Maia Atlantis: Ancient World Blogs

Our upcoming read is Robert Harris' Imperium, A Novel of Ancient Rome. (linked to paperback edition) We will be blogging Imperium/Cicero, but meanwhile, here are some reviews: N.S. Gill's The New York Times Mary Beard in New York Review of...

Yet more Mimnermus, this time 12 (West), The toils of the sun.

2,500-year-old artifact returned to Egypt Egypt said Monday that it retrieved a 2,500-year-old limestone relief from London after its sale was blocked by Bonhams auction house there because it had been looted from a pharaoh's tomb. A team of Egyptian archaeologists traveled to Britain to retrieve the artifact, which bears hieroglyphic text engraved in six rows and a cartouche of an ancient

Histories: Viking longships brought rape, pillage and cod Just over a thousand years ago, a Viking chieftain named Ohthere paid a visit to England and the court of King Alfred. An intrepid mariner, Ohthere told the king about his homeland in Arctic Norway, and described long sea voyages around what are now Norway and Denmark. The learned king evidently listened intently, and instructed his scribe

Group hunts for, gathers state's past Most of what's known about Stone Age Michiganders comes from a few large archaeological sites near the Great Lakes, Stafford said. But this site shows the state's interior was more important than some thought, he said. The dig has unearthed an unusually high number of ancient tools without many flint chips that would indicate that the tools were being

Archaeologists claim forest find Archaeologists and volunteers working at a Perthshire forest claim to have uncovered a "very exciting" find. Excavations have revealed a stone entrance to the Black Spout enclosure, which workers believe indicates an important local person lived there. Radiocarbon dating has also shown the site dates back to about 200 BC - it was originally though such

Commentaries are our best-selling category of books. We have thousands of volumes of commentaries available, and we are adding more on Community Pricing and Pre-Pub all the time. It’s hard to keep up with all of them, so I thought I’d highlight some of the recent ones:

• Wesleyan Bible Commentary (7 Vols.)
• Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament (15 Vols.)
• Exegetical Summaries Series (24 Vols.)
• The Greek Testament by Henry Alford (8 Vols.)
• Elicott’s Commentaries on Paul’s Epistles (6 Vols.)
• Analytical Bible Expositor Collection (3 Vols.)
• The Numerical Bible (7 Vols.)
• Crossway Classic Commentary Collection Upgrade (11 Vols.)
• John Darby's Synopsis of the Books of the Bible (5 Vols.)
• The Annotated Bible (9 Vols.)
• Exploring the Bible Commentary Collection (7 Vols.)
• Opening Up Commentary Collection (24 Vols.)
• Charles Hodge Commentary Collection (4 Vols.)
• Preacher’s Homiletic Commentary (38 Vols.)
• Lenski's Commentary on the New Testament (12 Vols.)
• The Expositor’s Bible (6 Vols.)
• Eerdmans Critical Commentary Series (4 Vols.)
• Socio-Rhetorical Commentary Series (8 Vols.)
• Walk! Messianic Jewish Devotional Commentary Collection (5 Vols.)

Also, check out our newly updated Commentary Product Guide, which should now be a nearly exhaustive list of multi-volume commentaries available for Libronix.

Still waiting for your favorite commentaries to make their way to Libronix? Let us know!

I've put some pix from my recent trip to Tuscany in Italy on-line.

In other news, my wife has suggested a brilliant and radical re-interpretation of the Swedish 70s dansband pop hit "Margareta", by Sten & Stanley. Comprehensible only to speakers of Scandy, I'm afraid.

Read the comments on this post...

It is the 4th of July, and in the United States, we often find people mixing Christianity and nationalism in ways that are at best ironic, and at times downright contradictory. The 4th of July is thus an appropriate day for reflection on Christianity, nationalism, and what might have been different had the colonies in the New World not fought for their independence.

First, we should remember the ways that Jesus challenged the nationalism of his time. There has been some interesting discussion of Bible translation in the blogosphere lately. If we're going to translate so as to make the meaning intelligible to any reader in a language today, then we have to effectively translate the impact of the story or saying, and the shock it would have caused to its original hearers.

I wonder how many American Christians would value their Bibles as highly as they do now in theory, if they contained such dynamically equivalent translations, and said things like "Many will come from Iraq and Afghanistan and take their place in the kingdom of God, while many Americans will be cast out." Ouch!

We also need to remember that today we celebrate our declaring our independence from a "Christian empire", and our independence surely contributed to the weakening and downfall of that empire. With the wealth and potential for expansion that ended up in the hands of the United States rather than Britain, presumably England's empire would have remained powerful for much longer. Its holdings also included the Middle East, and so all those lines that the British drew when they withdrew, creating nation-states that separated people who wanted to be together and lumped together people who wanted to be separate, would perhaps not be there even today.

Where would the Baptists and others who valued religious freedom have fled to?

Without this loss of prominence and dominance, would the Church of England have become such a broad tradition with such a progressive outlook in at least some quarters, ordaining women and eventually even homosexuals?

If the "United States" had remained part of this "Christian empire", then rather than celebrating our independence today, there might be many groups, including Christian groups, hoping and praying and perhaps even fighting for their independence from us.

Think about it... and remember, if we don't use our independence wisely, Alan Baxter, John Cleese and/or the Queen might still revoke it...

Have a happy 4th of July!

ROMA, 4 LUG - Il Consiglio dei Ministri ha deliberato lo stato di emergenza nell'area archeologica di Pompei. Il provvedimento era stato richiesto dal ministro Bondi, dal prefetto e dalla Regione, per intervenire a difesa dell'immenso patrimonio artistico, minacciato da crescenti e gravi criticita'. Bondi ha sottolineato che il provvedimento, annuale, e' stato reso necessario 'dal perdurante stato di incuria e degrado in cui versa ormai da lungo tempo il sito'. (ANSA)

Today began bright and early at 5:00am as usual. The first task included a drive to a lighthouse that marks the southern end of the survey area. When we arrived I was struck by the sheer size of the survey area. It stretches from just south of Toprakkale in the north to the lighthouse south of Arsuz. Obviously it is not possible to survey such a large area in one season so occasionally the team sits down with satellite photos, aerial photos, and topographic maps to identify collection units. The last two days have focused on the southern end of the survey area.

We began survey south of the major Roman site near Konacik with the three large excavated sarcophagi and the columns lying on the coast. As an interesting side note apparently during the Crusader Period this area was known as the Port of Columns. It appears that the columns have been laying there for a while and not a result of modern activity. The survey methodology adopted today was extensive non-site survey. The survey began well outside of the Roman site boundaries and ran to the south. During the course of survey two sites were identified. The first contained mostly Late Roman and Byzantine material while the second possessed both Hellenistic and material.

Identifying a site includes but is not necessarily restricted to the presence of architecture, cultural landscape manipulation, features, and increased artifact densities. The two sites were identified today by the sudden appearance of concentrated material culture, primarily pottery. After a site is identified, the basket number is closed down and the field director gives the site a number. Then the surveyors conduct an artifact collection. The artifacts will then be assigned to the newly established site number. During the collection process another participant will determine the site boundaries and map it by taking several GPS points. After these two tasks the appropriate forms are filled out.

The two sites discovered today are of modest size, both well under 2.5 hectares. Below I have posted pictures of the survey and the local “wildlife.”

Yesterday a colleague informed that CNN has reported that a team of archaeologists have identified the remains of the boyhood home of George Washington, who commanded the Continental Army against the British Crown and who then served as our nation's first president. Read the full article here.

If true, this is an exciting discovery. I hope it's not just hype as was the reported bust of Caesar from Arles.

I would be interesed in hearing some thoughts as to the validity of the identification of the home, especially from any New World archaeologists or historians who happen upon this post.

Happy 4th of July!

“Though working as a theorist and not as theologian or exegete, Girard has put forth a hypothesis about the origin of violence that readily aligns with the biblical evidence. Cain desires what Abel has, namely, the assurance of God’s favor. Denied this favor, he turns his hostility on the model whom he is imitating. The two struggle. Cain kills Abel. A Christian theologian, interpreting this same material, can agree to some extent with Girard on the reason for the violence but concludes that the human predicament is the sins of selfishness and rebellion, one of the consequences of which is violence. The conclusion is inevitable: where sin reigns, violence is inevitable.”—Martens, War in the Bible and Terrorism in the Twenty-First Century, page 42.

It has been found on Mount Zion, in Jerusalem. Here’s the story:

The Rev. Jeff Butz was digging when he spotted a small object in the ground. It appeared to be the top of a handle. It looked like a fragment from a jug.

And

Butz was part of an archaeological dig led by scholars in an ancient part of Jerusalem. They were digging in a section where objects from the first century were being uncovered. Butz wondered what he had found.He went over to Shimon Gibson, one of the world's leading Holy Land archaeologists, and asked what the object was.The piece turned out to be a "pilgrim flask." It was a first-century version of a canteen that would have been worn on a strap.

Then Butz added

"It's the same kind of flask that Jesus and the apostles would have drunk out of,". "It was a moving experience because it really hit me that perhaps one of the apostles or Jesus himself drank from it."

But don’t go too far... otherwise, you’ll turn an interesting archaeological finding into a hoax.

-------------------------

Nel corso degli scavi sul Monte Sion, a Gerusalemme, è stata ritrovata un’ampolla usata al tempo di Gesù per bere. Una specie di bottiglietta. Jeff Buzz, lo scopritore, ha dichiarato che Gesù o uno degli apostoli forse la usarono per bere. Ecco un esempio di come la fede può trasformare un ritrovamento archeologico in una bufala. O quasi.

The Joint Library now takes Quaderni di Studi Pompeiani. The first issue, 1 (2007), is now on the 'current' periodical shelves. It is published by the Associazione Internazionale Amici di Pompei.

Looting Matters (David Gill)

Following on from recent reports about fact Coptic art held in museum collections, David Gill has made the brief point that he and Christopher Chippindale have been making for many years - which is that "Collecting recently-surfaced antiquities (ancient or of modern creation) has intellectual consequences for the study of the ancient world," a point which they initially made with regard to Cycladic figures in an article entitled Material and Intellectual Consequences of Esteem for Cycladic Figures (American Journal of Archaeology 97, 1993).

Anyone who has looked at Predynastic archaeology in Egypt is well aware of the problem too - the number of unprovenanced palettes, labels, figurines and ceramics is quite staggering and with many of them it is unknown whether they are genuine or not. I was told recently that a set of "Predynastic" figurines in the British Museum are now considered to be fakes - which was more than a shame for the researcher friend who was planning to use them in part of his work! And the Harrogate Vase is a good case in point.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

The above article is accompanied by a photograph (click to enlarge).

A COLLECTION of painted wooden sarcophagi dating from the Late Period have been unearthed at the Saqqara necropolis, Nevine El-Aref reports.

To the south of the causeway of the pyramid of Unas at Saqqara, a team from Cairo University has been uncovering more secrets about this necropolis, which served as an important burial ground for nobles from the early dynasties to the Late Period.

While removing surface sand, archaeologists from the university stumbled upon a part of the tomb of Wadj-Mes, overseer of the guards during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses II (1304-1237 BC), as well as a number of burial shafts on the tomb's eastern side.

The tomb is a maze of corridors and underground tunnels that lead nowhere but contain fragments of pots, sarcophagi and blocks painted with the figures of deities.

Ola El-Aguizi, former dean of the Faculty of Archaeology and head of the mission, said that owing to the poor condition of the tomb, excavation inside it has been put on hold until the next archaeological season. Accumulated dust and sand would be removed in an attempt to facilitate further excavations.

See the above page for more details.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

Nevine El Aref has been busy this week. This is a nice compliment to her previous article (below) about the National Committee to Return Smuggled Antiquities.

A 26th-dynasty limestone relief and two Graeco-Roman skulls are back in Egypt, Nevine El-Aref reports.

An archaeological delegation headed by Youssef Khalifa, director of the department of stolen and recovered antiquities at the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), returned from London this week with three artefacts that had been stolen and illegally smuggled out of Egypt.

The first was an ancient Egyptian object saved for the nation when the SCA succeeded in halting its sale at Bonham's auction hall in London as part of its campaign to stamp out the trade in illegally- smuggled artefacts.

The object is an inscribed limestone relief that was chopped off the tomb wall of the 26th-Dynasty nobleman Mutirdis. The tomb was discovered in 1969 at Assassif on Luxor's west bank by German Egyptologist Jan Assman, and the fragment was apparently still in its original place when the tomb was restored between 1973 and 1974. A photograph of the inscription still in situ was published in 1977 in Das Grab der Mutirdis.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

Six months after its establishment, the National Committee to Return Smuggled Antiquities has convened for the first time. Nevine El-Aref attended the meeting.

The Ministry of Culture and the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) have been at the forefront of a campaign since 2002 to stamp out the trade in artefacts illegally smuggled from Egypt and bring them back home. To put the campaign into effect, the SCA has created a new department in its administrative body, the National Committee to Return Smuggled Antiquities (NCRSA), to list all the objects that have been illegally smuggled out of the country together with those missing from archaeological storehouses and museums. It also traces all reports provided by Egypt's embassies and consulates abroad of possible infringements of the antiquities law, and from time to time it checks the sale catalogues of well known auction houses such as Bonhams and Christies.

By following these measures the SCA has succeeded in recovering 3,000 artefacts over the last six years. Of these, 619 items came from Heathrow airport in London, 398 from Geneva and two from Basel, seven statues from Italy, a unique, ancient Egyptian relief from Belgium, and others from the United States, Holland, Germany, France and Canada.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Lost Egypt Exhibition blog

Dr. Parcak works at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. It’s a little odd to think of an archaeologist doing a lot of “field work” at a computer station, but that’s exactly what she’s doing. One of the tricky things about archaeology is that the people who practice it are often looking for things that are hidden, buried underground for long periods of time (have you ever seen the drawings Napoleon’s team did of the Sphinx buried up to its neck in sand?). Archaeologists used to (and sometimes still do) rely on logic, perseverance, and luck when looking for new sites. They would dig in places where they had deduced that a site should be based upon the available evidence (like the team that discovered the Lost City of the Pyramid Builders), or they would jump on chance discoveries made by the local human or even animal population (like the donkey who accidentally stepped into the graves now known as The Valley of the Golden Mummies). But because of the satellite imaging that is now being done by Dr. Parcak and others, archaeologists are better able to determine exactly where to dig before ever even setting foot there.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Time Out

The institute has expanded its offerings with a new gallery focused on ancient Nubia, the area that is now southern Egypt and northern Sudan. The artifacts, many of which are on public display for the first time, go as far back as 6,000 years. Don't-miss items include a fragment of what's believed to be the world's oldest rug, an ancient saddle and various ceramic items such as jugs, bowls and incense burners.

The Oriental Institute Museum has its own website, with an excellent set of pages dedicated to Nubia's archaeology and history.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Al Ahram Weekly (Zahi Hawass)

Hawass is using his Dig Days column this week to talk about Farouk Hosni, the Egyptian Minister of Culture and well known modern artist. If you're interested in finding out more about Hosni, he has his own home page (but beware - as soon as you click on the link it starts to play music). Here's an extract from Hawass's article:

Farouk Hosni left Paris to work at the Egyptian Academy in Rome. At that time Abdel-Hamid Radwan was the minister of culture; Radwan wanted Mohamed Ghoneim to be the head of the academy. However, the late Sufi Abu Taleb and late Atef Sidqi convinced Radwan that Hosni was the best candidate for the job. Hosni established great activities in Rome and brought the Egyptian cultural scene to the Italians. He became good friends with many Italian Egyptologists, such as Sergio Donadoni and Silvio Curto.

Sidqi was appointed by President Hosni Mubarak to be Egypt's prime minister, and at the same time Ahmed Qadri became the head of Egypt's Antiquities Organisation. Qadri gave a voice to antiquities but most of his work was criticised, especially because of the Sphinx restoration project that he oversaw. The architect who was in charge of the reconstruction of the casing stones that the Pharaohs had put on the Sphinx's body replaced them with stones that completely changed the proportions of the Sphinx. Also the cement could be seen on the blocks, distracting from the beauty of this masterpiece. Another incident that drew significant criticism was a student who had never before worked in restoration was commissioned to paint the Citadel.

Sidqi understood how valuable Hosni was. At that time, Hosni was not well known by the public, but he was known and respected as a talented artist within the cultural community.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Pyramid of Man blog

Thanks very much to Vincent Brown's excellent Pyramid of Man blog for alerting me to the fact that the Informatique et Egyptologie Group Conference is scheduled for later this month (in just a few days time). Here's what Vincent says (see the above page for programme details):

The IAE Computer Group (Informatique et Egyptologie, I&E) will be meeting in Vienna at the Kunsthistorisches Museum on the 8-11 of July this year. The conference itself will start on Wednesday the 9th and 10th.

IAE 2008 meeting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum

The conference fee is €30 and includes a visit to the Heurigen restaurant for a typical Viennese party.

Updates will be found on the IAE's web page on Nigel Strudwick's Egyptology Resources site.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

Visitors to Al-Muizz Street in Fatimid Cairo will encounter an unfamiliar scene in the next few days. They will be able to stroll along the street without having to worry about traffic. Nor will they have to negotiate the huge pumps that for years blocked the routes of pedestrians as they pumped out subterranean water. These, like the drainage pipes over which visitors once tripped, are no more. A majority of the monuments that line the street have now been restored and the handful that have not are nearing completion.

Workers are now busy repaving the street. Others, on wooden scaffolding, are cleaning the façade of houses and shops. On an empty platform in front of the Qalawun Mosque two gardeners with spades are busy planting a pair of date palms to recall the original spirit of the street. Before the Mohamed Ali sabil (public fountain), which has been transformed into a Textile Museum, a dozen engineers and technicians stand checking lamps that will illuminate the dramatic façades along the entire street. The lighting has been designed so that colours can be used to mark special events.

A total of 34 monuments along Al-Muizz Street and 67 located in neighbouring alleyways have now been restored.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Egypt Then And Now
All-About-Egypt

Ben Morales-Correa, who so kindly updated this blog in my absence, has posted a request for collaborators on his own site. This may represent a great opportunity for some of you out there to share information and help to build on an increasingly useful resource. Here's an extract from his post, but see the above page on Egypt Then and Now for full details:

Any website’s success is based on traffic, and traffic is generated by addressing the needs of readers looking for specific topics within a central theme.

All-About-Egypt has grown to the point that I have to recognize that while my passion for Egypt is boundless, my knowledge is not.

I deem it necessary to request the collaboration of other writers interested in having their articles published in All-About-Egypt. This is strictly voluntary, but as author, you get full credit, international recognition and publication rights. If you have a blog or website, you’ll also get an outbound link to help you develop traffic and rank. Your article will be further promoted through my subscription base.

The writing style of All-About-Egypt is informal, in a few words - Egyptology for the rest of us. Ease of reading is essential, but accuracy is too. Usual disclaimers apply, but All-About-Egypt is not a forum to propose outrageous claims or poorly supported theories. Just make sure that events and dates are properly corroborated.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

The Daily Photo will be resumed shortly, along with other normal services. Rick Menges kindly sent me some photographs to use, and those will be up in the next few days, and I've received other generous offers too which I will be taking up soon. Plus, the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology has given me permission to use photographs from their database (with my everlasting thanks) But don't forget - I'm always on the hunt for photographs!

Apologies to all those who are still waiting for me to reply to emails - I will be back to you shortly. I've got quite a lot on my plate at the moment, so I am still playing catch-up.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

Mercury News

Tickets for the King Tut exhibit opening this fall at the Dallas Museum of Art are on sale.

The exhibit, "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs," is making an encore visit to the United States after a two-year tour that drew nearly 4 million visitors ended in September 2007.

The exhibit, currently in London, will open at the Dallas Museum of Art on Oct. 3. It will run there through May 17, 2009, and then travel to two yet-to-be-named cities.

There will be more than 130 artifacts from the tomb of Egypt's King Tut, including some artifacts that are new to the exhibit and have not been seen before outside of Egypt, the Dallas Museum of Art said in a news release.

In Dallas, a photography exhibit of prints from Harry Burton, the photographer who accompanied the King Tut expedition in 1922, will be on display as well.

The official Golden Age of the Pharaohs website is now selling tickets for Dallas (via Ticketmaster).

Just a reminder to those of you who will be in the UK in the next couple of months - the exhibition is currently in London and closes on 31st August 2008.

Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

The International Herald Tribune reports:

Syria has returned a marble artifact to Iraq that was stolen from one of the country's archaeological sites.The marble block roughly 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall and 1 1/2 feet (half a meter) wide contains an engraving of a bearded man kneeling in prayer and several lines of cuneiform writing.

This is the back of Elgin's Firman - it's really not terribly exciting, but I since I'm posting the document to help the British Museum I really wouldn't want any conspiracy theorists to think that they are hiding anything ...

The third and final page of the text of Elgin's Firman - seen to the right in the top photo.

Page two of Elgin's Firman - seen to the left in the top photo. At the bottom I have added close-ups of the 'contentious' part, which details exactly what could legally be removed.

Gosh, I'm pretty darn sure that the British Museum repeatedly told me that they had not been denying people access to the Firman, nor 'hiding' the fact that they have had it for two years now ... and that one of their grounds for justifying that they were being entirely open and above board was that it was going on display in one of the Duveen slip galleries in June. And up on their web site.

So I walked through the BM yesterday, on my way to the ICS library, to see their new display.

There was a new display in the south slip, and it was interesting.

Some tessarae formerly in the collection of Thomas Burgon, picked up in 1804-14. They are assigned to the 12th century mosaic of the Madonna and child which was once in the apse, so presumably were found in the east end of the Parthenon interior. I've always emphasised the long history of the post-Classical Parthenon, so it's nice to see a few teeny weeny little bits of it from the Byzantine period.

A mortar fragment loaned by Eton College, which was found partially exploded on top of one of the Parthenon's walls. It is of a type used by the Venetians in th 17th century, so is believed to be one of the shells thrown at the Parthenon in 1687 ... and that caused it to explode.





A bronze medal ("plaque or lid"), with an engraved cross on the reverse. It was found at the east end of the Parthenon, and is believed to be 17th century northern Italian on stylist grounds - so is associated with the Venetian siege again. The Venetians were the first to try to remove bits of the Parthenon sculptures - though Morosini failed - so it's nice to see that they gave a bit back, and didn't just take.

I couldn't for the life of me see the Firman or any other document from the St. Clair archive that went on display last month. I admit that because of all those weird tropical parasites and viruses I picked up, my eyesight is not what it used to be. So I went to the Information Desk to ask.

On my way to the Information Desk I passed this very impressive fencing display. I'm not sure what it has to do with the Museum, but obviously if the BM can organise this, it surely must be able to organise a display of the Firman.

Apparently the Information Desk staff have no information whatsoever about a Firman being put on display. So I left a voicemail for the woman in the exhibitions office who had told me the Firman would be put on display in June. Technically it might have been a little bit of a rant, as I was not a happy bunny.

Later, I came home and read this story:
British museum staff to walk out in pay row - The Scotsman

And I understood. Neil MacGregor, the Director, has always made a huge point of being very Christian. I am certain that he would not deliberately have had people at the Museum bear false witness. Clearly Mr. MacGregor really, really wants everyone to have the opportunity to see the Firman, but because of the fencing display and the strike, they just have not been able to organise themselves.

As everyone knows, I think the British Museum is a super-duper-fabulous place - so I've been racking my brains, trying to think how I could possibly help them make the St Clair Archive available to as many people as possible. Then I had one of those Eureka moments. Today is the 4th of July, a day on which Americans generally help the British sort out their messes. So ...

I'm going to host a virtual exhibition of the Firman and highlights of the St Clair Archive right here, beginning ... as soon as the photos are uploaded.

At the top is an overview of the front / first page of Elgin's Firman - use it to locate the sections of the text in the details below, which are easily readable if you click on the images to super-size them.

These photos are just designed to be an overview, so that people can 'see' the Firman. If you click on them, the text is more or less legible. I will of course post close-ups so that everyone has an opportunity to read the Firman, as the British Museum wishes them to be able to.

A quick note on Copyright - The Pisani who wrote the Fiman is long dead, so he no longer has copyright. Thanks to the past nonsense from Old Blue Eyes, a couple of the descendants of the last Sultan have told me that they have no problems with my reproducing the Firman. This blog is hosted in the US, and I recognise Bridgeman v. Corel - so in my humble non-legal opinion I cannot hold copyright of these photos, since they lack the requisite originality (see The Art Law Blog for more on the Decision). Feel free to click on them to enlarge them, and distribute them - if you'd like to credit me, that would be nice, but I won't worry if you don't.

È il titolo di un articolo uscito su The Forward, che analizza quale significato si debba attribuire ad אַשְׁכְּנַז (Ashkenaz):

As for Ashkenaz, it is almost certainly the Hebrew name of the land of the people known to the Assyrians as the Ishkuza and to the Greeks as the Skythoi or Scythians. The Scythians were a powerful confederation of Indo-European tribes who spoke a language of the Iranian family; their original home was the steppe-lands north of the Black Sea, in what today would be southern Ukraine, from where, in the mid-first millennium BCE, their armies spread southwestward into western Asia Minor and southeastward into the Assyrian and Babylonian empires.

Interessante le considerazioni e l’analisi filologica. Insomma, un saggio tutto da leggere.

------------------

An interesting essay on The Forward deals with the original meaning of אַשְׁכְּנַז.

In 1776 there was no official national anthem, but two songs were popular with the troops and became our unofficial anthems as we forged a new nation on the battle field.

Yankee Doodle was perhaps the more popular. Although it remains the anthem of Connecticut ... its origins make it unsuitable for our national anthem - it was written by the British to mock Americans. We've since made it our own, but ...

The other option was Chester by William Billings, which is first recorded in 1770 although the current lyrics date to 1778. The words are a little more serious, and the martial elements our troops' victories:

Let tyrants shake their iron rod,
And Slav'ry clank her galling chains,
We fear them not, we trust in God,
New England's God forever reigns.
Howe and Burgoyne and Clinton too,
With Prescot and Cornwallis join'd,
Together plot our Overthrow,
In one Infernal league combin'd.
When God inspir'd us for the fight,
Their ranks were broke, their lines were forc'd,
Their ships were Shatter'd in our sight,
Or swiftly driven from our Coast.
The Foe comes on with haughty Stride;
Our troops advance with martial noise,
Their Vet'rans flee before our Youth,
And Gen'rals yield to beardless Boys.
What grateful Off'ring shall we bring?
What shall we render to the Lord?
Loud Halleluiahs let us Sing,
And praise his name on ev'ry Chord.

The music was used as the theme for the HBO series John Adams. They did not use the lyrics, but the beat is clearly good for marching:

Facebook has recently included a 'blognetwork' app which a number of ancient history type bloggers have signed on to ... a number of same were kind enough to confirm my ownership of rogueclassicism, but apparently I need 15+ readers for a feed of rc to show up on Facebook (although that portion of the app is still in beta). Not sure if that would be useful to folks out there, but if you'd like to read rc via Facebook (for some reason), we need five (+) more folks to become 'readers' ... here's the page ...

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY to my American readers.



(Wikimedia Commons image)

PICTURES OF THE JEWISH GOLD-GLASS MEDALLIONS recovered from Nazi loot have been posted by Dorothy King on her PhDiva blog.

Background here.

NAZIS. I HATE THESE GUYS.

Nazi looted relics returned to former owner's heirs

Mon Jun 30, 2008 7:01pm EDT

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON, July 1 (Reuters) - Three ancient medallions looted by the Nazis in World War Two and missing for more than 60 years are being returned to the heirs of the former owner, the Commission for Looted Art in Europe said on Tuesday.

The three gold-glass relics from the 4th century AD are decorated with some of the earliest known depictions of Jewish symbols from the Second Temple period.

Found in the Rome catacombs in the 17th century, they were part of the collection in Poland of Countess Isabella Dzialynska.

Hidden for safekeeping at the outbreak of war, they were found and taken by the Nazis in 1941 and sent to Austria on the orders of Adolf Hitler where they were once again looted by locals at the end of the war.

The three medallions were acquired in the 1960s by the Israel Museum Jerusalem which, under the deal with Dzialynska's heirs, is keeping two of them bearing the ancient Jewish symbols.

[...]

UPDATE (2 July): The ArtDaily has more information:

Israel Museum Restitutes Three Ancient Roman Gold-Glass Medallions

[Restitutes?]

JERUSALEM.- The Israel Museum announced today the restitution of three gold-glass medallions dating from the fourth century CE, two from the catacombs in Rome and one discovered in Cologne, to the heirs of the Dzialynska Collection at Goluchow Castle in Poland. Of the three medallions, two are decorated with Jewish motifs, representing some of the earliest known depictions of Jewish symbols from the Second Temple to appear outside of the Land of Israel. Given the historical importance of the medallions to the Museum’s collections and to the patrimonial heritage of the State of Israel, the Israel Museum and the heirs have worked together to enable the Museum to repurchase one of the medallions with Jewish iconography for its permanent collection. The second medallion bearing Jewish symbols has been purchased by a donor and friend of the Israel Museum, for long-term loan to the Museum.

Distinguished by iconic imagery of the Holy Ark, the Lions of Judah, and the Temple Menorah, these two medallions were identified in Vienna by the well-known Judaica dealer Joseph Steiglitz and were purchased for the Israel Museum in 1965 by founder Teddy Kollek through the generosity of Museum donor Jakob Michael, New York, in memory of his wife, Erna Sondheimer-Michael. The third was acquired by Teddy Kollek in Vienna at the same time and donated by Teddy and Tamar Kollek to the Israel Museum in 1970. Given their rarity and their archaeological significance, the two medallions with Jewish motifs have been featured on permanent display in the Israel Museum’s archaeology galleries and in several special exhibitions and publications, with Goluchow Castle identified as part of their history of ownership beginning with the 1986 publication, “Treasures of the Holy Land: Ancient Art from the Israel Museum.”

[...]

Read it all.

UPDATE (4 July): For photos, see here.

IRAQI JEWISH ARCHIVE UPDATE?

Rare Iraqi Jewish books 'surface in Israel'

Fri Jun 27, 9:29 AM ET

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Some 300 rare and valuable books confiscated from Iraq's Jewish community by Saddam Hussein's regime have been secretly spirited into Israel, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.

The books include a 1487 commentary on the biblical Book of Job and another volume of biblical prophets printed in Venice in 1617, the Haaretz daily said.

[...]

"We bought them from thieves," Mordechai Ben-Porat, an Iraqi-born Jew and the founder of Jerusalem's Babylonian Jewry Heritage centre told the newspaper, adding that the foundation paid some 25,000 dollars (16,000 euros).

In the beginning, Ben-Porat sent an emissary to Baghdad who shipped the books directly to Israel, but once the Americans caught wind of his activities they forbade further shipments, forcing him to smuggle the rest, he said.

[...]

The article says that these items are part of the Iraqi Jewish archive, the rest of which is now awaiting restoration at the Library of Congress (background here). Jeff Spurr has some useful comments on the Iraq Crisis list. He is skeptical of the claimed provenance for this new find.

UPDATE (4 July): More here.

IRAQI JEWISH ARCHIVE (?) UPDATE:

Iraq creates task force to probe stolen antiquities

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Iraq said on Thursday it has created a special task force to investigate the theft of valuable ancient Judaic manuscripts that later turned up in Israel.

The rare books, confiscated during the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, were rescued from US bombing at the start of the 2003 war and then sent to the United States for restoration but later wound up in Israel instead.

[...]

Background here.

A SYRIAC TOOLS AND RESOURCES WEBSITE has been placed online by MGVHoffman.

From the Turkish Daily News: A team of eight students hopes to unearth the remains of an ancient city on the Black Sea coast, regarded by many as the "Ephesus of the Black Sea." Excavations will be made July 15, aiming to unveil the architectural plan of Teion (or Tion) located in the city of Zonguldak's Filyos district. Archaeologist Sümer Atasoy said the excavation team, composed of a map engineer, an archeologist, an art historian and eight students from Greek Yanya University, will conduct a major dig in the ancient city with a team of 35 people, speaking to the Anatolia news agency. Saying the excavations will begin July 15 if the team receives an annual grant, Atasoy added: "Our excavations will continue in Turkish baths and castles, and, if we get permission, we will conduct research on jetties under the water. Our two archeologist divers will take their photos. It was the first time an ancient city on the Black Sea coast was excavated and this shows that the Black Sea region is an important area in Turkey." Atasoy said there is evidence that, together with forestry products, bonitos, small fish, were sold to boost trading. He said the team had already unveiled a special Turkish bath, which leads them to believe the ancient city was the location of other Turkish baths, graves and treatment places. During the excavations last year, the team found remains of two phalluses, which symbolize productivity and fertility. "We think the remains are dated around the Roman period. The farmers might have been using the fertility goddess to increase productivity, or a man who had trouble having a child might use the goddess of fertility to increase his chances. The excavations will unearth everything," noted Atasoy. Greek affinity The ancient city was established by people coming from Mıletos, according to Atasoy, who added, "Traces of the ancient residential areas of Kastamonu, Sinop, Samsun, Ordu, and Trabzon provinces of the Black Sea were all lost. Filyos is the only place that preserves its beauty." He said conferences held in Greece drew a lot of attention from citizens. "This year many tourists will come and visit the area. With the help of local authorities, we will host our guests for two days. When the remains of the city are unearthed completely, it will make a great contribution to the city's tourism." A team of 15 workers is now conducting the excavations and, if the university receives any further grants, the number will increase, said Atasoy. We mentioned this dig last summer as well ...

Malaysian Heritage commissioner Datuk Prof Zuraina Majid talks about having successfully recovered the neolithic remains from Gua Cha, which were until this year stored at Cambridge University.

Keeping skeletons in her closet, literally
New Straits Times, 3 July 2008

Heritage Commissioner Prof Datuk Dr Zuraina Majid has skeletons in her closet.
But this does not mean that she harbours dark secrets from her past which she wants to keep under wraps.

Instead, Zuraina is literally keeping eight skeletons in her office.

The skeletons are prized relics — 6,000-year-old Neolithic human skeletons from Gua Cha, Kelantan, which were brought back to Malaysia after a long stint abroad in January.

Related Books:
- Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago
- Early History (The Encyclopedia of Malaysia)

Show on map

THE SAN DIEGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM is pleased with its haul from last year's Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition:

The San Diego Natural History Museum reported that it has broken all attendance records with its past two blockbuster exhibits, "Dead Sea Scrolls" and "A Day in Pompeii."

During the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2007, the museum recorded 726,000 visitors, more than double the 134-year-old museum's usual attendance. The "Dead Sea Scrolls" exhibit drew 393,975 visitors and "Pompeii" drew 131,199. By comparison, the next most-popular exhibit in the museum's history was the "Chocolate" exhibit in 2005, which drew 70,290 visitors.

The museum's next major exhibition is "Water H2O=Life," opening July 19.

On a related note, the Isaiah Scroll exhibition in the Israel Museum continues to get attention.

Kenton Robinson in The Day touches on piles of topics of interest to us:

OK, you've really got to pay close attention here. You've got to keep track of the upper and the lower case. Letters, that is. Because our subject today is Lesbians. Note: Not lesbians. Note: Well, actually, Lesbians and lesbians but with the emphasis being on Lesbians. If you follow the news of the world beyond your daily ration of McCainage and Obamaphobia, you already know what I'm talking about. If not, here's the scoop: Several Lesbians, which is to say folks who live on the island of Lesbos, are asking a Greek court to forbid lesbians to call themselves lesbians. This is because, they say, Lesbians are merely Lesbians and not necessarily lesbians, and being thought lesbian when you are merely Lesbian invites no end of painful ridicule. For those of you who skipped your classical studies class on the day they taught this, the reason lesbians are called lesbians in the first place is because Lesbos' most prominent resident was Sappho, who lived some 2,600 years ago and was known as “the tenth muse” for writing some of the hottest erotic poetry of all time. Indeed, even though only one of her poems has survived intact and all the rest are mere fragments, those fragments make for some steamy reading. For example: ”Once again that loosener of limbs, Love, bittersweet and inescapable, crawling thing, strikes me down.” As it happened, Sappho was both a Lesbian and a lesbian, though they didn't call lesbians lesbians then. Actually, if her poetry is any indication, Sappho was a lover of both women and men, but for some reason, we use the word lesbian to describe women who love women alone. At any rate, after two millennia of lesbians calling lesbians lesbians, Lesbians who are not lesbians finally have caught wind of it and want it stopped. This would be known, even back in Sappho's day, as closing the Lesbian door after the lesbian is out. And that, of course, is the trouble with trying to legislate language. Words are a lot like mercury. Try to nail one down and it's gone before you've raised your hammer. Which is, in its own way, similar to other ancient news lately. Just as the law wrestles with language, so does science wrestle with myth and with, most recently, The Odyssey. As you may recall, after helping the Greeks beat the Trojans, Odysseus heads back to Ithaca. But, due to his crew punking Poseidon, it ends up taking him 10 years to get home. Meanwhile, there being no cell phones, a bunch of greedy suitors are pressing his wife to marry them. When Odysseus does get home, he slaughters them all, then chills in the bosom of his family. It's a great story, but scientists weren't satisfied with that. They had to know: Did this really happen? And if so, when? Fortunately, Homer sprinkled his tale with a few astronomical clues, from which these scientists were able to deduce that (a) it probably did happen and (b) it happened on April 16, 1178 B.C. All of which leads me to think that both the litigious Lesbians and the literalists reading Homer could take a tip from Pliny the Elder, who was not Greek but Roman, and who, many would argue, was the first scientist. Pliny was a man full of prescriptions for what ails you. No matter your infirmity, Pliny knew a cure. Got a fish bone in your throat? Go soak your feet. Etcetera. As for the aforementioned subjects, Pliny would recommend that they rub beaver testicles on their foreheads. That was his cure for idiocy.

Well, not quite, but here's what Pliny does say (32.29 ... part of a long section on the medicinal uses of beaver testicles):

somnum conciliant cum rosaceo et peucedano peruncto capite et per se poti ex aqua, ob id phreneticis utiles

"Phrenitis" is some sort of mental derangement ... whatever the case, in the future when I write 'break out the beaver testicles', you'll know what I'm referring to.

From the BBC:

Archaeologists are to return to an Iron Age "power centre" to further investigate the influence of the Romans on the north of Scotland. Dr Fraser Hunter, of the National Museums of Scotland, will lead the dig at Birnie, near Elgin, next month. Roman coin hordes have previously been found in the area. Dr Hunter said he hoped the work would further uncover clues to an Iron Age community there and the emergence of ancient people known as the Picts. The archaeologists will look at a number of key target sites in what will be the final phase of excavations at Birnie. Dr Hunter, principal curator of Roman archaeology, said it had been a "power centre" going back 3,000 years. He said: "Around the Roman Iron Age it really flourished and was a place with Roman connections." He said: "The site shows the influence of Rome beyond the edge of the empire." The coins were thought to have been buried as a religious offering. Dr Hunter said: "A series of strange things have also been found recently. "One was an intact decorative pot buried upside down and a whet stone, a lovely rectangular object hardly used and not the kind of thing that would be have been discarded. "We think these were buried as sacrifices as offerings to the gods." Evidence of Roman influence outside the boundaries of the empire have been found across northern Scotland. Last July, the BBC Scotland news website told how ancient coins were found on a beach in the Western Isles. Archaeologists believed the pieces of copper alloy date from the middle of the 4th Century. They were found in a sand dune, but the location in the Uists has been kept secret to protect the site.

From Today's Zaman:

Euripides’ ancient tragedy “Phaeton” was staged for the first time ever in the modern world yesterday in the ancient city of Ephesus as part of the ongoing 22nd edition of the İzmir International Festival. The premiere began with Greek tenor Mario Frangoulis taking to the stage at the historic Celsus Library at 9:30 p.m. Phaeton was featured as part of this year’s “Turkish-Greek Art Get-together” portion of the annual festival. The manuscripts of the tragedy, believed to be about 2,400 years old, were recovered in the 1890s in Egypt when experts discovered that a number of ancient Egyptian mummies were actually wrapped in old parchments on which Euripides’s tragedy had been written. The parchments were believed to be among those saved during a fire at the Library of Alexandria. The performance was directed by Nikos Charalambous and featured a musical collage of ancient hymns dedicated to Apollo, one of the 12 principal gods of Greek mythology. Frangoulis sang fragments from Phaeton during the performance. Filiz Eczacıbaşı Sarper, chairman of the İzmir Foundation for Culture, Art and Education (İKSEV), which organizes the annual İzmir International Festival, said the staging of Euripides’ ancient tragedy after 2,400 is very significant for the theater business. “İzmir has been the scene of important activities since 2001 as part of the festival’s Turkish-Greek Art Get-together section. We attach great importance to this festival. … It has strengthened the fraternal ties between the two peoples (Turks and Greeks), who share the two coasts of the same sea and a common culture,” she said. Sarper noted that this year’s festival was more important than those held in previous years because of the tragedy’s premiere. “This premiere will be a significant step in theatre history,” she said. The İzmir International Festival will run until July 22, featuring 10 performances under the slogan “Feeding our appetite for art.” It will end on a high note this year, with world-renowned maestro Zubin Mehta conducting the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino orchestra at the closing concert on July 22 at the Celsus library. In Greek mythology, Phaeton, the son of Eos, the goddess of dawn, bragged to his friends that his father was the sun god, Helios. One of his friends, however, refused to believe him and said his mother was lying. Phaeton went to his father, Helios, who swore to give Phaeton anything he should ask for to prove his divine paternity. Phaeton wanted to drive his chariot for a day. Though Helios tried to talk him out of it, Phaeton was adamant. When the day came, Phaeton panicked and lost control of the horses that drew the chariot. First it veered too high, so that the earth grew cold. Then it dipped too close, and the vegetation dried and burned. He accidentally turned most of Africa into desert; burning the skin of the Ethiopians black. Eventually, Zeus was forced to intervene by striking the runaway chariot with a lightening bolt to stop it and Phaeton plunged into a river. His sisters grieved so much that they were turned into trees that weep golden amber. This story has given rise to two latter-day meanings of “phaeton”: a person who drives a chariot or coach, especially at a reckless or dangerous speed, or a person that will or may “set the world on fire.”

... there are scattered photos of the production here and there ... this is the most interesting:

... I'm kind of hoping something shows up on YouTube ...

From the Independent:

Few would doubt the brilliance of Robert Graves, a man considered to be one of Britain's foremost war poets whose verses on Greek mythology and frontline conflict cemented his name in literary history. But one academic has accused the poet of stealing ideas, literary criticism and poetry from his one-time American mistress and passing them off as his own. Dr Mark Jacobs, a research fellow at Nottingham Trent University who has spent two decades studying 700 letters he received from Laura Riding Jackson as well as her literary works, said when she discovered the uncanny similarity in his texts she condemned her former lover as a "robber baron". Dr Jacobs, who is writing a book which will reveal the full extent of the couple's relationship, credits Jackson for having been a major influence on Graves's work and has called for a reassessment of his writings in the light of the revelations. Jackson's chagrin at Graves' alleged "lifting" of her work is described in her letters to Dr Jacobs, who began writing to her as a PhD student 30 years ago. Their correspondence continued until a year before her death in 1991 and the letters were this week placed in the university's research archive. The couple became lovers in the 1920s, when Graves was still with his first wife, Nancy Nicolson. Jackson moved into the couple's home for some time before the marriage ended after Jackson's failed suicide attempt when she threw herself out of a window, an event she describes in her letters. The couple's literary and romantic partnership was the inspiration for Miranda Seymour's 1998 novel, The Summer of '30. Dr Jacobs said Jackson accuses Graves of "robbing" her of key ideas which he appropriated as his own for his seminal study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess, published in 1948. He claimed that the inspiration for the work, which equates God with women, related to an early essay Jackson wrote in the 1930s called The Idea of God and her book, The Word Woman, which preceded Graves's magnum opus. The couple moved from Britain to Spain, where Jackson left her manuscript for The Word Woman when the pair fled the country on the outbreak of the civil war in 1936. Dr Jacobs claims it was this manuscript – which Jackson had asked Graves to burn – that the poet used as the basis for The White Goddess. "Between 1926 and 1939, he was learning from her what she was doing and thinking," Dr Javcobs said. "He was taking her ideas, her research, he was simply shovelling it in to his own books.... She left her manuscript in Majorca. She later wrote to him [Graves] and told him to burn the manuscript. We now know that he didn't. It all appeared in dribble form in The White Goddess. He used it for his own ends without mentioning it to her. She only found out in the 1950s." Graves also used four lines of a poem Jackson had published at least two decades earlier about the Greek mythological hero, Hercules, in his own poem, Ogmian Hercules, Dr Jacobs added. "He wrote the poem and stole about four lines in his 12 line poem. Her poem was published by the private Seizin Press that they had set up in the 1920s." In her letters to Dr Jacobs, Jackson accuses Graves of having "sucked, bled, squeezed, plucked, picked, grabbed, dipped, sliced, carved, lifted the body of my work" after their relationship broke down in 1939." Professor Dunstan Ward, president of the Robert Graves Society, said there was a host of textual evidence proving that Graves was developing his theory for the White Goddess even before he met Jackson and that a poem called A History, written before the two met, contains "clear references" and the reproduced lines of poetry in Ogmian Hercules was a "homage to her".

The looted glass now in the Israel Museum is so beautiful that I thought it was worth posting larger photos -

This one is from the Times:

Chewing gum, high heels, booming amplifiers and other modern plagues are seriously damaging Greece’s 2,500-year-old outdoor theatres and should be banned, according to the country’s powerful archaeological establishment. As the shows become more elaborate, with bulkier sets, highvolume speakers for acoustic shock effect, and high heels clattering on the ancient marble, experts fear that theatres such as Epidavros, built 2,400 years ago for men in leather sandals and relying on natural acoustics, are under threat. Add the countless wads of used chewing gum that regularly stud the old terraced marble seats, requiring painstaking removal, and the Central Archaeological Council has declared war on modernity. “We find ourselves regularly cleaning kilos of chewing gum from the Herod Atticus theatre,” said Kathy Paraschi, an architect working on the Parthenon restoration. “It’s an amazing and awful situation.” She added: “Speaking as a woman and an Athenian, I like my fashionable spiky heels.” But wearing them to Epidavros is “like taking a hammer and splitting the blocks apart”. The Central Archaeological Council is considering a ban on chewing gum and high heels, though the Herod Atticus theatre on the south side of the Acropolis is made of tougher Attic marble and can better stand up to modern footwear fashion. As if that were not enough, avant-garde directors are being blamed for damaging the sites where ancient writers once performed their plays. “Despite repeated warnings,” the council said in a recent statement, “stage sets seem to be getting bigger and decibel levels louder. This could inflict damage on the ancient structures.” Some see the archaeologists’ complaints as part of a conservative campaign. At Epidavros last month Matthias Langhoff, a German director, interrupted his production of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, revamped as a modern antiwar play. In mid-performance he harangued his audience to denounce what he called “Greek culture-politics”. The council had previously objected to Mr Langhoff’s large set and avant-garde interpretation, which they said took unacceptable liberties with Sophocles’s original text. Mrs Paraschi complained that many modern directors “don’t respect the rules about keeping the theatres safe and clean”. “Is Greece really protecting its antiquities?” wrote a reviewer in Kathimerini newspaper. “We love them, of course, [but] in any other way, in all the other crucial ways that actually matter, we don’t really pay them that much attention.”

Perhaps more interesting is a letter to the editor from the Times archives (August 10, 1937):

The acoustic properties of the theatre at Epidaurus, and the other Greek theatres mentioned by your correspondents. are well known. I am surprised that no traveller has mentioned the little theatre at Delphi, from whose back seats a listener can hear a whisper from the orchestra. The big theatres of Asia Minor, notably those at Ephesus and Pergamnos, are also remarkable for their acoustics. Surely the explanation is to be sought not in the clarity of the atmosphere, as one of your correspondents suggests, but in the care taken by the ancient architects in selecting their sites. All these theatres are built into hillsides; thus the actors had a wall behind them and a rising slope befole them. if the audiences of ancient times could take a part in this correspondence we might hear another side to the question. It is obvious that when theatres became large enough to accom- modate crowds of 40,000, as they did in Hellenistic and later times, there must have been some difficulty in hearing the actors, no matter how good the acoustics may have been. It was for this reason that the Greeks installed microphones in their theatres to catch and distribute the sound vibrations. These instruments were inverted bell-shaped vessels of bronze, which were placed in niches about the building, presumably all round the Kot.ov, or cavea. The architect Vitruvius tells us that the Greeks called these microphones hXeia, and that it was possible to adjust them (or " tune-in ") to any required musical pitch. I am, Sir, your obedient servant. H. V. MORTON.

Mr Morton's contentions have, of course, been recently scientifically confirmed in regards to site selection ...

From ANSA:

Rome is set to celebrate one of its greatest historical figures with an exhibition exploring the life and achievements of Julius Caesar (100-44 BC). The show, opening this autumn in the Chiostro del Bramante, will be the first ever to focus entirely on Ancient Rome's most famous political and military leader. It will bring together 180 archaeological, artistic and cultural items to explore Rome's first dictator in all his complexity. It will examine the historic aspects of Caesar's rule, as well as the political and cultural atmosphere of the time, his military campaigns, his literary works, his ascent to power and his brutal murder. It will then consider the cult that sprang up after his death, and the legends about him that survived the Dark Ages and attracted fresh attention during the Renaissance. By the 18th and 19th centuries, the figure of Caesar was enjoying a fresh wave of popularity and fame, which culminated in Napoleon Bonaparte, who was fascinated by the achievements of his military forerunner. The exhibit will begin with artefacts from Caesar's time, including a magnificent silver goblet discovered by Napoleon III. HOLLYWOOD'S VIEW OF CAESAR ALSO FEATURED. A sculpture of Venus Genetrix, on loan from the Louvre, recalls Caesar's claim to be descended from the Trojan prince Aeneas, son of the goddess Venus-Aphrodite. There will be several busts of Caesar - although only confirmed portraits of the dictator will be on display, such as those from museums in Berlin and the Vatican. Curator Giovanni Gentili has stressed that uncertain portraits, such as a bust recently discovered in Arles, will not be included. Portraits of key figures in the cast of Caesar's life will also be on show, with busts of Pompey on loan from Venice, Crassus from the Louvre, Mark Anthony and Cicero from Rome, and Cleopatra from museums in the Vatican, Turin and Berlin. Other archaeological treasures include jewellery, manuscripts, mosaics and paintings from a variety of sources, including the villa in Herculaneum that once belonged to Caesar's father-in-law, Calpurnius Piso. The exhibition moves on to explore the development of the Caesar myth in later centuries, with paintings by masters such as Rubens, Guercino, Pietro da Cortona and Guido Reni. Massive canvases of Caesar by Giambattista Tiepolo, sold to the Russian tsar in 1800, will also return to Italy for the first time in 200 years. The final section will look at the depiction of Caesar in the world of cinema, from early silent black and white movies to the 1963 blockbuster Cleopatra, which was filmed at Rome's Cinecitta studios. The exhibit opens in the Chiostro del Bramante on October 24 and runs until April 5, 2009.

... hmmm ... I think they *should* put that portrait from Arles in this show; it might make it abundantly clear that it isn't Caesar ...

Writer Simon Jenkins to chair National Trust - The Guardian

Hat tip - Whispers in the Loggia.

There seem to be a lot of these sorts of articles coming from archaeological sites all over the world lately ... from the Telegraph:

The attraction's 2.5 million visitors per year are plagued by bogus tour guides, rubbish strewn streets and poor facilities, said the Corriere Della Sera newspaper. It added that the city, which was buried in AD79 by an eruption from the nearby volcano Vesuvius, was losing its artefacts either through bad management or casual looting by visitors. Antonio Irlando, a regional councillor on artistic patrimony, told the newspaper: "'Every year more than 150 square metres of fresco and plaster work are lost at Pompeii because of poor maintenance. "Tourists also take away items that they find on the floor and in the ruins and what they can put into their rucksacks.'' Corriere added that much of Pompeii was also used as an illegal rubbish dump thanks to the crisis in nearby Naples with tyres, fridges and mattresses littering parts of the ancient site.'' The newspaper noted that 2.5 million a year visit Pompeii paying a £10 entry fee generates an annual income in excess of £25 million a year. Professor Andrew Wallace Hadrill, director of the British School of Rome, who is leading a dig at nearby Herculaneum which was buried in the same eruption said: "The problems with Pompeii have been known about for 10 years. "These are just superficial problems but the whole site is very difficult to maintain when you think it has been through an eruption, excavations and now has more than 2.5 million people a year passing through it. "Pompeii needs a lot more investment into it and to give credit to the local superintendency which overlooks the site they are trying their best.'' No one was available for comment at the Superintendent's office in Naples which oversees the running of Pompeii.

The Italian press (e.g. ASCA) is claiming that a 'state of emergency' has been declared for Pompeii ...

From ANSA:

A proposal to privatize the management of the Valley of the Temples, one of Italy's most important archeological sites, has kicked up a storm of protests. The idea was the brainchild of Sicily's regional councillor for culture, Antonello Antinoro, who said that ''to make Sicily's cultural assets more profitable we must offer quality private operators a complete tourist attraction package for a period of 30 years''. ''I'm thinking along the lines of the Valley of Temples or the Greek theatre in Siracusa,'' he added. ''In return, private operators must guarantee a fixed fee and pay for related projects, such as road work or building hotels,'' Antinoro explained. ''In the case of the Valley of Temples, for example, we could ask a private operator to revamp the Palermo-Agrigento motorway and build a heliport,'' he said. The Valley of the Temples is a ridge on which sit seven Doric style Greek temples dating back to the 6th and 5th centuries BC. They constitute some of the largest and best-preserved Ancient Greek buildings outside of Greece and are listed as a World Heritage Site. According to Antinoro, ''a list of candidate sites would have to be drawn up together with the councillor for tourism and, in my view, should include the ancient Greek theatre in Taormina, the Greek Temples in Selinunte and the Palatine Chapel,'' the Byzantine chapel of Sicily's Norman kings in Palermo's royal palace. Antinoro even suggested offering the private sector the management of ''groups of artistic works in exchange for building a museum to house them in Sicily''. Antinoro's proposal got an immediate thumbs down from the opposition Democratic Party (PD) with Filippo Panarello, deputy chairman of the Sicilian regional assembly's culture committee, observing that ''it would be a paradox if the region with the highest number of public employees decided to entrust the management of public assets to private parties''. Leading archaeologist Andrea Caradini said he was ''very worried'' about Antinoro's proposal saying it reflected ''a sign of the disintegration of a sense of state''. After recalling that the Valley of Temples ''is one of Sicily's most important archeological sites,'' Caradini said that ''it is true that the region of Sicily has managed the site badly, the same way the state had managed Pompeii badly. But to entrust its management to private operators does not ensure its protection''. Also on the warpath was the Italian Environment Fund (FIA) which said that cultural assets like the Valley of Temples ''are and must remain pu