Translation in progress of Hrabanus Maurus commentary on Judith

Brian Glass has written to tell me that he is working on a translation of the commentary on Judith by 9th century Latin writer Hrabanus Maurus.  This writer is later than the scope of this blog; but I heartily approve of the project, which he is doing through a series of posts on his blog, all tagged, here.  The translation is in progress as a Google Document here.

Brian wanted to translate something for which no English translation existed, which he was interested in anyway.  This is a fine way to do so, and to polish language skills.  There are plenty of such texts around; and even if the translations are not finished, whatever is done is useful, so long as it appears online.

I’m sure that we all wish Brian Glass the best of luck with his project.

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From my diary

The run up to Christmas is always busy, even if you are at home, and mine is no exception.

A few months ago Dr Michael Fuller kindly sent me some excellent photographs from the Mithraeum of S. Maria Capua Vetere, and some Mithraea in Ostia.  I have finally got around to uploading them to my Mithras site, and adding them to the catalogue of images.  It took much more time than I thought, even though I omitted some.

I’ve always hesitated to add the Ostia Mithraea to the site.  The reason for this is that the excellent Ostia Antica site has a page on each Mithraeum, which is simply splendid and better than anything that I’d be able to do.  There has never seemed any point in duplicating this; so my own photographs from Ostia have remained unused as well.

Today is the shortest day, the winter solstice.  I saw on Twitter a link to a good article by Richard Flower, on the Bruma and Brumalia, here.  This reminded me of my own soundings, I don’t know how long back.  He in turn made use of an article on Choricius of Gaza by Roberta Mazza, which, delightfully, was online at Academia.edu here.[1]  This not merely discusses the Bruma and Brumalia, but also refers to a study (which Dr. F. mentioned also) in Latin: Crawford’s “De Bruma et Brumalibus festis” in Byzantinische Zeitschrift 23.

Googling for this, I don’t find the volume online.  Yet somehow I have it on my local storage, downloaded from somewhere.  How odd.  But it does make the point that we do need local copies of things.

The Latin seems fairly easy.  It makes the point that the festival of Bruma is unknown to Martial, in Domitian’s time, who simply uses it as a synonym for Saturnalia; its first appearance as a distinct feast is two references in Tertullian.

I suppose I ought to read this.  ‘Tis the season to be paying attention, after all.  But … it’s really dark out there, and I find it very hard to wake up.  Maybe I’ll just lie on the sofa and read social media on my smartphone!

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  1. [1]Roberta Mazza, “Choricius of Gaza Oration XIII: Religion and State in the Age of Justinian”, in: E. Digeser, R.M. Frakes, J. Stephens (eds.), The Rhetoric of Power in Late Antiquity: Religion and Politics in Byzantium, Europe and the early Islamic World, Tauris Academic Studies: London-New York 2010, 172-93. At Academia.edu

Coptic text of the Acta Pilati – translated into English by Anthony Alcock

Anthony Alcock continues his splendid series of translations from Coptic with a translation of the Coptic version of the Acta Pilati, from a papyrus manuscript in Turin published in the Patrologia Orientalis 9.  This forms part of the text known as the Gospel of Nicodemus.

Here it is:

Our thanks to Dr Alcock for making this available!  More please!

The apocryphal Pilate literature is a tangled mass of materials in Greek, Latin and other languages, which ought to be sorted out one day.

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For further reading: A bibliography and resource list for the pyramids at Meroe

It might be useful to gather in one place the sources that I have found online for the pyramids at Meroe.  Doubtless some of the links will prove ephemeral; but corrections are welcome in the comments, however late.  The material here is not up to date – the most recent from the 1950s – but I can only work from what I can find online.

Note that all my posts on Meroe may be found here, and I have excerpted or translated material from what follows in them.

Bibliography

  • G. A. Reisner, “The Meroitic Kingdom of Ethiopia: A Chronological Outline”, in: Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 9 (1923), p. 34-77.  Online at JSTOR here, but it is not open-access.

This is perhaps the single most important article, for anyone interested in the pyramids of Kush: i.e. of Napata and Meroe.  It assigns the Reisner numbers to the pyramids, which are used today.  It also establishes the date-order of the pyramids, and gives a list of royal pyramids in date order with their rulers (p.75-8), thereby establishing a list of kings for Napata and Meroe.  It also contains detailed maps of all the pyramids and pyramid fields, photographs of treasure from various of them, and other photographs.

  • G. Reisner, “The Pyramids of Meroe and the Candaces of Ethiopia”, in: Museum of Fine Arts Bulletin vol. 21, no. 124, 1923, p.11-27.  Online here (originally at the MFA, but no longer).

Much less important article, but … online and accessible.  Useful photographs, and discussion of who the “Candace”s were – the title is for a Queen.  (Note that the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a lot of items on its website, some online.  Search for Meroe.)

  • S. E. Chapman and D. Dunham, “Decorated chapels of the Meroitic pyramids at Meroe and Barkal”, in: The Royal Cemeteries of Kush III, Boston, 1952.  50 pages. Online here (PDF).

This is another important article, with loads of plates, and a complete list of all the royal pyramid tombs in the six Kushite cemeteries, including the Meroe North.  Plate 1 is a map of the Meroe North pyramid field, with Reisner’s and Lepsius’ codes for each pyramid.  It also discusses the early visitors to the site, and mentions unpublished papers!

B. Porter and R. Moss, Topographical Bibliography of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, reliefs and paintings. – VII. Nubia, The Deserts and Outside Egypt. Oxford: Griffith Institute, 1952.  Online here.  Meroe starts on p.235, with biblio; then p.241-3 has real scholarly bibliography, including unpublished manuscripts of material, plus a map of the pyramid field with the Reisner numbers.  This is then followed by an entry for each pyramid in turn, with finds, and bibliography.  Massive and exhaustive.

Links

Early Travellers

  • F. Caillaud, Voyage à Méroé au fleuve Blanc fait dans les années 1819 à 1822, Paris (text in 4 vols: 1826-7; plates in 2 vols: 1823).  Plates: here and here.  See my blog posts here and here.

  • G. Ferlini, Relation historique des fouilles opérées dans la Nubie par le Docteur Ferlini : suivie d’un catalogue des objets qu’il a trouvés dans l’une des 47 pyramides aux environs de l’ancienne ville de Méroé , Rome (1838).  Online at the Bavarian State Library here.  See my blog post here.

  • G. A. Hoskins, Travels in Ethiopia, Above the Second Cataract of the Nile, London, 1835.  Online here.  Includes 90 illustrations.

  • K. Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien, 12 vols, 1849-59.  All online here.  See my blog post here.

I hope that this will be useful to others who learn of the pyramids of Meroe, as I have done, and wonder how to learn more.

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Viewing Cailliaud’s engravings of the pyramids of Meroe at the Biodiversity Heritage Library

The first modern visitor to the pyramids of the black pharaohs at Meroe was the 18th century Scotsman, James Bruce.  In 1821 the ruler of Egypt, Mohammed Ali, sent a huge army up the Nile and occupied the Sudan.

The next visitor, therefore, was the Frenchman Frédéric Cailliaud, who marched with the army.  Cailliaud wrote an account in 4 volumes, with a larger 2 volume Atlas of engravings. I was unable to access the latter when I wrote about him here.

But a kind correspondent has drawn my attention to the fact that the two volumes of the Atlas are indeed online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library, here and here.

I find that a PDF can be downloaded of each.  Unfortunately these are locked; but it is still vastly easier to scan through the volumes this way, than online.  JPGs of the pages are also available, but it is a 3Gb download, served at a miserable 400kbs.  My rather nice 60mbs broadband is therefore effectively throttled; and IE says it will take two and half hours to download.

However you can select pages online, and request a PDF of them be created, for you to download.  This I did, for 30-odd pages, and … the generated PDF is not locked!  That means that we can view some of them together.

The original image sizes are good, high resolution, which means that on-screen the engravings are, quite frankly, imposing.  The ones in the PDF that is generated are much lower, but still usable.

The Meroe pyramids are not listed under that name, but rather under the name of the nearby town of Assour.  They begin at plate 31, with a map of the whole area, with the pyramid fields – “Pyramides principales” at the lower right.  Plate 32 is a map of the ruined pyramids close to the Nile – these presumably are the western cemetery, and plate 33 is a depiction of the view.  Plate 34 is plans and elevations of these pyramids.

Plate 35 is a map of the main pyramid fields, north and south.  Here it is:

Plate 35: the principal pyramids of Meroe. 1821. Frederic Cailliaud.

Plate 36 is an imposing view of the north pyramids from the north-east:

Plate 36. F. Cailliaud. The North Pyramids at Meroe, from the NE

Plate 37 is the same prospect from the South East.  The pyramids at this time still had their tops, not yet blown off by gunpowder.

Plate 37. F. Caillaud. The north pyramids of Meroe, from the SE. 1821.

But there are very many further engravings, plans and elevations, as far as plate 46; and then engravings of the pyramids of Nuri, ancient Napata, where is the pyramid of the Black Pharaoh Taharqa, once ruler of Egypt and Nubia; and then more at Gebel Barkal.

I won’t reproduce them all.  But I will attach a PDF of the Meroe ones here:

I’ve rotated the pages so that you can view them easier on screen.  Well worth downloading – enjoy!

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A labelled map of the north pyramids at Meroe, and a Google Maps satellite view on a phone!

Let’s continue our series on the pyramids of the Black Pharaohs at Meroe in the Sudan.

Now that we have seen all these pictures and photographs of pyramids, by Cailliaud, Lepsius, and others, the question arises… is there a list, with a map attached showing the layout of the pyramid field?

In fact I see references to “pyramid XI”; or “N. XI” or even “Beg. N. XI”.   But … nowhere do I see a map.

One reason that I looked at Reisner was to see if he gave a map of the pyramids, with numbers on.  But as far as I could tell, he does not.

Well, I have spent this day looking through the literature, and, finally, I have discovered a map with the numbers on.  Here’s an excerpt of it:

Zoomed-in portion of the map of the North pyramids at Meroe, showing Beg. N. I-IX

I’ll give the full map at the end, for it is large, and unless you zoom in, you won’t realise that it has the Roman numbers on it.  Nor do all these monuments stand full height; the vile Ferlini demolished some, right down to the ground.

The cryptic numbers become clear.  “Beg.” means Begarawiyah, the modern village nearby, while “N” means the north pyramid field at that location.

The map comes from a 1923 article in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, by G. A. Reisner.[1]  Plate XIV is a “Plan of the North Cemetery, Begarawiyah”.  In fact it is a map of the pyramid field, showing the pyramid locations, and also the trenches which expose the stairs to the burial chambers, and other fore-buildings.

Here’s Reisner’s map.  You’ll have to click on it, and then zoom and zoom to get the detail; but it is there.

Meroe: a map of the north pyramid field, by G. A. Reisner, 1923.

Now for practical reasons that diagram has north at top right.  But this afternoon I was playing with Google Maps on my smartphone.  And I found … that you can see Meroe on Google Maps!  Which is quite remarkable, when you consider that Google won’t allow you to access Google Apps from within Sudan!

Anyway, just for fun, here’s what I saw when I searched for Meroe!

Google maps satellite photo of pyramids at Meroe

These are days of miracles and wonders. I can testify that, when I began adding content to the web in 1997, just accessing the JEA was a feat attainable by those few who could convince a research library to grant them access to a paper copy. Something like this was unthinkable. We must remind ourselves sometimes how fortunate we are!

And isn’t it a shame that the ordinary people of Sudan itself are cut off from all this, just because of political differences among the mighty of this world?  Nobody benefits from this.  I could wish that Britain, as the colonial power, could do something about this, surely needless, restriction on a former colony.

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  1. [1]G. A. Reisner, “The Meroitic Kingdom of Ethiopia: A Chronological Outline”, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, volume 9 (1923), 34-77.  JSTOR link here.

Lepsius at Meroe – the some pictures of the pyramids

The early German archaeologist Karl Lepsius came to Meroe after the treasure-hunter Ferlini had done his worst.  His engraver produced a number of rather charming depictions, which are all online here.  I thought I would include the Meroe pyramid images.

The shattered state of the pyramids is obvious.  Modern German archaeologists have done some repairs with concrete, so thankfully the situation is not as bad as Ferlini left it.

Another:

And

Also a map, but without numbering the pyramids, even though the text does number them!

Lepsius’ map of the pyramid fields of Meroe

I’m not an archaeologist, so I’m not that familiar with the literature.  One thing that I have been looking for today, and in vain, is a map of the pyramids, which gives the number for each of them.  For instance I see references to “N11”; but no map to show which this is!  I wonder where these come from?

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The Annals of Eutychius of Alexandria (10th c. AD) – chapter 18c (part 5)

Let’s carry on a little further with the narrative of Eutychius.  The Muslims now prepare to invade Egypt.  But first, some bureaucracy!

The narrative of Eutychius contains endless letter-writing and refers to supposed Muslim guarantees. It seems unlikely that this is historically accurate, considering the illiteracy of most of the invaders, and their indifference to anything except loot.  Again, this perhaps reflects more the situation of the churches in the 10th century, and the mostly forged documents that they used to try to stem the seizures of their property.  The narrative everywhere reflects abject subservience to Muslim power, of the kind necessary in the 10th century, when in reality in the 7th century the Muslim invasion was seen (even by themselves) as no more than a large-scale raid of bandits from the desert.  It makes for tedious reading, but may explain why the Muslims liked Eutychius’ version of their history.

The lost Sassanid chronicle is excerpted once again for chapter 9.

8. Omar ibn al-Khattab ordered Amr ibn al-‘Ās to make the necessary preparations and to go to Egypt.  If the letter had reached him while he was still staying in Syria, he was commanded to remain and not to move, but if he was already on Egyptian territory then he should carry on.  Then Omar ibn al-Khattab returned from Jerusalem to Medina.  Abu Obayda ibn al-Garrah returned to Homs and from Homs he went to Qinnisrīn.  The patrician of Qinnisrīn wrote to him, asking him to give him a one-year truce, so that the population could go to King Heraclius, and to grant security to those who chose instead to remain in the city.  Abu Obayda agreed and the patrician asked him to put a column between the Rum and the Muslims, arranging with [each other] that no Muslim would travel to the side of Rum past that column, and that no Byzantine would travel to the side of Muslims, passing the same.  The column was a carved figure of King Heraclius seated on a throne.  Abu Obayda gave his approval.  Now it happened that, while a group of Muslims were learning to ride horses, Abu Handal ibn Sahl bin Omar lost control of the horse, passed the column with his spear in his hand, poking the tip into the eye of the effigy, without any intention to, and knocked out the eye of the statue.  The patrician of Qinnisrīn came to Abu Obayda and said: “You have deceived, O Muslim, you have violated the agreement and broken the truce that existed between us and you.”  Abu Obayda replied: “Who has violated it?”.  The patrician replied: “The one who knocked out the eye of our king”.  Abu Obayda said then: “So what you want [to do]?”.  He said: “We will satisfied only when the eye [of an effigy] of your king is gouged out.” Said Abu Obayda: “Instead of this, put up a likeness of me, then do with it what you want to do.” They said: “We will content ourselves with no other image than that of your great king”.  Abu Obayda acquiesced to this request, and the Rum sculpted the image of Omar ibn al-Khattab on a column, then their man stepped forward and with a spear knocked out the eye of the image.  Then the patrician said: “Now you have done justice”.  The following year, they renewed the act of truce and safety.  Ghiyād ibn Ghanm occupied Mesopotamia, ar-Raqqah and ar-Ruha, conceding his guarantee of security and a peace treaty.  Al-Mughira ibn Shughba with his army invaded Azerbaijan.  Al-Mughira was the first to call Omar ibn al-Khattab the “prince of the believers”, for the people, after the death of Muhammad, used to call Abu Bakr “the successor of the Envoy of God” and his governors also usually wrote:  “The such and such to the successor of the Envoy of God”.  When he took command, Omar ibn al-Khattab was usually called the successor of the successor of the Envoy of God and his governors usually wrote: “The such and such to the successor of the successor of the Envoy of God”.  But when Omar ibn al-Khattab had chosen al-Mughira ibn Shughba as governor of Basra, he wrote to him thus: “To the servant of God Omar ibn al-Khattab, the prince of the believers”.  Omar ibn al-Khattab, however, refused this title and did not recognize it.  But later he had to say himself:  “I am the servant of God, I am Umar ibn al-Khattab, the prince of the believers, as al-Mughira ibn Shughba well said”.  Thus it was that Omar ibn al-Khattab was called “prince of the believers”.  And since then every Caliph has been called “prince of the believers”.

9.  When Yazdagard, king of the Persians, was made aware of the coming of Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas, he ordered his family and his property to shelter in China.  Then he took with him a small number of soldiers and the money, left Khrād al-Awzadī, brother of Rustam, in command of Ctesiphon, and sent the same Rustam to fight against Sa’d ibn Abi Waqqas.  Rustam camped near al-Qadisiyyah, where he remained until he was killed.  When Yazdagard heard this, and realized the state of discord and of internal struggle, of the death and of the sedition of his best soldiers, he perceived that the kingdom was slipping out of his hand.  He then went to Persia, then fled to Merv by the way of Sigistān, and was killed there.  He had only fought and faced sedition, until the day he died, having reigned twenty years.

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Mithras in “Mythes fondateurs. D’Hercule à Dark Vador”

I learn via Twitter that there is an exhibition doing the rounds in France, called “Mythes fondateurs” (=foundation myths).  It seems to be largely aimed at children, which of course is one of the genuine functions of public museums.

Among the items in the exhibition is this:

Now this is plainly two figures from the cult of Mithras; Cautes, with his torch uplifted, and Cautopates with his torch pointing down.  The names of these figures are referred to in no literary text, but we know them thanks to inscriptions.

Cautes is accompanied by the dog, and Cautopates by the snake.

I was intending to add this photograph to my catalogue of Mithras photographs; but of course that is useless unless I can identify the item.  It looks as if  most of the items are from the Louvre, but some from the museum in Vienne, at which Dimitri Tilloi, the photographer, saw the exhibition.

Looking in the CIMRM, I find that a pair of torchbearers was found in Vienne in 1835, but are since “lost”.  However it is clear from the text that Vermaseren, the editor, received no cooperation at all from the museum in Vienne.  Are these the “lost” items? (CIMRM 901)  or are they from the Louvre?  But I can find no indication of a pair of torchbearers in the Louvre in the CIMRM.

It is frustrating not to know!  If by any chance any reader of this blog visits this exhibition, please photograph the card which explains the item and send me the details!

UPDATE: I have written to both museums to ask.

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The pyramids of Meroe in 1821 – the engravings of Frederic Cailliaud

The pyramids of Meroe, today Gebel Barkal or Mount Barkal, 100 miles north of Khartoum, were vandalised by an Italian, G. Ferlini, ca. 1832.  But between 1819 and 1822, a French explorer named Frederic Cailliaud also visited the area.  His discoveries were published in four normal-sized volumes of text, each around 400 pages, and two large atlas-sized volumes of plates, each of 75 pages,[1] all under the title Voyage à Méroé au fleuve Blanc fait dans les années 1819 à 1822, Paris (text: 1826-7; plates: 1823).  The volumes of text are online; the volumes of plates, sadly, do not seem to be.*

A few scattered plates can be found online, in variable quality images, and I thought it was worth giving these here.

First, a general view of the pyramid field, as it then was, taken from the north-east:

F. Cailliaud, Voyage a Meroe, plate XXXVI.

This photograph, via Wikimedia here, shows part of the same area today.  The three little pyramids in a line at right-angles, in the middle of both images, helps to see what is what:

Next, a view of the north-western group of pyramids, taken from the south-east (via here, which also shows the 4 vols of 2, and the 2 vols bound as 1 of plates):

Cailliaud, Voyage a Meroe, Plate LII.

Interestingly I found a photograph of the same group of pyramids today here:

Next, plate 35, which I have worked over a bit from a poor photograph, and shows a plan of the pyramid field:

Plate XXXV

And a couple more, also reworked by me, from the same source:

and:

I am unsure, but I think this modern photograph by Olivier Maurice from here may be of one of these pyramids:

I suppose that I shall never see these pyramids, situated as they are in a troubled land; and indeed the same is true of most of us.  But it is deeply interesting to see these drawings, and the modern photographs also.

* UPDATE: a correspondent draws my attention to the fact that the two volumes of the “Atlas” are indeed online at the Biodiversity Heritage Library here and here.

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  1. [1]Information on the volume of plates from the Victoria and Albert catalogue, here; sadly they have not made their copy available online.