Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts

Via that wonderful Roman site, Eternally Cool.

Where Did Zenobia Die?

The 6th century historian Procopius of Caesarea (c. 500-565 CE) tells us that Queen Zenobia built the city on the Euphrates River (below) that even today is known by her name:

on the road to Roman territory, Zenobia, wife of Odenathus, who was ruler of the Saracens in that district, once founded a small city in earlier times and gave her name to it; for the name she gave it was Zenobia, as was fitting. (Buildings 2.8)

By the side of Zenobia, Procopius continues, flows the Euphrates River, passing to the east of it and coming very close to the circuit-wall on that side; but since high mountains rise beside the river at this point, the stream cannot spread out at all, but by reason of the proximity of these mountains and because it is constrained by its banks, which are hard, it would gather its stream into an extraordinarily narrow space

Actually, mountains rise on both sides of the Euphrates here, making a sort of gorge through which the turquoise waters of the river in pre-dam days used to run with great speed. On the opposite bank -- some 3 km (2 miles) downstream -- she may also have founded Zenobia's sister city, Zalebiye (seen below).



Zenobia and Zalebiya are surely the two towns mentioned by the Persian historian and commentator on the Koran, al-Tabari (839-923 CE), who wrote a History of Prophets and Kings, ten thick volumes in Arabic recounting the history of the world from the Creation up to the events of his own day. When he reaches the time of Zenobia, Tabari tells us that

Al-Zabba [Zenobia] built herself a fortress on the western bank of the Euphrates. She used to spend the winter with her sister, and the spring at Batn al-Najjar from where she would go to Palmyra.

The connection with Palmyra makes it clear that Tabari's Al-Zabba is the same as our Queen Zenobia. Later, Tabari says that she also built a castle beyond the Euphrates with a tunnel under the river to link the two banks.

This seems to be a half-remembered reference to twin towns on opposite banks of the river. We'll come back to Tabari and his story of Zenobia's life in a moment. But, first, let's have a look at the archaeology of her cities.

Zenobia and Zalebiye

The two towns control the river crossing at this narrow point -- undoubtedly the reason these forts were established by the queen, or her husband, or by someone else entirely. Very little is left of Zalebiye on the eastern bank because the cliff on that side of the river has partly collapsed into the Euphrates. What remains shows, however, that Zalebiya was probably built following the same plan as Zenobia (aka Halebiye, named after the peninsula on which it is located). Happily, Zenobia itself is amazingly well preserved, even if the city we now see is much later in date than the 3rd century.

What's the background?

As far as is known, the original city was built when Palmyra moved its troops into the area, certainly well before 266 CE. In Zenobia's time, the forts may have been meant to replace Dura Europos which had been destroyed by the Sassanian Persians in 256 or 257 CE [see the map below]. Their geo-strategic importance is clear: from here, the Palmyrans maintained control of the Middle Euphrates valley and the routes across the desert.

Pity, then, that the emperor Aurelian, in destroying Palmyra, had clobbered the essential buffer state which held back the Persians and inadvertently opened the eastern empire to multiple invasions. Without Palmyran power, the frontier was wide open. Palmyra's commercial empire collapsed, too. And with it went the wealth it had brought to Rome. Just like many plans gone awry -- in saving the Roman empire, he helped destroy it. Well, we all know how that feels, nowadays.

After Palmyra fell in 272 CE, the Romans took over Zenobia-Halebiye as one of their main forward defences against the Persians. The city was rebuilt and fortified twice, first under Diocletian who, more than most emperors, was able to see beyond immediate material gains, and who tried to strengthen his defences in this area. That still wasn't enough to reverse Aurelian's damage.

The long period of time that had elapsed since [Zenobia's foundation of the city] had reduced its circuit-wall to a ruin, since the Romans were quite unwilling to take care of it, and thus it had come to be altogether destitute of inhabitants. So it was possible for the Persians freely, whenever they wished, to get into the middle of Roman territory before the Romans had word of the hostile inroad.

The great period of Zenobia's expansion came under the Emperor Justinian (527 - 565) in a renewed effort to fortify the Euphrates against the continuing Persian threat. Justinian provided it with massive defences around 545 CE -- and this is basically what we see today.

Justinian demolished the old city walls which had been sufficient protection against attacks by nomads but not nearly strong enough to withstand a Persian siege or to guard the rest of Syria from attack:

He also found that portion of the city's circuit-wall which faces the north dangerously weakened by the passage of time; so he first took it down, along with the outworks, clear to the ground, and then rebuilt it.

At the same time, the emperor gave the city of Zenobia all the trappings of a Byzantine-Roman town: there are still traces of a north-south street (the cardo maximus), several baths (complete with frigidarium, tepidarium, and caldarium), two Christian basilicas, a gymnasium, and a forum.

But there can be no doubt that Zenobia was, first and foremost, a military post.

Anti-Persian Ramparts

[The] Emperor Justinian rebuilt Zenobia completely and he filled it quite full of inhabitants, and he stationed there a commander of select troops and a thoroughly adequate garrison, and made it a bulwark of the Roman Empire and a frontier barrier against the Persians; indeed he did not simply restore its previous form, but he actually made it very much stronger than it was before.

The walls of Zenobia resemble a triangle (left) with its base parallel to the Euphrates and its apex on the highest hill where he built the fortress that dominates the town. The encircling walls, made of basalt stones, measure 1400 m (4300') long and are punctuated by 38 rectangular bastions. The walls still stand 10 m (30') high in places.

The site, which covers 15 hectares (30 acres), is mightily impressive: the massive towers and the Praetorium (barracks) are almost intact, just like Justinian's fantastic walls.

The Praetorium (left), about halfway up the hill, has vaulted rooms surviving even today up to three storeys high, and a very large hall. It is built of blocks of local white crystalline gypsum. I don't know if anyone has estimated the number of troops that could be quartered there, but it was undoubtedly a serious commitment, as Procopius said.

The local gypsum is a handsome building stone, but terribly susceptible to erosion -- and it does rain surprisingly often on the Euphrates. The structure is collapsing. As are the two churches and the bits of the inhabited city that were exposed in early excavations.

The French to the Rescue

Since 2006, a Franco-Syrian Mission has been active at Zenobia-Halebiye. The main goals are the conservation of existing buildings and -- what is really exciting -- the exploration of the town before Justinian's 6th century refortification and urbanization. Was it really founded by Queen Zenobia? What did it look like in her lifetime? We may soon learn.

But, keeping to the ultimate point of this post: did Zenobia, in fact, die here -- in her own city on the Euphrates?

A Tale of Two Cities

Tabari may indirectly suggest that she did. He tells an entirely different story about Queen Zenobia from the one given in the Historiae Augustae -- or in any other Greek or Roman source -- and it is just as fabulous. Those who would miss none of his tale of Blood Revenge, Deceit, and Royal Murder in the desert should read my post about Tabari and Zenobia's Arab history in The Zenobia Romance.

But the heart of the matter is this. He tells us three new things:

1. That the queen built herself a fortress on the western bank of the Euphrates -- by which he must mean the town of Zenobia-Halebiye.

2. As part of her plot to take revenge on her father's murderer, the Arab sheikh, Jadhima, she builds a castle beyond the Euphrates with a tunnel under the river to link the two banks. This castle on the eastern bank must surely be a reference to Zalebiye.

3. Her tunnel-building isn't over yet. Presumably in case her plans go awry, she later 'builds a tunnel from the audience hall ... to a fortress inside her city, an escape route (as it were).

Two (legendary) tunnels should raise eyebrows in even the most trusting of readers. According to Tabari, she succeeds in killing Jadhima. His murder, in turn, now demands blood revenge. So, Jadhima's sister's son, Amr ibn Adi, attacks her city and, through a folkloric trick, sneaks his army into the town and massacres her soldiers. Amr pursues Zenobia, who attempts to flee via her tunnel. But the enemy is waiting for her inside. She evades capture by swallowing poison. Her kingdom passed to Amr.

Where was that tunnel?

There is a real possibility that Tabari meant the (legendary) tunnel to be understood as at Zenobia-Halebiye. The 'city' Amr attacked is never named. Everyone has always assumed that it was Palmyra. In truth, Tabari mentions Palmyra only once in his story -- merely saying that Zenobia goes there in the spring. Given that two tunnels are a bit much, there may have been just one in the 'original' story -- the one supposedly dug under the Euphrates.

And that must be where she was thought to have met her end.

What Now?

Outside Zenobia, on the northern and southern sides of the city, are two cemeteries with a total of 120 tombs, including funeral towers and monumental underground tombs. Many boast painted and plaster decorations, and grafitti and inscriptions. Perhaps a thorough survey would turn up just one hoped-for grave, dated ca. 272 CE

.... and who knows?




Footnotes and Illustrations credits:

On the map (left), the big red spot marks Palmyra and the middle-sized Dura Europos.

Further information on Halebiye at Livius.Org (in French) at France Diplomatie , and from the Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier (under the direction of Sylvie BLÉTRY),

Photograph top centre: Campagnes 2007 Mission franco-syrienne : Sylvie BLÉTRY, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier.

2nd centre: ForumFr

3rd centre: Livius.Org

All others from: Campagnes 2007 Mission franco-syrienne : Sylvie BLÉTRY, Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier, or Programme d’études archéologiques et de consolidations sur le site de Zénobia-Halabiyé.

Translation Procopius Buildings 2: via LacusCurtius

Time Gazing at the Pantheon in Rome

What's the time now?

An expert in ancient timekeeping thinks we can tell the time from this sunbeam entering the Pantheon in Rome. The building is, he says, a colossal sundial.

The Pantheon, a Roman temple dedicated to "all the gods" , was finished by the Emperor Hadrian in 125 CE. It consists of a cylindrical chamber topped by a domed roof with a big open hole in the top (the oculus) which lets through a dramatic shaft of sunlight -- bang, as you see on the left.

Paranormal blogs have got quite excited by this news ... but what is it all about?

Robert Hannah, author of Time in Antiquity, argues that the Pantheon is just a vastly larger version of the sundial used by the Greeks and Romans -- a hollowed-out hemisphere with a hole in the top -- to tell the time as well as seasonal information (solstices and equinoxes). The Roman comic poet Plautus (250-185 BCE) complained bitterly that the town was already full of those accursed sun-dials:

The gods confound the man who first found out
How to distinguish hours! Confound him, too,
Who in this place set up a sun-dial,
To cut and hack my days so wretchedly
Into small portions.

Like those unutterably smaller dials, the Pantheon's dome forms a perfect hemisphere inside. Hannah reckons that this is no coincidence but, he says, "a deliberate design feature."


You enter through gigantic bronze doors – the originals. There were once veneers of precious marbles within, pure gold tiles on the roof, and the bronze doors, weighing twenty tons each, were themselves once covered with plates of beaten gold. Inside the temple is one immense circular room. The interior is a cylinder above which rises the hemispherical dome, constructed of stepped rings of solid concrete with less and less density as lighter aggregate (pumice) is used as it rises. The only natural light enters through the oculus at the centre of the dome and through the bronze doors to the portico.

As the sun moves, striking patterns of light illuminate the walls and floors of porphyry, granite and yellow marbles.

Its roof represented the dome of the sky -- where Romans believed the gods resided. Cassius Dio (who saw it in its glory days) says as much:

Also [Hadrian] completed the building called the Pantheon. It has this name, perhaps because it received among the images which decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus; but my own opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens.(53.27)

At equinox, the sun is on the celestial equator -- where Earth's equator would lie if projected into space -- which was seen as the most stable part of the sky, a perfect eternal home for the gods.

M AGRIPPA L F COS TERTIUM FECIT

The inscription on the architrave reads “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, third time consul, made this temple.” Originally constructed in 27 B.C. by Agrippa, the Pantheon was rebuilt by the Emperor Hadrian in 118-125 CE to reflect the terrestrial and cosmic order.

The interior space was designed around a perfect sphere 43.3m (142 feet), in diameter, the largest dome ever constructed in masonry. Its mathematical perfection is underscored by its symmetry: the width and the height of the dome are equal. A whole sphere can be inscribed in the interior volume, with the diameter at the floor of the cylinder of 43.3 m (143 feet) equalling the interior height.

The sphere (or orb) was a symbol of the world and universe and consequently doubled up as a symbol of the Emperor's power over the world. It's not far-fetched to see the Pantheon as also a political message marking the symbolic connections between the cosmos and the empire, and between the sun and the emperor.

There is a progressive narrowing of the five coffered rows of the cupola’s interior, so that the eye is drawn to the centre. And up, up, up to the oculus. The 9 m. (30' ) hole in the roof allows in light (and rain!). When the sun is shining, the shaft of light travels across the interior of the building. It takes little imagination to conclude that a cosmic effect was being sought rather like being in a large scale observatory where the heavens are turned outside-in.

In her Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar speaks of

"this open and secret temple, conceived as a sundial. The hours were to circle the center of its carefully polished pavement where the disk of the day was supposed to rest like a golden buckler; there the rain would make a limpid pool from which prayer could transpire like smoke toward the void where we place the gods.”

All other Roman temples before and since cope perfectly well without the oculus solution. Even Hadrian himself designed the enormous temple to Venus and Rome without such a device. Hannah thinks that by marking the equinoxes, the Pantheon was designed to elevate emperors who worshipped there into the realm of the gods.

How It Could Have Worked

During the six months of summer the noon sun falls on the walls and floor of the temple, and in winter (when the sun is lower in the sky) it falls onto the inside of the roof itself. But at the exact moment of the two equinoxes, in March and September, the sun falls at the junction between the roof and the walls, directly above the northern doorway, and shines through a grill there onto the porch floor beyond.

A grille above the door allows a sliver of light through to the front courtyard -- the only moment in the year that it sees sunlight if its main doors are closed. So, it seems certain that the building served some sort of important function on the equinoxes. Extinguish the torches ... and it's easy to imagine that, twice a year, the emperor would get to stand in that ray of light.

The Pantheon probably doesn't work as a sun-dial (the necessary markings are not there; or, at least, have not survived) but imagine the impact of the emperor's entrance. And, then, his prayers rising through the open oculus to the heavens, a union of earth and sky, from the god on earth to all the gods above.

Illustrations

Top: From Great Buildings.com

Upper left: From The Monolithic Dome

Middle left: From Roman Pantheon

Below: No place like dome: the Emperor Hadrian's connection with the Pantheon at TimesOnLine

And with thanks to Dea Adria Mallin at The Cultured Traveller: the Oculus, and to MariaMilani, Antiquities of Rome: Purpose of the Roman Pantheon

Laser Scanning the Hung-e Azhdar Rock Relief

Why laser scan a rock ?


This extraordinary relief is carved on a huge limestone boulder at the cliff edge of a remote, not to say 'hidden' valley in the rugged mountains of northeastern Khuzistan [at the southwestern edge of the Iranian plateau, sharing a border with southern Iraq (= the big red blob on the map, below right)]. In ancient times, this was the heartland of Elymais, sometimes a small empire, more often a vassal to more powerful states.

At the time this relief was carved, Elymais was under Parthian rule.

Or was it?

Well, yes and no. As so often, scholars differ.

Look closely at the relief. You'll see that it is divided into two very different compositions -- and carved in entirely different styles. So, the question is: does this relief record a single historical event? Or are two different happenings accidentally fused together by craftsmen too lazy to smooth away an earlier unfinished relief?

What and When?

In the absence of inscriptions, the relief can only be studied through the images themselves. We'll start with the easier bit.

There's no doubt that the four standing figures on the right -- all pictured frontally in the Parthian manner -- belong to the Parthian period and were sculpted some time between the 1st and 3rd century AD. They wear the long tunics and baggy trousers of local Elymaid bigwigs. The tallest of the standing figures is clearly the main subject of the relief. He is the largest figure, topping the horseman on the left by almost a head. His prominent weapons and the gesture of the left hand on the sword hilt shows that he is a warrior prince, surely an independent ruler. And I think he must be one of the last Elymaid kings, for the mass of rounded, puffy curls on either side of his head also appears on Elymaid coinage at this time (left), before the kingdom is finally and forever vanquished. That would date him to the end of the 2nd or 3rd century AD

The King of Elymais (for so we must think of him) and his retinue seem to greet the man on the horse -- who is, in turn, followed by a single attendant. Both horseman and attendant are in profile view. These are the only figures among all of the Parthian rock reliefs pictured in profile.

Who is this rider? He wears a diadem tied at the nape of the neck with long fluttering ends, a symbol of kingship worn by Elymaid, Parthian, and Seleucid rulers. So we know he's a king -- but where is his homeland? The profile head with short hair and a naturalistic, bearded face suggest a Hellenistic Greek portrait so strongly that the entire relief has been dated in the 2nd century BC by comparison with coin portraits of Mithradates I (171-138 BC). Mithradates was the first 'Great King' of Parthia, who conquered Elymais in about 140 BC -- temporarily only, as it reappeared a few decades later as an independent kingdom (lasting on and off until its conquest by the first Sassanian king, Ardashir).

In close-up, this is how they compare.

I'm not convinced by the resemblance (although it's possible, of course, that after 300 years his exact image was lost). For example, the sculptor has carefully depicted a heavy necklace (a torc) around the rider's neck, a detail that never appears on Mithradates' coins but sometimes on coins of his successors. Perhaps the sculptor substituted the image of a later Parthian ruler for that of the 'Great King'. But what brings him to Elymais? The bird with a wreath and a palm branch flying towards the horseman (visible on the close-up, below left) is a clue. This is a Roman victory symbol (based on the Roman eagle) which becomes common on Parthian coins from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The bird could apply to either Mithradates I or II, both of whom were victorious in Elymais.

But, wait a moment. A second bird is flying toward the Elymaid king -- and he's pictured a head taller than his presumed conqueror. I suppose we could imagine that the horseman is not an historical character but meant to be more than human -- a deified or heroized early king. Whether human or super-human, he's badly out of proportion: his head is much too large. That may suggest that the head was copied from another source and clumsily attached to a ready-made body.*

And, then, there's his horse.

The prancing horse with arched neck and raised foreleg is a Greek image which spread throughout the Near East during the Seleucid period. This stallion (quite clearly male) has the short, clipped mane and high flowing tail of Greek horses. His bridle ornaments and fluttering ribbons, too, are very un-Parthian.

If the rider is heroized, his mount might be too. Could he be copied from Bucephalos, the famous horse of Alexander the Great? He does look a bit like a marble statue; doesn't he? In which case, we are certainly in the realm of myth or legend.

Anyway, why would an Elymaid ruler in the later Parthian period order a relief which shows him greeting or venerating a mounted figures also embellished with borrowed Roman victory motifs?

With the decline of Parthian power, Elymais was again independent and relatively powerful. The tall standing figure could be a nameless, late Elymaid king paying homage to his real or imagined ancestor in order to stress the legitimacy of the local dynasty's rule. That assumes, of course, that he had at hand suitably ancient images which -- with a bit of cut and paste -- served as a model. And that he was sophisticated enough to adorn this long-ago king with the correct trappings of his own era.

I don't think so.

Whichever way you look at it, the arguments are tortuous.


Enter lasers.

The whole story depends, of course, on the left and right sides of the relief being contemporary. Naturally, there are two opposing views about that. The carving in the two halves of the scene looks different. Some argue that the horseman is sculpted in higher relief than the standing men. This may only be an illusion based on a swelling in the rock surface which makes the horse seem in higher relief than the tallest standing figure. So, if the entire relief was indeed executed at one time, the stylistic differences have no chronological significance.

Lasers should settle the question, or so we hope. A study now underway will allow a detailed examination of the sculpted surface and precise measurement of the carving’s depth at different points of the scene, and should shed light on the carving techniques of all the figures.

The Iranian-Italian Joint Expedition in Khuzistan: 1st Campaign (March 4 - 12, 2008)

The sculpted surface of the boulder (above, left) was divided into 34 squared sectors. About 15,000 markers were placed on the surface to allow the scanner to recognize its position in a 3D model. Note that the scanner itself never touches the surface of the rock, so the process is non-destructive.

Vertices have been located on the ground by a GPS receiver and by traditional topographic method, while 70 ground control points, placed on the sculpted surface (below) are located to define a network. This network has 4 main vertices, while the ground control points orientate the frames acquired by the laser scanner and the digital photogrammetric camera.

The acquired frames were merged to create a 3D digital model of the rock relief consisting in 7.692.104 points, with an accuracy of 0.2 mm approximately [ I like that approximately!].

A specific software has been created to analyse these data. This software manages all the elaborated files: traces of tools on the sculpted surface, differences in the depth of the carving, and the natural conformation of the rock will be examined in order to verify whether there are also differences in the carving technique and evidence of re-sculpting in the two halves of the relief.

The first results (reported on 5 December 2008) look like this:

It's the best image ever. The contradictions in iconography and style are perfectly clear. Isn't science grand!

-- Do we have our answer?

-- No, not yet.

Tune in for the results of the second season -- coming next month.

* This idea does not hold water (in my opinion) since the attendant on foot behind the mounted figure -- although possibly unfinished -- also has an overly large head. It seems more a stylistic trait than a copying error.

References: I have made much use of T.W. Kawami, Monumental Art of the Parthian Period in Iran, Leiden, 1987.

Entropa Rules OK

Entropy + Europa = Entropa

While the eyes of the whole world were fixed on Washington D.C., I was also following the Entropa brouhaha in the capital of Europe. In case the drums and trumpets of the American inauguration drowned out the noise of this second installation, let me explain.

Entropa (left) is now on display at the normally dull and grey European Council building in the centre of Brussels. It's an artwork that lampoons all 27 EU national stereotypes, which has caused some countries to throw a fit. Others are unusually quiet.

Entropa portrays Bulgaria as a Turkish squat-down toilet, France is out on strike, Lithuania has three statues urinating on Russia, and my beloved Netherlands sinks beneath the waves (below, right) with only the towers of minarets poking through -- to the tune of wailing muezzins. Oh, and by the way, the United Kingdom is that empty space at the top left-hand of the work: in short, absent entirely -- exactly as Eurosceptics have always wished.

This is undoubtedly the first exhibition in the history of EU Council art displays to cause a diplomatic incident, the usual intent being to get by unnoticed and avoid criticism at all costs. In truth, so successful have they been before the current Czech presidency that I don't know anyone who has even heard of such an art event in Brussels. Until now!

Entropy is a measure of the disorder of a system

The Czech Republic, which holds the rotating EU presidency for the first six months of 2009, thought it had commissioned a joint work from 27 European artists -- one from each EU country, a cute (if fuzzy) idea.

But it turned out to have been entirely completed by the notorious Czech artist David Černý and two of his mates. Mr Černý, 41, first gained fame in 1991 by painting a memorial to a Soviet tank in Prague a shocking pink (the then Minister for National Defence offered hasty official apologies to the Soviet Embassy), while his spoof sculpture of Saddam Hussein preserved in formaldehyde has been banned in two countries.

Art Attack

Entropa is subtitled Stereotypes are barriers to be demolished, in accord with the Czech EU Presidency motto of "Europe without barriers". The Czechs boasted that the artwork, based on an outline of each country, would speak where words fail.

Er, I wonder what that German autobahn (right) is saying....

According to the artist's proposal, alongside the Italian entry (the map of Italy with nine footballers) is the legend "It appears to be an autoerotic system of sensational spectacle with no climax in sight." And next to the alleged British entry, an Airfix kit of Europe (where there is now a blank space): "this improvement of exactness means that its individual selective sieve can cover the so-called objective sieve."

If that gobbledegook was not enough to warn the Czechs, they have only themselves to blame.





The Czech Presidency is keeping its collective head down. The Deputy Prime Minister, however, bravely stated that "in today's Europe there is no place for censorship. I am confident in Europe's open mind and capacity to appreciate such a project."

His confidence was soon tested.

International Incidents

The Polish piece recreates the flag-raising at Iwo Jima, with the U.S. Marines and Stars and Stripes replaced by Catholic monks erecting the rainbow flag of the Gay Rights movement. Or are they a gaggle of gay priests? Hard to tell. Still, the public in Poland appears to be largely in favour, with 64% considering it "spot on" and only 13% thinking it "an insult to Polish people", according to an on-line poll.

The Romanians, seeing their country turned into a Dracula Disneyland, hauled in the Czech ambassador to complain (I want to know if they bit his neck).

Slovakia, the truncated half of once Czechoslovakia, is portrayed by what looks like a strangled sausage. Rubbing salt into the sausage, it is tied up in the Hungarian tricolour -- a reference to a little ethnic spat between the two EU lands. Slovakians officially claim that it resembles a wrapped-up corpse. The Foreign minister lodged a formal protest, calling it an offence to the Slovak nation.

But most peeved (if that's the word I want) is Bulgaria. The country's ambassador wrote undiplomatic letters of complaint to the Czech EU presidency and the EU foreign policy chief demanding that the sculpture be taken down before the official launching. The first secretary for the Bulgarian office to the EU, said:

“I cannot accept to see a toilet on the map of my country. This is not the face of Bulgaria.”

Individuals outside the government as well expressed outrage about the image:

It is one thing portraying, say, France as a country on strike, but quite another to show my homeland as a toilet. That is downright wrong.

Point taken. Though the French might not agree.

An EU Compromise

EU officials expressed concern. One said: 'This is very provocative for an official building and does not seem to have been properly discussed in the appropriate forum."

The Czechs were bloody but unbowed:

What we approved was a blank map; we decided not to censor anything. When we saw the finished work, we thought it might be too much. That remains to be seen. At any rate, it is an expression of freedom, we decided not to censor it.

Until they did.

Yesterday, as the hands of the clock moved towards midnight, Brussels bureaucrats came up with one of their famous half-way measures: they decided to leave the piece in place but decorously covered it with a black cloth. A map of Bulgaria was pinned to it in case you didn't know what was hidden from view.

What was that famous axiom about Entropy?

The algebraic sum of all the transformations occurring in a cyclical process can only be positive, or, as an extreme case, equal to nothing.

The Ara Pacis in Colour!

From the aptly named Roman blog, eternallycool, this stunning news:

Last week, the Comune di Roma treated the eternal city to a full-colour illumination of the front of the Ara Pacis or Altar of Peace.


As part of an actor-led tour that dramatically recounted the stories of Romulus and Aeneas in order to explain their presence on the front of the Ara Pacis, lights were used to superimpose dazzling colours onto white marble facade of the altar. The goal was to give visitors an idea of the monument’s appearance at the time of its dedication in 9 BC.


Though the altar is all-white now, scholars agree that such monuments — as well as sculptures — were once brightly coloured. Thus, vivid blues, greens, yellows, and reds characterized the illumination.

Vatican Museums Director, Antonio Paolucci, who co-organized the project, said that the projected colours were chosen based on traces of paint recovered from the monument in the 1930's, such as red ochre and gold leaf.

The Ara Pacis was built in celebration of the end of the civil wars and the advent of peace under the reign of Rome’s first emperor, Augustus.

Though the colour projections were a temporary holiday event, organizers say they hope to make the demonstration a permanent part of Ara Pacis Museum in December 2009.

Reproduced under eternallycool's generous Creative Commons License

QUEENS HAVE MAGIC

Three Minor Mysteries of a New Tomb (Updated)

This is all that is left of the body of Queen Sesheshet -- a skull, legs, pelvis, and scattered bones, once carefully wrapped in linen. Sesheshet was the mother of Teti, first pharaoh of the 6th Dynasty (r. 2323 - 2291 BC).

Her new pyramid was found at Saqqara last November. Although now topless, it had once been as high as a five-storey building.

As Zahi Hawass (Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities) whooped:

You can discover a tomb or a statue, but to discover a pyramid, it makes you happy. And a pyramid of a queen -- queens have magic.

Still, after digging down through 7 metres (23') of sand to reach the pyramid, archaeologists must have been miffed when they spotted a gaping vertical shaft already dug through its upper structure -- evidence that the pyramid had been robbed in antiquity.

Yesterday, the archaeologists, too, entered the tomb.

Inside a spacious burial chamber (22-m [72'] long and 4-m wide), they discovered the queen's granite sarcophagus, some six tons in weight. A team of workers spent five hours lifting its heavy lid. Sadly, her disarray and paltry adornments showed that the robbers had been there first. Only some gold finger wrappings had been left behind. It had been thoroughly ransacked.

Mystery # 1

Who put the lid back on the sarcophagus, and why?

Mystery # 2

Was Sesheshet an Uppity Queen, or not?

To be honest, almost nothing is known about her. Her husband's name -- and, thus, the father of the new king, is unknown. Her estates under the title King's Mother are mentioned in the tomb of the early sixth dynasty vizier Mehu. That title points to her being a royal mother but hardly suggests (as reported on some sites) that she ever ruled as pharaoh herself.

Rather, she was said to be instrumental in enabling her son to gain the throne and reconciling two warring factions of the royal family. Teti's chief wife, Queen Iput, was probably a daughter of the last king of the 5th Dynasty, Unas -- and one can easily imagine that Sesheshet had a hand in arranging the marriage. Marriage to the previous king's daughter legitimized Teti's rule but that doesn't mean that his accession was peaceful. A less than easy transition is suggested by his Horus name, Seheteptawy, which means, "He who pacifies the Two Lands".

The rest of the story is just as murky (to say the least).

Mystery # 3

Was Sesheshet the "Queen Who Had No Hair?"

A Queen Mother named Shesh is mentioned in the Ebers medical Papyrus, the most important Egyptian pharmaceutical record to have survived (ca. 1550 BC, although its content is undoubtedly much older). It tells us how to make the very same hair-restorer that Queen Shesh had used herself!

Another remedy to make the hair grow , prepared for Shesh, the mother of his Majesty, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Teti the justified.

The remedy was made from the claw of a dog, the hoof of a donkey, and some boiled dates.

This was a fairly unpretentious hair-restorer for a great queen but her celebrity endorsement undoubtedly popularised it. If that didn't work, however, another sure-fire remedy for baldness advised the sufferer first to recite this invocation to the sun god:

O Shining one, thou who hovers above!
O Disk of the Sun!
O Protector of the Divine Neb-Apt

and then swallow a mixture of burned prickles of a hedgehog immersed in oil, fingernail scrappings, and a potporri of honey, alabaster, and red ochre.

Hair still falling out? Stir up and rub on the scalp “the fat of a horse, a hippopotamus, a crocodile, a cat, a snake and an ibex. Then mix in the tooth of a donkey crushed in honey.” Just collecting the ingredients would be a fairly hair-raising business, which might have been the general idea.

Did any of this help Queen Sesheshet? We don't know, but I suggest that the archaeologists now going through her tomb with a fine-tooth comb keep an eye out for plaits and fringes of false hair. A hair-piece might have supplied the deficiency rather better than brew of dogs' claws and donkey's hoof had done.

Not really uppity -- but she might have set the fashion for Egyptian wigs.

Update: 20 January 2009

Mystery #1 is solved! Elementary, my dear Shesh: the early reports of the sarcophagus having been opened by the tomb robbers turns out not to be the case:

The thieves entered through a tunnel from the top, because they couldn't get through the main entrance, said Zahi Hawass, secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities

Fortunately, Seshseshet's mummy was inside a granite sarcophagus with a six-ton lid,* so the thieves left the body and its decorations of gold jewelry untouched.

They didn't open the sarcophagus; they were using their hands, said Hawass, whose team used heavy machinery to remove the lid.

Here's a close-up of Seshseshet's mummy. It certainly doesn't look 'untouched' -- but I'm more prepared to believe that something horrible happened to her during embalming than that the thieves lifted the lid with their hands ... and then carefully replaced it.

* Surely it's the sarcophagus that weighs 6 tons, not the lid by itself!

My thanks to Talking Pyramids for signalling the update.

Beyond the Horizon

A New Year's modern surprise at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden (Updated)

... a triumphant display of works inspired by the Museum's own collection

What a great start to the New Year!

The Dutch artist Bierenbroodspot opened her new exhibition of paintings and sculpture, drawings and giant prints 4 x 5 metres (12' x 15') -- hanging like sunlit banners on the museum walls -- which I read as prose poems or like pages from a time-travel diary.

In this unique exhibition, we see how a modern artist re-interprets the past by viewing her work almost side-by-side with the original pieces that inspired her.

An offering which the pharaoh gives Sekhmet, the Great, Lady of Heaven that she may grant power in heaven, strength on earth and a good name for her beloved, the Overseer of Craftsmen and Chief of Goldsmiths, Gerti Bierenbroodspot.

For countless generations, artists have freely incorporated elements from distant cultures to create new visual forms. Archaeologists and art historians are always studying (and being stymied by) such 'influences' and artistic interdependence. Bierenbroodspot takes this ‘re-mix’ one step further: she uses a modern Museum’s archaeological treasures as the starting point for her art, creating from the ancient objects a highly personal vision of a modernity grand in theme as well as in manner. To create this ground-breaking show, Bierenbroodspot received the keys of the Museum, free to wander at will -- enter any vault, open any display, sit in the hidden hall of the mummies, rummage through the racks in the basements -- sketching whichever items struck her artist’s eye.

Follow her trajectory through the Museum. Click on the video (Warning: downloading is slow, so I suggest that you read on until it starts. Impatient readers may click via her website instead. The music is from cellist Ernst Reijseger's Requiem for a Dying Planet).




In the Ideal Museum

Bierenbroodspot went on a barefooted journey of discovery through the Museum (without footwear, she feels freer, her mind more open to improvisation). The barefoot artist -- smudged with paint, and laden with papyrus, rice paper, quills, brushes, inks and powders -- followed magic signs and golden lines through the galleries to reach a mythical abode, Beyond the Horizon.

The Muses do not wait; they decide over the Holy Fire, the Divine Inspiration, when and where they want to share it with the artist...

But it is not history that interests her: as she paints them, objects become re-newed, the transmutation of art giving them again the power of dreams.

When Bierenbroodspot saw the bronze horse bits from Luristan or inscribed clay tablets from Sumer, she stopped and had them out of their cases and in her hands. Re-used in her art, these things that are silent and past get a new vision, as in a magic theatre or divine rite. A polished bronze Corinthian-Greek hoplite helmet or the ornate gilded silver face-mask of a Roman knight become eerily like, in feel, twelve bronze helmets from the armoury of Atlantis that Bierenbroodspot cast for her record-breaking show, Atlantis Rising:

round and domed helmets encrusted with fiery green or turquoise patina, with pins, tubes and metal strips attached to vanished crests, worn by warriors in a dream-like world. These are the faces of an invisible army, with gabled brows and eye-holes sharply drawn out, and sun disks glittering with gold enamel. Helmets that have power, and that shock.

The phalanx of helmets stands in the hall of the Isis (Taffeh) temple. Where once stood imperial statues, there are two massive bronze heads, Bierenbroodspot’s Fallen Gods, guardians of a lost civilization; and, nearby, the Last King of Atlantis, lordly and full of pride, the fragment of a colossal statue cast in the here-and-now.

Finally, Bierenbroodspot descended into the mummy hall, a place closed to the public. Museums have an ethical dispute with mummies: are they fit objects for display or, as human remains, are they entitled to eternal rest? Bierenbroodspot, as an artist, treats them with sacred dignity.

Over this image that is sketched on a clean, unused sheet of papyrus with powder of emerald green glaze mixed with myrrh and water. Say, "I am an initiate, void of sins. There is nothing I do not know about Truth."

She thinks of the mural scene of the deathbed of Queen Nefertari, carved like a lion’s body, with the goddesses Isis and Nephtys to guard her mummy, as two hovering hawks. Hieroglyphs with birds and animals flutter around her protective tent, magic spells to help the dead as they make the dangerous journey Beyond the Horizon.

She painted the head of a mummy, blackened by age, now spending its afterlife as an unexpected artist’s model. She (a female head, according to Bierenbroodspot) grimaces at the painter, her upper lip drawn back to bare her teeth. "It’s a smile," says Bierenbroodspot. "I am bringing her back to life. That’s why the Pharaohs let me paint them."

Beyond the Horizon is antiquity re-emerging, and a limitless unique moment in space.　



** Visit Bierenbroodspot's Beyond the Horizon at the National Museum of Antiquities (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden) until 22 February 2009. A catalogue is available. Click for a free e-card. If you can't get to Leiden in time, visit her website and click on 'Beyond the Horizon' in the menu.

Update: 14 January 2009

Due to the unprecedented number of visitors, the Museum announced yesterday that Beyond the Horizon, originally slated to run until 22 February, has been extended through 3 May 2009. So, anyone planning a trip to the tulip fields in the spring, can scoot over to nearby Leiden as well. Don't miss it!

An Uppity Stone-Age Venus (III)

Click for Part I and Part II

Symbols of Fertility, procreation and life

Or not?

Swelling bellies, ample curves, and the milk-filled breasts of a pregnant woman -- what could be more natural, and evocative?

Reproducer Venus, fat and fertile.

A Palaeolithic man needed a woman who would bear him lots of children. Not a pretty face but a “faceless fertile being" with a strongly emphasized vulva to produce a continuing supply of young humans. And, if she got too fat in the process, well, there's just more of her to impregnate. So men carved desirable images of obese, passive, child-bearing nurturers -- another weapon in the armoury of Palaeolithic magic. Perhaps these ladies were divine in some sense, but, if so, that was restricted to a place in cults of fertility acted out by men and for men. This was the early 20th century prehistorians' view -- and there may well be a certain amount of truth in it.

But not enough to carry the weight of the theory. For it should have been obvious (even at the time) that this could not have been the whole story. Some Venuses didn't fit the model.


Someone may have unkindly pointed out, too, that there are no carved children. If Palaeolithic Tarzans were obsessed with the need for abundant offspring, they (literally) didn't show it.

So fertility was combined with another idea.

From Palaeolithic Reproducer to Mother Goddess

Johann Bachofen had already proposed the existence of the Neolithic cult of the female deity and prehistoric matriarchy in Mutterrecht und Urreligion (Mother Right and the Origins of Religion) in 1861. He believed that women and Mother-centred religion had dominated in the epochs before recorded history.

In this once-upon-a-time-world, women were

the repository of all culture, of all benevolence, of all devotion, of all concern for the living and grief for the dead.

In short, the first gods were female and women ruled the earth. In this era, women mated promiscuously and "every woman's womb was the mortal image of the Earth Mother". Everyone was sister, brother, uncle, or aunt to everybody else, a world of unimaginable equality or, as Bachofen described it, "the undifferentiated unity of the mass." It sounds as if he pictured Mutterrecht society as a kind of human beehive. A beehive throbbing with inchoate forms of She-worship:

Whirling round and round in dance until "the beasts and all the mountain seemed wild with divinity."

Of course, such happy, chaotic times couldn't last. Too bodily-busy, sticky (if not steamy), and oblivious to the individual, the Mother was destined to be replaced by paternal rule. The stars transited from the warm lucent bubble of livingness to the celestial, Olympian right of the father.* Out went the She-god, in came the He-god -- and with him, hierarchical male-dominated religions, and male control of females. This "world historical defeat of the female sex", as Friedrich Engels phrased it, was not only inevitable ... but for women's own good: obscene disorder was suppressed and women came under the protection of individual men.

Whoopee.

The Neolithic Goddess in the Rear-view Mirror

Although the evidence for an ancient Mother Goddess religion is much stronger in Neolithic archaeology (popularly connected with the writings of the Marija Gimbutas), theories that include the Palaeolithic figurines as ritualistic representations of an even older Mother Goddess are quite common.

Gertrude Rachel Levy's study of Stone Age religion, The Gate of Horn (1948) was strong on the continuity of female religious traditions from Upper Palaeolithic people who "bequeathed to all humanity a foundation of ideas upon which the mind could raise its structures": the cave as the female womb; the mother as a pregnant earth; the magical fertile female as the mother of all animals. Levy assumed that the Venus figurines were

the first step in the establishment of a relationship between the human group and the One [the goddess].

Well, maybe. She had an interesting idea, though, about why the early Venuses usually lacked extremities: "the general unimportance among the statues of face, hands, and feet may have originated in fears of magic dangers” -- as seen, for example, in modern voodoo dolls. Having made a potential connection between an anthropomorphic figure of a specific person and the resulting power over that individual, Levy left the idea hanging and took refuge in vague references to their role in a "cult of human fertility".

What's a Fertility Cult Anyway?

Obviously, many Venuses have pronounced sexual characteristics but all that really tells us is that there was an undoubted (and unsurprising) interest in sexuality.

It says nothing about cult.

The word 'cult' implies beliefs and rituals, or at least performances. So any ' fertility cult' requires some kind of ritualistic performance that aimed to promote animal, vegetable or human procreation. Needless to say, we rarely find archaeological evidence demonstrating such performances in any prehistoric period, let alone in the Upper Palaeolithic.

What about 'fertility' by itself, then?

It's an inconvenient fact that those hunter-gatherer societies which survived into the early 20th centuries did not seem especially concerned with fertility. Not a perfect analogy (to be sure) but the best we have. The importance of fertility only becomes apparent during the transition into communities based on agricultural and pastoral production. Still, archaeologists can really only hope to unveil the meaning of the Venuses by analogy of some sort -- which means borrowing ideas from various other disciplines (psychology, phenomenology of religions, anthropology, or -- to be very up-to-date -- neuroscience) .

Zenobia will do her re-reading of the past through the lens of feminism.

You Tarzan, Me Jane

Feminist scholars of the 1960's began to question the research methods and male chauvinism apparent in earlier studies of the female figurines. Citing Bachofen’s Mutterrecht theory (despite its dire biases), they revived his primeval matriarchies and the belief that ‘mother-right’ was important in early religion:

[The] female body was a symbol of cosmological significance ....

If the female body was one of the most widespread and elaborate images of the Old Stone Age, and a symbol for the various forces of nature and the various aspects of culture, would it really be so far from the mark to believe that the figurines actually embody aspects of the Paleolithic worship of a goddess?

In their interpretations, feminist writers imagined the first religion as the deification of the female. The SHE-body is now a multivalent, multi-purpose symbol which can be utilized both for the understanding of and worship of a goddess-figure.

This is the viewpoint of the goddess-books published from the 1970's to the early 1990's, many of which went whizzing off into quasi-mystical realms

the mystery of the female body is the mystery of birth, which is also the mystery of the unmanifest becoming the manifest in the whole of nature

Archaeology definitely takes a back seat. And prehistoric women are transformed into “some kind of super-beings revered by submissive males for their femaleness and their ability to produce children”.

And all because the stupid men didn't know about the birds and the bees:

It is plausible, though not certain, that the first humans were unaware of the exact role of the male in procreation, not having established a causal relationship between coitus and parturition. Thus, their attitude toward the female, apparently weaker than the male, but mysteriously able to produce life, was ambiguous: a profound respect, if not veneration, and, at the same time, a kind of terror in the face of incomprehensible, even magic or divine, powers. The statuettes called ‘Venus callipyges,’ ["of the beautiful bum"] of the well-known Lespugue type, are a decisive argument in favor of this thesis, because, in these representations, a divine maternal power is undeniable [and it is] probable that primitive humanity regarded divinity, whatever that was, as feminine in nature.

The only problem with this overheated argument is that the largest group of Venuses represent non-pregnant adult females. Instead of simply being obese or pregnant, many figurines appear to be young, pre-pubescent girls who have very small or no breasts and diminutive fatty deposits -- which surely means that the Venus figurines must represent different aspects of womanhood, not just motherhood.

So, serious studies nowadays reject fertility, ritual, feminine power or prestige, and cast about for other, lesser meanings to explain the variety of Venus figurines. They could be good-luck amulets, for example, or initiation figures, obstetrician teaching tools, puppets, priestesses, witches, or banshees to scare away strangers. A Venus-in-hand might help a woman in childbirth, or calm a fretful man like a string of primordial worry-beads. Finally, Venuses might mean nothing at all, being examples only of Palaeolithic experimentation with the technique of carving.

Girls Will Be Girls

The 1966 "Man the Hunter" conference changed the way anthropologists thought about hunter-gatherer societies. New research showed that such societies were sexually egalitarian, and thus the idea that men and women were once equal finally took root. Studies began to demonstrate women's contributions to subsistence. The he-manly mammoth hunter, beloved of 19th century prehistorians, turned out to be a dud as the main food provider -- though there is an undoubted cultural value in sharing meat and the prestige it bestows upon men with strong hunting skills. Analysis showed that women produced an average of 2/3rds of the calories for the group, a result of their highly-skilled gathering forays. During those forays, incidentally, women also often caught small game, thus producing protein-munchies as well as veg and nuts.

Possibly, it was the women's contributions -- and not the big-game of male hunters -- that assured the survival of the species.

While !Kung people of the Kalahari Desert, Australian desert Aborigines and polar Eskimos, of course, are not carbon copies of our Palaeolithic ancestors, they do share important features in social behaviour and values. Since they have never been in contact with each other, it's very likely that the shared features reflect a common social and environmental situation ... and thus it's reasonable to assume that European Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers had similar social organisation, values, and ways of thinking.

I suggest that one should make use of what we know about contemporary hunter-gatherers in order to imagine the motivations of prehistoric artists:

A centrality of women, or a special relevance of them or even a state of gender equality, has very probably been an important adaptive factor in the emergence of Homo sapiens out of all the different evolutionary experiments attempted by non-human Hominids. In simple terms, human evolution may well have acted on the gender that most invested in reproduction, nurturing and caring, a concept often [proposed] by female evolution scientists, but stubbornly ignored by their male colleagues and museum directors, who continue to display the evolution of Man the Hunter, with small women squatting in the background.**

The Venus figurines may well reflect women's centrality (not political power) in the human adventure. The figurines range from realistic to symbolic representations of women but, regardless of the degree of realism, all or some female attributes are emphasised: breasts, vulva, and the natural female pattern of fat distribution on legs, hips and buttocks. These are clearly the attributes the carvers wished to emphasize.

If we accept that prehistoric artists represented forms that were important for them, carving a Venus was a way of expressing emotions and sharing them with others, just as contemporary artists, singers and dancers do. This is not art for art’s sake or aesthetics, it is communication.**

Will we ever know what they were saying?

No, I don't think so.

As my dissertation supervisor used to say, "That, Judith, is not an archaeological question."



* Citations in this section from Marianna Torgovnick, Primitive Passions: Men, Women, and the Quest for Ecstacy (1997) 37-39.

** Piero P. Giorgi, "A new interpretation of female symbols and figures produced in prehistoric Europe: the hypothesis of the centrality of women", in Valcamonica Symposium 2007.

Other Main Sources

On fertility cults, Emmanuel Anati, "The Question of Fertility Cults", in (A. Bonanno, ed.) Archaeology and Fertility Cult in the Ancient Mediterranean, 1985, 2-16. On Venuses, Alexander Marshack "The Female Image: a 'Time-factored' Symbol, in Proc. Prehistoric Society 57 (1991) 17-31; Patricia Rice, "Prehistoric Venuses: Symbols of Motherhood or Womanhood?" Jrl. Anthropological Research 37 (1981) 402-14; once again, I have made much use of K.D. Jennett's paper Female Figurines of the Upper Paleolithic (2008).

Illustrations

Above centre: 3 views of the ceramic Vestonicka Venus, credit Petr Novák, Wikipedia

Middle centre: 3 mammoth-ivory Venuses from Avdeevo, Collection of the Museum of Anthropology, University of Moscow. Photo L Iakovleva ("Les mammouths", Dossiers Archéologie - n° 291 - Mars 2004).

Above left: Ostrava-Petrkovice Venus (Czech Rep.), carved in haematite (sic). Photo: T. Powell, Prehistoric Art.

Above right: Savignano Venus (Italy), in steatite

Lower left: Mammoth-ivory 'The Armless' Venus from the caves of Balzi Rossi (Liguria, Italy)

Bottom left: Mammoth-ivory Venus of Lespugne.

Bottom right: Mammoth-ivory Venus from Yeliseevichi (Russia). Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2006

Footnote left: for a sense of scale (cm.), two mammoth-ivory Venuses from the Grotto of the Venuses, Parabita (Sarento, Italy).