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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-384722342015-10-07T02:07:07.312+02:00Zenobia: Empress of the EastExploring Zenobia's World. The Incredible Rise and Fall of the City of PalmyraJudith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-7726588662253574702015-09-30T18:48:00.002+02:002015-10-05T20:45:02.473+02:00Happier Days in Palmyra: Part II This post is dedicated to the memory of Dr Khaled al-Assad, a good and gentle man

Part I, click here

The Peregrinations of a Lady

This funerary portrait of an elegant upper-class woman from Palmyra used to belong to the wealthy Italian art historian and critic, Federico Ziri. Before it entered Ziro's collection, however, the bust had already passed through the hands of several important French collections. As with so many Palmyran portraits in private hands, there are gaps in its collecting history. We don't know, of course, when or where the bust was found, dug up and sold.

...illicit digging continues, and almost every traveller buys and removes a few busts and mortuary inscriptions. (John Punnett Peters, in Palmyra in 1889)
Our lady's portrait first came to public notice in 1903 when it appeared in the Beirut collection of the linguist and excavator Father Sébastien Ronzevalle, SJ. Long before the Jesuit father's death (d. January 1937), the bust had resurfaced in the possession of the slightly dubious French architect Émile Bertone, who had travelled to Palmyra in 1898 where he copied and published a mixed bag of inscriptions. He kept the portrait until his death (d. March 1931), when it was sold at the Paris auction house of Clément Platt. Who bought it? We don't know. We know nothing of its fate between 1931 and the 1960s when it entered Federico Ziri's collection (along with another nine Palmyran busts); exactly how and where he acquired the lady's portrait is not yet clear.

Like the vast majority of Palmyran reliefs cloistered in private collections, her portrait had, for all practical purposes, vanished from the world. Zeri kept the busts in his private villa just outside Rome. The art historian had come to believe that he descended from a noble Syrian family from Homs (ancient Emesa, 160 km as the crow flies across the desert from Palmyra); accordingly, he placed the ten portraits in the entrance hall of his villa -- rather like an ancient Roman patrician's ancestral busts -- so that anyone visiting him would have to pass along them, as if through a guard of honour. In short, if you wanted to see the lady and her compatriots, you needed a personal invitation.

Ziri's ten busts were finally published in 1986 -- albeit in an Italian learned journal of little international reach. When Zeri died in 1998, he bequeathed the ten pieces to the Museo Gregoriana Egizio of the Vatican Museum, where presumably they will rest until the Day of Judgment. You can now find our lady online with some information in Italian and in English.

That being said, the museum's text is brief and not entirely crystal clear. In fact, it merely whetted my appetite. Who wouldn't like to learn more about this woman's life and death, the clothes she is wearing, her choice of jewels, and even the meaning of her hand gestures? But, until today -- unless you are sitting in a world-class university library -- finding this out will be a complicated and long drawn-out business, which might even end with your hitting a brick wall.

Ye Olde Way

The first question we would need to answer is the date of the relief itself: when did her family have that beautiful stone carved in her memory? That's not too difficult -- for the bust is a fine example of the early-third century style of Palmyran sculpture; so the memorial was made in the years between ca. 200 and 230 CE. Happily, there is also a woman's bust in the National Museum of Damacus that is nearly a twin of our lady -- and her portrait is precisely dated by its inscription to 226/27 CE. We can't be more than a decade off from that date.

Our lady is also inscribed with Palmyrene script on the slab above her left shoulder ... and that text should reveal her name and close family relations. Being outside of my dream library, finding that text proved difficult. I searched on Google by catalogue number and finally tracked her down in a truly obscure academic journal in the middle of a discussion about an ancient Latin inscription from Libya(!). As it happens, the Libyan man's name was also shared by a handful of Nabataeans and Moabites as well as a very few Palmyrans; but only by one female, who turns out to be our lady: her name is Rumai. The name probably comes from the root RWM, meaning 'high' (perhaps in the sense of 'high-born'). Finally, with the help of inter-library loans,* I read the complete inscription:

Image of (SLMT)
Rumai (RWMJ), wife of
Iarhi (JRHJ), son of
(HN'). Alas!
Admittedly, I was not much the wiser.

Although in theory, I was now in a position to winkle out possible family connections, this could not realistically be done outside of my dream library ... so I put that task aside for another time.

Her finery, however, which is carved in very great detail, allowed me to start on the interesting task of comparing her statue with those of other wealthy Palmyran women of her time.

Beginning at the top: beneath her veil she wears a high rolled elaborately decorated turban with rosettes and pearls apparently sewn on. I know of several portraits with similar headdresses, such as this lovely lady (left) now in the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Both ladies also share the same swept-up hair style. The headdress and hairdo can also be found together on a few other female heads of which I have but dismal black-and-white photographs (e.g. IN 1102, 1099, 1104, in the Ny Carlsburg Glyptotek in Copenhagen) -- all dated on stylistic grounds to ca. 210-230 CE. So we can be reasonably sure that these particular features were shared by some fashionable women at this time.

Next, Rumai's lovely cloak is adorned with a vertical band of acanthus leaves, a design repeated on the cuffs which also end in fringes (or possibly fur). Ladies' cloaks are rarely embroidered in Palmyra: here, it is the men, not the women, who sport elaborately decorated outer garments, especially (though not exclusively) those wearing Parthian-type tunics and trousers. Besides Lady Rumai and her 'twin' in Damascus, another exception is the 'Beauty of Palmyra' (illustrated in Part I) whose sleeves are decorated with a pattern that seems to echo her ornate bracelets. There are, of course, a few other exceptionally clad women, but it still holds true that embroidered cloaks are very uncommon on women's funerary busts.

Then I thought of Bitti, daughter of Yarhai (left). One rarely thinks of Bitti. Why not? Because she is one of the very very few Palmyran women who does not wear a veil -- an altogether exceptional group; who are these strange or wanton women? Are they (as some have proposed) freed slaves, or even eunuchs, or are they merely flappers out for a fling, the better to flaunt their special hairstyle? I won't get into this question today (though one day, I will) but note that Bitti, too, wears a beautifully decorated cloak. She is also dated to ca. 230 CE. It all seems to be coming together nicely.

Now, what we really need in order to progress further is to see all the women who are wearing such decorated cloaks. And then put that together with all women whose jewellery -- drop-earrings, necklaces, and finger rings -- is similar to that worn by Lady Rumai. But even a preliminary look at jewellery would take me days ... if not weeks of work; and I'd still be certain to miss a large number of poorly-illustrated busts, as well as those which have never been shown to the public. Honestly, what can we hope to learn from just one portrait, or even a wall full of them?

Not very much, really.

If Lady Rumai is not to remain little more than a pretty picture, we need a Corpus.

What's in a Corpus?

Palmyran portraits are scattered in public and private collections throughout the world. They are often poorly published, or not at all -- and they have never been catalogued, described, dated, or treated as an entire group.

That is now about to change.

The Palmyra Portrait Project***

When Harald Ingholt (Part I of this post) worked out the essential chronology and dating of Palmyran sculpture in 1928, he knew of 524 portraits. Between the 1930s and the 1980s, he found and drew in his diaries almost 1,000 pieces. But today, the Palmyra Portrait Project (PPP) database has recorded more than 2,600 portraits -- far more than anyone ever knew existed -- from museums and private collections around the world. This includes hundreds of portraits that had briefly appeared on the antiquities markets and then vanished from public view.

The PPP is preparing a complete research dossier for every single known piece of Palmyran portraiture. Wherever possible, new high-resolution photographs have been made. That is an essential step: look at the photograph of Lady Rumai at the top of this post: it's the best I could find online, not bad but it blurs some details, such as the round brooch that pins her cloak (next to her left hand). Brooches are an important item of jewellery, usually of gold -- and their shapes and designs change over time; certain designs perhaps are meaningful but we can't know what they might mean until we can compare them all, type by type.

Portrait descriptions will also include detailed analysis of poses, faces, and attributes (usually, what is held in the hands). Gender, colour traces, hairstyles, dress, and jewellery are all recorded in minute detail, and made searchable. For the very first time, it will be possible to compare every detail of each sculpture with all the others. Added to the data, of course, are the dated inscriptions as well as all known family relations [So-and-so, the son/daughter, father/mother of so-and-so: up to five generations!] -- and a whole world of new research possibilities opens up.

Portraits can be compared across and within groups such as priests, women, children, or even those sharing the same attribute. Sticking to women for the moment -- as is the wont of this blog -- did you know that five women hold writing tablets (vs. more than 100 men); who are these ladies? One such woman with a tablet doesn't wear a veil (left); is that significant? Are there still more ladies with stylus or tablets out there, in less accessible collections? Women sometimes hold keys (men never do): are these the keys to the household cupboard or to the gates of the world beyond? And who else is wearing any special piece of jewellery that catches your eye? All of this can soon be studied by date and, if we're lucky, by family connections. We'll be able see how facial features are treated differently over time, and follow changes in fashion and tastes -- hairstyles, beards and moustaches for men and hairstyles, headdresses and jewellery for women.

Let's say that you'd like to know if the pearls-and-rosette decoration sewn on Lady Rumai's turban is a design that runs in her family, perhaps even a badge of her clan? We can only study that if we first know who else wears that particular pattern, their dates, and inscriptions (if any) that might lead to other family members. By this time next year I might be able to tell you. And then, when I next think about the Unveiled Women of Palmyra, I expect to have a complete picture of all of them before I start to write. What a difference that will make!

Palmyrene portraiture has an inherent logic all its own. Everyone who studies it has an intuitive understanding of this. It's time we find out more exactly what it is.

* My warm thanks to Prof. Anna-Marguerita Jasink of the University of Florence, who was kind enough to call it up from the university library in Naples.

** Harald Ingholt (see Part I) long ago divided the known Palmyrene funerary portraits into three distinct chronological groups by taking the small number of dated examples and grouping about them undated reliefs that were stylistically similar. While later scholars have refined Ingholt's categories, the basic groupings have been maintained. For example, we know that most men before 150 CE are clean-shaven whereas they tend to be bearded from 150-200 CE. Or that, after 200 CE, certain facial features appear, such as unincised eyes and a single groove for eyebrows, as well as the marks of the curved and flat chisel on the necks. Women in his early group (50–150 CE) wore little jewelry and often held a spindle and a distaff in the left hand. Those in his second group (150–200 CE) wore more jewellery, including necklaces, bracelets, and rings, rarely held the spindle and distaff, and frequently raised the right hand to hold the veil back from the face. In the latest group (200-273 CE), some women display even more jewellery, and many used their left hand to hold the veil. However, it's possible that the amount of jewellery a woman wears correlates better with her family wealth or some other factors than simply with chronology. This is just one of the many conundrums awaiting solution after the Palmyra Portrait Project is fully launched.

*** Under the direction of Dr Rubina Raja of Aarhus University and Dr Andreas J.M. Kropp at Nottingham University.

 Sources

R. Raja and A.H. Sørensen. Harald Ingholt and Palmyra, Aarhus, 2015; A.J.M. Kropp, 'The Palmyra Portrait Project', Syria 91, 2014, 393-408; M.K. Heyn, 'Female Portraiture in Palmyra' (Case Study VI), in A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, Published Online: 13 FEB 2012; P. Callieri, 'Rilievi funeriari palmireni nella collezioni Ziri', Annali di archeologia e storia antica. Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli 8 (1986) 223-244; F. Vattioni, 'Le inscrizioni sui rilievi palmireni nella collezioni Ziri', Annali 8 (1986) 245-248.

Illustrations

Top: Rumai, wife of Iarhi. Bust of a Woman from Palmyra in the Vatican Museum. Photo Credit: LaurieAnnie.

Left # 2: Bust of a Woman from Palmyra in the National Museum of Damascus, April 2009. Photo credit: Dosseman.

Left # 3: Bust of Woman from Palmyra (with false Palmyrene inscription) in the University of Pennsylvania Museum, Inv. B 8904. Photo credit: UPM .

Left # 4: Bitti, daughter of Yarhai. Ny Carlsburg Glyptotek I.N. 1053. Photo credit: Colledge, Art of Palmyra, Pl. 91 (via Carnuntum).

Left # 5: Bust of a woman from Palmyra, holding a writing tablet on her left hand. Vatican Museums, Rome. Photo credit: Carole Raddato CC BY-SA (via Following Hadrian: The Ancient People of Palmyra). Judith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-16351960993230144282015-09-02T09:14:00.002+02:002015-09-30T19:04:47.228+02:00Happier Days in Palmyra This post is dedicated to the memory of Dr Khaled al-Assad, a good and gentle man

The Beauty of Palmyra

When the Danish archaeologist Harald Ingholt was just beginning his third season of digging at Palmyra in 1928, someone offered to sell him this stunning portrait of a woman - and, in accordance with the practices of the time, he bought it on the spot. The bust - or more correctly, half figure - was shipped to Copenhagen where it still graces the New Carlsberg Glyptotek, one of the sponsors of his excavation.

The most beautiful female bust I have seen thus far, Ingholt said, and, short of a beauty contest between at least six of my favourite female contenders, that probably still remains true.

 The portrait shows a woman who was both wealthy and fashionable: look at the gold-coloured paint which enriches her exuberant jewellery -- imitating golden jewels she must have owned in reality -- and the deep red embroidered sleeves and ruddy dangling beads, red lips, and rouged cheeks (the reds, alas, more visible when she was found than now*). An altogether elegant woman. More the pity that there was no precise provenance: no one knew where the bust was found, nor when the woman had lived....

Until now!

Harald Ingholt's unpublished diary held the secret, only recently teased out thanks to the Palmyra Portrait Project. One of the goals of the PPP (headed by Rubina Raja of Aarhus University and Andreas J.M. Kropp at Nottingham University) is the transcription, translation and digitalization of all of Ingholt's archives, including his excavation diaries. Thanks to their careful work, we now can place the Beauty in her proper tomb: she comes from the underground house-tomb known as Qasr Abjad, 'White Castle', in the Western necropolis. Sculptural finds from this relatively modest sepulchre date to the late 2nd century CE so the woman whose portrait is our Beauty probably ended her life in the years between 190 and 210 CE.

All this and more in Aarhus (Denmark)

The Museum of Ancient Art at the University of Aarhus is highlighting Harold Ingholt's work in its thought-provoking show, Harold Ingholt and Palmyra (until 13 September). The exhibition is based on research carried out within the framework of the Palmyra Portrait Project: their scrutiny of Ingholt's dig diaries has brought to light previously unknown locations of tomb sculpture and new information on his excavations in the city. With his descriptions, sketches and reports, for example, it has been possible to identify some graves whose plans have never been published.

Ingholt carried out three major excavations at Palmyra in the 1920s, finding more than 50 tombs of which 24 could be entered, while the rest had collapsed. Although many of the graves had been robbed long before he got there, he still found a wealth of well-preserved sculptures, sarcophagi, inscriptions and smaller objects. In the mid-1930's, he returned for a brief season to excavate the collapsed tomb of Malkû son of Malkû, son of Nûrbel the doctor, for himself and his sons and their sons. This tomb, in the Southwest Necropolis, founded in 116 CE by the first named Malkû, was used for burials at least until 267 CE according to the last of its 14 inscriptions. This means that Malkû's descendants were probably still being buried in their own family tomb even as the city fought off the Romans and then fell in 272/273 CE.

Adding a Niche

Another long-lived tomb that Ingholt excavated is the subterranean communal tomb of Atenatan also in the Southwest Necropolis. Atenatan built it in 98 CE, one of the earliest underground house tombs at Palmyra, and it was used for well over a century; and then, in 229 CE, a side niche was built into it by a man named Julius Aurelius Maqqai -- who paid for it, as he boasts, with his own money. Maqqai had the ceiling of the niche painted and, at some point, three sarcophagi were installed along its walls (left). Relief figures on the sarcophagi depict Maqqai and his children, wife, and servants. Ingholt's drawings illustrate the many traces of red and blue colour that could be seen on their decorative reliefs when he excavated the tomb -- something never previously pictured.

As with the 'Beauty of Palmyra', it is now possible to get a good impression of how the sculptures were painted and installed in a tomb in combination with painted ceilings.

And that's the sort of new insights you'll get if you are lucky enough to visit Aarhus before 13 September. For those of us who can't get to Denmark, the Museum has published a 68-page illustrated booklet of the exhibition and generously makes it available as a free download. Click here for Harald Ingholt and Palmyra . There is a huge amount we have still to learn.

In the next post, I'll look at the ambitious Palmyra Portrait Project itself in much more detail. Their major goal is to build a corpus of every known Palmyran portrait, so that we'll be able to see and compare what is now scattered in museums and private collections around the globe. The PPP files already record details of over 2,600 portraits -- far more than anyone ever knew existed! In fact, it is now clear that the portraits from Palmyra form the largest Roman-era group of portrait sculpture outside of Rome. As the site itself is now looted and being destroyed, only our knowledge will keep the light of Palmyra alive.

The PPP could hardly be more timely.

Part II of this post, click here.

* Detailed microscopic analysis indicates traces of four colours (yellow and red ochre, carbon black [on the hair] and madder) as well as minute traces of gold leaf. The jewellery would have further glittered with inlaid glass or gemstones as indicated by sunken oval or circular areas. The irises of her eyes were also originally inlaid as shown by circular flat depressions. Full details at Tracking Colour.

Illustrations

Top left: The Beauty of Palmyra, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek.

All other photographs from the Museum of Ancient Art at the University of Aarhus publication Harald Ingholt and Palmyra

Judith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-30764233267343041022015-07-12T15:12:00.000+02:002015-08-15T10:37:37.165+02:00This Summer, Join a Blogging Research ProjectSummer is usually a quiet time for archaeological blogging. Most archaeologists are away in the field, digging up (what is for us) buried treasure, or in museums learning from previous digs; and universities are closed. News of recent discoveries rarely seeps out before September when everyone gets back to their desks. This year, however, we've got two great summer stories for you, one of which gives you the chance to participate in a real archaeological research project.

But first, the hot news from Arles in southern France.

Extremely rare ancient Roman frescos -- comparable to those found in the Villa of Mysteries in Pompeii and the Villa of  P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale a little north of Pompeii -- have just been discovered in the bedroom of a freshly-dug Roman villa in Arles (Latin Arelate). This is the very first full mural ever found in France in what's known as the Second Pompeian style (starting and ending in Gaul some 20 years later than in Italy, (ca. 70-20 BCE).

Among the images in the fresco (now broken into more than 12,000 fragments that will have to be pieced together like a giant jigsaw puzzle) is this extraordinarily expressive face of a young woman with full red lips and dark eyes gazing slightly upwards.

As expert restorers started putting fragments together, they discovered that she was plucking the strings of a harp.

The lady harpist is painted in expensive Egyptian blue and red vermilion pigments. Even in Italy, in fact, large human figures painted on a vermilion background in the Second (rather 'Illusionistic') Style, only appear on a handful of sites. It seems very likely that the fresco-painters came to Arles from Italy.

Although Arles had been a Roman town since 123 BCE, it remained rather small compared to Massalia (Marseilles) -- until the city fathers had the wit, or luck, to support Julius Caesar in the Civil War. When Caesar emerged victorious in 48 BCE, Massalia (which had backed Pompey) was stripped of its possessions, which were transferred to Arelate as a reward. This must have been the time when the newly-discovered luxurious villa was built and so very richly decorated.

Now, for the other hot news of summer.

Join an Archaeological Research Project

Fleur Schinning is a young scholar in the Department of Archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She wrote to me last week asking if the readers of my Zenobia blog might be willing to help in her post-graduate research project for Heritage Management. The focus is on how blogs and social media can be used as tools in creating public support for archaeology. Accordingly, she is comparing a number of blogs from the UK and USA, where blogging seems widely accepted. As she writes, "I have come across some very interesting and successful blogs, of which your blog is one."

I am flattered, of course. She asks me and the readers of this blog to join her in the project. If you can spare just five minutes to complete a simple anonymous questionnaire to share your thoughts about this and other blogs you read, she would be tremendously grateful. Click here to get started.

In return, you might win six issues of Archaeology, the very magazine that was so quick to publish the story of the Roman fresco discovered in Arles (10 July 2015) ... and which supplied the best photograph of the lady harpist. So you see, 'what goes around, comes around'. Click here.

My thanks to my Facebook friend, Lynda Albertson, for the heads up on the new Arles frescos.

Sources include INRAP fr: 'Des fresques romaines uniques en France découvertes à Arles'; RFI: 'Rare ancient Roman frescos found in south of France'; Le Monde: 'Des fresques dignes de Pompéi exhumées à Arles'; Archaeology: 'Complete Roman Fresco Discovered in Arles, France'.

Illustrations

Upper left: Arles fresco: detail of young woman. Photo credit: Julien Boislève, INRAP/MUSÉE DÉPARTEMENTAL ARLES ANTIQUE (via Le Monde)

Middle left: Arles fresco: the lady harpist. Photo credit: Julien Boislève, INRAP/MUSÉE DÉPARTEMENTAL ARLES ANTIQUE (via Archaeology)

Centre: Arles fresco : decorations around the edge of the bedroom. Photo credit: Julien Boislève, INRAP/MUSÉE DÉPARTEMENTAL ARLES ANTIQUE (via RFI )

Lower left: Fleur Schinning Judith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-71746440342785835662015-06-03T08:54:00.002+02:002015-06-04T10:53:22.959+02:00ZENOBIA: AN UNFINISHED POEM BY CAVAFYC.P. Cavafy's draft of a poem on Zenobia (November 1930)*

Written on a single sheet, with covering page bearing the title and date:

Side 1 is the text written in black, including two illegible crossed-out words at the end.

Side 2 gives the added text, here written in red, including the line crossed out.

Now that Zenobia is queen of many great lands,
now that all of Anatolia marvels at her,
and even the Romans fear her by now,
why shouldn't her grandeur be complete?
Why should she be reckoned an Asiatic woman?

 They'll create her genealogy straightaway.

 Two scholars skilled in history
Are taking up the important task
See how they deal with her genealogy

How obviously she's descended from the Lagids.
How obviously from Macedonia
(four letters crossed out).

*Translation and commentary by Daniel Mendelsohn (Twitter/undated)

C. P. CAVAFY: COMPLETE POEMS
DANIEL MENDELSOHN

ALFRED A. KNOPF, 2012

A PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CRITICOS PRIZE (U.K.)

AN AMAZON BEST GLB BOOK OF THE YEAR

Illustration

Portrait of Zenobia. Modern mould taken from an Alexandrian tetradrachm (Paris, Cabinet des Médailles n. 3647). For discussion of why this coin might preserve her true portrait, see the blog post, My Money On ZenobiaJudith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-39532524695819080282015-04-04T20:19:00.002+02:002015-04-06T14:11:16.725+02:00ELEGY FOR HATRA (Women: Last and Least)(Part I, click here; Part II, click here; Part III, click here)

 As of last count, only 13 life-size statues of mortal women are known from Hatra compared to some 120 statues of men. This undoubtedly reflects (I am sorry to say) womens' lower social status in Hatrene society. It seems that, as ever, even a Queen or Princess was first and foremost a female, and thus inferior in the greater scheme of things. Still, all is not bleak.

Location Location Location

Not only are there far more statues of men but a great many of them were placed in the most prestigious locations: 77 male statues come from the central Sacred Area of the city where the most important gods and goddesses were worshipped in their enormous temples. These are statues of kings, princes, and high officials. Only one statue of a woman made that grade.

The statue of Ebū daughter of Damyōn which has erected for her [the temple of] Bar-Mārēn ['the Son of Our Lord'] the god.*

Her father's name suggests he was a Greek, Δαμίων, an ancestry which might have had something to do with her singular honour. On the other hand, he gives no official or cult title nor does he boast of his paternal line (as in Damyōn, son of X son of Y). This leaves us rather at a loss. Still, the statue of Ebū (also transcribed as Abu) is exceptionally tall: while precise measurements are lacking, she is clearly well over life-size. Even more unusual is that her statue was erected and paid for by the temple itself -- one of only two mortals who received this honour** -- presumably in return for some great benefaction. But what? We have no idea.

Ebu's elaborate costume demonstrates that her family was very rich. The sleeves of her undergarment appear to be abundantly pleated (silk?) and she wears an ample full-length robe pinned by a broach at the shoulder. Other jewels include a choker around her throat, a heavy necklace, earrings, and bracelets ending in snake-heads(?). Her pose is typical of female statues with her right hand raised palm outwards either in prayer or respect for the gods while the left slightly lifts the stuff of her outer gown. She wears a striking and unusual headdress apparently built up of a three-level diadem covered by a raised stiff veil that runs down the back to her waist.

 Ebu remains a mystery but we have more information on another grand lady.

Queens and Princesses

Meet Princess Dushfari (left), daughter of King Sanatruq II and Queen Batsimia. Her mother was Sanatruq's chief wife. We assume that the king had several wives because Batsimia twice records the fact that she is the mother of the Crown Prince -- a statement that would hardly be necessary if she were the sole wife of the king.

This means, too, that Dushfari (apparently the only daughter of Batsimia) is the Number 1 Princess of Hatra at this time (238 CE). Such high rank is in keeping with the size of the statue dedicated in Shrine V, one of the tallest from Hatra (2.10 m/6.9'). It was found along with a much smaller but otherwise almost duplicate statue of her young daughter, Simia (below right).

Dushfari and her daughter both wear ample floor-length gowns with long, elaborately decorated unbelted chitons above.

Dushfari's neck is adorned with four necklaces (her daughter three): a short heavy choker, a chain with hanging ornaments, and two longer chain-like metallic necklaces, one ending in a round medallion and the other in a rectangular pendant and medallion.

Such long necklaces with medallions are also pictured on some statues of enthroned goddesses, which surely must be significant. One possibility is that the princess wears this as a 'badge of office' as priestess of the goddess Allat-Athena who was worshipped in Shrine V (see Part III). If so, her daughter could be wearing one such chain as a 'priestess in waiting'. Dushfari's astonishing headdress appears to be some kind of very high diadem but it is more likely that her hair was combed back and coiled high on her head (as in clearer on the simplified headdress worn by Simai) and this then topped by the ornate diadem around which was draped a decorated veil adorned with jewels. In the middle of the diadem is an oval medallion displaying a god in relief.

Murder Most Foul

This is Abu, daughter of Gabalu, the only statue that we are sure was made to commemorate a person who was already dead. Abu is seated on a chair placed on a high pedestal; the statue is about 1 m./3' high and the pedestal of much the same height. It comes from Shrine IV. A long inscription is written on the pedestal. It begins much like all the others but adds her death notice:

(This is) the statue of Abu, daughter of Gabalū, which has erected for her Aššā, her husband, the son of Šmešṭayyeb. She died at the age of 18.*

Abu wears gowns simpler but similar to those worn by Dushfari, but they are belted under her breasts which consequently are sculpted as two whirligigs! Her high conical headdress is made up of vertical levels decorated with large beads and topped by a wide veil that falls down her back. From her ears hang a magnificent pair of earrings, probably of silver or gold, which contrast a bit with some strings of beads: a pearl(?) choker that looks as if it's really about to choke her, a beaded necklace, a pendant necklace, and a long chain-like necklace ending in a pointed ornament. She raises her right hand to the gods while her left is busy pulling up the cloth of her gown and holding two flower-like objects.

Poor pale Lady Abu

The proportions of the statue are out of whack. Her right hand is far too large, her neck too thick, and she looks almost stunted. What could have happened to her?

Our Lord Maren, Our Lady Marten, the Son of Our Lord Bar-Maren, Balshamin and Atargatis, lay a curse on the one who killed Abu and on those who rejoice in the death of Abu, and against the women who filled and poured out the ... of Abu!
What's the ... missing word?

"Poisoned cup"?

We'll never know, but it led to the most extraordinary private drama that Hatra has ever left evidence for us to read.

Sliding down the social scale

Needless to say, all women who get statues are members of the elite but not all are from the tippy-top of the social pyramid. Ladies' statues were found in some of the smaller temples scattered throughout the living quarters of the city. Four came from Shrine V, including those of Princess Dushfari and her daughter, where Allat-Athena was the main recipient of cult (see Part III) although, even here, more than one divinity apparently was worshipped. It is unclear how many deities were worshipped in each of the smaller temples, probably reflecting the multiple guardians of those families, tribes, or clans who contributed to building and maintaining the shrine. From the little we know, it appears that the Hatrene divine world was not particularly well organized.**

The headless statue of Martabu, priestess of Isharbel, found in Shrine V (dated 235 AD; no picture, sorry) shows her plainly dressed with a cloth sash girdling her waist. No jewellery is mentioned. The inscription (quoted in Part III) tells us that her paternal grandfather was a priest, perhaps serving the same goddess, which hints that religious offices ran in some minor elite families. Martabu must be the same woman who dedicated a divine statue in Shrine V which called down blessings (using the formula 'for the life of...') on herself and her boss:

Martabu has sculpted for the life of herself and for Rabta, her superior [chief priest] and for whoever worships [the goddess].*

The sound of music

Simai daughter of Oge (left), from Shrine I, was in all likelihood also a priestess. Her statue (damaged around her mouth; no moustaches on girls!) was erected in 235 CE by her husband, himself a priest of the goddess Atargatis. Simai is also simply dressed, with just a pair of chokers as jewellery. She carries a tambourine, an instrument probably connected with her religious function. She could have been one of the religious musicians bound to her vocation by threats of death (Part III). As for her music, remember Exodus 15.20-21:

Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. Miriam answered them, "Sing to the LORD, for He is highly exalted

I, Woman, Did This Myself

A statue of Lady Qaimi (also from Shrine V), wears similar loose clothing tied by a single sash at her waist. Her jewellery is limited to three simple rings on her left hand (right hand missing). Her husband is a scribe and probably also a priest in the service of the god Bar-Maren. Qaimi is shown holding a kithara, a kind of lyre, in her lowered left hand. The inscription reads:

In Elul of the year 549 (= September 238 CE). The statue of Qaimi daughter of Abdsimia, the wine-seller, wife of Neshraqab, the scribe of the Bar-Maren [the Son of our Lord], which 'Isharbel the Virgin' has ordered her [to make]. And she herself has erected it for the life of herself and for the life of Neshraqab, her husband, and Absa, her brother, and for the life of all personnel of Bar-Maren, both inside and outside, and whoever is dear to them, all of them.
Her simple dress, the musical instrument, and her husband's vocation argue that Qaima is another priestess serving the goddess 'Isharbel the Virgin'. What is remarkable is that she erected her own statue. Made -- first and foremost -- 'for the life of herself ', she obviously felt the need to justify this act of self-aggrandisement by claiming it was at the explicit orders of the goddess ('She made me do it!'). The goddess' blessing then extends to her husband, her brother, and to all of her husband's colleagues in the religious community of Bar-Maren. The inclusion of her brother in the blessings opens a tiny window on Hatrene women's lives: it means that she maintained close relations with the 'house' into which she was born and was not handed over unconditionally to her husband's family when marrying him.

As a matter of some historical interest, too, this inscription also proves that the ancient Arabs drank wine -- and in sufficient quantities to propel Qaima's father, who was a wine-seller or vinter, into the local elite.

And on that happy note in these dismal days, Weingarten ("garden of wine") brings this series of posts on Hatra to a close.

To all my readers Happy Easter, Chag Sameach, or Whatever lifts your boat!

* Ebu's inscription H228; Abu: H30; Martabu: H31. Translations by Melammu Project and Raman Asha

** The other, also a statue of a woman (whose name is lost), was made by the temple or religious company of Istarbel (H38): The statue of ..., daughter of Bedšā ..., which has ordered for her Iššārbēl the virgin. Translation Raman Asha

** The deities worshipped in the central Sacred Area -- the triad of Maren ('Our Lord'), Marten ('Our Lady') and Bar-Maren ('the Son of Our Lord'), as well as the goddess Allat, and the god Shahiru (a god of dawn or a moon-god) -- also appear in inscriptions in the smaller shrines. In contrast, the cults of the many other divinities were practiced only in the smaller shrines. However, it is entirely possible that many of the deities known from the shrines are named manifestations of the main deities: e.g.Shamash = Maran; Nergal (mentioned in 8 shrines) = Bar-Maran?, Herakles, in turn, may be another name for Nergal (mentioned in 9 shrines); Allat and Allat-Athena may be another facet of Marten. Put together in this way, the four deities figure in ca. 80% of inscriptions. See L. Dirven, 'Religious Frontiers in the Syro-Mesopotamian Desert', In Frontiers in the Roman World (Leiden, 2011), 165-66.

Sources: Shinji Fukai, 'The Artifacts of Hatra and Parthian Art', East and West, 11, No. 2/3 (1960) 135-181; Lucinda Dirven, 'Aspects of Hatrene Religion: : A Note on the Statues of Kings and Nobles from Hatra,', In (T. Kaizer, ed.) The Variety of Local Religious Life in the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, Leiden 2008, 209-46; ead.'A Goddess with Dogs from Hatra', In Animals, Gods and Men from East to West, BAR IS 2516 (2013) 147-60; K. Dijkstra, Life and Loyalty: A Study in the Socio-Religious Culture of Syria and Mesopotamia in the Graeco-Roman Period Based on Epigraphical Evidence (Leiden, 1995); T. Kaizer, 'Some Remarks about the Religious Life of Hatra', Topoi 10 (2000) 229-52.

Illustrations

Top left: Statue of Ebu d. Damyoun. Status: Replica destroyed by ISIS (video 4 April 2015); location of original presumed to be in Baghdad. Photo credit: U.N.E.D. Archivos Mesopotamia

2nd left: Mosul marble statue of Princess Doshfari. Iraq Museum # 56752 Photo credit: Iraq Museum 2008 (State Board of Antiquities and Heritage) p. 29.

Right: Mosul marble statue of Princess Doshfari and white marble statue of her daughter Simia (Iraq Museum 56753). Photo via: Pinterest:   Found on jeannepompadour.tumblr.com

3rd left: Local yellow limestone statue of Abu, daughter of Gabalu. Iraq Museum # 56730. Photo credit: Suppressed History Archives (8 March 2015)

 4th left: Mosul marble statue of Simai, daughter of Oge. Mosul Museum # 21. Status: unknown. Photo credit: S. Fukai (see sources above) p. 151, Pl. 12.Judith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-27023183965818438552015-03-25T17:37:00.003+01:002015-04-04T21:13:24.624+02:00ELEGY FOR HATRA (Part III: Goddesses and Putative Priestesses)(Part I, click here; Part II, click here)

Three Goddesses and a guy-lion

Allat, the Arab goddess of war, is the central figure on this stone relief from Hatra (once covered with thin sheets of gold or silver). She is flanked by two smaller female figures, most probably her daughters al-Izza and Munat, with right hands raised up, palms forward, in the typical Hatrene manner indicating benediction or respectful prayer. Although these deities are of Arab origin, Allat is shown with the attributes of the Greek goddess Athena: a gorgon head on her breastplate, armed with a spear, a helmet, and carrying a shield marked with her lunar symbol. The eyes and the costume are rendered in the local Parthian fashion.

The fascinating thing about this relief is the combination of strong Parthian features and borrowed Greek traits -- the Greek input seen here, obviously, in dressing up Allat as Athena but also more subtly in the bend of her left leg and slight body tilt which breaks the typically stiff Parthian pose. Even so, their eyes (once inlaid with white seashells with bitumen-black dots for pupils) are set straight forward.

The goddesses are perched on a lion -- Allat's sacred animal par excellence -- pictured with an extravagant flame-like mane (it's always a male lion) and its tail wrapped, pussy-cat like, around its hind leg. The association of Allat with lions was noted by Lucian, a 2nd-century CE Syrian author, in his work on De Dea Syria ('The Gods of Syria', 41). Lucian describes the temple at the sacred city of Hieropolis where the local goddess (Allat, often identified with a similar, earlier goddess, Atargatis) appears under the guise of Greek Hera:

 The sanctuary faces the sunrise…. In it are enthroned the cult statues, Hera [Allat/Atargatis] and the god, Zeus, who they call by a different name [Baal-Hadad]. Both are golden, both seated, though Hera [Allat/Atargatis] is borne on lions....
 We saw just such an enthroned Allat with her lions on the so-called Cerberus relief (pictured in Part II).

The relief showing Allat standing with her daughters was found in one of the smaller shrines in Hatra (known as Shrine V) outside of the central Sacred Area, along with three more reliefs of Allat-as-Athena. Inscriptions from the same sanctuary name the goddess as ˀšrbl and ˀšrbl btlh, 'Iššar-Bel' and 'Iššar-Bel the virgin', harking back to Ishtar, the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of sex, love, and war, whose symbol, too, was a lion. Two of the inscriptions come from statue bases dedicated by women, one of whom was named as the priestess Martabu:

In the month Adar of the year 546 (= March 235 CE). The statue of Martabu, priestess of Isharbel, [creator] of the Universe, which [is] erected for her [by] Bara, her son, son of Abdshalma son of Bara, the priest, and his brother has made the [garment?] for the life of themselves and for the life of their sons and for the life of whoever is dear to them. Shabaz, the sculptor.*
It's very likely that Shrine V was dedicated to Allat in the guise of Iššar-Bel the virgin, where she was visited primarily by priestesses and ordinary women.

Three more goddesses. Or are they mortals?

The three female figures on this relief look pretty glum (even by Hatrene standards). I must admit that they are almost like clones, being of the same height and dressed exactly alike. All wear bright red diadems in the form of high cylindrical crowns (poloi) over their black-coloured hair. Long veils hang down their backs. Each figure slightly lifts her skirt in a typical Hatrene female gesture. One figure grasps a mirror (or tamburine or perhaps even a plate) in her right hand. The others hold palm branches(?) with trailing ribbons.

Are they goddesses, or mortal women? Or, as I suspect, are they three priestesses engaged in a ritual act that is now entirely unintelligible to us?

Note the red marks on their cheeks.

We have enough statues of male priests from Hatra to know that they can be identified by a circle incised on both cheeks -- a mark never found on non-priestly dignitaries but only on statues of priests. While it is impossible to tell from their statues if the circles are made by scarification, branding, or tattooing, Lucian (De Dea Syria, 59) does say that all devotees of the goddess at Hieropolis are tattooed on their necks or wrists. In such cases, the tattoo would mark a person as belonging to the goddess. Temple staff at Hatra may indeed have been considered as the chattel 'property' of a deity. A kind of sacred servitude surely underlies a law posted at the city gates which threatened with death any female musician and singer of Maren, Marten, and Bar-Maren who leaves the city.*

Not only do the three ladies have red marks on their cheeks but they are not wearing any jewellery other than (as I would argue) the diadem of the goddess they serve. The lines around their throats probably do not indicate multiple necklaces but rather are thin sashes that tied their gowns.

To see what they are missing, check out the clunky gold jewellery worn by the three goddesses at the top of the post and the bling on this fragmentary figure (left, from Shrine I): a gilded polos topped by a long veil, golden girdle under her breasts, knock-out gold earrings and a heavy gold necklace that would make Cartier blush. I doubt, too, that real goddesses actually carried their own ritual implements. If they hold anything, it will be a symbol of authority, such as Athena's spear or this goddess' sceptre.

Inside the holy shrine

For similar reasons, I suspect that the women depicted on this model shrine are also priestesses and not images of any goddesses themselves. The altar is in the form of a temple, with four pillars at the corners and four identical female figures between the posts. The women wear short coats over their gowns, with open V-shaped neckline, and are girdled by double sashes just under the breasts. Their hair is parted in the middle and combed back with the ends coiled up high on their heads. Each figure holds fruit in her right hand and a well-filled cornucopia in her left. It appears (though I can't swear to it) that they are bare-footed. Statues of male priests are also usually identified by bare legs and feet.

It seems that no single trait is sufficient to distinguish Hatrene deities from mortals. In fact, without inscriptions it is often difficult to tell representations of goddesses and mortals apart.

A seated woman (left; from Shrine VI) wears a plain crescent-shaped diadem on her head and a heavy but not ostentatious necklace. Yet she is surely a goddess for she holds an orb in her left hand, symbolizing her power over the world and, in her right hand, a staff or sceptre now lost. Perhaps sceptre and orb were borrowed from Roman divine and imperial regalia (but this is just a guess).

This very goddess appeared earlier this month on the ISIS video recording the jihadist rampage through the Mosul Museum. Her statue was seen being flipped off its stand and onto the floor, breaking off its head (Gates of Nineveh). The good news is that the barbarians destroyed a plaster replica and that the original statue (pictured here) is still safe in Baghdad.

Unlike this next goddess.

She had her head chopped off and stolen during the looting of the Baghdad Museum in 2003 -- while American troops stood by. Alas, ISIS is not the only force responsible for the catastrophic destruction of Iraq's antiquities, though it is by far the deadliest. My picture of the goddess (left) is a composite photograph with her head put back where it belongs: since the almost life-size statue was too heavy to join the exodus of loot, it was left behind (the sad headless image may be accessed on the CAIS website).**

Be that as it may, she was once a beautiful goddess, though we don't know her by name (Shrine VII). Her gown has heavily patterned sleeves and is more elaborate than most worn by other deities. She also wears a richer version of the same short garment with V-neckline and girdled under the breasts as the priestesses(?) on the model shrine above. Her head is crowned by a short polos encircled by a laurel wreath and covered by a veil that drops down the back. Heavy earrings ending in pointed cones hang from her ears. Her open hands touch what looks like a wreath on her lap; her left hand also holds a palm branch which rests on her lower arm.

Stuck on the Throne

The absolutely static enthroned figures may most truly 'personify' Hatrene art. The rules of frontality are completely dominant and any sense of movement or activity entirely absent. Such rules are never broken ... but they can be made to budge a bit. Standing figures sometimes put one foot forward which does express slight movement. King Uthal rather timidly does this, and the high-ranking military officer advances a little more forthrightly (both illustrated in Part II). One of the minor goddesses on the Allat relief at the top of this post lifts her right shoe onto the lion's mane, and all three ladies shift their weight by almost imperceptibly bending a knee -- a pose undoubtedly adopted (albeit hesitantly) along with Athena's own attributes from the Graeco-Roman sphere.

We'll look at this again as we examine the very last group of statues from Hatra -- those of mortal women who are not involved (or at least not overtly involved) in the religious sphere.

Queens, Princesses, Noblewomen ... in the next and last part of Elegy for Hatra.

So, think with me about this picture (left). Who is this woman seated on a chair? She is made of a rough local limestone rather than the more precious 'Mosul marble' (in fact, a finer limestone) used by the better-off. And she is bare-headed but marked by lunar imagery.

Your thoughts are welcome as comments.

Till next week, then.

Part IV: click here

* Thus, in contrast with cities such as Palmyra, there is evidence for a prominent female priestess at Hatra as well as female temple personnel. Inscription cited from Raha Masha.

**The head was listed by Interpol among the "Top 30 Missing Artifacts" stolen in 2003; and is one of ca. 8,000 objects still listed as missing.

Sources

Inscriptions from Temple V: The Melammu Project; Shinji Fukai, 'The Artifacts of Hatra and Parthian Art', East and West, 11, No. 2/3 (1960) 135-181;  Lucinda Dirven, 'Aspects of Hatrene Religion', in (T. Kaizer, ed.) The Variety of Local Religious Life in the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods,Leiden 2008, 209-46; ead. "My Lord With His Dogs: Continuity and Change in the Cult of Nergal in Parthian Mesopotamia" in L. Greisiger, C. Rammelt & J. Tubach (eds.), Edessa in hellenistisch-romischer Zeit (Beirut 2009), 47-68; K. Jakubiak,in (L. Dirven, ed.) Hatra: Politics, Culture and Religion between Parthia and Rome, 2013, 91-106.

Illustrations

Top left: Limestone relief of Allat from Hatra Temple V. 1st c CE. Temple V. Iraq Museum #56774 Photo credit: Virtual Museum of Iraq

2nd left: Local yellow limestone. Head of a goddess (Tyche?). 2-early 3 c CE. H. 53.5 cm. Status: Stolen from Baghdad Museum; still missing. Photo credit: akg-images

3rd left: Mosul marble high-relief of three goddesses or priestesses. 0.44 high x 0.44 wide. Mosul Museum # 53. Status: unknown. Photo credit: Lynn Abercrombie/NationalGeographicCreative

4th left: Ivory(?) fragmentary relief of goddess flanked by bird (eagle) perched on pillar. Temple I. Photo credit: CAIS-soas

5th left: Mosul marble model shrine from Temple I. H. 20.3 cm. Baghdad Museum # 57794. Status: unknown. Photo credit: Lynn Abercrombie/NationalGeographicCreative

6th left: Limestone statue of anonymous seated goddess from Temple VI. Status: Replica in Mosul Museum destroyed by ISIS (Gates of Nineveh). Photo credit: ErickBonnierPictures

7th left: Limestone statue of anonymous seated goddess from temple VII. Status: Head broken off and stolen from Baghdad Museum; still missing. Photo credit: CAIS/soas

Bottom left: Local yellow limestone female figurine. Photo credit: via Suppressed History ArchivesJudith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-12188764487297969312015-03-15T16:51:00.002+01:002015-03-25T18:55:23.285+01:00ELEGY FOR HATRA (PART II: THE STATUES)(For Part I, click here)

The Image of King Uthal, the merciful, noble-minded servant of God, blessed by God

King Uthal

Thus reads an Aramaic inscription on the base of the statue of a king of Hatra (left). Alas, mercy and noble-mindedness are in very short supply in today's Iraq. King Uthal's monument was among those smashed in the Mosul Museum last week by the thugs of ISIL/Daesh. All that really matters to those savages is the kick that comes from unlimited violence and the thrill of destruction.

No atrocity too far in the name of God.

We know almost nothing about King Uthal other than that he was an early Arab king who ruled Hatra. We don't even know the dates of his reign. Sooner or later, of course, with proper study of this and other royal statues, archaeologists would have been able to place him in the right time frame or at least the correct chronological order. There are all sorts of clues in the statue itself -- the cut and rich embroidery of his clothes, its belt and buckle, the trim of his beard, the conical pearl-encrusted(?) headdress, the shape of his long sword and its pommel, and last but certainly not least, the form and formula of the Aramaic inscription written in the very particular Hatrene script. Alas, this will never happen now. His statue is lying on the ground, broken into pieces, as you can see in the video image below (his is on the right).*

Bye-bye King Uthal, whoever you may have been.

Islamacist Porn

A few words, if I may, about sharing Islamacist propaganda videos. The jihadists are playing with us when they produce these films. The images are meant to shock and enrage while making us feel completely powerless. These pornographic videos are NOT documentations of acts of violence, they are THE violence.**

After the Mosul incident, it has become clear that ISIS operates like a reality show. The violence is choreographed and planned precisely for the video footage to be produced - a visual spectacle of violence to be shared by us in social media. By sharing these videos, we become ISIS's media outlets who disseminate and propagate their ideology. We are both the audience and the media for these visual spectacles of destruction....***
Simply put, we are doing exactly what they want us to do by spreading their vile videos. Thus, please stop sharing; instead, darken your screens for them. Having said this, why in the name of heaven (you may ask) am I violating my own injunction by reproducing a scene from their rampage through the Mosul Museum? Because it shows one of those perverts with a hand on his crotch, which really says it all.

And now to work.

Besides the remarkable architecture of Hatra -- which we wrote about in Part I of this post -- the finds from the city include about 300 statues and reliefs, all in a very characteristic local style. With few exceptions, the statues are somewhat larger than life-size (ca. 1.90m / 6'3") and all were carved to be seen from the front since backs and sides were left only roughly worked. About half of the sculptures represent gods and goddesses and thus have an overtly religious character.

Of course, the division between religious and secular is largely artificial, reflecting more the way we think than how the ancients did. The king of Hatra will have held supreme religious authority in addition to his grip over all forms of social and political power.

King Sanatruq II (r ca 205-240/1)

For example, statues of a number of kings show them carrying small figures of deities (left). Whether this pictures them in the act of dedicating a graven image, or indicates a king's particular closeness to the god-in-hand is not clear. But it certainly stresses the king's active role in religion. Some kings are known to have also served as the chief priest of Shamash, the great god of the city. Even without the proof of inscriptions, it's very likely that all kings held this office.

Given Hatra's architecture, one can hardly doubt its overwhelming importance as a religious centre: the huge walled Sacred Enclosure in the heart of the city takes up about one-fifth of the total area within the circle of its defensive walls (see Part I). Inside this sacred area were the main temples -- a complex of enormous halls covered by barrel vaults (called the Great Iwans). These were the homes of Hatra's most important deities: Maran ('Our Lord' = Shamash, the Sun-god), Marten ('Our Lady' = Allat) and Bar-Maran ('the Son of Our Lord' = Nergal?). Another temple in the forecourt of the sacred area was dedicated to the goddess Allat (its entrance -- with the camel mother nursing her calf, and two royal figures on guard -- is pictured above). Besides the great temples in the centre of the city, many gods and goddesses also received cult in 14 small shrines belonging to different tribal groups scattered about the domestic quarters of the city. Eight of these shrines were dedicated to a god who looked like Greek Herakles (one of his statues in Part I, lowest left) but worshipped as the ancestral deity of the family or tribe and who was assimilated to Nergal, the Babylonian god of the Netherworld. When he wasn't looking vaguely Greek, this is what Nergal looked like:

Lady Allat is seated on her throne, looking on with approval. The Hatran Netherworld, though, doesn't look like a place you'd want to visit.

Kings and Queens

About 120 statues of Hatrene kings, noblemen and noblewomen also survive(d) -- and these are the sculptures I'd like to focus on today if only because we can more readily engage with humans than with Nergal and his Cerberus-dogs of death.

What can these upper-crust statues tell us about the social and religious life of the city?

High-ranking military officer

It is striking that there isn't a huge variety in the statues. Despite the obvious differences of details and gender, the sculptors did not greatly vary pose, costumes, or attributes of the individuals they portrayed. They paid little attention to individual facial features. These are not portraits. We can't claim to know what any of the even highest-ranked royals really looked like.

Thanks to the inscriptions, however (on 42 statues and 22 bases now missing their statues), we do have some names and dates of local rulers, names of certain officials, and the names of deities.  The inscriptions, too, are quite standardized: about a third simply say "Image of ..." followed by a personal name, and another third also tell us who was responsible for erecting the statue -- family members, or friends, or devoted subjects of a royal figure. A few texts, like that on King Uthal's statue, add some pious thoughts.

Kings and Princes

King Sanatruq I (r ca 128-140)

Twenty-seven life-size statues can be certainly identified as those of kings. Most come from within the central Sacred Area but some few were found at the city's gates, too. All kings are dressed in sumptuously embroidered long-sleeved tunics with ornate Parthian trousers and elaborately worked belts. Some kings (and only kings) wear diadems or high tiaras. When not carrying mini-statues of gods -- like Sanatruq II (above left) or eagles, the iconic bird of Shamash (below left), their majesties stand with the right hand raised, palm facing outward in a gesture of benediction or prayerful worship. Their left hands either hold a palm branch or rest on a long sword. In the ancient Near East, worshippers attending sacrifices very often carried palm branches. In fact, they still do in many Christian churches on Palm Sunday....

Princes

Princes (at least five statues) are dressed very like their fathers, in richly embroidered garments, but appear as beardless youths and have short curly hair. The sons of King Sanatruq I (below) are shown with daggers hanging from their belts. The better-preserved figure, of Crown Prince Abdsamiya, has his right hand raised and holds a palm branch in his left. He is wearing an astonishingly rich tunic embroidered with the figure of a goddess holding a staff or standard on his upper body and a rather Greek-looking god below the hips -- perhaps, in a visual pun, it is Bar-Maran, "the Son of Our Lord", just as Abdsamiya is the son of the lord-king.

Princes Nayhara and Abdsamiya

His brother Nayhara's tunic is simpler (though still gorgeous) but note, too, subtle status differences in the accessories worn by the brothers: the crown prince wears a heavier, more ornate necklace and a bigger belt. I imagine that, every time Abdsamiya walked into a room, his younger brother looked pale by comparison.

So, we are not surprised to learn that Abdsamiya ascended to the throne after his father's death. Ruling from ca 180-205, he was the king who twice beat off assaults on the city by the Roman emperor Septimius Severus (in 193 and 197 CE), as recounted in Part I of this post. In turn, his son Sanatruq II -- seen above, carrying the statuette of a god -- became king. He had the misfortune to fight against Ardashir, first king of the new Sasanian dynasty, who twice attacked Hatra -- in ca 230 and again ten years later. The first time, Sanatruq II held the city safe. The second time, it fell. As a temple inscription reads: The Fortune of the king [is] with the gods. Alas, his god could not help him. He was the last king of Hatra.

King holding eagle adorned with jewellery

That was his fate in life.

His fate in the Mosul Museum was as dire. Sanatruq's was one of the four king's statues destroyed by ISIL/Daesh in their ignorant and barbaric rampage. Most of the 27 statues of Hatrene kings are for the moment safe in the Baghdad Museum but the losses in Mosul mean that 15% of the kings of Hatra -- along with the monuments of many of their subjects -- are gone. Alas!

And what about their Queens and Princesses?

That will be told in the next post. This has become too long.

 (Part III: Goddesses and Putative Priestesses, click here)

* For the latest reports on damage to the statues in the Mosul Museum, follow Christopher Jones on his Gates of Nineveh blog (see Sources).

**According to Mosul Eye, the footage in the video published by ISIS last week was shot in July-August 2014 and NOT February 2015. We must ask ourselves why ISIS chose this specific time to post the video.

*** Quoting Ömür Harmanşah, Associate Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago (Facebook, 27 February 2015).

Sources: Christopher Jones, Gates of Nineveh blog, Assessing the Damage at the Mosul Museum, Part 2: the Sculptures from Hatra ; Lucinda Dirven, "Aspects of Hatrene Religion: A Note on the Statues of Kings and Nobles from Hatra," in The Variety of Local Religious Life in the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Leiden, 2008), 209-246; ead. "My Lord With His Dogs: Continuity and Change in the Cult of Nergal in Parthian Mesopotamia" in L. Greisiger, C. Rammelt & J. Tubach (eds.), Edessa in hellenistisch-romischer Zeit (Beirut 2009), 47-68; ead. "Religious Frontiers in the Syrian-Mesopotamian Desert" in Frontiers in the Roman World (Leiden, 2011) 157-173 .

Illustrations

Top: Life-size statue of King Uthal, 2nd century CE. Photo credit: © ARTEHISTORIA

Upper centre: Portal of temple of Allat, in Sacred Enclosure. Photo credit:

Middle centre: Relief of the Sun-god (Bar-Maran?). Photo credit: Amir Kooshanzaman blog.

Top left: Life-size statue of King Sanatruq II. Early 3rd century CE. Photo credit: Iraqi Cultural Center, Washington DC.

Centre: Relief slab picturing the god Nergal with 'Cerberus' and enthroned Allat: Istanbul Archaeological Museum). Städte in der Wüste. Petra, Palmyra und Hatra (Stuttgart 1996) pl. 188. Photo via L. Dirven, "My Lord With His Dogs: Continuity and Change in the Cult of Nergal in Parthian Mesopotamia" (see Sources) Colour Pl. 1.

Second left: Life-size statue of a military officer , (IM 58084), Iraq Museum. Photo credit:ICONMuseum © Photo Scala, Florence.

Third left: Life-size statue of King Sanatruq I. 2nd century CE. Photo credit: © Scala Archives, Florence/ Art Resourse, NY. Via CUNY Academic Commons.

Below centre: Life-size statues of the sons of King Sanatruq I. 2nd century CE. Photo credit: Faces of Ancient Middle East (Part 17): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CU6WJpRcF4

Below left: Detail of life-size statue of an unidentified king carrying an eagle (insignia of Shamash). Photo credit: Col. Mary Prophit, United States Army, 2010. Via Gates of Nineveh blog. Judith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-74779546704701334542015-03-08T15:35:00.005+01:002015-03-15T17:27:20.138+01:00ELEGY FOR HATRAThe City of the Sun God

I began writing this post after the Islamicists' rampage through the Mosul Museum, but now news reports are coming in that ISIL bulldozers are also on their way to destroy the ancient city of Hatra some 80 km away.* This has not yet been confirmed, but it leaves me little time to explain just what we shall be losing if it turns out to be true.

The spectacular ruins of Hatra are located in Jazirah  (the area between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris) in Iraq, to the southwest of Mosul. To get an idea of the site, have a look at this great video produced by UNESCO. Don't bother with the wishfully anachronistic text; just look.

(Because UNESCO does not allow bloggers to embed videos, I can only link to it, so click on video and then on the direct Utube link). After which, come back and read the rest....

The fortress city of Hatra arose in the Jazirah desert where it guarded the two main caravan routes connecting Mesopotamia with Syria and Anatolia. The city was an independent small kingdom (including not only the town but a wide territory around it) on the fringe of the Parthian Empire. By the first century BCE it had grown into a strongly fortified city, one of several such cities which sprung up in the space between Parthia and the Roman Empire.

Hatra, Palmyra, Petra and Dura-Europos all made their fortune as trading stops between east and west. These cities were client states of either Rome or Parthia, with Hatra choosing Parthia. The city was ruled by lords, later called kings, who were vassals of the Parthian King of Kings. Inscriptions refer to Hatrene rulers as 'King of Arab' and the territory is named as 'Arab', with the nomadic population that roamed the steppe known as 'Arabs'.

 Hatra (in Aramaic htr` ) is undoubtedly our best preserved example of a Parthian city. The city must have been of great strategic importance at the time. Roman historians tell us that the emperors Trajan and Septimius Severus personally attempted its conquest.

Trajan, who had planned to extend the Roman frontier up to the river Tigris, marched southwards along the river Euphrates, capturing great parts of Babylonia up to the Persian Gulf and even the Parthian capital at Ctesiphon (near modern Baghdad). On his retreat from there in 117 CE he attacked Hatra. Dio Cassius (68.31.1) says that the siege failed chiefly because of "the lack of water, timber, and green fodder". The emperor Septimius Severus met the same fate eighty years later, when the city was under the rule of  the Hatrene king Barsêmías (thus Herodian 3.1.30; probably king 'Abdsêmyâ of the inscriptions). He laid siege to Hatra twice (in 193 and 197) without achieving anything. The position of the city, its strong walls, and the strength of its warriors eventually forced the emperor to withdraw. It was in the period between those failed sieges at the beginning and the end of the 2nd century that Hatra reached the peak of its prosperity and became one of the most beautiful cities in the East.

Defeat finally came at the hands of Ardashir, who had overthrown the Parthians and founded the new Sasanian-Persian empire. Even he failed at his first attempt (230 CE) and only cracked it ten years later (240 CE). The survivors were deported, the city abandoned and never again inhabited. In effect, we have an entire city more or less as it was when people left it in the middle of the third century.

Hatra is a unique example of a fortified Parthian city.

The fortification system is immense. The city was guarded by two concentric and nearly circular city walls almost two km in diameter and 6.4 km (4 miles) in circumference. The outer wall (3m thick and 10m high) was made of clay bricks with 4 gates, 11 bastions, 28 great towers and more than 160 smaller towers. Once any enemy had crossed this first wall, he'd still be faced with a moat and the second wall. In fact, the heavily fortified gates of the second wall could only be reached by ascending up ramps which run parallel to the wall.

In the very center of the city is a huge rectangular sacred area of about 440 by 320 m [1500 x 1000'], surrounded by a massive wall and divided by another wall into an enormous forecourt and a smaller court where the main temples are situated. Hatra was clearly not only a political and economic powerhouse but also a great religious centre for the desert people living in and around the city.

All the buildings inside the sacred area are temples characterized by iwans (great halls open to the front and roofed with high barrel vaults). The striking architectural feature of the iwans, namely the barrel vault, is an innovation which came in quite suddenly in the Parthian period, suggesting a kind of a technical revolution at that time. The buildings display a unique mixture of Assyrian, Hellenistic, Parthian, and Roman styles.

The main shrine in that central sacred area is the so-called Great Temple (or Great Iwan), an enormous structure with that once rose to 30 metres. This was the home of Hatra's most important gods, Maren ("Our Lord") and Bar-Maren ("the Son of Our Lord"). The square temple of the sun-god Shamash (probably = Maren) was attached to the Great Iwan. Shamash was undoubtedly the chief god of the pantheon as can be read from the legend on Hatrene coins, "Enclosure of Shamash", which suggests that the whole city was dedicated to the Sun-god.  Those iwans and the Shamash Temple were built at the beginning of the 2nd century.

Within the sacred area are three more temples dedicated to other gods and one to Allat, the goddess of the city. At least fourteen smaller temples honouring a host of different deities are scattered elsewhere throughout the domestic quarters of the city. Foremost among these gods was a Heracles-figure, who was worshipped in Hatra under the name of Nergal (below left).

Which brings us back to ISIL's barbaric smashing of statues within the Mosul Museum.

As Christopher Jones tells us on his blog Gates of Nineveh,

The damage by ISIS to the artistic legacy of Hatra has been catastrophic.

This tragedy is compounded by the fact that Hatrene sculpture has been chronically understudied. Almost all of it was excavated in the 20th century and the finds never left Iraq.... Very few scholars outside of Iraq have had the opportunity to study the statues.

And now they are gone.

With heavy heart, we follow Christopher and turn to the statues and their fate in Part II of this post.

(For Part II, click here)

* Up to date reports on the Mosul Museum from the blog, Gates of Nineveh - Part I: Assessing the Damage at the Mosul Museum, Part 1: The Assyrian Artifacts, and Part II: Assessing the Damage at the Mosul Museum, Part II: The Sculptures from Hatra. And on the damage to the city of Nimrud: ISIL 'bulldozes' ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud  (predicting that Hatra would be next).

Sources: Lucinda Dirven, 'Aspects of Hatrene Religion', in (T. Kaizer, ed.) The Variety of Local Religious Life in the Near East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods,Leiden 2008, 209-46; Rüdiger Schmitt on the 'Iranian World: Parthian Hatra' via CAIS/SOAS; Thomas Twohey, on 'Ancient Hatra' via Roman Empire net;

Video Link: HATRA: UNESCO/NHK World Heritage Site Documentary
The partnership between UNESCO and NHK Japanese broadcasting corporation builds on state-of-the-art digital visual and sound processing technologies for the production of short digital TV documentaries on Heritage using Hi-Vision technology as well as quality 3-D moving images and reconstruction images related to the World Heritage Sites.

Illustrations

Top right: Map of Region.

Top left: The ruins in 1911 (excavations led by Walter Andrae of the German excavation team working in Assur from 1906 to 1911). Photo via: CAIS-SOAS.

Second left: Schematic plan of Hatra; after J. Khalil Ibrahim, Pre-Islamic Settlement in Jazirah, Baghdad, 1986, 321.

Top centre: View of the Great Iwan after restoration. Photo credit: UNESCO/© Photo Scala, Florence

Second centre: Detail view of the Great Iwan after restoration. Photo credit: Dieter Radow

Lower left: Busts of gods and goddesses built into the temple walls. Photo credit: University of Chicago, Photographic Collection

Lowest left: Statue of Heracles-Nergal. Photo credit: Wikipedia  Judith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-63576910228308021022015-02-18T17:04:00.000+01:002015-02-19T21:45:12.282+01:00AMAZONS! (Part III)Continuing my review of Adrienne Mayor's The Amazons (Part I, II)

According to Homer [Il. 6, 168-195], when the Greek hero Bellerophon travelled to Lycia in southwestern Anatolia, the king of the country ordered him to accomplish three tasks:

[He] first commanded Bellerophon to kill the savage monster, the Chimera, who was not a human being but a goddess, for she had the head of a lion and the tail of a serpent while her body was that of a goat, and she breathed forth flames of fire; but Bellerophon slew her, for he was guided by signs from heaven. He next fought the far-famed Solymi [a savage tribe], and this, he said, was the hardest of all his battles. Thirdly, he killed the Amazons, women who were the peers of men ....

So Homer already knew of warrior women who were the 'peers of men' (though he located them in Anatolia and not to the north of Thrace and across the steppe, as many later writers did). In fact, the Bellerophon story -- told as a tale-within-a-tale -- could be an 'echo' from a pre-Homeric epic. If so, the Amazon myth, too, might date back to an even earlier tradition. Whatever its ancestry, Homer clearly considered Bellerophon's defeat of the Amazons as equal to his other epic deeds. Our hero, thus, is monster-slayer, barbarian-slayer, and Amazon-slayer.

That rings a bell....

Fast forward to Athens, 447-432 BCE.

When the Athenians rebuilt the Parthenon on the Acropolis -- which had been burnt down by the Persians 33 years earlier (480 BCE) -- they decorated its sides with carved marble panels (metopes), each showing a mythological victory over a major enemy. The East side showed the Olympian gods defeating the evil giants and beginning their reign over the world. On the South (left), Theseus, legendary king of Athens, battled the monstrous centaurs. The North had scenes of the Trojan War, the Greeks' epic triumph over the Trojans, their ultimate enemies. And the West metope? The West pictured the ancient Athenians fighting the Amazons.

They never forgot their war against women. Almost 100 years later, the orator Lysias began his praise of Athens by citing as first of their ancestors' great deeds their hard-fought victory over the Amazons. Naming the Amazons as 'daughters of Ares [Mars]', Lysias declared that in ancient times

... they alone of the people round about were armed with iron, and they were first of all to mount horses.... They were accounted as men for their high courage, rather than as women for their sex; so much more did they seem to excel men in their spirit than to be at a disadvantage in their form....

[After enslaving all the tribes in their own country, seeking greater glory, they rode on to conquer Athens].

 They would not return home ... for they perished on the spot, and were punished for their folly, thus making our city's memory imperishable for its valor; while owing to their disaster in this region they rendered their own country nameless.*

Thus, the great Amazon empire vanished.

Did the Athenians really believe this guff? Evidently. For them, the Amazon invasion of Attica in the distant past was an historical fact.

Certainly, it was a true enough part of their past for them to commemorate the defeat of the Amazons not only on the Parthenon metopes but, again, on the great shield (above; once an estimated 4 m [12'] high) held by Athena on the massive gold- and-ivory  statue of the goddess dedicated in her temple in 438 BCE.

But, surely, we are not going to believe such an outlandish tale. Is it really any more than a 'Just So' story? ("Why, Daddy, are women subordinate to men?" "Because our ancestors beat the uppity Amazons, son.") And, just so, the Greek social order re-established its authority. Thereafter, the tale is endlessly embellished, as only the Greeks could, through their love of story-telling

Or might there possibly be some kernels of truth in it, after all?

Adrienne Mayor, in her new book, The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World, argues that there is real-world history behind the obvious folklore.

 Amazons were modeled on stories of self-confident women of [Scythian] steppe cultures who fought for glory and survival and enjoyed male companionship, on terms that seemed extraordinary to the ancient Greeks.

 The popularity of Amazon stories and images suggests that Greek women and men enjoyed imagining heroes and heroines interacting as equals and seeking adventure and glory in hunting and battle.
Among the nomads of the steppes, girls and boys would wear the same practical clothing and learn horseback riding and archery, so that, later, a woman could ride her horse to hunt or care for the herds, or skirmish with enemies, as necessity demanded, alongside other women, or together with men. Scythian society was certainly not female-dominated, but simply woman had a more equal status -- if only because female participation was essential in that harsh, unforgiving landscape.

Self-sufficient women were valued and could achieve high status and renown. It is easy to see how these commonsense, routine features of nomad life could lead outsiders like the Greeks -- who kept females dependent on males -- to glamorize steppe women as mythic Amazons.

Horse riders, archers, fighters, Scythian women were sexually free, armed, and dangerous. As The Amazons amply demonstrates, many Scythian graves contain battle-scarred skeletons of women buried with their weapons, horses, and other prestige items. That strong, ambitious women could lead raiding parties was exaggerated in Greek myths into a kind of war of the sexes, pitting powerful Amazon queens against great Greek heroes (like Theseus, Herakles, and Achilles).

Mayor's book is popular history at its best. Much of her archaeological evidence is new -- such as her descriptions of 'Scythian' female graves with horses and weapons. She chooses wonderful illustrations which makes the book enjoyable and easy to read. However, I am not the only one to notice that she combines testimony from hundreds of years apart without weighing the problems of transmission ... and covers tribes spread over thousands of miles and separated by many centuries as if they were neighbours and could have been known to the ancient Greeks (and Romans).

True, we have to deal with the evidence as we have it. That means relying on Greek and Latin texts (many fragmentary; more quite late) because the tribes of the steppes left nothing at all in writing. Perhaps, too, nomadic life didn't change much, even over long periods of time and great distances.

But the Greek view of nomads -- and thus of the Amazons -- certainly did change. Very early vase paintings show the warrior women dressed and armed just like the Greeks, wearing short chitons (exposing one breast) with crested helmets, breastplates, and large round shields. That suggests to me that the original stories did not associate the Amazons with Scythians. By the end of the sixth century, as Mayor convincing argues, the Greeks were becoming more familiar with the nomad groups around the Black Sea and beyond, whose women and men rode horses and dressed alike. Accordingly, pictures of Amazons melded into Scythian horsewomen and they were now depicted with leggings or trousers, sometimes tattooed, and armed with a full range of steppe weapons: battle-axe, a quiver full of arrows, a pair of light spears, a crescent shield, and a sword.

In the Greek myths Amazons are always defeated and either killed or, very rarely, domesticated by marriage. They always die young and beautiful. Despite their bravery, erotic appeal and prowess, they are doomed. But a short splendid life and violent death in battle was also the perfect heroic ideal in myth. Compare the sad fate of Bellerophon whose story began this post: he was thrown by his flying horse, Pegasus, and ended up a blind, lame hermit.

Stories about Amazons were amazingly popular in antiquity. Though more than a thousand Greek vases depicting Amazons still survive, that's only a tiny fraction of the Amazon-related paintings and sculpture that once existed.  Only Herakles was pictured more often. Women warriors undoubtedly fascinated the Greeks and they do not cease to fascinate us today. The Amazons has just brought them one step closer to reality.

The Amazons:
Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World
Adrienne Mayor

Princeton University Press
Hardcover | 2014 | $29.95 / £19.95 |
ISBN: 9780691147208
536 pp. | 6 x 9 | 10 maps. |
eBook | ISBN: 9781400865130 |

*Lysias Funeral Oration 2.4-6 (translation via Perseus)

Illustrations

Top: Amazon warriors hunting on horseback. 5th century mosaic from Nile House, Sepphoris, Israel. Photo credit:

Upper left: Centaur and Lapith in combat. From the Parthenon South metopes. Photo credit: Wikipedia

Second left: Terracotta volute-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water): Attributed to the Painter of Woolly Satyrs, c. 450 BCE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1907, 07.286.84. On the neck, battle of centaurs and Lapiths; around the body, Amazonomachy (battle between Greeks and Amazons). Photo credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Centre: Copy of the shield of the statue of Athena in the Parthenon. British Museum GR 1864.2-20.18 (Sculpture 302). Strangford Collection. Photograph courtesy of the British Museum

Lower left: Amazons. Apulia 4C BC. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. Photo credit: www.maicar.com

Below left: Wounded Amazon. Roman marble copy (c. 150 CE) of Greek bronze original (mid-5th centur)  Gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr., 1932. Accession No. 32.11.4. Photo credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Judith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-15925609419402843622015-02-06T19:23:00.003+01:002015-02-18T17:26:00.384+01:00AMAZONS! (Correction & Part II)Continuing my review of Adrienne Mayor's The Amazons (Part I, here)

A major correction: Last week, following breaking-news as reported in The Siberian Times, we began our review of Adrienne Mayor's The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across The Ancient World by asking: is this face (above) 'the face of a real, once-alive Amazon'? It may well be. But, alas, the face recreated by Swiss taxidermist Marcel Nyffenegger was not, as reported, that of the 25-28 year-old tattooed 'Princess Ukok', discovered buried with six sacrificed horses in the Altai region of Siberia, but rather belongs to a 16 or 17 year-old girl who was buried beside a much older man, more sacrificed horses, and two piles of weapons, in an adjacent tomb. Neighbours to 'Princess Ukok', but not the princess herself.*

Nonetheless, theirs was also a very rich burial with sacrificed horses, and it has the added attraction of lots of battle weapons.

The 16/17 year-old teenager was described as "unusually tall and strong, well-built". She was discovered in a double grave alongside and to the left of a male who was about 45 when he died. Very little of her remains were still intact, unlike Princess Ukok who was preserved in permafrost, but it is thought she also once had tattoos on her body.

Remarkably, the pair were equipped and dressed exactly alike. Both wore elaborate felt caps with earflaps (it was cold in Siberia), and their collars and hats were lavishly decorated with golden leopards, stags, horses, and wolves.

Both were interred in their leather boots and red woolen trousers. Trousers have always been gendered male in greater 'Scythia'. Typical nomad attire, trousers were practical for horse-riding over long distances and for engaging in mounted warfare. After all, if you spend day after day on horseback, trousers and seat coverings are essential.

So, the girl's being dressed in trousers must mean that, during her lifetime, she could move more freely, ride horses, and be as active as a man, whether exercising, hunting or fighting.

That she, in fact, did hunt and fight is strongly suggested by her being buried, just like the man, with a complete set of weapons to hand -- battle-axes, bows, quivers, arrows, and shields [of which only the shield-boss survived]. An iron dagger lay by her right thigh in an extremely badly preserved wooden sheath, along with remnants of leather belts. Beside her left thigh was the wooden base of a quiver, with engraved scenes of leopards attacking wild boars. Next to it were found seven bone arrowheads, staffs, and parts of a composite bow. If Amazons ever really existed, the bow would have been their weapon of choice: it requires less muscle strength to use than spears and swords. It does demand concentration, good co-ordination of hand and eye, and a precise sense of distance and timing -- all skills which could be acquired through rigorous daily training in childhood.

Was our 16-year old a young Amazon?

The Greek pseudo-Hippocrates [4, 17] - who lived in the late 5th century BCE - wrote about the Sarmatians, a Scythian tribal group famed for their mastery of mounted warfare:

Their women, so long as they are virgins, ride, shoot, throw the javelin while mounted, and fight with their enemies. They do not lay aside their virginity until they have killed three of their enemies, and they do not marry before they have performed the traditional sacred rites

A woman who takes to herself a husband no longer rides, unless she is compelled to do so by a general expedition'.
This could mean that only very young nomad women were ever mounted fighters, while older women with children would ride to war only in emergencies.

Or, as so often with Greek legends, it could be entirely fanciful and mean nothing at all.**

Every steppe warrior -- male or female -- owned several horses. And even the humblest nomad rider would be buried with his or her mount (Princess Ukok was hardly humble: she had six horses with her in her tomb).

The young girl and older male in this double tomb also took an exceptional number of horses with them into the next world: nine horses were sacrificed and buried in their grave mound. All the horses were richly adorned with decorative harnesses and other trappings; four of the nine were bridled in death. Seven complete sets of harness were found.

Have we found a real, once-alive Amazon at last?

Now that we have attached the reconstructed face to the right burial (or so we hope!), and the teenager is given her rightful due, we can get back to our main subject and to the postponed review of Adrienne Mayor's The Amazons in our next post:

Part III: click here.

*I hope they've got it right this time because the picture (above) still shows her with the blue tattoo that was inked on Princess Ukok's left shoulder. On the other hand, her cheek in profile has what looks like a pimple, perhaps Mr Nyffenegger's little joke to indicate that she is still adolescent.

** Psuedo-Hippocrates is also responsible for spreading the story that the Amazon had but one breast: They have no right breast; for while they are yet babies their mothers make red-hot a bronze instrument constructed for this very purpose and apply it to the right breast and cauterise it, so that its growth is arrested, and all its strength and bulk are diverted to the right shoulder and right arm. Utter nonsense. Adrienne Mayor rightly demolishes this long-lived fallacy.

Illustrations

All photographs and drawings from The Siberian Times, 6 February 2015:

Top: Reconstructed face of "16-year old fighter buried with her weapons and horses." Reconstruction: Marcel Nyffenegger.

Above left: Detailed plans of the burial, with the young girl on the left.

Left inset: Reconstructed felt cap worn by the young girl.

Lower left: Some of the weapons buried with the young girl.

Lowest left: Felt saddle decorations on her horses and plan of the horses' burial.

Judith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-51023638842819224372015-01-30T17:54:00.000+01:002015-01-31T17:45:21.079+01:00AMAZONS!Is this the face of a real, once-alive Amazon?

This woman, whose face can be seen by us for the very first time today, was about 25-28 years old when she died. Her body was discovered inside a Siberian burial mound (kurgan) a little more than 20 years ago. She had been placed in a hollowed-out log dug deep within the mound, where she froze into a solid block of permafrost ice. And that's why she -- and the six chestnut-coloured horses buried with her -- were so amazingly well-preserved.

They had all been alive around 500 BCE -- just about the time when Herodotus [9.27] was writing about the Amazons. He recorded a speech in which Athenians boasted of the glorious deeds done by their ancestors -- even as the citadel of Athens was burning and the Greek army prepared for battle against the Persians at Plataea in 479 BCE:

It is our belief that we are gathered for battle with the barbarian, and not for speeches; but ... we must prove to you how we ... have by virtue of our valor a hereditary right to the place of honor.

[We have] on record our great victory against the Amazons, who once came from the river Thermodon and broke into Attica, and in the hard days of Troy we were second to none.

Thus, among the examples of Athenian bravery taken from the mythical history of the city, the battle against female warriors, the Amazons, is right up there with the epic of the war against Troy. In fact, Homer knew of Amazons, too. In the Iliad (6, 168-95; 2, 811-15), they already appear as a mighty band of warrior women who fight against men, and with whom conflict is dangerous even to the bravest of male heroes. 'Fearless in battle', and the 'equals of men', the Amazons were said to live somewhere to the north and east of the Black Sea, across the Caucasus Mountains and eastwards throughout the vast plains and steppes of central and northern Asia. This was a world inhabited, in fact, by countless nomadic tribes of many different histories and languages but all sharing a horse-centred nomadic warrior lifestyle with similar weapons, artistic motifs, and burial practices. To the Greeks, those people were known collectively as 'Scythians' -- and ancient Greek historians, including Herodotus, identified Amazons as one of these real tribes of Scythia.

Lured on by pastures, [they] live in camps and carry all their possesions and wealth with them. Archery, horseback riding, and hunting are a girl's pursuits.

One of Herodotus' earliest informants (whose work is almost entirely lost to us) was the poet and miracle-worker Aristeas. Aristeas had travelled to those distant regions some time in the late-7th century BCE and he was the first to link the Amazons to the Scythian nomads who actually inhabited those lands ... and so began the colourful, intricate, tangled threads of fact and fiction about Amazons and Scythian women, "bow-legged from riding since childhood and scarred by battle, buried with their weapons and horses in the vast landscape" of the steppes.

Princess Ukok's shoulder, with tattoo of a fantastic animal, and a drawing of it.

So, who is this woman who now stares at us from the top of this page,* whose burial was adorned by six sacrificed horses with trappings including bridles made of gold? She is called 'Princess Ukok', named after the high altitude plateau in the Siberian steppes where she was discovered. A tall woman (about 5'6"; 168 cm), her left shoulder was decorated with a brilliant blue tattoo showing a twisting deer with extravagant antlers and a falcon's beak. More tattoos ran down the remains of her arm, with images of a mountain sheep and a panther or leopard.

Princess Ukok's burial is one of more than a thousand ancient 'Scythian' tombs excavated across the Eurasian steppes from Thrace to Mongolia. In recent years, our understanding of these people has radically changed. New ways of studying skeletal remains have turned their 'male' and 'female' burials quite upside down. It used to be simple: burials with weapons and tools belonged to men; spindles, jewellery and mirrors meant that the body was female. But, really, all we were doing was reinforcing our own gender biases. Now, thanks to osteological science, we know that, in some cemeteries on the steppes, as many as 37% of tombs with weapons, tools, and armour contain female skeletons.

The armed women were buried exactly as the armed males were, with similarly constructed graves, sacrificed horses, funeral feasts, food offerings, weaponry, and valuable local and imported grave goods.

Not only that, but their bones and skulls sometimes bear battle scars identical to those of male warriors, with injuries inflicted by battle-axes, swords, and daggers -- bringing to mind scenes of violent battle and hand-to-hand combat.

Such discoveries are the starting point for Adrienne Mayor's wonderful new book, The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across The Ancient World.  Mayor takes us on an exhilerating gallop through the archaeological evidence for female 'Scythian' burials with weapons and the scars of war, and of the evidence for the more egalitarian way of life for these horse-nomads in antiquity.

Were the Amazons real?

What do we actually know about this world of warrior horse-women across ancient Eurasia? Was the Greek story of Amazons inspired by reports of -- and perhaps direct contacts with -- real warrior women among the steppe nomads in 'Scythia'?

The early Greeks certainly believed that Amazons were real, even if the tribe no longer existed in their own day. The Athenians portrayed Amazons on the Parthenon metopes when, after they won the battle of Plataea, they rebuilt the temple of Athena.  Little did they imagine that this might have been a most distant echo of the lifestyle of Princess Ukok.

Part II of this post will continue with The Amazons.

The Amazons:
Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World
Adrienne Mayor

Princeton University Press
Hardcover | 2014 | $29.95 / £19.95 | ISBN: 9780691147208
536 pp. | 6 x 9 | 10 maps. |
eBook | ISBN: 9781400865130 |

* The reconstruction was made by Swiss taxidermist Marcel Nyffenegger (below), and published in The Siberian Times, 26 January 2015. Next to hear body was a funerary meal of sheep and horse meat and ornaments made from felt, wood, bronze and gold, as well as a small container of cannabis, along with a stone plate on which were the burned seeds of coriander.

Sources

The book under review. See also my review of an earlier book by Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy  (Times Higher Education).

Illustrations

Top left: Reconstruction of face of 'Princess Ukok' by Marcel Nyffenegger. Photo credit: The Siberian Times 26 January 2015

Second left: Amazonomachy (battle between Greeks and Amazons). Attic red-figure terracotta bowl for mixing wine and water, attributed to the Painter of the Berlin Hydria. 460-450 BCE. Photo credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1907. Accession Number: 07.286.86

Third left: An Amazon warrior delivering a Parthian shot. An Etruscan figure from the lid of a bronze dinos or cauldron from S. Maria di Capua Vetere, Capua, 6th century BCE. Photo credits http://www.agefotostock.com/en/Stock-Images/Rights-Managed/HEZ-2586947

Centre: Close-up of Princess Ukok's shoulder, with tattoo of a fantastic animal, and a drawing of it. Photo credit: The Siberian Times, 14 August 2012

Below left: Red and white sardonyx cameo. First century BCE/CE. Marlborough Gems, Beazley no. 507. Photo credit: Classical Art Research CentreJudith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-20340499309246231552011-06-30T14:36:00.002+02:002015-01-24T16:37:46.417+01:00Zenobia and the Manichean Convert

Rock Crystal Sasanian Seal: Mani and two of the Elect (priests).
The inscription reads, "Mani, the Apostle of Jesus Christ".

Mani, Apostle of Light

A new religion was founded in Mesopotamia in the third-century by the Persian prophet, Mani (216-277 CE). Mani deliberately created a universal church that incorporated Christian, Zoroastrian, and Buddhist concepts.   Previously considered by scholars to be a Christian heresy, Manicheism (as named after the 'apostle') is now properly understood as an independent religion in its own right.

Glory and honour to the Paraclete!* Victory and blessing to our lord [Mani], the Spirit of truth, this one from the Father.

Mani saw himself not only as the successor of previous prophets (Zoroaster, the Buddha, and Jesus Christ), but also as the incarnation of the saviour -- that is, both as Jesus the saviour and as Buddha Maitreya, the saviour.

Wisdom and deeds have always from time to time been brought to mankind by the messengers of god. So in one age they were brought by the messenger called Buddha to India, in another by [Zoroaster] to Persia, in another by Jesus to the West. Thereupon this revelation has come down, this prophecy in this last age, through me, Mani, the messenger of the God of truth. (Shabuhragân).
Also in the Shabuhragân (a summary of his teachings written for his great patron, the Sasanian King of Kings, Shapur I), Mani declares that he is the very Paraclete* announced by the Messiah and that he is the seal of the prophets. This means that no further revelations and prophets were necessary, since Mani considered he had taken all precautions to ensure that his religion would not be corrupted and so would endure until the end of the world.

In Mani's view, the greatest problem with other religions was that the messages of true prophets had become corrupted by later generations because the earlier apostles did not write down their own teachings as he himself did (his seven canonical works included the Treasure of Life, Living Gospel, Book of Giants, Book of Mysteries, Letters, Psalms and Prayers [all in Syriac Aramaic], and the Shabuhragân [in Persian]). Jesus, he said, came to the West, and after his death his disciples wrote down his words. Zoroaster came to Persia, but he did not write books, though his disciples remembered and wrote down his words after his death. And, when the Buddha came, he preached much wisdom and established churches, but he did not write anything, and, again, it was his disciples who wrote down his words after his death.

That was one way in which Manicheism was thought to be superior to all the others. Just as important, Mani's religion did not dismiss other religions as false religions; instead he accepted earlier religions and their prophets as carriers of parts of the truth. So, he incorporated elements of those faiths into his own great scheme of the world and mankind.

According to Mani, his new religion would not simply replace the previous religions, but rather represented the fulfilment of what the previous religions had promised but not been able to live up to. It was the same truth that had been revealed to the earlier prophets and was embedded in their religions, but, for various reasons, this truth had degenerated. Earlier religions simply did not have the inherent power to withstand the attacks of evil -- and so they degenerated, and the truth they contained was spoilt.

The writings and the wisdom and the apocalypses and the parables and the psalms of all earlier churches were gathered everywhere and came to Mani's church and were added to the wisdom which he revealed.... "As water will be added to water and becomes much water, so were the ancient books added to my writings and became a great wisdom the like of which was not proclaimed (hitherto) in all ancient generations." (Kephalaia,** chap. 154)
This is also what Mani believed distinguished his church from all others. But perhaps what made Manicheism really special (and Mani himself put this at the top of his list) was the fact that "The previous religions were only in one land and in one language, but Mani's was taught in all lands and in all languages."

During Mani's lifetime, the religion had already moved east towards India and west into the Roman empire. The gruesome death of the founder (recounted in Sassanian Stuff III) did not prevent the new religion from growing and spreading. By the time the Sasanian Empire was overthrown by the armies of Islam in the mid-7th century, Manicheism had spread into Egypt and North Africa in the west, and to the borders of China and beyond in the east. Thus, Manicheism reached from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans before it was eventually destroyed by the Catholic church in Europe and wiped out in the east by new conquerors. So, at times, Manicheism was a veritable world religion -- as had been intended from the beginning.

So, one of the first things Mani did was to concern himself with missions. Not only did he send out missionaries, both east and west, as soon as possible, but he himself travelled extensively. From various sources we know that he visited many countries to the east of the Sasanian empire. The most reliable report is from Ibn al-Nadim's Fihrist, which tells us that Mani travelled from country to country for 40 years before he met with Shapur I, King of Kings, who granted him the right to teach his religion in the Persian empire. Then, Mani settled near Ctesiphon, on the western bank of the Tigris and it was there, during 262-63, that he set down the tenets of his faith and organized the missions. Throughout Shapur's reign, for over thirty years, Mani and his followers were free to propagate their ideas. And so it happened that, by 270, Mani's religion had firm footholds throughout the vast Sasanian empire.

But that was not enough. "All lands" meant the world outside Persian territory as well. So Mani sent one of his closest collaborators, Mar Adda, who held the ecclesiastical rank of 'teacher', to carry the new religion to the west, i.e., to the Roman empire. Several stories about Mar Adda's missionary activities are found in Manichean texts: for example, when Mar Adda was at Kirkuk (in the north-east of modern Iraq), Mani sent him three scribes who brought him the new gospel and instructed him to strive to spread the good word "like a merchant hoards up a treasure." As the Prologue to the Kephalaia** reveals, Mani exhorted his disciples to record what he taught them, as "everything is explained fully and completely".

The Books of the Mysteries of the Truth

In 1929, a library of seven genuine Manichean Coptic texts were discovered in the ruins of an old house in Medinet Madi, to the south-west of the Fayyum, in central Egypt. The cache was said to have been hidden in a wooden chest found in the cellar by workmen digging for fertilizer. They sold the papyri, all bound with wooden boards, to an antique dealer for a trifle. And so the books reached the Cairo market. A German scholar, Carl Schmidt, who was on his way to Palestine to collect manuscripts, was shown a papyrus entitled the Kephalaia of the Teacher. By sheer coincidence, he had been working on a 4th-century text (Bishop Epiphanius' Panarion) that furiously denounced 80 different 'heresies', which just happened to cite the Kephalaia as a book of detestable Manichean lies. And then, when Schmidt read the characteristic phrase, Once more the Enlightener speaks to his disciples, he knew for certain that the text had originated from the innermost circle of the Manichean sect. As he read on, it became clear that the 2,000 leaves (= 4,000 pages) were a treasure-trove of original Manichean documents:

Glory and honour to our Father, the God of Truth. Victory and
blessing to his beloved son, Jesus, and his Holy
Spirit, our Lord, the Paraclete, and all his holy Elect.
While the Coptic papyri were probably written down ca. 400 CE, they were undoubtedly translated from Syriac originals that reach back to Mani himself or to the first generations of the church.

Mar Adda at Palmyra

Included in the Medinet Madi papryi is a fragment of Mani's Homilies, which mentions the Semitic name of Palmyra:(Thadamor). While this suggests a lost history of Manichean settlements in Palmyra, the reference passed without comment until, almost sixty years later, spectacular new finds allowed scholars to put two and two together: Manichean documents from the Turfan oasis in Xinjiang (northwestern China) included an account of the missionary exploits of Mar Adda, one of the earliest Manichean missionaries sent by Mani to the west. His first stop in the Roman Empire seems to have been at Palmyra, where, as healer and teacher, he came into contact with Queen Zenobia.

But Mar Adda and Zenobia will have to wait a bit. What was supposed to be a short introduction to the Turfan texts has turned into a post of its own. My apologies. I promise that Zenobia and the Manichean Convert II (the whole kit and kaboodle!) will follow very quickly.

Part II: click here.

* Mani as the Paraclete (comforter) and Holy Spirit incarnate. Cf: ...the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. (John 14.26)

** Kephalaia, Greek for 'headings, central principles'. Sacred Manichean text in which Mani discusses the basic tenets of the religion with his students: The whole revelation I have unveiled/and declared to the church. In your presence/I declare this revelation alone.

I am most grateful to Chris Bennett (whose website is a treasure trove, too, on the chronology of the Ptolemaic Dynasty) who brought the documents from Turfan -- and their implications for Zenobia's history -- to my attention.

Main sources for this post: I.M.F. Gardner & F.N.C. Lieu, From Narmouthis to Kellis: Manichean Documents from Roman Egypt, JRS 86 (1996) 146-69; Prods Oktor Skjærvø, An Introduction to Manicheism, 2006; W. Barnstone & M. Meyer, The Gnostic Bible, Ch. 40: 'The Kephalaia', 598-615.

Illustrations

Upper left: Manichean rock crystal seal engraved with 3 profile busts; inscribed "Mani, the Apostle of Jesus Christ". Bibliothèque nationale de France, INT 1384BIS. Via Encyclopaedia Iranica

Middle left: Manichaean Middle Persian manuscript (ink on paper). © Depositum der BERLIN-BRANDENBURGISCHEN AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN in der STAATSBIBLIOTHEK ZU BERLIN - Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Orientabteilung. Via IDP (International Dunhuang Project)

Lower left: pictorial insert in Manichean scroll in the Sogdian language from Turfan oasis in Xinjiang (northwestern China), preserved in the collection of the Turfan Antiquarian Bureau (81 TB 65:01); created between 7th and 9th century CE. Via Encyclopaedia Iranica

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.Judith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-27735078400027232502014-12-05T18:18:00.001+01:002014-12-10T20:07:12.138+01:00When Was That Christmas Star?
The star blazed and glittered "like the most beautiful and glorious torch ever seen when driven by a strong wind."

Thus exclaimed Johannes Kepler when, on the night of 17 October 1604, he saw a brilliant new star shining in the heavens in the foot of the Constellation of the Serpent-Bearer (Ophiuchus). That brightest of stars -- now known to have been a supernova -- is marked N in the lower centre of Kepler's sky chart (below).

The supernova appeared in the sky not long after a rare conjunction between the planets Jupiter and Saturn which, for the first time in 800 years, came together in one of the five fiery signs, in this case Sagittarius. When Mars then moved closer to Jupiter, the planets and the supernova formed a heavenly triangle. A fiery triangle within a fiery astrological sign.

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) was in Prague serving as Imperial Mathematician and court astrologer to the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. He charted the new star over the course of many months (except when it was too close to the sun to be seen by the naked eye), making his last observation a year later, after which the nova faded from view.

Kepler believed that the new star was a portent, "an exceedingly wonderful work of God." He also believed it was connected to astrological forces -- not the power of the zodiac, to be sure -- but in a kind of dynamic force emanating from the sun that kept the planets in motion. The planets, in turn, exchanged this nebulous force among themselves -- rather like magnets attracting and repelling -- which is how other planets could influence events on earth. In 1606, Kepler published De stella nova in Pede Serpentarii (On the New Star in the Foot of the Serpent-Bearer), arguing that there was a direct correlation between the new star and the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Such conjunctions were always potent signs for astrologers and thus, with the brilliant new star bursting onto the scene as well, it must have been especially charged with astrological significance. Accordingly, Kepler predicted nothing less than the downfall of Islam and the return of Christ.

Yet his true Eureka! moment was not very far.

As a devout Lutheran, Kepler was deeply interested in Biblical chronology, not doubting, for example, that the earth had been created in 4,000 BC -- his starting point for calculations of heavenly movements throughout history. Now, Kepler calculated that an equally rare 'greater conjunction', also later joined by Mars, had also taken place in the year 7 BC. Surely, this conjunction was of the greatest astrological significance! But what? By remarkable chance, the Polish Jesuit historian, Laurentius Suslyga, had just published a tract which argued that the reckoning of the start of the Christian era (and thus all Anno Domini dates) was in error by four years. Christ was born not in 1 AD but in 4 BC.

Eureka!

For, if the author is correct, in order to reckon the Age of Christ, four years must be added to the Epoch of Christianity now in use It would follow, therefore, that Christ was born one or two years after the great conjunction of the three superior Planets in the first part of Aries or in the end of Pisces, occurring for the sixth time since the foundation of the world. Hence, the star which led the Magi to the manger of Christ, if it occurred two years before the birth of Christ, could be compared to our star.
The triple conjunction of the planets, thus, was the harbinger of the Star of Bethlehem just as, in his own day, an identical heavenly configuration had called forth Kepler's new star. He assumed that his brilliant nova had the same relationship to the planetary conjunction in 1604 as had a portentous 'new star' in 7/6 BC, but that earlier star was the true Star of Bethlehem that led the Magi to the Christ child.

The Magi were of Chaldea, where was born astrology, of which this is a dictum: Great conjunctions of planets in cardinal points, especially in the equinoctial points of Aries and Libra, signify a universal change of affairs; and a cometary star appearing at the same time tells of the rise of a king.... Granted, then, that the new star of the Magi was first seen not only at the same time as Saturn and Jupiter were beheld in each other's vicinity, namely in June BC 7, but also in the same part of the sky as the planets .... what else could the Chaldeans conclude from their, and the still existing, rules of their art [of astrology] but that some event of the greatest moment was imminent?
Concerning the True Year in which the Son of God assumed a Human Nature in the Uterus of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Kepler published his work on chronology and the year of Jesus's birth in 1614: De Vero Anno quo Aeternus Dei Filius Humanam Naturam in Utero Benedictae Virginis Mariae Assumpsit (English title above). In it Kepler demonstrated that the Christian calendar was in error by five years, and that Jesus had been born in 4 BC, a conclusion (as we are told by the authoritative Galileo Project) that is now universally accepted.*

It had come about like this: Christ was conceived about the time that the major planets were in conjunction with the sun. The Magi arrived in Jerusalem in February 5 BC to see for the second time (as recounted in Matthew 2,9-10) the star which they had seen for the first time in 7 BC (Matthew 2,2).

What Wise Men Saw

The Star of Bethlehem could not have been the conjunction in and of itself. No matter how close together two planets come, even if they eventually partially overlap, no Wise Man would mistake them for a single star. While watching, he would have seen them coming together and, a few nights later, he'd see them separating. Anyway, in 7 BC (as more recent and accurate reckoning has shown), Saturn and Jupiter never appeared to have approached each other more closely than a distance double that of the apparent diameter of the moon. Worse still, while Saturn, Mars, and Jupiter did form a triangle in the sky towards the end of February 6 BC, Saturn and Mars, at least, were too close to the sun to be seen with the naked eye. By the time all three were visible in the morning sky, they had already moved apart considerably.

At The Fount of Astrology

As it happens, Babylonian astrological records exist for the crucial year, four copies, in fact, of a so-called 'Almanac' covering the Seleucid Era year 305 = 7/6 BC. This means we have an extremely detailed set of observations and mathematical calculations for the prediction of astronomical movements from Babylonia -- a centre of astronomy and astrology in the Seleucid and Parthian periods -- which was also, according to some versions of the story, the home town of the journeying Magi. In short, these cuneiform records were written at the right time and in the right place. There is no doubt that the Babylonians would have been aware of the approach of a conjunction and would have been able to estimate its date within a few days. While the almanac covers the period of the closest approaches of Jupiter and Saturn, the tablets do not allude to these conjunctions.

No conjunction, no unusual heavenly activity.

This rather party-pooping report, of course, does not take into account the miraculous nature of the star itself: "This star was not of the ordinary run of comets or new stars," said Kepler, "but by a special miracle moved in the lower layer of the atmosphere." Really, I have to admit that the miraculous option is the only one left. The magic pointing finger created it, as Kepler thought, putting a star between Jupiter and Saturn when they were already fairly close.

... there shall come a star out of Jacob, and a Sceptre shall rise out of Israel.

Numbers 24.17.

Have a very happy winter solstice however you celebrate it.

I wish all my readers the best of health and most interesting of work in 2015.

* Not so fast, Galileo. 'Universal' apparently doesn't mean everyone. In my opinion, there's still plenty of play room between 8 BC and 4 BC if we want all the stories to fit. It largely depends on when Herod died (the Massacre of the Innnocents has to take place when Christ is two years old), when Christ began preaching -- O lots of things. Maybe that will be next year's Christmas post.

This is not the first time Zenobia has written about aspects of some Christmas stories. See The Magi and Christmas , We Twelve Kings of Orient Are, and Whose Christmas Is It Anyway?

Sources

I have made much use of the excellent discussion by Rahlf Hansen,  Kepler and the Star of Bethlehem; W. Burke-Gaffney, S.J., Kepler and the Star of Bethlehem; A. J. Sachs & C.B.F.Walker, Kepler's View of the Star of Bethlehem and the Babylonian Almanac for 7/6 B.C., Iraq 46/1, 43-55; and William Eamon's blog, Kepler and the Star of Bethlehem. Other sources include The Galileo Project: Johannes Kepler; D. Hayton, Kepler on supernova, theology and astrology PACHS 2009; Robert S. Westman, Johannes Kepler (Encyclopaedia Britannica); and (last but not least), the witty and wise M. Gardner, The Star of Bethlehem, Skeptical Inquirer 23.6 (1999).

Illustrations

Top: Artwork from De Stella Nova showing the Constellation Ophiuchus with the 1604 supernova marked 'N' in the Serpent-Bearer's foot, as observed by Kepler.

Above left: Portrait of Johannes Kepler, Photo credit: Wikimedia

Below left: Kepler and Solar System (http://cosmologybus.typepad.com/cosmology_bus/johannes-kepler/)Photo via Connor from Victoria, Canada, Science Hero: Johannes Kepler.

Lowest left: Late Babylonian cuneiform tablet from Babylon (?). British Museum 35429 obverse. Photo via Sachs & Walker (sources, above).Judith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-30213930142190007982014-11-02T08:11:00.000+01:002014-11-14T23:11:56.801+01:00The Women of Mycenaean Pylos and Knossos (Part III)
(continuing our review of Barbara Olsen's Women in Mycenaean Greece. Part I click here; Part II here)

The Great Minoan Tradition

During the period that archaeologists call Late Minoan I (ca. 1600-1450 BCE), Crete was at the height of its glory and riches. The island was split into at least four regional powers, each ruled from one of the main palaces: Khania in the west, Phaistos/Ayia Triada in the south, Zakro in the east and -- richest of all -- Knossos in the north.* Despite the damage and shock caused earlier by the volcanic eruption at nearby Santorini, Crete was still peaceful and prosperous, continuing to trade all over the Aegean and farther afield, with Egypt, Syria, and the Levant. Palace scribes were keeping their typically Minoan, slightly messy records written on clay tablets in the Linear A script (to this day, undeciphered). Traditional, distinctively Minoan styles of art and architecture were blossoming; religion and social organization seemed unchanged.

The women of Minoan Crete were always held in high regard -- though it's a mistake to think they ruled the roost. Very many images clearly show that they held positions of great honour ... and they could appear quite comfortably together with men.** In matters of ritual and cult, women were probably the supreme gender. Yet it must be admitted that their public appearances -- as preserved in art -- were apparently limited to religious (and related athletic) activities.

Aristocrats -- whether male or female is unknown -- were busy sending messages from one end of the island to another, using exquisite Minoan gold rings to seal their missives. Large gold rings -- especially those showing the bull-leapers of Knossos -- were surely used by high officials of the ruling and religious elite. And someone at Knossos, perhaps of subversive temperament, was exporting such rings to the Mycenaean mainland where many are found in elite burials.

True, there were some clouds on the horizon. Possibly, the rulers of Knossos had got too close to the Mycenaean powers.

Whatever the proximate cause, this attractive Minoan world came crashing down in a few short years around 1450 BCE -- when palaces, towns, and settlements across the island were destroyed in a rage of violence. The perpetrators were almost certainly Mycenaean invaders from the Greek mainland. When the fires stopped burning, there was only one palace left: Knossos. And the language spoken in its halls was no longer Minoan but Mycenaean Greek. Knossian bureaucrats now wrote in Linear B, and the administrative set-up of the economy was remarkably close in all its outward manifestations to that of Pylos.***

Yet the Mycenaean-administered palatial state of Knossos is an entity unparalleled on the Mycenaean mainland. At Mycenaean Knossos, we encounter not a state like Pylos, where an ethnic Mycenaean population is governed by a Mycenaean administration, but rather a hybrid society of both ethnic Minoans and ethnic Mycenaeans under the authority of a Mycenaean administration.
The Aftermath of Conquest

The Linear B records that remain date from about 100 years after the conquest. We read of men with Minoan names who are lower in status (for example, many shepherds) than men with Greek names who occupy most of the warrior and official ranks. That's hardly surprising: to the victor go the spoils.

But what was it like for the women of Crete? What happened to their status and rights when the Mycenaeans -- whose women had relatively low status (Part II) -- came to rule over a Minoan society which had accorded women a higher social status?

To answer this question, Prof. Barbara Olsen looked closely at the gender patterns to be teased out of the written records of Knossos. Were Minoan gender roles and practices assimilated into Mycenaean ones? Or were there important differences that might argue for the continuation of at least some aspects of a freer, more Minoan approach to women's rights? Her findings form the third part of our review of her new book, The Women of Mycenaean Pylos and Knossos.

The Women of Knossos

Detail of KN Ap 639 listing women workers and their children

At least 1200 women identified by the ideogram 'Woman' appear in workgroups at Knossos. In most cases, these lists are very similar to those recording groups of low-status and slave women at Pylos. However, the women identified by this ideogram are often also listed by name -- which never happens at Pylos. For example, the 22 women recorded on tablet KN Ap 639 (note the ideogram, generally the first sign on each line) probably worked in the textile industry, though their exact tasks elude us. Some bear the name of their home towns (e.g. Phaistia, "she of Phaistos"), which suggests their servile status. Most personal names are Minoan in origin but five are certainly Greek (e.g. Philagra and another 'Rosie'). One is named ke-ra-me-ja -- from which comes our word for 'ceramics'; the lady is a potter or from a potter's family. Since it is likely that all 22 women are slaves, such Greek names might have been given them by a Greek master who couldn't pronounce their own funny Minoan names -- a common phenomenon in slave cultures.

From Rags to Rags

More than a thousand such low-status women worked in the Knossos textile industry. However, the women were not concentrated in and around the palace as at Pylos, but laboured in the many towns and villages of central Crete under the control of their Mycenaean overlords. The cloth industry was far and away the most important business organized by the palace. The sheer size of the industry is staggering: over 100,000 sheep, along with their shepherds and shearers (male, mostly Minoan names) are tracked in obsessive detail from the grazing lands to the allocation of their wool, and on through the setting of cloth production targets until the final delivery of the many sorts of finished cloth. All the work of producing the cloth was assigned to women.

While some of these women were certainly slaves, not all of them were. Rather, the system made use of obligatory corvée labour. Groups of local women were set specific production targets for different kinds of cloth. The system was forced, of course, but though labouring for the palace, they remained in their local villages. While pretty gruelling, this was not slavery. When they had finished their assigned tasks -- varying from an estimated three to six months of work annually -- they were presumably free for the rest of the year. This allowed the women to sustain themselves and their families at home.

At Knossos itself, there is no sign of the full-time year-round menial females who did the dirty work at the palace of Pylos. Slaves who performed the unenviable endless tasks for the palatial elite -- maintaining the water supply, personal attendance, and food-processing -- must have been, in some sense, a private concern.

At the other end of the social scale are the priestesses. Given their prominence in art, documentation of the women who officiated in cult is surprisingly sparse. A 'priestess of the wind' is mentioned three times: one was at Knossos(?), another at Utanos, and a third at Amnisos. Each received a monthly distribution of olive oil as did a number of other cult officials and divinities alike. That oil was probably intended for cult purposes rather than for their personal use. Then, there are the enigmatic groups of ki-ri-te-wi-ja women at Knossos, Amnisos, and Phaistos. These are low-ranking religious personnel, but above the level of slaves and servants. Trying to guess their function from their name gives bizarre results. It could mean 'barley-women' -- perhaps those who served an otherwise unknown 'deity of barley', or women who received or distributed that rather low-grade grain. Other interpretations are more hopeful (if no more certain), the name perhaps derived from 'chosen' or 'annointed ones'. Whatever their cult function, each group received a very large monthly ration of wheat -- enough to have fed 500 women of a workgroup for a month.

There is no mention of land or other goods being assigned to priestesses or the ki-ri-te-wi-ja women.

In fact there is little indication of the priestesses having a broader economic role in the Knossian state; and no personnel, land, or shrine property are associated with female cult officials.... In contrast to Pylos, where we see nearly all of the property attributed to women in the hands of cult officials, the majority of the property associated with women at Knossos is linked with low- to middle-status women.

She Stoops to Conquer

A key difference with Pylos is that some women at Knossos who are not connected with cult exerted control over textiles, foodstuffs such as wheat and oil (sometimes in very large quantities), wool, linen, and, above all, land -- in the form of orchards. We'll go back to the land in a moment but, first, let's have a look at a woman with the unlikely name of po-po.

Po-po appears in a supervisory capacity with control over fairly large quantities of raw materials for cloth-making in three tablets (twice linen, once wool). Her name appears again on two more fragmentary tablets and then on a tablet (Kn L 513) that records her obligation to send a sizeable amount of textiles to the palace: the phrasing indicates that po-po is the person in charge and seems to confirm that she is a workshop supervisor. The same may be true of other women listed on the textile tablets who have some stated responsibility for the collection or allocation of cloth. A number of men appear on some of the same tablets with exactly the same obligations as the women: there is no obvious distinction and their obligations are described in the same way.

Unfortunately, Knossos lacks the careful, detailed records of land-tenure as kept by the scribes of Pylos. We therefore know next to nothing about the land-owning system, and who owned what. Just one series survives: 20 tablets record the ownership or stewardship of groves of fruit-trees. This is enough to show us, however, that men and women held these orchards in a completely analogous fashion. The phrasing is the same: "[The man] Eriklewes holds an orchard plot". "[The woman] Perijeja holds an orchard plot". In another case, a man and a woman are said to have the same kinds of orchards but her holding is five times the size of his. In short, though the sample is small, the few texts from Knossos look remarkably egalitarian -- with men and women incorporated into the land-holding system in exactly the same way.

So, overall, Prof. Olsen's analysis strongly suggests that the gender organization of Mycenaean Knossos was not the same as that of Mycenaean Pylos.

Various women were also attested as having massive amounts of food-stuffs ...raw and finished textile products, and luxury goods .... These women were also held personally accountable for missing property -- further underscoring the notion that the property in question was considered that of these women rather than of their husbands, fathers, or other male relations. Importantly, none of these property holders were attested to in any context that might suggest they held a religious affiliation, nor were they listed as wives of ranking men.

Fenced-in

Nonetheless, they were decidedly the lesser sex.

The property holdings of Knossian women were significantly limited in both size and scope compared to those of men. Knossian men of all social rankings controlled a wide range of commodities, most of which never appear with a woman's name attached. On the contrary, men had access to every commodity that women had and, then too, lots more. The palace never seemed to give women exotic goods such as spices or ointments, objects made of horn or ivory, metals or metal vases, nor (obviously) weapons, horses, armour or chariots -- the 'must have' status symbols of the ruling elite. In short, men controlled far more property than women.

Still, Knossian women were better off than their Pylian sisters.

First of all, it is likely that the women in the textile workgroups -- except for those specifically identified as slaves -- were commandeered for only part of the year as corvée labour. If so, they were in some senses 'free' and their social standing would have been significantly higher than the slaves of the Pylos groups. Similarly, there seems to have been legal space for some women to run workshops and take responsibility for their own economic identity.

At Pylos, the only women who controlled significant property belonged to the ranks of priestesses, the only institution that elevated a few women to an exceptional status. Even so, they did not achieve parity with men since they did not own the land but held it on lease. In contrast, Knossian women who had no apparent religious affiliation owned their own land, and the palace recorded their holdings in exactly the same way as for male land holders. It would seem that this was the expected norm

Quite simply, even a century after the conquest of Crete, mainland institutions do not appear to be governing women's role in the economy. Differences in gender practices between the states of Pylos and Knossos imply that cultural assimilation was partial and far from complete. So, where did these differences come from?

I suggest that these differences may likely be holdovers from an earlier period -- for would Mycenaean Greeks introduce gender practices not their own -- and that the most likely source of those holdovers would be Neopalatial Minoan Crete, where women have long been suspected of enjoying a more egalitarian status than other women....
Having finished this richly rewarding book, I can only say to Dr Olsen: "Q.E. (Definitely) D".

Women in Mycenaean Greece

 The Linear B Tablets from Pylos and Knossos

 By Barbara A. Olsen

 Routledge – 2014 – 380 pages

 Hardback: $140.00
ISBN: 978-0-415-72515-6

* Olsen references five or more Minoan palatial states, including Malia and Galatas but excluding Khania. However, there are no signs that those two palaces (unlike Khania) had any written archives in this period, surely a requirement for the administration of a 'state'.

** Olsen stresses the gender segregation of the Linear B tablets on which men and women are usually divided into male- and female-only tablets. While gender isolation extends to iconography at Pylos, it certainly less marked on Crete where both sexes are frequently pictured together in cult scenes on gold rings and frescoes, as well as on some major frescoes from the Mycenaean period -- for example, the Procession fresco, the Campstool fresco, and bull-leaping frescoes from Knossos; also at Ayia Triada (cf.: the frescoes from Casa VAP [above] and the famous painted scenes on the Ayia Triada sarcophagus).

*** Interpreting the Linear B tablets from Knossos is even more challenging than at Pylos. Scribes at Pylos were well-organized: ca. 1100 tablets were filed by subject matter in a single archive inside the palace. Consequently, 50% of those documents were complete and preserved, on average, 25 signs per tablet. At Knossos, on the other hand, ca. 3400 tablets were found higgledy-piggledy in a dozen or more parts of the palace, often fallen from upper storeys, and thus rarely intact: 75% of the documents are fragmentary, and the average number of signs per tablet is only 7.7. Moreover, the broken tablets are frequently missing headings and ideograms.

Sources: Besides the book under review, I have made use of L. Baumbach, 'The Personal Names on Knossos Ap Tablets', in (A.M. Etter, ed) O-o-pe-ro-si , Berlin (1986) 273-278; R. Palmer, 'Wheat and Barley in Mycenaean Society', in (J.-P. Olivier, ed) Mykenaika, BCH Suppl. XXV (1992)

Illustrations

Top left: 'Dancing Lady 'from the Queen's Megaron, Knossos. Photo credit: Oxford University Fine Arts

2nd left: Gold ring from Nemea, CMS V Suppl. IB 113. Photo credit: CMS Arachne

3rd left: Gold ring from Arkhanes-Phourni. Photo credit: OU Fine Arts [Note: the date given for the ring on this site is far too early; it should be LM I)

4th left: Female taureador (her skin is white, following the Minoan convention [derived from the Egyptian] of picturing females as white, men as red) dressed in male athletic garb: Bull-leaping panel from Court of the Stone Spout, Knossos. Photo credit: Zenobia (in the Heraklion Museum)

5th left: Detail from a Linear B tablet Ap 639 from Knossos recording women textile workers and their children, around 1375-1350 BC. Photo credit: Ashmolean Museum

Centre: Reconstruction of the fresco panel from Casa VAP, LM III Ayia Triada (Heraklion Museum). Photo credit: Dr Santo Privitera, to whom I am most grateful for the picture.

Lower left: Detail from Ayia Triada sarcophagus. Photo credit: OU Fine Arts [Note: the date given for the sarcophagus on this site is too early]

Bottom left: Bronze statuette of female worshipper, c. 1600-1500 BC, Middle Minoan III-Late Minoan I Crete. Cleveland Museum of Art. Photo credit: Boundless blog Judith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-67146650194567590602014-10-23T18:39:00.002+02:002014-11-14T22:50:40.103+01:00The Women of Mycenaean Pylos and Knossos (Part II)The Essence of Woman

(continuing Zenobia's review of Barbara Olsen's Women in Mycenaean Greece. Part I click here)

The Linear B tablets found in the palaces at Pylos on the Greek mainland and Knossos on Crete are the oldest documents ever written in Greek They are without exception administrative records (inventories, accounts, and lists of names and personnel). While they record information on some 5,000 men, they also document the palaces' interest in more than 2,000 women. In fact, these tablets are one of the largest sets of evidence for real women's lives in any period of Greek antiquity.

Unfortunately for us, the palaces were not interested in reporting on their private lives (loves, friendships, family). Rather, women are only documented because they are, in some way, connected with the economic institutions of the palace -- whether involved in commodity production, property holdings, land tenure, or cult practice. The result is that, at Pylos and Knossos, scribes recorded women's economic activities in public or civic -- rather than domestic -- contexts. Women (like men) are listed either as individuals with names or titles, or as undifferentiated members of collective groups.

Who are these 2,000 women? How do they compare in status and power to the men who are recorded in the Linear B tablets? Prof. Barbara Olsen (Vassar College) has brought together for the first time all of the references to women in the Linear B tablets from the two best-documented Mycenaean sites (1400-1200 BCE). As far as written sources are concerned, it is the low-down on everything there is to know -- or possibly ever will be known -- about Myceanean women.

The Belated Death of Matriarchy

The numbers alone (5000:2000) should be the first red alert: the tablets reflect societies where men's production and holdings were more important than those of women. Of course, it might also be possible for women to hold the same types of commodities and property as men -- but at approximately 30% of the amount, reflecting their proportion in the tablets. Alas, as Prof. Olsen irrefutably demonstrates, this is not at all the case. The documents reflect societies where men's production and holdings were much more significant to the palaces than those of women.

The palaces of the Late Bronze Age Aegean were not egalitarian in matters of gender. If any of my readers still believe that there was a feminist tilt at that time, get over it now. This book is ruthless in its incidental demolition of any such idea. Women's holdings differed from men's not just in scale but also in substance. As a sex, women held significantly less property and received fewer commodities (whether slaves or livestock, foodstuffs, textiles, leather goods, bronze, or precious objects such as gold vases and ivory) than men.

The archives from both palaces reveal strictly gendered societies where an individual's sex opens or limits access to various occupations and to specific commodities or resources and ultimately governs his or her access to civic office, control over property, and public functions. In short gender is constructed at both Bronze Age palaces in a way so that men and women largely experience their societies in very distinct ways.
Women at both sites had more limited access to commodities, were excluded from the highest political offices, and were socially and economically subordinate to men. In short, the palaces were patriarchal in their social, economic, and political organizations. The only ray of light is in the religious sphere, but we'll get to that in a moment.

First the gloom.

Separate and Unequal

On the left is The Mycenaean Woman as expressed by a scribe writing in Linear B.*

Lazy bureaucrat that he was, he used a shorthand picture (ideogram) instead of writing out the whole word: just a semi-circle for her head, a skirt, and dot breasts was quite enough to make it clear that he meant 'Woman'.

What could be simpler?

Except that no Mycenaean scribe ever drew such a neat, clean ideogram. What Mycenaean scribes actually sketched was much sloppier; like this:

A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair

Who were these carelessly-drawn women? They could not have been further from the high-priestess Eritha (Part I) in rank, status, and -- especially -- autonomy. Never personally named or differentiated in any way as individuals, they belong to single-sex female work groups that were assigned by palace officials to menial, labour-intensive work. They are the anonymous women who, day after day, would card wool, spin thread, weave, sew, and decorate cloths. These are not Penelopes but some of Penelope's nameless maids. They are flour-grinders (a perpetual, unhealthy task), sweepers who clean the palace, water-carriers and bath attendants, launderers, or simply personal servants. For which work, the women (along with their minor children) received standard subsistence rations of wheat and figs. And that's it.

In a word, they are slaves.

The Slave Women of Pylos

At Pylos, 7 women wool-carders, 4 girls, 4 boys: wheat 240.4 litres, figs 230.4 litres; 1 supervisor(?)
Such servile low-status women make up by far the largest group of women documented in the Linear B tablets at Pylos (more than 750 out of nearly 900 women). There is no evidence for extra-palatial craftswomen who might have conducted economic activities in their own right. In contrast to Pylian men, not a single free, economically independent women is listed in any craft or trade. Female workers always appear without any property of their own, labouring in collective work groups in return for bare subsistence rations.

Except for just one woman -- Kessandra (the meaning of whose name hints at a future Cassandra, "who speaks solemnly to the men"**). Kessandra receives more than 25 times the amounts of wheat and figs that a workgroup woman would get as rations. This is the largest, and perhaps only, real property attributed to a Pylian woman who is not expressly in cult service. Clearly, Kessandra (who appears on five tablets) is a very different mess of pottage compared to the menial laborers who are no more than ideograms to us. The best explanation is that she is one of the female supervisors whose job may have been to dole out rations to the female workgroups. Whatever her exact role or status (slave, free, or freed), she is the only such woman in the Pylos archive, an exception that proves the rule.

The Seven Merry Wives of Pylos

Only a handful of named women appear on the tablets without any religious titles. Six women listed on a single tablet (PY Vn 34+) are all pendants to their husbands: the man's name comes first, followed by the woman's name and the number one. Each couple apparently receives one portion or piece of whatever is being distributed. Three of the men are known from other sources where we are able to identify them as prominent elite Pylian officials.

[Their] wives would appear to occupy a high level of prestige -- presumably they were aristocrats -- but their high social status does not translate to a similarly high level of economic status. Put simply, these women have no major property holdings allocated to them as distinct individuals ... and consequently no real economic authority or autonomy.
One couple, however, Metianor and his wife Wordieria ('Rosie'), pop up again as recipients of leather goods from the palace storerooms: he gets 1 prepared hide and 3 red-leather hides; she gets 10 pigskins, 2 deerskins, 1 ox-hide, and two (pairs?) of sandals with matching ox-hide laces. A second woman -- perhaps a merry widow since no man's name is appended -- gets pigskins, deerskins and something with fringes(?). Those skins and sandals are the only non-edible goods, as far as we know, allocated to any woman outside of the religious sphere. With the best will in the world, we cannot magnify a pair of sandals into female economic power.

Let there be light

Priestess, Keybearer, Servant of the god, Servant of the Priestess, or Servant of the Keybearer

The five titles of female cult officials specifically identity 120 Pylian women as religious functionaries. These are the only women both named and titled in all of the Pylos texts. And they differ in nearly every way from their lay sisters.

Religious officialdom not only lends to Pylian women a visibility not accorded to their secular peers but also provides for functionary women an exceptional status where many of the usual restrictions on women's access to resources and economic power are lifted.
First and foremost, these are the only women who exercise control over land at Pylos even if they did not achieve full parity with men. While all five categories of cult-affiliated women are known to have held land-leases, none is attested as land-owner. Nonetheless, they shared the ability to redistribute sanctuary resources and land. The priestess Eritha was at the very top of the pile, able to challenge her community council in a legal dispute over land and to represent herself to make her case. Other priestesses and keybearers had access to bronze (the key raw material of the time) and received textiles and other goods intended either for use in the cult or for their personal use. They supervised low- and mid-ranked personnel, owned slaves, both male and female -- one priestess is granted 14 female slaves "on account of the sacred gold" -- and appear on tablets (PY An 1281, Fn 50, Jn 829) alongside male officials listed in ways analogous to the men -- among the very rare cases when both men and women are recorded on the same tablet.

So at Pylos, as eight centuries later in Classical Athens, religion lent certain women an exceptional status in that economic restriction and subordination were overruled for them by the requirements of cult. Priestly women had, at least to some extent, economic autonomy. But, of course, it was also the only place where women had any economic power in their own right. As Prof. Olsen puts it, "religion functioned as an economic wildcard in terms of Pylian gender roles."

So much for Pylos! You wouldn't really expect more from those Mycenaean-Greeks; would you? But what about Knossos in the Mycenaean period (after 1450 BCE)? What was the status, what were the rights of the post-Minoan women of the Knossian state? Were there any real or significant differences between the gender biases of Pylos and those of Mycenaean Knossos where the conquerors governed a mixed Mycenaean and Minoan population?

The next post follows Barbara Olsen to Crete as she examines the "wildcards" that were played out in the daily lives of women at Knossos under Mycenaean rule.

Part III: The Women of Mycenaean Pylos and Knossos

Women in Mycenaean Greece

 The Linear B Tablets from Pylos and Knossos

 By Barbara A. Olsen

 Routledge – 2014 – 380 pages

 Hardback: $140.00
ISBN: 978-0-415-72515-6

*The comparable ideogram for a man (left) was a simple forked stick, with some slight stress on the shoulder line, and a barest sketch of the head.
Collected ideograms of MUL and VIR from J. Weilhartner, "Gender Dimorphism in the Linear A and Linear B Tablets", in Kosmos, Aegaeum 33 (2012) 287-296, Fig. LXVI 5, Fig. 9: https://www.academia.edu/1777935/Gender_Dimorphism_in_the_Linear_A_and_Linear_B_Tablets.

** Though, of course, it may just be built on the masculine name Kessandros, since it is "not conceivable" that any Mycenaean woman would speak so to men: J.L. GARCÍA RAMÓN, 'Mycenaean Onomastics', in "A Companion to Linear B Vol. 2 (Y. Duhoux - A. Morpurgo Davis, eds) Louvain, 2011, 225, 226.

Illustrations

 Upper left: Fresco fragment, the 'White Goddess' from the NW slope, Pylos; end 14th C BCE. Photo credit: http://www.tumblr.com/search/mycenaean+frescoes

 Second left: Fresco fragment, 'La Parisienne' from the Campstool Fresco, Knossos; 14th C BCE. Photo credit: http://onassisusa.intelligentlearningmedia.com/blogos/?p=266

 Centre: Fresco fragment, "Women in a loggia" from ramp house deposit, Mycenae. Photo credit: http://www.ou.edu/finearts/art/ahi4913/aegeanhtml/mycptg2.html

Below: Fresco fragment, Woman with a decorated ivory box (pyxis): reconstruction of figure from Women's frieze Tiryns. Photo credit:Wikimedia Commons

Judith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-35434717701475830372014-10-06T17:47:00.001+02:002014-11-14T22:48:42.187+01:00Eritha, A Mycenaean Uppity Woman
Around the year 1300 B.C.E., a priestess named Eritha argued a law suit against the governing council of the district of Pa-ki-ja-na (= Sphagianes, "the place of ritual slaughter"). Eritha was high-priestess of the religious sanctuary at Sphagianes where she served the great Mycenaean-Greek goddess, Potnia (meaning "Our Lady" or "Mistress").

Eritha the priestess claims that the land she holds is a 'freehold' on behalf of her divinity, but the damos [district council] says that she holds a plot of leased communal land.

Eritha v District of Sphagianes

The legal issue is clear: if Eritha had leased the land from the commune as an individual person, it would be taxable. Eritha asserted, however, that she held it as "freehold" on behalf of her goddess, and thus it was free of all fiscal and service obligations. This was no trivial dispute. The amount of land involved was substantial. It was also prime arable land located not far from the town of Pylos, where the king (the wanax) who then ruled over this part of Greece had his palace.

We know about this legal case because it was recorded on a clay tablet (PY Ep 704) written in Linear B (the earliest known form of Greek) by a bureaucrat working in the palace of Pylos. Faced with two powerful, competing entities -- a senior priestess versus her local governing council -- the scribe either lacked the will or the authority to decide whose claim took priority and simply recorded both claims as items to be dealt with at some later date. In time-honoured bureaucratic form, he "kicked it upstairs". Presumably, the king himself would have decided the case ... had not the mortal enemies of Pylos chosen this time to attack his capital. And so it happened that, in the year that Eritha challenged the district council, the palace went up in flames and the kingdom collapsed.

Death and taxes

The fire that destroyed the palace unexpectedly baked and thus preserved the Eritha v District of Sphagianes tablet. Like so many other ancient court cases, we do not know how this dispute was resolved nor even if the king had time to hear any arguments before disaster overtook him. All we really know is that Eritha had an active dispute with the local government of Sphagianes and had challenged them over the classification of a large chunk of land.

Presumably, every landholder in the community of Sphagianes shared the obligation to pay a certain amount of annual tax to the palace. If Eritha's property wasn't taxable, the missing amount would have been shared out among the other landholders when the taxman came to collect whatever was due to the king. The prospect of heavier burdens for the rest of the community (not to mention for themselves) must have prompted council members to object to Eritha's claim. Eritha, however, was trying to protect the interests of her goddess and sanctuary (though it's not impossible she had also slipped a bit of private land into the divine freehold). Both the district council and the sanctuary had the wherewithal to act as independent legal entities. And both sides tried to get the most out of the system for their supporters and also possibly for themselves.

Her-story

This seemingly everyday squabble is actually of huge importance in women's history because it tells us, first of all, that Eritha must have had legal access to both private and official land holdings; otherwise there could be no dispute. Clearly, despite being a woman, Eritha could legally own, or lease, arable land -- the most important commodity in an agrarian economy and the basis of all status and power. Eight centuries later, Greek women -- at least those of whom we know anything, like the ladies of Classical Athens -- no longer had such rights: they could own personal effects like jewellery, clothes, and household goods, but (with very few exceptions) nothing more.

Second, Eritha apparently had the authority to plead her own case. No husband, guardian, or son is mentioned. Remarkably, she was able to defend her own economic interests against her local governing council. And she did so in public. Again, no later Greek woman, not even a priestess, would have been able to represent herself in a legal dispute, let alone challenge public authorities. Such audacity cannot have been common. In fact, we hear of no legal case brought by a male official or landowner. It is extraordinary (at least from the viewpoint of gender politics) that this is the only law suit recorded in the entire Linear B corpus.

Eritha thus has the dubious distinction of having argued the first legal case ever known in Europe.

An Uppity Woman

As chief priestess of "Our Lady", the great goddess Potnia, Eritha had an exceptionally high status. She held leases in her own name on rather a lot of different tracts of land in the district, as well as having the authority to disburse some of this land to her own subordinates. For example, she made a grant of land as a 'gift of honour' to a woman named Huamia, who was described as a 'servant of the divinity' (PY Eb 416; PY Ep 704). Apparently, she had the right to reassign her own land holdings in accordance with her personal wishes. Other tablets tell of two of her slaves (or servants) who each held a small allotment of public land: her high rank meant that even her lowly underlings qualified for official land holdings (PY Eb 1176; PY En 609).

Behind every uppity woman is a power base, in this case the cult sanctuary at Sphagianes. Potnia and her shrine were closely linked with palatial cult and power. The king of Pylos made monthly offerings to the great goddess and lesser deities connected with her sanctuary. A unique tablet (PY Tn 316) records gifts to the gods in connection with a religious ritual. Found in the central archive of the palace, the tablet lists gifts of thirteen gold vases and ten human beings (8 women, 2 men) to female and male deities in order of descending importance. Potnia takes pride of place She is clearly the principle deity for the royal house at Pylos, at least at this time of year [July-August?]:

During the Month of Sailing.
And he [the king?] is performing a holy ceremony.
And he is bringing and carrying gifts to the shrine at Sphagianes.
To Potnia: 1 gold goblet, 1 woman [servant?]

Then, four minor goddesses who reside with Potnia at her shrine are given simpler gold bowls (plus two woman servants). From the language used, it appears that the primary activity of the event was a procession and ritual performance at which the king offered gifts of gold vessels and female servants to Potnia and associated goddesses.

Beware of Mycenaean-Greeks bearing gifts

Which brings us back to the land at the centre of the dispute between the priestess Eritha and the damos of Sphagianes. Can it have begun with a lavish royal gift of land given by the king to Potnia? The palace certainly had the power to tax the land of Sphagianes. Perhaps the king simply comandeered a parcel of their communal land, declared it free of taxes, and presented it as a religious offering to the goddess. If so, the district council's protest may have been aimed not so much at the alienation of land as the fiscal consequences -- a problem which only the king could resolve. Thus, the dispute might have involved not two but three centres of power: the king, the damos, and Eritha fighting her corner on behalf of the shrine of Potnia.

No wonder the palace scribe 'kicked it upstairs' for a royal decision.

A One-And-Only Eritha

This post was meant to review a marvelous new book, Women in Mycenaean Greece: The Linear B Tablets from Pylos and Knossos, by Barbara Olsen (Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Studies at Vassar College). For better or worse, I got carried away by the extraordinary implications of Eritha v District of Sphagianes. Eritha, however, was an altogether exceptional woman. She was not representative even of other high-born women at Pylos, let alone those of the middling or lower classes. What rights had they? What kind of lives did they lead? We'll turn to that in the next post. Consider Eritha's story, thus, as a kind of trailer for my upcoming review Barbara Olsen's fascinating study of the women at Pylos and Knossos.

Part II: The Women of Mycenaean Pylos and Knossos

Sources

Barbara Olsen, Women in Mycenaean Greece: The Linear B Tablets from Pylos and Knossos, Routledge, London and New York, 2014; Susan Lupack, "Redistribution in Mycenaean Societies. A View from Outside the Palace: The Sanctuary and the Damos in Mycenaean Economy and Society", American Journal of Archaeology 115 (2011) 207-17; T.G. Palaima, "Kn 02 - Tn 316", Floreant Studia Mycenaea. Acts of the 10th International Mycenaean Colloquium in Salzburg , Vienna, 1999, 437-456.

Illustrations

Top: Fresco of the "Mycenaean Lady" from the Cult Centre, Acropolis of Mycenae. National Archaeological Museum, Athens inv. no. 11670. Photo credit:

Middle:"Goddess with Sheaves of Grain", Room of the Frescoes, Citadel House, Mycenae. Nauplion Museum.

Below: Two-handled gold goblet, the so-called 'Cup of Nestor' from Shaft Grave IV (Grave Circle A), Mycenae. Photo credit: http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/mycenae.html Judith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-74617959380466530082014-06-18T21:37:00.002+02:002014-10-13T16:00:54.148+02:00Egyptian 'Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom' (Part II)
The Archaeology of Female Burial

Continuing my review of Grajetzki, Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom

Yes, I did say in Part I of this post that I would stop harping on the gorgeous jewellery of 12th Dynasty royal women and show you some serious implements of authority and war instead. Well, sorry, girls will be girls. So hang on a moment and we'll get to blood and guts after the bling.

This is the pyramid of Pharaoh Senusret III (ca. 1837-1818 BCE) at Dahshur. Around the king's enormous pyramid are clusters of smaller pyramids inhabited in death by his wives and daughters. Each such peripheral pyramid had an underground burial chamber containing the sarcophagus and two side chambers, presumably chapels dedicated to the cult of the deceased.

X Marks the Spot

Instead of separate units for each queen or daughter of the royal loins, as was customary, there was (left) a most unusual underground gallery connecting the burial chambers beneath the four small pyramids on the north side. Under the first gallery, a lower shaft provided access to a long vaulted corridor connecting the four sets of chambers each with their sarcophagus and canopic chest.

Long before the French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan explored these galleries in 1894/5, they had been entered by tomb robbers -- probably during the Hyksos period (ca. 1650-1550 BCE) -- and all the sarcophagi were opened and looted.

I can well imagine the first reaction of De Morgan when he found the open sarcophagi and scattered debris left by the ancient thieves: after digging the main pyramid and finding nothing but dust in the king's sarcophagus, and then these ransacked tombs, he might well have been a bit disheartened. But the robbers had been careless or perhaps confounded (not expecting, I imagine, to find buried treasure in a tomb) and so missed two boxes filled with jewellery that had been placed in holes dug into the floor.

Thus, a lucky Monsieur de Morgan hit the jackpot: finding one badly decayed, partly gilded treasure chest on 6 March 1894, and another two days later.

Fit for a pharaoh's daughter

The first box almost certainly belonged to Princess Sithathor, as the box contained a scarab with her name and title, 'King's daughter Sithathor, lady of honour'.

It seems that the princess took with her to the grave much of the jewellery that she had already worn during her lifetime: the gold was much heavier than the thin or gold-leaf items that are usually found on mummies. Surely her most cherished possession was this pectoral collar (above) made of gold, carnelian, lapis lazuli, and turquoise, with the throne name of her father (?) Senusret II in the central cartouche. On both sides of the cartouche a Horus falcon wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt is perched on the hieroglyphic sign for 'gold'.

Other masterpieces from her treasure include two bracelets (left) of hundreds of beads in alternate rows of lapis lazuli, carnelian, and turquoise with gold spacer bars between them, and fastening pieces in the shape of a djed pillar (the sign 'Stability!'). Similar bracelets with djed-pillar clasps were found in the nearby burial of Senusret III's principle queen Weret II, a tomb only discovered in 1995.*

Smiting the enemy

The second treasure in the gallery belonged to the king's daughter (possibly also king's wife) Mereret. Her box contained an even greater number of goodies including two pectoral collars -- one with the throne name of Senusret III and one naming Amenemhat III, his successor.** The later pectoral (above) depicts a vulture protecting the scene under its outstretched wings. The king's throne name appears twice within a cartouche, between which is written "The good god, lord of the two lands, beating all foreign lands". Not to leave any doubt, the enemies about to be clobbered are identified by a label which reads, "smiting Asiatics". Accordingly, the king is (twice) shown smiting kneeling enemies with a mace.

A mace?

Yes, that's how pharaohs smite:

Your mace is over the head of every foreign land ....

The depiction of the king on foot with mace raised ready to crack the skulls of his enemies is very ancient and it doesn't change much over time. But why a mace? Maces are basically only wooden clubs with a head made of some heavy and hard material, in this case stone. As one of the earliest weapons in ancient Egypt, the skull-smashing mace became a source of royal prowess long after it was abandoned as a practical weapon. Perhaps this was because the mace is a weapon requiring great force, rather than any particular skill, and so became a symbol of overwhelming power.

But that alone does not explain why the mace-wielding smiting scene endured for some 3,000 years: even Egypt's Roman pharaohs continued to crush opponents with a mace, at least on temple walls. In fact, this is probably the longest-lasting and best-attested image in Egyptian culture. Its staying power may well lie in its echo of the cosmic conflict between the gods Horus and Seth, their everlasting battle of good against evil, and the victory of order over chaos. The pharaoh was considered to be an incarnation of the falcon god Horus, the posthumous son of Osiris, a divine king slain by his brother, Seth.

Horus has brought Seth to thee [Osiris-King], he has given him to thee, bowed down under thee. (Pyr. 1632a)

Which brings us back to Mereret.

In Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom, Wolfram Grajetzkio describes 76 pieces of jewellery and precious objects found in her treasure chest: number 74 is listed simply as 'A mace head.' So Mereret, too, amidst all her gold and dainty bangles took a royal weapon with her to the grave.*** She is far from the only royal lady buried with weapons and royal regalia. As we saw in Part I, Dr Grajetzki's careful listing of finds from the few intact female burials, credit all of the women with one or more maces, daggers, bows, arrows, and even spears -- as well as wooden staffs, flails, and sceptres of authority.

In a word, these are standard features of the 'Court Type' elite burials -- for women as well as men.

True, Mereret had just a single mace head in her treasure box -- but who knows how many weapons and regalia had originally been buried with her and later looted from her grave? A goodly number, I would say, given those in intact female 'Court Type' burials. But the "Most Weapons Award" should probably go to the comparatively non-aristocratic 'Lady of the House', Senebtisi, whose unlooted tomb was excavated at Lisht in 1906/07 by Herbert Winlock of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 Lady Senebtisi lacked nothing when it came to worldly goods. Despite not having a royal title, she nonetheless had a 'Court Type' burial. Her mummy was adorned with loads of jewellery (three broad collars, gold necklaces, gold hair ornaments made of 98 golden rosettes, armlets, anklets, and much much more). She also had a full panopoly of royal sceptres and staffs, a beaded flail (similar to that on the left), two bows, an alabaster mace with a gold-mounted shaft, a rock crystal mace-head, and a copper dagger with gilded wooden sheath.

She was, it seems, quite ready to have a battle royal. Yet I don't think for a moment that she was a warrior-woman in any way, shape, or form [in this, disagreeing with Rebecca Dean (see Sources, below)]. Nor can we really explain the weapons and regalia as a means of projecting their worldly power: if anything, there seems to be a decrease in women's and thus queens' status in the Middle Kingdom.

Wolfram Grajetzki is, of course, well aware of the fact that female Court-Type burials contain muddled gender-related goods. In fact, he takes us on a tour of rich tombs in other ancient cultures where weapons are occasionally buried with high-ranking women. But there really isn't much known about female burials in the Middle Bronze Age around the eastern Mediteranean, the time period of this post. So, he doesn't say much -- except to warn against the danger of projecting our own gender expections onto ancient burials.

How true.

Dr Grajetzki does, however, put his finger on the underlying symbolism -- if only alluding to it briefly -- when he says:

Although these insignia and weapons are in other contexts associated with gender and in many cultures more typical for burials of men, they appear as ritual object in late Middle Kingdom tombs of women. In this context they are not gender related but confirm the identity of the deceased as Osiris, and clearly show that the deceased was treated as Osiris in ritual.
What has Osiris to do with it?

It's complicated.

In ancient Egypt, the act of creating new life was not attributed to females. Rather, the male created the 'spark of life' while the female's role was to stimulate the male sexually and then receive his child (fully formed in the semen) into her nuturing body. That's how it was supposed to work both for earthly fertility (having babies) as well as for -- a crucial mental leap -- the rejuvenation of the dead. It all goes back to the Creation.

Atum and Osiris

In the Egyptian creation myth, the primal deity Atum brought forth all creation via masturbation. The only female entity involved was his hand -- the word 'hand' is grammatically feminine in Egyptian -- which helped Atum create himself by acting as the stimulant. Thus, the deceased says:

I am Atum who made the sky and created what exists, who came forth from the earth, who created seed, Lord of All, who fashioned the god, the Great God, the Lord of Life.... (Book of the Dead, Spell 79)
Osiris, god of the netherworld, has the same creative power, somewhat weirdly creating his own rebirth after his murder and dismemberment by his brother Seth. When his sister-wife Isis had reassembled him in a wrapped human form (i.e. the first mummy), Osiris magically recreated himself through the same act of masturbation as Atum. Osiris essentially raises himself from the dead. When his body had been reunited by mummification, that sexual act reawakened him to life. Hence, the transition to the blessed afterlife became a model for mortals, but one that only really worked for the male sex. The female had no active role in the mechanism of rebirth.

You can well imagine that this created problems for half of the elite world. Nonetheless...

You will become Osiris (CT, Spell 4)

The circle was squared by having the dead take on a masculine form once placed inside the sarcophagus, regardless of the original gender of the body. To start with, both male and female deceased likened themselves to the god of rebirth, assuming the name of Osiris + their personal name. Thus, for example, Zenobia would have become Osiris-Zenobia (regardless of her female sex). This would give her the regenerative powers of a creator god, simultaneously masculine and divine. Second, her mummy was shaped into the form of Osiris, with the same wrappings whether the person inside was male or female. Third, scribes stuck to the masculine pronouns he and him instead of the feminine she and her when writing magical texts on a woman's coffin. All together, this meant that the deceased female was given a temporary masculine divine identity in order to be reborn after death.

Wake up! May you appear as Osiris... in your hand is the sceptre, in your hand is the flail.

Yes, but to be sure to wake up in the 'Fields of Peace' I suggest we add a fourth way for wily elite women to masculinize themselves: let them place in their tombs such manly objects as weapons, the regalia of kings, and even metal tools.

If nothing else, this will confuse generations of Egyptologists.

But don't worry. After becoming one of the 'blessed dead', the lady returns to her feminine self, her true form for all eternity.

* In 1994, the Metropolitan Museum of Art investigated a shaft in the western most of these tombs that led to a tunnel which in turn led to a three chambers actually located under the southwest corner of the king's pyramid. Fragments of a canopic jar found within this tomb bore the name of Khnumetneferhedjetweret (Weret II), who was the wife of Senusret II and the mother of Senusret III. See also "Queens and Princesses in the Pyramid Complex of Senwosret III, Dahshur". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York:  The Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 2004).

** Egyptologists generally agree that such scenes cluttered with figures and hieroglyphs are characteristic of the goldsmith's art under Amenemhat III, indicating a slight decline in the goldsmith's art. There's certainly something crowded in the composition, at least to our eyes; but would Mereret have agreed with us? I rather suspect not.

*** Stone maceheads already appear in female burials in the Predynastic period. A study of 100 Predynastic burials with mace heads indicated that the weapons were more common in the graves of males but not at all rare in female graves. Given the unreliability of sex determination in early excavations, we should be cautious (although the sex bias probably lies in the other direction). However, three such burials appear quite certain: Predynastic Naqada 1488 with two stone mace heads; 1401 with three stone mace heads and a flint knife; and 1417 with a decorated limestone mace head and several flint knives. For references, see Dean in Sources, below; for maces in Predynastic graves, see Stevenson in Sources, below.

Sources: Besides the book under review, I have made especial use of M.M. Luiselli, "The Ancient Egyptian Scene of 'Pharaoh Smiting his Enemies': an attempt to visualize cultural memory". In (M. Bommas, ed.) Cultural Memory and Identity in Ancient Societies, 10-25; R. Dean, Women, Weaponry and Warfare in Ancient Egypt: A Brief Examination of Available Evidence ; A. Stevenson, Alice, 'Mace', UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. On the exciting new topic of the fluid genders of the dead, see H.L. McCarthy, 'The Osiris Nefertari: A Case Study of Decorum, Gender and regeneration,' Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 39 (2002), 173-195; and the trio of papers by K. Cooney, which she so kindly sent me: 'Gender Transformation in Death' Near Eastern Archaeology 73.4 (2010) 224-237; 'Where does the Masculine Begin and the Feminine End?' In (B. Heininger, ed.) Ehrenmord und Emanzipation, 99-124; and 'The Problem of Female Rebirth in New Kingdom Egypt', In (C. Graves-Brown, ed.), Sex and Gender in Ancient Egypt: "Don your Wig for a Joyful Hour", 1-25.

Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom:

The Archaeology of Female Burials

By Wolfram Grajetzki
University of Pennsylvania Press

E-ISBN-13: 9780812209198
E-ISBN-10: 0812209192
Print-ISBN-13: 9780812245677
Page Count: 288
106 illus.
Publication Year: 2013

Illustrations

Top: Pyramid complex of Sensuret III in Dahshur. Copyright © 2000-2014 Dariusz Sitek, Czestochowa - Chicago-Ann Arbor.

Upper left: Plan of the underground galleries of the pyramid complex of Sensuret III. Credit: W. Grajetzki, from the book under review, p. 83, Fig. 65.

Middle left: Canopic jars of Princess Sithathor . Photo credit: Egypt, The pyramid of Sensuret II at Dahshur.

Upper centre: Pectoral of Sithathor with the throne name of Senusret II in central cartouche. Photo credit: Sergiothirteen on the Ancient Egyptian Jewellery Flickr group.

Lower left 1: I cheated: this photograph is actually of the restrung djed-pillar bracelets of Queen Weret II (A. Oppenheim, "Queens and Princesses in the Pyramid Complex of Senwosret III, Dahshur". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York:  The Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 2004). The similar bracelets belonging to Sithathor were in deplorable condition with scattered beads and only the djed-pillar clasps intact.

Middle centre: Pectoral of Mereret with the throne name of Amenemhat III. Photo credit:

Lower left 2: A rounded pear form of mace head known as a "piriform" used throughout the Naqada III period (3250-3100 BC). Photo credit: Tour Egypt net.

Lower left 3: Girdle of Mereret, gold and amethyst, length 60 cm. Cairo Museum JE 30879 - 30923 (CG 53075). Photo credit: Tour Egypt.

Below centre: Was sceptres from the tomb of Senebtisi, Lisht North, Tomb of Senwosret (758), Pit 763, MMA 1906–1907. Photo credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1908; Accession Number: 08.200.51.

Lower left 4: Collar and beaded flail from burial of Princess Nefruptah, daughter of Ameemhat III, in Hawara. Photo credit  sergiothirteen on Flickr.

Bottom left: Colossol statue from Coptos showing the god Min engendering his own creation. Ca. 3200 BCE. Ashmolean Museum 1994.105e. Photo credit: Katherine Wodehouse (via K.M. Cooley, 'Gender Transformation in Death' (see Sources), Fig. 1.Judith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-70988177636882183922014-05-28T17:40:00.001+02:002014-10-13T16:00:19.751+02:00Egyptian 'Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom'
The Archaeology of Female Burials

Ask anyone: the glory of Middle Kingdom art is its sculpture -- and I agree: it really does reach an extraordinary high level, especially during the 12th Dynasty (ca. 1983-1778 BCE). Most of the grandest statues, of course, depicted kings and princes but royal sculpture also extended, if less often, to the females of the ruling families. One of the finest such pieces is this masterly polished head of Princess Ita, a child of Pharaoh Amenemhat II (1919–1885 BCE), the beloved king's daughter of his body.*

We actually know something about this princess.

The reason I want to tell you about her is that I've just read a fascinating new book by Egyptologist Wolfram Grajetzki, Honorary Research Associate at University College London. In his Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom: The Archaeology of Female Burials, Dr Grajetzki pulls together for the first time all possible information on Middle Kingdom tombs belonging to elite and royal women (the so-called 'Court Type' burials of people closest to the king; in a word, his courtiers). It's a surprisingly short list. So many of their tombs were excavated in the nineteenth or early-twentieth centuries when, to be honest, archaeologists were more interested in getting objects for museum collections than in recording details of the dig, let alone correctly sexing the skeletons. Most tombs were also massively looted in antiquity resulting in fragmentary finds and badly-disturbed contents.

There was no such insult to the grave of Princess Ita. She and other females of her family were the lucky ones.

Horus has placed gold on his eye, a gold collar (Pyr. spell 742)

Ita's tomb was found in the pyramid complex built by her father, Pharaoh Amenemhat II, at Dahshur, about 30 km (19 miles) south of Cairo. The pyramid was re-discovered by the French archaeologist Jacques de Morgan (left) in 1894 but it was in deplorable state -- a shapeless heap of rubble with only piles of white limestone chippings -- the remains of its outer casing -- to mark the spot. Around the west enclosure wall of the pyramid, however, De Morgan found  three underground galleries, each of which contained two burials.

Miraculously, the burials had been missed by grave robbers and they produced sumptuous examples of Middle Kingdom funerary objects.

If you've got it, flaunt it!

The first gallery excavated by De Morgan's team belonged to the king's daughters Ita and Khenmet.

Princess Ita's tomb consisted of two chambers, one completely filled by the sarcophagus, while the other contained her burial goods. Her body was found inside a set of three containers. The outer sarcophagus was a simple sandstone rectangular box. Then, a middle coffin decorated with gilded edging and inscribed on the inside with religious texts and on the outside with wedjat eyes  , symbols of protection and royal power. The poorly preserved inner anthropoid coffin (that is, shaped like a human mummy) was embellished with inlaid silver eyes, a headdress in blue with golden bands, and a broad beaded collar on the breast. The actual mummy wore around her neck the remains of a broad collar made of silver and beads of lapis lazuli, carnelian, and turquoise, and was decked out with multiple armlets and bracelets.

We don't know if Princess Khenmet, who was buried near Ita in the same gallery, is her sister or not. Like Ita, she was laid to rest in a set of three containers: an outer sarcophogus made of quartzite, a wooden coffin with inscriptions almost identical to those found inside Ita's coffin, and a badly-decayed inner anthropoid coffin -- its head covered in blue and gold and with inlaid silver eyes. She too was described as a king's daughter but boasted the additional title of "the one united with the white crown" (Khenmetneferhdjet, perhaps not a title but a longer version of her name).

Khenmet's jewellery was drop-dead gorgeous.

The broad collar around her neck had gold falcon-head terminals. Look at them closely: the eyes, eyebrows and mouths of the falcons are inlaid with lapis lazuli. The collar is made of 103 pieces of gold in the shapes of the ankh (life!), djed (stability!), and was (power!) signs.

The two golden crowns right under the words 'flaunt it!' (up above) belonged to her too. The circlet on the left consists of a series of golden flowers with carnelian, lapis lazuli, and turquoise inlays, each connected by gold wires to smaller gold flowers. The second crown is of heavier gold and inlaid with the same gemstones. In the middle, between rosettes and flowering plants, stretches the figure of a vulture made of gold leaf and with black obsidian eyes. The vulture suggests that Princess Khenmet was a queen; if so, her elevation may have happened quite late in life -- after most of her funerary equipment had already been made, since the title of a king's wife never appears.

She had lots more gold jewellery (five bracelets on each arm, chokers, and clasps among other items), as well as a collection of separate gold pieces (above), perhaps from several different necklaces, which looks quite un-Egyptian in character and is more reminiscent of goldwork from the Aegean, perhaps Minoan Crete.

Despite its beauty, I'd really like to get away from the fabulous golden gee-gaws and consider something quite different. No one doubts that the jewellery reflects the personal identity of these women. They are the adornments, so to speak, of their social and religious functions at the royal court. It is also exactly what we expect wealthy ladies to take with them to the grave. But other objects found in both Khenmet's and Ita's tombs are more debatable: such as wooden staffs and sceptres (signs of authority), a set of bronze tools, including chisels, burins, and knives, a mace (symbol of power), and daggers. Khenmet had a dagger made of gilded wood. But Princess Ita trumped her royally in daggers.

Royal Insignia

Near Ita's waist, perhaps having dangled from her belt, was this remarkable dagger (left). The crescent-shaped pommel is made of lapis lazuli. The grip is beaten gold and inlaid with disks of lapis lazuli and green feldspar. The disks are inlaid with crosses of thin gold and between the disks are squares inlaid with light brown carnelian. A solid gold shoulder holds the bronze blade attached by three gold rivets. The gold was surely too weak to support the pressure of a thrust if the dagger was meant to be used -- so it must have been made as a funerary object for the tomb. Just like the foreign pieces (above) of Khenmet's necklace, this dagger is also un-Egyptian in style: the rosette-like pattern of the handle is a fairly common design on Minoan Crete, while the blade's shape points to manufacture in Byblos on the northern coast of Lebanon.

I have taken the time to describe this dagger in detail not only because it is one of the masterpieces of ancient metalwork but because it should make us ask the question: what is this superb weapon doing in a woman's tomb? She was not alone in having a dagger. Princess Khenmet was buried with a gilded dagger as well as a mace. Some elite women in similar 'Court Type' graves elsewhere had daggers, too, and often other weapons: maces, bows, arrows, and even spears. If jewellery in the tomb describes a woman's identity, weren't these weapons also part of that identity? Yet, when the daggers are even noticed (other than for their craftsmanship), they are usually explained as weapons to be used against the evil forces to be met in the underworld. In other words, they have nothing to do with the woman in life. In fact, as we see from Dr Grajetzki's careful listing of finds from the few intact female burials, weapons as well as wooden staffs and sceptres are standard features of the "Court Type" burials -- for women as well as men. Why, then, are they weapons when found with men, whereas with women they become magical tools for the afterlife?**

We'll come back to this eternal question in Part II of this post. We'll also consider the rich burials of women in other pyramid complexes; and, yes, look at more jewellery, too. Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom may not be an easy book but the suitably cautious and meticulous author has given us a real boost in our understanding of The Archaeology of Female Burial.

Part II: Continuing our review of 'Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom'

*This identification is not certain but the head strongly resembles that of a small, badly damaged sphinx statue (now in the Louvre Museum) from the Syrian site of Qatna, inscribed with her name and text.

** My regular readers will be reminded of the story last October about the Etruscan prince found buried with a spear, who turned out to be, upon osteological analysis, a female: How a Prince Became a Princess: Quick Sex Change in Etruria. Whereupon the spear was no longer seen as a weapon and symbol of authority but morphed into a symbol of the union of man and wife -- regardless of the fact it was found with her body, not his. Later, discovering some needles in a bronze pyxis near her body (Part II: What's up with Etruscan gender?), the spear vanished from the story and the tomb was re-baptised 'The Embroiderer's Tomb', a perfect example of the conservation of gender regardless of the finds and their context.

Tomb Treasures of the Late Middle Kingdom:

The Archaeology of Female Burials

 By Wolfram Grajetzki
University of Pennsylvania Press

E-ISBN-13: 9780812209198
E-ISBN-10: 0812209192
Print-ISBN-13: 9780812245677
Page Count: 288
106 illus.
Publication Year: 2013

Illustrations

Top: Head from a Female Sphinx, ca. 1876-1842 B.C.E. Chlorite, 15 5/16 x 13 1/8 x 13 15/16 in., 124.5 lb. (38.9 x 33.3 x 35.4 cm, 56.47kg). Brooklyn Museum, Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, 56.85. Creative Commons-BYImage: Brooklyn Museum photograph.

Upper left: Jacques de Morgan, Director of the Egyptian Antiquities Service, 1894/5: the illustration is from the 'illustrated London News' and shows the dramatic moment of the discovery of Princess Khenmet's diadem. Photograph via http://ib205.tripod.com/intact_burials.html

Middle centre: Golden crowns from the tomb of Princess Khenmet. Original photograph: Emile Brugsch in Maspero 1908, Cat. Egyptian National Museum, vol.1, via Athena Review Image Archive.

Below left: Burial chamber of Princess Itakayet, daughter of Amenemhat II, at Dahshur. Photo credit: A. Oppenheim, "Queens and Princesses in the Pyramid Complex of Senwosret III, Dahshur". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York:  The Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 2004).

Lower centre: Gold pectoral with semiprecious gem stones worn by Khenmet's mummy: via http://ib205.tripod.com/intact_burials.html.

Below centre: Gold jewellery from Khenmet's tomb (from Crete?). Egyptian Museum, Cairo 52975-9. Via K. Benzel, 'Ornaments of Interaction: the Art of the Jeweler' in (J. Aruz, K. Benzel, J.M. Evans, eds.) Beyond Babylon, Metropolitan Museum of Art (2008) p. 102, Fig. 33.

Bottom left: Dagger from the tomb of Princess Ita. Photograph via Eternal Egypt website.Judith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-12383131447796311852014-09-28T18:00:00.003+02:002014-09-29T11:09:33.303+02:00 Amta, Daughter of Yarha. Alas!In the year 113 CE, a rich Palmyran merchant named Taibul (or TYBL in his native Palmyrene) built a grand underground tomb for himself and his family, for their burials to be secure ... and remembered forever.

The name of the tomb's founder and date of construction were inscribed on the lintel-stone discovered outside his 'House of Eternity'. The tomb itself ('H' on the map: click to enlarge) lies about five kilometres southeast of Palmyra, in a large cemetery where all the tombs are subterranean -- so, when you get to the site, you don't see anything except, here and there, low heaps of sand-covered rubble from collapsed towers. In fact, at the end of the dirt-track that leads to the necropolis, there appears to be only empty stony desert.

However, the lack of anything to see above ground is more than made up for by what is hidden below: in 2002, Japanese archaeologists discovered this intact tomb from the period of Palmyra's rise to greatness.* A tomb unlooted, and rich. TYBL had been twice lucky.

Into the Tomb of TYBL

Leaving the brilliant desert sunlight behind, you pass through a massive single-slab door, descend the stone staircase, and find yourself in a long spacious room. On the opposite wall there are three separate burial vaults; the most prominent is the central exedra (the semicircular arcade in the middle) with simpler arched chambers on either side. Taibul lies with his nearest and dearest in the central vault -- set apart from more distant or less prestigious relatives by a great arch flanked by two pilasters with elaborately decorated capitals. Inside the exedra, three elegant stone funerary banqueting couches are arranged as if for a feast in a Roman dining room (triclinium). Finely-sculpted figures of men, women, and children make up the banqueters.

No inscriptions have been published from the exedra but Taibul, as the family patriarch, is surely the middle figure reclining in the place of honour. As the centre of the family scene, he would be the first person met by his descendants as they entered the chamber bringing vessels filled with water and wine to drink ceremoniously with their dead ancestors. On his right sits his wife and son and, to the left (presumably) his brother and brother's wife. More family members are memorialized on the sarcophagus below.

Two stone couches placed on either side of Taibul's splendid monument are filled with men and women, surely close relatives, reclining or sitting according to sex and status, with still more family busts below. Thus, three families are simultaneously joining in Taibul's funerary banquet while also celebrating their own.

High Relief and False Sarcophagi

At the far end of the tomb, another arched chamber would have been immediately visible to anyone entering the tomb. In the centre of its back wall, two sculptures in high relief are fitted into a niche. The top piece depicts a man reclining on a couch (although the couch is not actually illustrated), his three children standing behind him. Below, two men, perhaps an adult son and his (predeceased?) father, take up two-thirds of the relief, leaving little space on their couch for a diminutive wife and two children. These high reliefs are false sarcophagi. They imitate the motif of the funerary banquet but are unusable, of course, for the deposition of the dead -- as they hang in the air and have no depth. So, they are images of the dead for commemorative purposes only. We really don't know what happened to the bodies of the people depicted on them but they might have been placed in the now-empty loculi which are visible to the left and right of the niche.

Loculi

Naturally, not everyone is privileged to have sumptuous funerary monuments.

The simpler burials lack elaborate funerary couches and large sepulchres. Instead, the dead are buried in loculi, narrow coffin-like horizontal spaces cut into the walls of the tomb. Each loculus was sealed by a limestone slab portraying the head and upper body of the dead person interred within.

Or rather, as recent excavation shows, the portrait of one of the dead persons within. For, oddly enough, a loculus was not used for just a single body. Usually several bodies were buried inside even if there were many unused loculi nearby. Since this is quite a recent discovery, we do not yet have any idea how they chose whose portrait would be used to seal the loculus. Even odder, the sex of the bodies buried inside does not seem to determine the sex of the bust on the outside of the grave: all we can say is that interred dead males are generally more numerous than females. Both sexes were placed inside with their heads facing the innermost wall. And neither sex was buried with any grave goods except for the clothes that they wore on their bodies. Dead infants, on the other hand, placed in pits in the floor of the funerary chambers, were given some small objects like glass beads and bronze bells to take with them to the other world.

So, in death, as perhaps also in life, the ties of the extended Palmyran family were enormously strong. Taibul's tomb served primarily the burial needs of his kin, based, I would think (as with much of the elite), on cross-cousin marriages. Publication is still incomplete but we may imagine a tomb filled to the brim with stone images of Taibul's brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents, children, and grandchildren, all commemorated in the tomb's funerary art.

Or, sadly, of what remains of its funerary art.

Two Ladies from Taibul's Tomb

This richly-adorned lady, whose name is lost, is almost certainly the same woman who is pictured on the upper left of the loculi wall above. Her face, hairstyle and turban match and her pose is the same: right hand holding spindle; index finger in the pointing gesture; spread fingers of her left hand holding her veil. This is, of course, a very common female gesture. Her specific jewellery confirms the identification: the bracelet and the shapes, number, and size of her necklaces are identical with the jewels worn by the lady on the wall. But she is no longer on her wall. Her grave-stone was jimmied off and taken from the tomb by looters.

Alas, Taibul, your luck has run out.

The Tipping Point

The four-year civil war has killed more than 200,000 people and forced millions more to flee their homes. It is also destroying some of the world's most important art, buildings and monuments. As the war grinds on, illegal excavation and the looting of antiquities is running riot. Sometimes the thieves are soldiers in the Syrian army. Others are criminal gangs, crazed iconoclasts, or just desperate unemployed and hungry men. It hardly matters: the resulting destruction of Syria's heritage is the same.

Amidst the gloom, however, are rare flashes of light, such as the lucky swoop by the Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums that recovered the anonymous bejewelled lady from Taibul's tomb (reported on the Palmyra History and Archaeology website, with photographs of recovered loot).

The authorities must sometimes get tip-offs. In just a single month this year, they intercepted three different lots of looted Palmyran antiquities on their way to the international market (click for illustrations of the recovered objects): on 6 March 2014, 16 March 2014, and 30 March 2014. April was much the same. June and September were worse.** And so it goes. These objects had all originated from known tomb groups or museum storerooms. What is perhaps even more disturbing is the consignment seized on 19 June 2014, none of which was known to archaeologists, which means that illegal digging of unexcavated tombs is taking place around the city despite Palmyra being nominally under the control of the Syrian army.

Amta, Daughter of Yarha. Alas!

The grave-stone of Amta, Daughter of Yarha (left) had also been stolen from Taibul's tomb and was among the group recovered on 26th August. As she is not pictured on the loculi wall but was registered among the tomb's unpublished contents, it seems all too likely that the thieves have emptied Taibul's tomb of its entire contents. Can we doubt that all the funerary banquets, sarcophagi, high reliefs, and busts have also been cut from the walls -- and already crossed the border into Lebanon to be sold on to rich European, American, and Gulf collectors?

Amta will be going back home, it is true, but her context is forever lost. Perhaps because of her beauty, the Syrian authorities gave her a whole page of her own boasting of her recovery. Amta deserves her 15 minutes of fame. But then, again, the gloom descends. 'Alas!' is the Palmyran last cry for the dead.

Amta, Daughter of Yarha. Alas!

* Prof. Kiyohide Saito and the Japanese Archaeological Mission to Palmyra have been exploring, excavating, and restoring tombs in the Southeast Necropolis since 1991. Their final research report summary (2004) is available at the Kaken website.

 ** A few days ago, it was reported that the entire Southeast Necropolis has now been looted.

 Illustrations

 Top left: Plan of Palmyra's Southeastern necropolis with location of Talbul's tomb (Tomb H) circled. Credit: Palmyra History and Archaeology

Centre: Isometric plan of Taibul's tomb. Credit: Palmyra History and Archaeology

Second left: Exedra of Taibul's tomb. Credit: Sumitomo Foundation

Third and Fourth left: Inside Taibul's tomb. Credit: Palmyra History and Archaeology 1, Palmyra History and Archaeology 2

Fifth left: Anonymous lady looted from Taibul's tomb. Credit: DGAM

Bottom left: Amta, Daughter of Yarha. Credit: DGAMJudith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-50723786535099115282012-11-11T18:40:00.001+01:002014-05-25T17:37:56.631+02:00Lady Sale and the Buddhas of Bamiyan (Part II): Multiple UpdatesCatastrophe II (What led up to it = Part I here)

The British army began its retreat from Kabul on 6 January 1842, aiming to reach the garrison at Jallalabad 90 miles (140 km) to the east. Jallalabad had been seized by the British three years earlier (a running sore for the Afghan rebels), and was now held by troops under the command of Lady Sale's husband, Major-General 'Fighting Bob' Sale. The rebel chiefs had sworn to allow the British unimpeded passage to exit the country but, scarcely beyond their cantonment gate, the insurgents began to harass them, picking off stragglers and, soon after, attacking the rear guard.

Lady Florentia Sale, then 51 years of age, along with her pregnant daughter Alexandrina (the youngest of her eight children) rode out with the troops. Despite the ghastly conditions, she continued the diary begun four months earlier at the start of the rebellion (later published in London as A Journal of the Disasters in Affghanistan).

Thursday, 6th January [1842]

We marched from Cabul. The advanced guard consisted of the 44th Queen's, 4th Irregular Horse, and Skinner's Horse, two H. A. six-pounder guns, Sappers and Miners, Mountain Train, and the late Envoy's escort. The main body included the 5th and 37th N. I.; the latter in charge of treasure; Anderson's Horse, the Shah's 6th Regiment, two II. A. six-pounder guns. The rear guard was composed of the 54th N. I., 5th Cavalry, and two six-pounder II. A. guns. The force consisted of about 4500 fighting men, and 12,000 followers.*

 The troops left cantonments both by the rear gate and the breach to the right of it, which had been made yesterday by throwing down part of the rampart to form a bridge over the ditch. All was confusion from before daylight. The day was clear and frosty; the snow nearly a foot deep on the ground; the thermometer considerably below freezing point.
There were a dozen women in Lady Sale's party, and 22 children. At the start of the march they travelled with the advance troops, but this arrangement soon ended as it became clear that the Afghans had no intention of keeping to their agreement. As the retreating army plodded grimly south, parties of armed men swept down the hillsides. Frost-bitten, disorganised, impossibly positioned at the bottom of steep-sided defiles, the Kabul garrison began to die. At first in ones and twos. Then in scores, and hundreds.

On January 8th, Lady Sale reports that the enemy was keeping up a sharp fire from all sides. Several persons were killed quite close to her.

The troops were in the greatest state of disorganization: the baggage was mixed in with the advanced guard; and the camp followers all pushed ahead in their precipitate flight towards [India] . . .The pony Mrs. Sturt [her daughter] rode was wounded in the ear and neck. I had fortunately, only one ball in my arm; three others passed through my [sheepskin cloak] near the shoulder without doing me any injury. The party that fired on us were not above fifty yards from us, and we owed our escape to urging our horses on as fast as they could go over a road where, at any other time, we should have walked our horses very slowly....
By now, more than half of the force was frostbitten or wounded; and most of the men, she tells us, could scarcely put a foot to the ground. At this point, the leader of the Afghan revolt -- a son of the ruler deposed by the British two years earlier -- Sirdar Akbar Khan , arrived on the scene under the flag of truce. He suggested that he take the ladies and children under his protection, house them in one of the nearby forts and later, when it was safe, escort them back to the Indian frontier.

Overwhelmed with domestic affliction [the agonizing death that day of her son-in-law, Lieut. Sturt], neither Mrs. Sturt nor I were in a fit state to decide for ourselves whether we would accept the Sirdar's protection or not. There was but faint hope of our ever getting safe to Jellalabad .... But although there was much talk regarding our going over, all I personally know of the affair is, that I was told we were all to go, and that our horses were ready, and we must mount immediately and be off.
 Reluctant they may have been ... but also very lucky.

Last Stand at Gandamak

On January 13th, the remnants of the British-Indian army were annihilated near Gandamak, 35 miles (56 km) from Jalalabad. This painting (left) made in 1893 gives their last stand an heroic glow but, if Lady Sale's diary is anything to go by -- after she left, derived from survivors' reports -- their end wasn't nearly so pretty.

Captivity

We marched; being necessitated to leave all the servants that could not walk, the Sirdar promising that they should be fed. It would be impossible for me to describe the feelings with which we pursued our way through the dreadful scenes that awaited us. The road covered with awfully mangled bodies, all naked: fifty-eight Europeans were counted; the natives innumerable. Numbers of camp followers, still alive, frost-bitten and starving; some perfectly out of their senses and idiotic. The sight was dreadful; the smell of the blood sickening; and the corpses lay so thick it was impossible to look from them, as it required care to guide my horse so as not to tread upon the bodies.
Lady Sale, her daughter, with the other ladies, children and their few surviving servants, were taken to a local fort (what we would now recognize as a fortified compound) and housed in primitive but decent conditions. Over the next few days, they were joined by a small number of wounded British officers who had been taken alive to be held as hostages or for ransom. On the 17th January, they were moved to a compound higher in the valley: Thus all hopes (faint as they were) of going to Jellalabad were annihilated; and we plainly saw that, whatever might be said, we were virtually prisoners.

 There was nothing virtual about it: they were decidedly prisoners. Through that winter and well into spring, they were taken from fort to fort, sometimes higher in the mountains, sometimes further down, dragged hither and thither hard on the heels of Akbar Khan, while negotiations went on for their ransom or use as chips in exchange for British-held prisoners. All the while, too, the British outpost at Jellalabad was besieged by an Afghan force led by the same Akbar Khan. Until, after a siege lasting five months, General Sale suddenly counter-attacked, capturing the main Afghan camp, baggage, stores, guns, and horses, and the Afghans fled back to Kabul.

On 16 June, Lady Sale writes: A report prevalent amongst the Affghans that our force has marched from Jellalabad; and that we consequently shall soon be removed from hence.

Thank heavens they weren't yet on the move.  On July 24th, Lady Sale dryly recorded the arrival of her granddaughter: At 2 P.M. Mrs. Sturt presented me with a grand-daughter;—another female captive.

Back to Bamiyan

On 9 August, there are more rumours: The servants have a report that we are forthwith to be taken away, to, or towards, Bokhara [beyond the Hindu Kush; now in Uzbekistan]. For two days there have been eight camels here ...in case of the [British] force coming up.

The women and children, including the new-born Julia Florentia, finally set off on the 25th, with ten British officers who were ill with fever. Among them was Lt. Vincent Eyre. They reached Bamiyan on September 3rd:

Marched at daylight [the last] seven miles to Bameean. The road wild and uneven, with narrow paths and many ascents and descents. This valley is nowhere more than a mile broad; but it is very fertile, and produces particularly fine grain.... Looking back from hence, we saw Zohak [the fortress drawn by her late son-in-law a year earlier] behind us, on a high point. At Bameean they refused to take us into the fort; and we pitched our tents just under the ancient fortress and city which were destroyed by Jhenzhis Khan; when upwards of 300,000 persons perished. The caves, ruins, and towers, extend for miles. There are two large images which have been described by former travellers: opposite to the largest was our encampment.

And that (I'm sorry to say) is all she tells us about the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Not that she was oblivious to the antiquities:

From the 5th to the 9th we made excursions to see the caves, &c. At first some difficulty was made: but about thirty men [were sent] to guard us and our pencils; for several went intent on sketching. I only copied the frescoes that were on the walls and ceiling near the large image; but Mr. Eyre made some very pretty and correct sketches of the ancient city, &c.
  Now Lady Sale had more on her mind than pencils: their getaway! On the morning of September 11th, a conference took place in her room between two of their Afghan captors and five British officers:

Here in the course of an hour all was settled. The gentlemen present signed their names to the paper; in which we promised to give Saleh Mahommed Khan 20,000 rupees, and to insure him 1000 rupees a month for life; and that if the government did not extricate us from this difficulty, we would be answerable for the money. Thus they held the promise of five British officers as sacred. In heading the paper, they insisted that we should do so in the name of Christ; as rendering it perfectly binding.
 On the 16th, the prisoners made their escape.

We marched to Killa Topchee on a fine sunshiny morning; which we hailed as a presage of the future. We were not, however, without considerable anxiety; for our present state was replete with danger. We had every reason to believe that [one of the Afghans], on leaving us, had gone to Akbar, and revealed our plans; and consequently every man we saw was suspected to be the avant courier of troops sent to reclaim us....[When we] had taken shelter under some huge masses of rock, Saleh Mahommed Khan came up to us; and speaking in Persian to Capt. Lawrence, told him that he had succeeded in getting a few muskets; which, together with ammunition, he had brought with him on a camel: and requested that he would ask the men, which of them would take them.

 Capt. Lawrence then said, "Now, my lads, here's Saleh Mahommed Khan has brought arms and ammunition for some of you: who volunteers to take muskets?"

I blush to record, that a dead silence ensued. Thinking the men might be shamed into doing their duty, I said to Lawrence, "You had better give me one, and I will lead the party."
Well, I think that should be her last word; don't you?

Meanwhile, back on the home front

In Britain, the fate of those hostages, writes Llewelyn Morgan in his book The Buddhas of Bamiyan, dominated public opinion in a way that has been compared to the American hostage crisis in Iran in 1979-1981 [though I doubt it extended to hanging yellow ribbons; stiff upper lips and all that].

On their release, the former captives, especially the tough-as-nails Lady Florentia Sale, were celebrated -- a substitute victory for the humiliating retreat from Kabul. Lady Sale became a household name to high and low in Victorian society. When her family visited Britain in 1844, landing at Lyme Regis (from a ship which the press were delighted to discover was called the 'True Briton'), Lady Sale, her husband, daughter, and granddaughter Julia were mobbed by well-wishers: "As soon as their presence became known," according to The Times, "the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood, and the inhabitants of Lyme, vied with each other in offering their congratulations, while the church bells poured forth their merriest strains of harmony…" There were similar scenes in Londonderry, Liverpool, Southampton, and London.

Her Journal of the Disasters in Affghanistan, accompanied by Lt Eyre's sketches of the CABUL PRISONERS became a publishing sensation. The last three of Eyre's images were of Bamiyan, one for each of the Buddhas and a fold-out panorama of the cliff face (reproduced centre, above). In this strange way, the crisis that gripped the British nation hugely contributed to the growing celebrity of the Buddhas of Bamiyan.

The Buddhas of Bamiyan
by Llewelyn Morgan

Published in the U.K. by Profile Books

In the U.S.A. by Harvard University Press

HARDCOVER
$19.95 • £14.95 • €18.00
ISBN 9780674057883
Publication June 2012

Also Available As
EBOOK
$19.95
ISBN 9780674065383

* Thousands of grooms, cooks, sweepers, dog-handlers, water-carriers and other non-combatants who were considered essential to an Indian army on the move.

Updated 28 December 2013

I just received this message from Llewelyn Morgan:

Dear Judith,

I wrote some more about Julia Florentia Sturt/Mulock, getting a bit closer to satisfying my curiosity.

Have an excellent New Year!

http://llewelynmorgan.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/her-child-born-in-that-captivity/

Ll.

Updated 2 December 2012

Taliban attack NATO base at Jalalabad for the third time this year.

Suicide attackers storm an airfield in Jalalabad, using car bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small arms.

Jalalabad: Now why does that ring a bell? Spelling's changed, weapons changed, but history marches on:

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Sources. Besides Llewelyn Morgan's Buddhas of Bamiyan, and his webpage which focuses on the fates of Lady Sale's daughter and grand-daughter, I have made great use of Lady Sale's journals, freely available online: the first volume (in replica) covers the rebellion in Kabul, the second the disastrous retreat, and the third her captivity.

 Illustrations Top: Portrait of Lady Sale (CABUL PRISONERS) by Vincent Eyre. Note her wearing a turban. Photograph courtesy of Leicester Galleries. Middle left (above): The last stand of the survivors of Her Majesty's 44th Foot at Gandamak, painted by William Barnes Wollenin 1898. Photo credit: Wikipedia. Middle left (below): Prison Scene (CABUL PRISONERS) by Vincent Eyre. Photograph courtesy of Leicester Galleries. Lower centre: Caves of Bameean (CABUL PRISONERS) by Vincent Eyre. Photograph courtesy of Leicester Galleries. Below left: A painting of Lady Florentia Sale escaping from Kabul on horse (1844), by Richard Thomas Bott. Photo credit: Wikipedia.Judith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-77748141536106196172012-11-01T10:35:00.003+01:002014-05-25T17:36:27.649+02:00Lady Sale and the Buddhas of BamiyanJust this morning, as I sat down to write a review of a splendid new book on The Buddhas of Bamiyan by Llewelyn Morgan, I saw this headline in the New York Times, Taliban Hits Region Seen as 'Safest' for Afghans -- a grim report on what's up in Bamiyan today. So I decided not to write a formal review after all, but rather to recount the gist of Morgan's remarkable history which turns out to be, alas, only too timely.

The colossal Buddhas (pictured above) are, of course, no longer in their niches, having been dynamited to bits by the Taliban in 2001. But, first, let me tell you what came before -- it's a long story: the Buddhas 'lived' for over 1,400 years -- and then to the extraordinary true tale of Lady Sale.

Bamiyan is an oasis town in the centre of a long valley that separates the mountain chains of Hindu Kush and Koh-i-Baba --some 140 miles/230 km northwest of Kabul. In the late-6th and early-7th century CE, first the smaller (38 meters/120 feet) and then the larger (55 meters/175 feet) Buddhas were cut at unmeasurable cost into the tall, sandstone cliffs surrounding Bamiyan. The taller of the two statues is thought to represent Vairocana, the "Light Shining throughout the Universe Buddha". The shorter one probably represents Buddha Sakyamuni, although the local Hazara people believe it depicts a woman (Muslims generally interpreted the two Buddhas as man and wife).

The two colossi must once have been a truly awesome sight, visible for miles, with copper masks for faces and copper-covered hands.  The outer robes (or sangati) were painted dark blue on the inside and pink, and later bright orange, on top. In their latest phase, the larger Buddha was painted red and the smaller white. Travellers as far back as the 11th century speak of one red Buddha and one moon-white.

Even an early Muslim visitor was impressed:

The people of India [i.e. non-Muslims] go on pilgrimages to these two idols, bearing with them offerings, incense and fragrant woods. If the eye should fall upon them from a distance, a man would be obliged to lower his eyes, overawed by them.
 Besides the huge Buddhas, there were numerous caves carved out of the ochre-coloured sandstone cliffs. When the Chinese pilgrim monk Xuanzang visited Bamiyan in 630-631 CE, some 2,000 monks were worshipping and meditating in these caves. One must imagine hundreds of stone and wooden staircases running along the hill face, linking caves that are now inaccessible, their entrances carved and painted and festooned with fabrics.

On The Silk Road

Behind the cliffs rise the high peaks of the Hindu Kush, perpetually under snow. Bamiyan, itself about 2500 m (7500') above sea level, is at the heart of this formidable barrier between India and Central Asia and the valley provides comparatively easy passage through it. So whoever held Bamiyan effectively controlled traffic along a major branch of the fabled Silk Road. In the Buddhist period (most of the first millennium CE), this strategic position made Bamiyan both a lucrative halt for caravans carrying goods across the vast reaches between China and points west, and a bone of contention for powers on either side of the Hindu Kush. Rich convoys and predatory armies have been regular features of Bamiyan's history.

Arabian Nights

Despite folk stories of instant conversion, Islamisation was a gradual, uneven process along the Hindu Kush. Almost a century after the first Arab soldiers reached Afghanistan, another Buddhist monk, Hyecho, visited Bamiyan in 727 CE on his travels from China to India and still found there 'many monasteries and monks'.   The northern plains of Afghanistan were conquered by Arab armies by the end of that century but it took another three or even four hundred years for the eastern parts of the country to embrace Islam. Bamiyan was said to have been converted at least three times: in 754-75; or again in 775-85; then, in 870, an Arab strongman captured the city and sent as loot 'fifty idols of gold and silver' to Baghdad, so obviously the monks were still rich and thriving; finally, almost another century later, the founder of the Ghaznavid Empire was said to have done the deed. Whatever actually happened, Buddhists must have lived alongside Muslims in the valley for some time: as late as 1078, a local official still boasts the title of 'monastery keeper'.

But it was all for nought.

In 1221 Genghis Khan arrived with his Mongol hoards. Bamiyan tried to resist -- never a good idea with Genghis -- and the town was taken by force:

Genghis gave orders that every living creature, from mankind down to the brute beasts, should be killed, that no prisoner should be taken, that not even the child in its mother's womb should be spared, and that henceforth no living creature should dwell therein.
In time the valley was repopulated by the people who now live there, the Hazaras. They believe that they are direct descendants of Mongol troops and their families who settled there, and they are quite possibly right: recent DNA tests seem to confirm their Mongol origin. In time, these new inhabitants, too, were Islamised but, for unknown reasons, they became Shi'a -- another cause of tension with the Sunni Pashtun majority and that underlies some of their deadly confrontation with the Taliban in our own times.

If any fool this high samootch [cave] explores,
Know Charles Masson has been here before.

Visitors of an entirely different kind arrived in Bamiyan in the 19th century, adventurers and spies heading to or from British India. The antiquarian Charles Masson (actually a deserter from the British army) arrived in 1832. An early excavator of Buddhist sites, he also worked surreptitiously for the British as their 'Agent in Cabul for communicating intelligence of the state of affairs in that quarter on a salary of Rs. 250 per annum.' It didn't take long for Afghan authorities to realize -- correctly -- that English archaeologists was just another way of saying English spies.

Europe's Favourite Psychopath

What these early adventurers shared was a classical British education and one figure above all inspired their interest: Alexander the Great. As the British progressed further into the north-west of India, the more they encountered territory familiar to them from the stirring accounts of Alexander's campaigns in the 4th century BCE:

To look for the first time upon the [Indus River] that had borne upon its surface the world's victor two thousand years ago. To gaze upon the landscape he had viewed....
Thrilling stuff! Another Englishman, Alexander Burnes, author of the bestselling Travels into Bokhara, and something of a sex symbol in his day, travelled to the Indus in 1831 to deliver a gift of five shire horses to the ruler of Punjab. Needless to say, he was also there to spy out the lay of the land. He had a particularly bad case of Alexander-itis:

 [Alexander] has reaped the immortality which he so much desired, and transmitted the history of his conquests, allied with his name, to posterity.... And, while we gaze on the Indus, we connect ourselves, at least in association, with the ages of distant glory.
A year later, Burnes was at Bamiyan writing about 'the gigantic idols of Bameean', quite convinced that this was the city founded by Alexander the Great, Alexandria ad Caucasum. Burnes would soon return to Afghanistan, this time as part of an invading army as the British played out their fantasies of regime change in Kabul. They wanted to make Afghanistan a friendly buffer state between British India and the Russians on the other side of the Hindu Kush. And so began the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1841).

So easy to get in, so hard to get out.

British and Indian troops occupied the country. Alas, poor Alexander Burnes -- unlike his hero, this Alexander was ripped apart by a mob in Kabul on 2 November 1841, one of the events that led to an infamous massacre of British troops as they retreated from Kabul two months later.

Another visitor to Bamiyan was Lieut. John Sturt of the Bengal Engineers, who had been sent to survey the all-important passes over the Hindu Kush. He stopped at Bamiyam on his route back. The officer, suffering from 'Koondooz Fever' (malaria) camped below Zohak, the fortress perched on the red cliffs at the eastern end of the Bamiyan valley. That's where he made the charming drawing of the ruins (above, dated 1840). A little over a year later, Sturt, too, would be dead, mortally wounded during the chaotic and bloody retreat of the British forces from Kabul.

Catastrophe

Lulled into a false sense of security, the British had reduced the number of their troops in Afghanistan and brought their wives and families to join them. They went hunting, horse-racing and held amateur theatricals in Kabul. But it was not a safe place for European interlopers. The country rose against them, and the outnumbered British and Indian soldiers tried to retreat back to India. As they withdrew through the narrow passes from Kabul to Jalalabad in freezing conditions in January 1842, the British column was attacked from all sides. Few survived.

Lieut. John Sturt, who had made that tranquil drawing of Zohak at the entrance to Bamiyan, died in agony of an abdominal wound, leaving his pregnant wife Alexandrina and his mother-in-law Florentia, Lady Sale, to be taken prisoner on the very day he died.  By a strange quirk of fate, their captors would take them to Bamiyan, then at the very edge of Afghan territory. They marched there along with their fellow captives, including Lieut. Vincent Eyre, who had been seriously wounded in the disastrous retreat, and his wife and young son.

Lieut. Eyre kept an illustrated diary of their ordeal. But I fear this post is already over long and so we must postpone the saga of the CABUL PRISONERS (as they were famously known in England) to another day.

[Part II: click here]

The Buddhas of Bamiyan
by Llewelyn Morgan

Published in the U.K. by Profile Books

In the U.S.A. by Harvard University Press

HARDCOVER
$19.95 • £14.95 • €18.00
ISBN 9780674057883
Publication June 2012

Also Available As
EBOOK
$19.95
ISBN 9780674065383

* Mass spectrometer tests have determined the age of the organic material in the clay layers. The construction of the smaller Buddha is dated to between 544 and 595 and the larger Buddha between 591 and 644.

Sources include the website  Azaranica, a news aggregator on Hazaras and Hazarajat; Hans van Roon on The Silk Road Blog;

Illustrations

Top:  Buddhas of Bamiyan, from Iwan Lawrowitsch Jaworski: Reise der russischen Gesandtschaft in Afghanistan und Buchara in den Jahren 1878-79, Jena : 1885; photo credit: Andreas Praefcke via Wikipedia.
Middle: Reconstruction of colours of the Buddhas robes at the end of the 10th century. Technische Universitaet Munchen via The Silk Road Blog.

Below: The fortress guarding the entrance to the Bamiyan valley, a lithograph of Shahr-i Zohak, based on a drawing by Lieut. John Sturt, Bengal Engineers (23 August 1840). Photo credit:  Leicester Galleries.

Judith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-46520064689547367052014-05-08T18:08:00.002+02:002014-05-09T19:52:48.581+02:00A DIRGE TOO SOON?[My long blog silence was caused by the pressure of work + a computer crash. I mark my return with something not close to my subject but close to my heart.]

Some faint hope for Zenobia, the Syrian ibis

Zenobia, queen of the ibis colony in Syria

Almost exactly a year ago, we were grieving not only for Syria and its raging civil war, but for Zenobia, seemingly the last ibis of Palmyra (left).

Zenobia was the only Northern Bald Ibis to make it back to the breeding grounds in the desert near Palmyra after their annual winter migration to the Ethiopian highlands (the whole, sad story in Zenobia, Last Ibis in Syria).

It had started out so well.

Right on schedule, Zenobia flew off with her mate, Odeinat, the one and only hope for her to continue the dynasty:

Taking flight after tagging

Zenobia had been paired the previous year to Odeinat, the last surviving male ibis. But his satellite tag stopped transmitting before he ever reached Ethiopia -- the final bleep having been sent from southern Saudi Arabia in July 2012....

After which he went radio silent. Zenobia returned to Palmyra alone and no other birds followed her home. Since no sole bird, not even a queen, can breed by herself, the Syrian branch of ibises -- once numbered in the thousands -- moved from Red-List Endangered (the highest level of threat) to the edge of Extinction.

On the Brink

That didn't stop Zenobia, however. According to her satellite transmitter, in autumn she set off again to fly to Ethiopia for her winter break -- which meant crossing seven countries and flying over 6,000 kilometres (3,800 miles) to the Ethiopian highlands.

But was she alone?

Or did some Turkish ibis fly with her?

 A Turk in Time?

In July 2013, six birds from the semi-wild Northern Bald Ibis population at Birecik, Turkey were released in a trial re-introduction to nature. Three were fitted with satellite transmitters and ringed. Four of the birds were juveniles, and two were one-year-old birds. The hope was that the gang of six would survive and migrate.

For the first two weeks, the birds remained very close to their home breeding station. However, excitement mounted as five of the birds departed south, and the intriguing news was that they had stopped off very close to Palmyra in mid-August, where the remaining wild population was now just the one individual, our intrepid Zenobia.

What happened next is unknown. The war had spread to Palmyra, making it almost impossible for the Syrian team of Bird-Life International to continue field checks at the ibis breeding site in the desert.

A Flutter of Hope

Ibis grabbing tasty scorpion prey by its sting

A trusted Ethiopian field-worker of Bird-Life International, however, picked up the trail. News from the highlands moves slowly: in February, as I've only just heard, he visited the site where the relict Syrian birds mainly overwintered. He reported spotting three adult northern bald ibis! These included the female Zenobia, who was accompanied by an unringed adult. Another lone ibis was also sighted it the area. So, there's a faint hope that Zenobia and the unringed bird (one of the Turks?) are indeed a pair, and might make it back to breed in Syria.

If so, they should be returning to Palmyra any day now.

Keep your fingers crossed for Zenobia, that rarest of rare birds and last queen of the colony at Palmyra.

Sources: We have been following Zenobia's story from March 2007 (Zenobia's Triumphant Return to Palmyra) with further hopeful flights of Latest News in 2011 and 2012, only to be grounded in 2013 with Zenobia, Last Ibis in Syria

Illustrations

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

 Upper left: Conservation officer, Adel Abouajaja, releasing Nader (meaning 'rare'), at the Northern Bald Ibis Conservation Project in Morocco. Photo Credit: Víctor García Matarranz (via SEO/Grepom).

 Lower left: Northern Bald Ibis. Photo credit: Brian Stone (via SEO/BirdLife).

 Bottom: Ibis catching scorpion by its sting. Undoubtedly this is a skill learned when they're young, demonstrating the importance of learning in these birds. Photo Credit: Víctor García Matarranz (via SEO/Grepom).Judith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-16176009376831001442013-05-12T16:38:00.001+02:002014-05-08T18:11:38.993+02:00Zenobia, last ibis in Syria
From 'red-list endangered' to extinct.

We interrupt our series on graffiti at Dura Europos to bring you a special announcement.

In the midst of our sadness and grief at events in Syria, comes one wretched extra ill omen (as if more were needed): the tiny breeding population of the Northern Bald Ibis in Palmyra has collapsed. This year, only Zenobia (left) returned to the breeding grounds in the Syrian desert not far from Palmyra after the winter's migration to the Ethiopian highlands.

We have been following Zenobia's story from March 2007 (Zenobia's Triumphant Return to Palmyra) with further hopeful updates with the Latest News in 2011 and 2012.

And then there was one.

This sad report came in this morning from SEO/Bird Life:

Only one of the Northern Bald Ibis has returned to the breeding site at Palmyra this spring. Unfortunately, there are no signs of any more birds so far returning from their migration to Ethiopia. The returning female Zenobia was last year paired to Odeinat, the last male, which was fitted with a small satellite tag that stopped transmitting in southern Saudi Arabia in July 2012....

This looks ominously like it may be the end for the relict eastern population of the species, having been rediscovered in 2002 when there were 3 breeding pairs. Despite huge efforts the colony dwindled to just one pair in the past two years and now it seems to just the one bird.
The Palmyran ibis colony discovered in 2002 never rose above 13 birds. They were the last of a Middle Eastern population that once numbered several thousand; and the bird was classified as critically endangered – the highest level of threat there is.

The northern bald ibis, Geronticus eremita, is a large bird with black plumage that flashes irridescent purple and green when the light strikes it, with a bald red face, red bill and legs, and a strange crest of long feathers on the back of its head, which makes it look as though it is wearing a feather wig. It is usually silent but hisses and grunts (like an angry queen) when at its nest and in display.

Zenobia is now alone; and soon there are none.

Illustrations

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

Middle: Last Syrian ibis among bedouin tents. Photo credit: M.S. Abdallah (via SEO/BirdLife).

Below: Northern Bald Ibis. Photo credit: Brian Stone (via SEO/BirdLife).
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Judith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-87349672724479431412014-02-02T18:40:00.001+01:002014-02-13T16:43:37.756+01:00A Lyrical Literary Miracle: More Sappho (2 Updates)The Tenth Muse

Although they are
only breath, words
which I command
are immortal .*

So said Sappho over 2,600 years ago and time has proved her right.

Yet, until 2004, the world could read only three complete poems by the Lesbian poet. In that year, a fourth poem was discovered and, now, just this January, we have been given a fifth.

More about the new poems in a moment. Be patient, and you'll be among the very first to read the newest of the new poems in an English translation which appeared only two days ago. But, first, a word about what we don't have.

There were once nine books of her poems that were written down in the 7th century BCE. By the time of Tzetzes, a 12th century CE chronicler, most of her poems had already vanished (Since the passage of time has destroyed Sappho and her works, her lyre and songs....). All that is left to us now are small scraps of papyrus, often with just a single legible word or two (such as down-rushing to describe a wind, or gold-knobbed goblets with no explanation) and disjointed phrases giving the middles of some lines and the ends of others (like my favourite, tender but obscure, far more sweet-sounding than a lyre . . . more golden than gold . . .). Sixty-three fragments retain a complete line while only 21 can boast a whole stanza. That's what had survived of the writings of a woman who, as Plato said, should be honoured not merely as a great lyric poet but as one of the Muses, the goddesses who inspire all art:

Some say there are nine Muses: how careless!
Look -- Sappho of Lesbos is the tenth!
Poem # 4

Then, just a decade ago, a papyrus manuscript containing fragments of three of her poems, one previously unknown, was discovered in the archives of the University of Cologne. That papyrus (left) was found in the cartonnage of an Egyptian mummy -- that is, the flexible layer of papyrus strips which was moulded while wet into a plaster-like surface around a mummified wrapped body, so that designs could be painted on it. The text had been copied onto the original papyrus scroll early in the third century BCE, not much more than 300 years after Sappho wrote, which made it the earliest manuscript of her work then known.

The scholars who unwrapped it realized that parts of the new poem corresponded to a fragment found in 1922 in one of the ancient rubbish heaps of the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus. In the Oxyrhynchus portion, we had only line-ends, preceded and followed by line-ends of other poems, and it was not clear where one poem ended and the next began. By putting all the bits and pieces together, rather like a jigsaw puzzle, they recreated a substantially complete poem of twelve lines, made up of six two-line stanzas. This brought the number of Sappho's complete poems to four.

 As 'A New Sappho Poem', it was published in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS 24 June 2005) with the 'new' original Greek and an English translation by Prof. Martin West, emeritus fellow of All Souls, Oxford, a renowned translator of Greek lyric poetry, and on any reckoning the most brilliant Greek scholar of his generation. Remarkably, within a month, two poets, Lachlan Mackinnon and Edwin Morgan, published further translations with slight differences in tone and emphasis, also in the TLS (click on their names to read them).

Three translations in so short a time feels like an embarrassment of riches!

Some will prefer West's version, some Mackinnon's or some again Morgan's, but I say that the finest, which appeared in the TLS half a year later, is by Richard Janko; and here it is:

Pursue the violet-laden Muses' handsome gifts, my children, and the loud-voiced lyre so dear to song;

 But me - my skin which once was soft is withered now by age, my hair has turned to white which once was black, my heart has been weighed down, my knees give no support which once were nimble in the dance like little fawns.

How often I lament these things. But what to do?

 No being that is human can escape old age.

For people used to think that Dawn with rosy arms and loving murmurs took Tithonus** fine and young to reach the edges of the earth; yet still grey age in time did seize him, though his consort cannot die.
I imagine that Sappho's contemporaries must have heard a song ringing something like this, perhaps responding to it as did Solon ( ca. 638-558 BCE), ruler of Athens and no mean poet himself, who asked for someone to teach him her song "so that I may learn it and die."

Poem # 5

Papyrus fragments that were recycled as mummy casings continue to surface on the market, since many of them belong to private collectors. Last year, a very lucky private collector walked into the office of Dirk Obbink, Lecturer in Papyrology and Greek Literature at Oxford University and Director of the Ancient Lives Project for imaging papyri. The anonymous collector, who presumably had no idea of what it contained, showed Dr Obbink a tattered scrap of papyrus, probably dating to the late 2nd or early 3rd century CE.

The papyrologist quickly realized what he was looking at -- "indubitably" in his words, parts of two previously unknown poems by Sappho. Dr Obbink asked for permission to publish the papyrus and his preliminary article, which includes a transcription of the fragmentary poems, has just appeared in an on-line version (link restored).

This is a spectacular literary discovery.

One of the poems is remarkably well preserved, with just a few letters missing and not a single word in doubt. Elements of this longer poem link up with fragments already known to be by Sappho, while the metre and dialect in which the poems are written point to her as well. The clincher is a reference to her brother, Charaxos – who is named by Herodotus, the fifth-century BC historian, when describing a poem by Sappho that recounts the tale of a love affair between Charaxos and a beautiful slave in Egypt; as well as to her younger brother Larichus who was previously known only by name. Appropriately, this has been dubbed 'the Brothers poem'.

The Brothers poem depicts an exchange between two people concerned about the success of Charaxos' latest sea voyage. The speaker -- perhaps Sappho herself -- advises that a prayer to Hera would be the best way to ensure this success, and expounds on the power of the gods to aid their favourites. The poem's final stanza speaks of Larichos, Sappho's younger brother, "becoming a man…and freeing us [Sappho's family?] from much heartache."

And now -- just two days ago -- Prof. Tim Whitmarsh (University Lecturer in Greek and Professor of Ancient Literatures at Oxford University) published the first translation of this poem in The Guardian newspaper.  'Read Sappho's "New" Poem' here:

But you always chatter that Charaxus is coming,
His ship laden with cargo. That much, I reckon, only Zeus
Knows, and all the gods; but you, you should not
Think these thoughts,
Just send me along, and command me
To offer many prayers to Queen Hera
That Charaxus should arrive here, with
His ship intact,
And find us safe. For the rest,
Let us turn it all over to higher powers;
For periods of calm quickly follow after
Great squalls.
They whose fortune the king of Olympus wishes
Now to turn from trouble
to [ … ] are blessed
and lucky beyond compare.
As for us, if Larichus should [ … ] his head
And at some point become a man,
Then from full many a despair
Would we be swiftly freed.
The new Sappho papyrus probably came from Egypt and perhaps from Oxyrynchus, but its provenance may never be known. A thriving black market for papyri means that many of them emerge not from archaeological digs but from souks, bazaars and antiquities shops. And there are yet more thousands of unpublished papyrus fragments in museum and university collections.

 The bottom line: two papyri with 'new' poems by Sappho have appeared in just the last ten years. There is hope, there is hope.

You may forget but
Let me tell you
this: someone in
some future time
will think of us.***

* Most unusually, this text (Edmonds [Loeb 1928] Lyra Graeca 1a) comes not from a papyrus but from a vase painting. Translation by Mary Barnard, Sappho: a New Translation, Berkeley, 1958, no. 9.

** As in so much Greek poetry, Sappho invokes myth to make her point. Tithonus was a youth so beautiful that the dawn-goddess took him as husband. At her request Zeus granted him immortality. But she forgot to ask for eternal youth. So, unlike his immortal lover, Tithonus grew old and feeble, having eventually to be shut in his chamber "where he chatters away endlessly but barely has the strength to move", as Dr West says. Dr Janko has a more elegant explanation: a crucial feature of the myth of Tithonus familiar to Sappho's contemporaries, but unknown to all but a few of her readers today, is that, in legend, the aged Tithonus turned into a cicada, a 'singing' insect that the Greeks thought had an immortality of a sort, since it rejuvenated itself by shedding its skin. Thus, Tithonus can continue to sing for ever -- an ideal image for the aged poet herself, with her wish to have her poetry win glory beyond the grave.

** Edmonds (Loeb 1928) Lyra Graeca 76. Translation by Mary Barnard, Sappho: a New Translation, Berkeley, 1958, no. 60.

Updated 4 February 2014

Three major items in the last few days:

1. Who was first to translate the 'Brothers Poem' into English? Tim Whitmarsh (who is quoted above) was certainly first to publish in the major media (The Guardian and, again, in HuffPost Culture UK), both appearing on 30 January. But he may have been pipped at the post by Steve Dodson who translated the poem on his blog LanguageHat, as 'New Sappho!' on 29 January (followed by an interesting discussion and revisions in the comment section).

But the first first-prize really must go to the eminent literary critic (and author of Sappho's Gift: The Poet and Her Community [in Italian 2007; in English 2010]) Prof. Franco Ferrari whose translation into Italian appeared on the 19th of January at Roberto Rossi's website, Il grecoantico: versioni, cultura, testi, letteratura, 'Se Larico diventasse finalmente uomo! A real treat for my Italian readers.

2. The second, quite scrappy poem on the new papyrus has now been translated by Thomas H. Buck and Katy Waldman on the Slate Culture Blog (along with their own version of the 'Brothers Poem') on 31 January: 'Read Two newly Discovered Sappho Poems in English for the First Time' -- which is true of the second if not of the first. Here is their version of what remains of the Aphrodite (Cyprian goddess) poem:

How could anyone not gorge always
Cyprian goddess, whomever you should love
and fervidly wish to call back to you?
You have …

 Having summoned me idly you cut
longing …
This is normally what you get, the little that remains of nearly all of Sappho's poems -- which underlines just how exceptional is the virtually complete 'Brothers Poem'.

3. All is not well in academia. Dr Dirk Obbink has taken his draft article off-line (so it's no use clicking on the link given above; it is broken) after being harshly criticized for pre-publishing the new Sappho papyrus which is without provenance and the property of an anonymous collector. 5 February 2014: the link has been restored. Strictly speaking, scholars are not supposed to publish dodgy papyri, however enticing (and authentic) their contents. The increasingly acrimonious tone of blogging and twittering is best caught on Adrian Murdoch's Bread & Circuses blog, 'Growing Anger at Lack of Response to Sappho Discovery'. I, for one, hope that Dr Obbink will come back on-line to calm his critics. More updates will possibly follow.

Updated 6 February 2014

Dirl Obbink returns to the fray with a punchy article, 'New Poems by Sappho', in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS 5/02/14), that staunch support of Oxford dons. He calls the new Sappho poems 'an Oxford secret' -- which is a secret you tell one person at a time. It seems to me that he may have intended his pre-publication online draft simply as an alert to papyrologists -- hence, the new texts were given in Greek only -- whereas the TLS  is meant to reach a wider educated and academic audience. Perhaps he hadn't planned on Sappho going viral.

Of especial note, Dr Obbink writes about provenance, telling us first that "the papyrus's text was found to overlap, in two narrow vertical bands of letters, with fragments of two previously published papyri containing fragments of Sappho." If I understand correctly, this fragment is from the same scroll as two fragments published long ago, which presumably had passed provenance muster. And he states unequivocally that it has "documented legal provenance." I hope this closes the rather sordid episode of loud whispering and twittering.

The TLS article also gives a new English translation of the 'Brothers Poem' by Christopher Pelling, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford. It seems, doesn't it, that Sappho and Oxford go together like love and marriage. And there is a translation, too, (also by Prof. Pelling) of the fragment now dubbed the 'Kypris poem'. Which translations do I prefer? Ah, that's an Oxford secret.

Sources: In addition to those published in the TLS (all clickable, above), I have made use of James Romm, Scholars Discover New Poems from Ancient Greek Poetess Sappho, The Daily Beast, 28/01/14; Charlotte Higgins, Sappho: Two Previously Unknown Poems Indubitably Hers, Says Scholar, in The Guardian, 29/01/14; Laura Swift, New Sappho Poems Set Classical World Reeling, on The Conversation, 30/01/14; Richard Welland Crowell, Sappho's Lyric Poetry, AncientGreekOnLine, 2009; Holt N. Parker, Sappho Schoolmistress, 1993; D.A. Campbell, Greek Lyric I (Loeb) 1982; Sappho biography by The Poetry Foundation

Illustrations

Top: Bronze Bust of Sappho. Roman copy of Greek original of ca. 350 BCE, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nationale, Inv. 4896. Photocredit via King's Collections, King's College London.

Above left: University of Cologne Papyrus (2004). Photocredit via William Harris, Sappho: New Poem No. 58from the Koln Papyrus.

Middle left: Portrait of Sappho, identified after other inscribed portraits representing the poet with the same hairstyle. Black basalt, modern copy (16th–18th centuries) after a Greek original, possibly an ancient bust reworked. Photocredit: From the Kircherian Museum in Rome, Accession number Inv. 65167, Photographer/Source Jastrow (2006).

Bottom left: Plaster cast of middle-to-late 1st century BCE bronze bust from the peristyle garden of the House of the Papyri, Herculaneum; Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam, Inv. Nr. 16162. The Allard Pierson is doing a clever fund-raiser, Haal ons van zolder (Take us down from the attic) to move their many beautiful plaster casts of Greek and Roman sculpture into newly furbished public exhibition rooms. To pay for the costs of the move, they are 'auctioning off' the casts. Sappho cost just Eur 75 -- I 'bought' her, so she should be on her way out of the closet quite soon.Judith Weingartenhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-38472234.post-74864074330061361362014-01-06T17:29:00.000+01:002014-02-05T20:48:25.226+01:00Sex Play in Ancient Canaan (Part III)(Part I,click here; Part II, click here)

The collection and interpretation of mother-goddesses is just a harmless outlet for the sexual impulses of old men.

Minet el-Beida (Ugarit) Syrian coast, 14/13th BCE. H. 9.2 cm

Thus spoke the great archaeologist Gordon Childe shortly before he jumped to his death from Govett's Leap in the Blue Mountains of Australia. Of course, his insight into the male passion for ancient goddesses had nothing to do with his suicide -- but, still, he knew that his time was running out....

Come on, sailor

I confess that it's easy to conjure up a lascivious fantasy or two about this voluptuous naked lady (left) discovered in Minet el-Beida, the port of Ugarit.

Ooh baby, ooh baby
You've got me reelin'
You've got me swingin' to your melody
I'm in a hot house
Come on, sailor.
Her hairdo with long Hathor curls falling almost to her pubescent breasts, wide pubic triangle and rounded thighs make an alluring image of femininity. Perhaps the long-stemmed flowers she was holding in her hands hinted at her heavenly smell. And standing on a crescent moon that floats above some stars could have promised an otherworldly experience.

So much for the fantasy.

Now, back to earth. Is she, in fact, the Q-goddess, Qedeshet?

L: Tel ed-Duweir, 1300-1050 BCE. H. 8.5. R: Akko, bronze pendant. ca.1300 BCE. H. 8.3

The Q-goddess

So who, really, is Qedeshet?

Her name Qdš(-t) simply means 'holy'. As such, it can be attached to almost any goddess, including the whole of the A-team: Anat, Astarte, Asherah and Athirat. The question is: did there exist an independent goddess named Qedeshet at all? She is not known from any Canaanite or Ugaritic texts or inscriptions. Rather, she only appears as a named goddess in Egypt. There, she is honoured with such typical titles as 'Lady of heaven' and 'Mistress of all the gods' -- which are not specific to her but could equally apply to any goddess in Egypt.

What seems to have happened is this. From the late Middle Bronze Age (ca. 1600 BCE) onwards, Canaan was under Egyptian rule.

Deir el-Medina (Thebes) 19th Dyn. Qedesh with Min & Reshep

Gods and goddesses moved with the armies back and forth in both directions. Canaanites were envious (I would imagine) of the power of Egyptian deities and freely borrowed their attributes -- in our case, all those Hathor curls and lily-lotus flowers. In return, Canaanite gods travelled to Egypt on the backs of soldiers, POW's and slaves. Once installed there, some became very popular with native Egyptians as well and were integrated with interesting local deities (as right, the Canaanite naked goddess with Egyptian Min on her left). So, when we see a picture of the naked goddess in Egypt inscribed with words such as Qedeshet, lady of heaven, great of magic, mistress of the stars, we wonder if the artists were illustrating the Canaanite Q-lady, or a generic Canaanite naked goddess that had been taken over and developed in Egypt itself. In other words, when the Egyptians borrowed the naked-female, did they mistake 'holy' for her own name? In which case, the goddess may have been baptized in Egypt and not in her original Canaanite home.

Nakedness

Minet el-Beida (Ugarit), Syrian coast. 14/13th C BCE.

Meanwhile, back in Canaan, we have seen a considerable variety in the looks of the nude females whether on gold pendants or clay plaques. The way she is pictured varies tremendously. As Kim Benzel says, "it is fair to state that the sole common denominator among these objects is their emphasis on nudity."*

At the risk of being vulgar, I would go further: while nudity is certainly important, the pubic triangle is absolutely vital. The pudendum is almost always inescapably emphatic, not just overly large but often embellished with hair-dots and, sometimes, even with a slit. Little or nothing is left to the imagination.

You could hardly be more explicit.

Rings on her fingers, bells on her toes

Tel Batash, Palestine. 14th C BCE. H. 13

Forget for the moment all the supposed fertility and mother goddesses. Remember what we said earlier (Part I): While there was a multitude of goddesses, there were even more women than goddesses.

What if the naked female is just a woman? In that case, she is clearly a woman who is visually defined by the pubic area + breasts + prominent face + (in most cases) jewellery. The jewellery is often profuse, either pictured as the necklaces and/or bracelets, armlets and anklets worn by females (like the bracelets and anklets on the plaque, left) or it is both pictured and inherent in the object itself as when the pendant is made of gold. In other words, the image carries -- perhaps it even promotes -- a specific idea of a woman.

Certainly, you can relate the pudendum and breasts to ideas of fertility but then you have to explain away the prominent face and all the jewellery, neither of which has any direct bearing on fertility. But what if the idea behind the image is an expression of female sexual desire? This is what Kim Benzel argues in a refreshing new approach to the nude female pendants and plaques.* As she says, "In combination (my emphasis), these features seem far better suited to a reading of female eroticism than the ... interpretation of fertility alone."

Sex in the Raw?

Tel Harasim, Palestine, LB II. H. 7.7.

Let's get rid of Protestant prudery once and for all. People in the ancient Near East were far more comfortable with the idea of overt sexuality than those of us still lingering in the Hellenistic or Judeo-Christian traditions today. Chastity and virginity apparently had no special importance for them and women were not expected to conceal their deepest sexual impulse. On the contrary, sexuality had an unequivocally positive connotation. Sexual allure (kuzbu in Akkadian) was enhanced by jewellery and facial cosmetics as well as through nudity, and was specifically linked to sexuality -- and not to fertility. As Benzel puts it,

[I]t is the nude, bejeweled, and beautified body that represents the physical manifestation of eroticism and sexual attractiveness, features and characteristics equated in the ancient Near East with vitality, power, and well-being rather than with indecency and vulgarity.*

Tel el-Ajjul, Palestine, 1600-1500 BCE. H. 8.0

Benzel thus understands the function of the pendants and plaques as the physical expression of sexual allure, or kuzbu. This does not, of course, deny other piggy-backing interpretations. A pendant could also refer to a myth, a goddess, a cult or votive act, in addition to being an erotic item of personal adornment. The gold pendants were meant to be worn on the body as jewellery, to attract the eye and draw attention to the body wearing it. The worn surfaces of the clay plaques testify to extensive handling in some related activity. But, whether precious pendant or cheap plaque, "the primary and most consistent interaction between image and object seems to be one that refers to the elemental aspects of eroticism and sexuality." The naked female thus represented the ideal of female sexuality. "I believe," Benzel concludes, "these ornaments represented personal, private, and highly animated expressions of sexual allure, or kuzbu -- images that interacted ... powerfully with the individual bodies they adorned".

If she is right, the pendants and plaques were ultimately images about themselves: in a sense, they perform sexuality. In doing so, they surely endowed their wearers with similar eroticism and sexual allure.

Now I'm lovin' and it feels okay
We let our lovin' take us far away
Ooh baby, ooh baby.

* K. Benzel, 'Ornaments of Interaction: Jewelry in the Late Bronze Age', In (J. Aruz, S.B. Graft, Y. Rakic, eds.) Cultures in Contact from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean in the Second Millennium, MMA, New York (2013) 258-267.

Sources: In addition to those listed in Part I and II, Chaka Khan – Be Bop Medley, lyrics of 'Come on, sailor' via Lyricsfreak

Illustrations

Upper left: Louvre Museum AO 14716. Embossed gold leaf plaque, 13th C BCE, Minet el Beida, port of Ugarit, Syria: "A few tombs in Ugarit that have survived intact have given up a rich hoard of jewelry. This gold pendant, representing the nude figure of the great goddess of fertility, was part of a necklace consisting of several pieces of gold leaf and carnelian beads." Photo credit: © 2004 RMN/Franck Raux.

Centre: (left) BM 1980,1214.2266. Terracotta plaque from potter's workshop, Tell ed-Duweir (Lachish), dated 1300-1050 BCE. (right) Bronze applique plaque cast in mould, from Akko tomb B3, ca. 1300 (stolen). Drawings after Keel, Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses and Images of God in Ancient Israel, Continuum, 1998, Figs. 69, 70.

Right: BM EA 191, upper register of limestone stele of chief craftsman Qeh. Naked goddess identified as 'Ke(d)eshet, lady of heaven' flanked by the ithyphallic Egyptian god Min and Syro-Palestinian god Reshep. Deir el-Medina (Dynasty 19). Photograph © Trustees of the British Museum.

Lower left 1: Gold pendant with nude goddess, Minet el-Beida (port of Ugarit), c. 14-13th C BCE, Louvre Museum. Photo credit: © A.K. (Insecula).

Lower left 2: Institute of Archaeology, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Terracotta plaque from Tel Batash (Timnah north), 14th century. Photo credit: Israel Antiquities Authority, IAA 2001-2232 (© The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, 1995 - 2014).

Lower left 3: Museum Hashephela, Kfar Menachem. Terracotta plaque from Tel Harasim (near Beth Shemesh), LB II. Photo cf.: Cornelius, The Many Faces of the Goddess, Fribourg, 2004, Cat. 5-24.

Lower left 4: Ashmolean Museum (number not known). Gold pendant from Tel el-Ajjul, 1600-1500 BCE. Photo credit: Eva, Mutter alles Lebendigen, Bibel und Orient Museum, Fribourg (via Doris Wolf: Das andere Aegypten-Buch).Judith Weingartenhttp://email@example.com