Month: November 2015

What did the Serapeum in Alexandria actually look like?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria in 392 AD by the Christian mob, headed by its leader, the patriarch Theophilus, is a famous moment.  It was the last temple to be closed, and by far the most famous.

It stood on the only high ground in the city, in the South-West.  Rufinus gives us a description of the destruction of the statue:

… a rumor had been spread by the pagans that if a human hand touched the statue, the earth would split open on the spot and crumble into the abyss, while the sky would crash down at once.

This gave the people pause for a moment, until one of the soldiers, armed with faith rather than weapons, seized a double-headed axe, drew himself up, and struck the old fraud on the jaw with all his might. A roar went up from both sides, but the sky did not fall, nor did the earth collapse. Thus with repeated strokes he felled the smoke-grimed deity of rotten wood, which upon being thrown down burned as easily as dry wood when it was kindled.

After this the head was wrenched from the neck, the bushel having been taken down, and dragged off; then the feet and other members were chopped off with axes and dragged apart with ropes attached, and piece by piece, each in a different place, the decrepit dotard was burned to ashes before the eyes of the Alexandria which had worshiped him.

Last of all the torso which was left was put to the torch in the amphitheater, and that was the end of the vain superstition and ancient error of Serapis.[1]

But what did the temple actually look like?

There is a rather marvellous article in the Journal of Roman Studies, by Judith S. McKenzie &c., that tells us.[2]  What it does is to sift both the literary and archaeological evidence, and a very fine job it does too.  In addition it gives some very useful pictures!  These, as ever, are worth a thousand words.

The site consisted of a large platform on top of the only hill in Alexandria.  A wall surrounded the platform, which was a colonnade on the inside.  The temple, a classical structure, stood inside the colonnade.

Here is a diagram of how the temple looked in the 3rd century.  The sea is to the North.

The Serapeum of Alexandria, by J.S.McKenzie
The Serapeum of Alexandria, by J.S.McKenzie

A hundred steps led up to the main entrance of the temple from the East.  Inside the entrance was a pool of some kind.  To his left, the visitor would have seen a building whose nature and appearance is unclear; the “south building”.

To his right he would see a classical Roman temple.  This was the temple itself, in which resided the wooden statue of Serapis.

There were also subterranean passages, the entrance to which is shown near the entrance to the main temple, and which still exist.

The emperor Diocletian added a monumental pillar late in the same century, which still stands and is known as “Pompey’s Pillar”.  The temple then looked like this:

Serapeum_post-diocletian

 

When the temple was destroyed, it seems that it was the buildings inside the colonnade that were demolished.  The main enclosure and its colonnade remained, and are mentioned by medieval Arabic writers, until, as we learn from Abd al-Latif, a governor under Saladin destroyed them in 1169.

The site of the Serapeum was not turned into a church, but became disused.  Two churches arose nearby, rather than inside.

Paganism in Alexandria did not die at once, of course.  The Life of Peter the Iberian, by John Rufus, in fact describes a pagan healing ritual which took place in the 5th century in this very same enclosure of the Serapeum.  We have also seen in the Life of Severus of Antioch, ca. 500 AD, that pagans made trips to the temple of Isis at Menouthis, still open even then.

I hope to explore some more of the footnotes of Dr McKenzie’s article, but I would like to conclude with some very interesting words from it, which appear at the beginning:

Reconstructions by archaeologists are often treated with scepticism by historians and literary critics. Thus, it is essential to present in detail the evidence on which these reconstruction drawings of the Serapeum are based, as well as the reasoning involved, in a way which hopefully is accessible to non-archaeologists.

This article must be the basis for anyone who wants to think about this ancient site.  Recommended.

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  1. [1]Philip R. Amidon (tr), The Church History of Rufinus of Aquileia books 10 and 11, 1997, 81-82.↩
  2. [2]Judith S. McKenzie, Sheila Gibson and A. T. Reyes, “Reconstructing the Serapeum in Alexandria from the archaeological evidence. JRS 92 (2004) 73-121.  JSTOR.↩

Images of Theophilus of Alexandria and the Serapeum in a 5th century papyrus codex

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I came across an image which, although striking, was previously unknown to me.  It can be found on Wikipedia here, and in other places.  It depicts Theophilus of Alexandria, standing atop the Serapeum at Alexandria:

Goleniscev Papyrus - Theophilus and the Serapeum
Goleniscev Papyrus – Theophilus and the Serapeum

The destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria in 392 AD – the date is not precisely certain – at the hands of a mob, incited and led by the patriarch Theophilus, was an iconic moment in the end of paganism and indeed of antiquity.

The image above comes from the remains of a papyrus codex, once the property of Russian Egyptologist and collector Vladimir Golenischev. Today it is in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, with the other Golenischev papyri.  The codex may be as early as the 5th century AD, although others date it later.  It contains the remains of a Greek text, the Alexandrian World Chronicle.

The text and images were published – in colour! – in 1905 by Bauer and Strzygowski,[1] and, even better, the publication is online at the German digital library here.

The page of the publication from which the image comes is here.  A local copy of the page is below (click for full size image):

Alexandrian World Chronicle, fol. 6v. Theophilus and the Serapeum, &c.
Alexandrian World Chronicle, fol. 6v. Theophilus and the Serapeum, &c.

The text in grey is reconstructed by Bauer, although the later discovery of an additional fragment has verified at least some of his text.

Fortunately Richard Burgess has placed on Academia.edu here a paper which discusses this page in great deal.[2]  He gives a translation of that page, as follows, and I have abbreviated some of his very interesting notes for the general reader:

In this year with his son
Honorius Theodosius arrived
in Rome and crowned him
emperor on 13 June and
gave a congiarium to the Romans.
108. Augustus Valentinian IIII and
Neoterius vir clarissimus, when
[…] was augustalis.
Tatianus and Symmachus
viri clarissimi, when Evagrius was augustalis.

In this year Valentinian
died in Vienna
on 10 June and Eugenius
was proclaimed emperor
on 22 August,
which is 23 Thoth.
109. Augustus Arcadius II and Ru-
finus vir clarissimus, when the same
Evagrius was augustalis
of Alexandria.
In this year […] Eugenius
was executed on 6 January,
which is 8 Thoth, and in the same
year… [the codex ends here]

There are also titles above the figures: the one of the left has “Saint Theophilus”, while the kneeling figure is the luckless “Eugenius”.

The picture shows Theophilus standing on top of a façade with columns and a triangular entrance, which is painted in blue and yellow.  In the entrance is the bust of a beardless man with curly hair and a “modius” jar on his head.  This is characteristic of Serapis, and temples are often represented by a few columns and the cult image, so this is not necessarily an exact picture of the temple.  It would be interesting to wonder if the colours represent something real about the painting of the temple, tho.

Note also the colour of the statue – the face is blackened.  This confirms a statement by Clement of Alexandria in his Exhortation to the Greeks, ch. 3:

He gave personal orders, therefore, that a statue of Osiris his own ancestor should be elaborately wrought at great expense ; and the statue was made by the artist Bryaxis, — not the famous Athenian, but another of the same name, — who has used a mixture of various materials in its construction. He had filings of gold, silver, bronze, iron, lead, and even tin ; and not a single Egyptian stone was lacking, there being pieces of sapphire, hematite, emerald, and topaz also. Having reduced them all to powder and mixed them, he stained the mixture dark blue (on account of which the colour of the statue is nearly black), and, mingling the whole with the pigment left over from the funeral rites of Osiris and Apis, a he moulded Sarapis; … [3].

At bottom right is a building, again with a triangular façade painted in blue and yellow, with two white columns to the left, and a roof in blue at the right.  Below the façade the “modius” appears again … so this is again the Serapeum, and this is confirmed by the caption to the left, “[Sa]rapitos to [i]eron”, the “Temple of Serapis”.  This designation for the Serapeum of Alexandria appears elsewhere in ancient literature.  Two figures stand to the left of the temple, dressed in grey-blue tunics with arms upraised; some have thought these to be monks throwing stones at the temple.

The entry in the Chronicle that described the destruction of the temple is sadly missing.  But it must have stood there, for there is no reason otherwise for these pictures to be there.

UPDATE (26/03/2018): A further image has reached me, found online at Twitter here.

St Theophilos, gospel in hand, standing atop of Serapeum in Alexandria from the so-called Alexandrian World Chronicle, prob. 6th C. It is an extraordinary example of a late antique illustrated papyrus.

Pushkin Museum Inv. Goleniscev 310

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  1. [1]A. Bauer and J. Strzygowski, Eine alexandrinische Weltchronik (1905), 71-3, pl. 6 Verso.↩
  2. [2]R.W. Burgess and Jitse H.F. Dijkstra, The ‘Alexandrian World Chronicle’, its Consularia and the Date of the Destruction of the Serapeum (with an Appendix on the List of Praefecti Augustales), Millennium Jahrbuch 10 (1013), 39-113.↩
  3. [3]Loeb translation, here↩

On finding my own books

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It is early here.  The sky is the deep overcast shade of an English winter’s morning in November.  But it is warm, too warm to stay in bed, so I have risen to begin the day.  As I did so, I noted that I needed a new bedside book, and the whim struck me to read again a volume of the adventures of Fu Manchu.

The first three volumes in this series – The Mystery of Dr Fu Manchu, The Devil Doctor, and The Si-Fan Mysteries, were all published in the days when Sherlock Holmes was still living in 221B Baker Street.  They form a kind of trilogy, and belong firmly to the gas-light era.  They should appeal to every Holmes enthusiast.

Vaguely remembering the opening lines of The Devil Doctor, I went to look for my copy.  I know what it looks like – a sun-faded brownish cloth-covered hardback of the kind that litters bookdealers’ shelves.  But … I could not find it.

I have a shelf-full of the later Fu Manchu novels, and I knew where they were.  After browsing a bit, I found The Si-Fan Mysteries.  But where were the other two?

My eyes are not what they were, so I put on my reading glasses and looked along the shelves.  And … I still couldn’t find them.

Partly this is understandable.  I removed most of my books from my study last year, after that room began to take on a definite aroma of a second-hand bookshop.  In the process I discovered that my then cleaning lady had neglected to dust them – the cause of the smell – and a good cleaning dealt with the problem.  But when I put them back, being pressed for space, I double-banked some of the shelves with less-used volumes.

So I looked at the second row.  And I still couldn’t see The Devil Doctor.

Eventually I found The Mysteries of Dr Fu Manchu, a tall paperback reissue of the 1980’s standing in a seldom-used low bookcase where it has stood for 20 years.  That case was never reorganised, so I can only blame myself.  Once I knew the location of every book.  Now it seems that I don’t even remember where books are, that have stood where they are for decades.  It is not merely my eyesight that is fading.

Now this is a trivial problem, and probably caused by the sheer burden of daily life and the amount of things that I am legally obliged to remember to do, or be fined heavily.  I am not growing old yet!  But the problem is only because I once could rely on my memory for the location of my books, and I no longer can.

What to do?

One thing that I can do is to gather together the volumes of series.  When there is a shelf-full of one series, any volume in it can be located more easily.  But that still leaves a vast number of volumes.

Often the place where a book stands is determined by the size of the book and where it will fit on my shelves.  They are not interchangeable in physical form.  Otherwise the answer would be to start some classification system.

I don’t know what the answer is.  I wonder how people manage, once they have above 2,000 books, as most of us must?

(I never found The Devil Doctor.  But fortunately my memory had failed me: the book I wanted was actually The Si-Fan Mysteries!)

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New edition of Cyril of Alexandria’s “Against Julian” is soon to appear – offline, and very pricey

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In the early 5th century, Cyril of Alexandria found it necessary to write a large apologetic work.  The book was in response to Julian the Apostate’s anti-Christian work Against the Galileans. This was written some 50 years earlier by the then emperor, but must have continued to circulate. Cyril made a series of extensive quotations from the work, reorganised them into a logical sequence (as he tells us at the start of book 2),  and wrote his own reply to each.  No doubt secretaries performed much of the manual labour, and Cyril dictated replies.

10 books of Contra Julianum have reached us, and a handful of fragments of the next 10 books also.  The work is little known in English, since no translation has been made into that language.  Indeed no complete translation has ever been made into any modern language.  The Sources Chretiennes began an edition, with a splendid French translation, but only a single volume, containing books 1 and 2, ever appeared.  No modern critical edition, even, existed.  Readers have been forced to rely on reprints of the 17th century Aubert edition.

For some years Christoph Riedweg and his team have been labouring at the task of making a critical edition of the text of this huge work.  An email today advises me that the first volume, containing the text – no translation – of books 1-5, will very soon be available in the GCS series, and published by De Gruyter.  The publisher’s information page is here.  It informs us that the work will be published in November 2015, and priced at $168.  De Gruyer kindly make a PDF available also, at precisely the same price.

Everyone should welcome this publication.  Contra Julianum contains any amount of useful information about antiquity and Christian thinking.  I look forward to the second volume also!

But … what a price!  And … I say that I look forward to a second volume, but there is no chance that I will ever own a copy of either; or even be able to use it, unless I come across a pirate copy.  It will, most likely, be most used in this manner.  This seems wrong.  But then, these books are not made for you or I.

Today there was an article in the Guardian on this very subject that every academic should read.  Here are some extracts, but it is worth reading in full.

Academics are being hoodwinked into writing books nobody can buy

An editor called me up to ask me if I’d like to write a book. I smelled a rat, but I played along…

A few months ago, an editor from an academic publisher got in touch to ask if I was interested in writing a book for them. …

“How much would the book be sold for?” I inquired, aware this might not be his favourite question. “£80,” he replied in a low voice.

“So there won’t be a cheaper paperback edition?” I asked, pretending to sound disappointed.

“No, I’m afraid not,” he said, “we only really sell to libraries. But we do have great sales reps that get the books into universities all across the world.”

“So how many copies do you usually sell?” I inquired.

“About 300.”

“For all your books?”

“Yes, unless you would assign your book on your own modules.”

I was growing fascinated by the numbers so I asked how many of these books they published each year.

“I have to…” he started (inadvertently revealing that this was a target that had been set) “…I have to publish around 75 of these.” … And he’s just one of their commissioning editors. …

Another colleague, on discovering his published book was getting widespread attention but was too expensive to buy, tried to get the publishers to rush out a cheaper paperback version. They ignored his request.

These may sound like stories of concern to academics alone. But the problem is this: much of the time that goes into writing these books is made possible through taxpayers’ money. And who buys these books? Well, university libraries – and they, too, are paid for by taxpayers. Meanwhile, the books are not available for taxpayers to read – unless they have a university library card.

In the US, taxpayers are said to be spending $139bn a year on research, and in the UK, £4.7bn. Too much of that money is disappearing into big pockets.

So what are the alternatives? We could stop publishing these books altogether – which may be advisable in a time of hysterical mass publication. Or we publish only with decent publishers, who believe that books are meant to be read and not simply profited from. And if it’s only a matter of making research available, then of course there’s open source publishing, which most academics are aware of by now.

So why don’t academics simply stay away from the greedy publishers? The only answer I can think of is vanity.

Of course the last bit is rather unfair.  An academic career requires publication in reputable format, and nobody can be blamed for doing what the system requires in order to feed their families.  But it raises disturbing questions of integrity and sustainability.

An edition of Contra Julianum serves a real need.  But the high prices and closed access compromise the entire system of academic publication.

All the same, let us congratulate Dr R. and his team.  Well done!  This was work of permanent value.

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