleeved shirt -- the Blue Burqa's are subjected to Taliban-like threats.

The group's songwriter, Nargiz (not her real name), says, "It was a lot of fun, but also very scary. Afghanistan is still a very dangerous place for modern women, and when we shot the video we had to do it very discretely because no one could know that we were playing music. Of course it was a joke to sing in the burqas, but it was also necessary to wear them. If people in Afghanistan knew who the members of the Burqa Band were, we could be attacked or killed because there are still a lot of religious fanatics here."

Still? As many as ever, I'd say.

My mother wears a burqa, I must wear a burqa too.
We all wear a burqa, we don't know who is who.
Blueee, burqa blue.

According to Nargiz, only 10 people in Afghanistan know who are the faces behind the burqas in the band. They have never performed in Afghanistan (the song was a hit in Germany). Today the only place to see the Blue Burqa Band is on video.


Zenobia has had some earlier burqa posts: sadly, R.I.P. Benazir Bhutto , and a more frivolous 'burqa on the cat walk' report in Thirty Centuries of Persian Art.

* Via The F-Word Blog

Think about supporting RAWA, the oldest political/social organization of Afghan women struggling for peace, freedom, democracy and women's rights in Afghanistan.