Category: Ancient world

Tell me where to go

Posted on by Roger Pearse

… on holiday.  It looks as if I shall get some time off in July and August; where should I go?

I’d like to go somewhere warm — I like heat anyway; somewhere with ancient ruins to see, perhaps with a museum or two.  I don’t want to catch any diseases, or be held hostage.  I would like to go somewhere that you can go on a package tour, so that I have people to talk to.  Maybe somewhere in the Mediterranean.  Somewhere with a 5* hotel.  Somewhere with an airflight time that isn’t too hideous.

Where should I go?

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2,000 year old papyrus roll found in Israel

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Israeli Antiquities Authority have put out a press release here that they have seized a 2,000 year old papyrus roll, containing a text written in ancient Hebrew, in “an operation.”

A document thought to be an ancient text written on papyrus was seized yesterday (Tuesday) in an operation led by the Intelligence Office of the Zion Region and the Undercover Unit of the Border Police in Jerusalem, in cooperation with the Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery and the Archaeological Staff Officer in the Civil Administration.

The document is written in ancient Hebrew script, which is characteristic of the Second Temple period and the first and second centuries CE. This style of the writing is primarily known from the Dead Sea scrolls and various inscriptions that occur on ossuaries and coffins.

The document itself is written on papyrus. The papyrus is incomplete and was in all likelihood rolled up. It is apparent that pieces of it crumbled mainly along its bottom part. The holes along the left part of the document probably attest to the damage that was caused to it over time. The document measures 15 x 15 centimeters.

Fifteen lines of Hebrew text, written from right to left and one below the other, can be discerned in the document. In the upper line of the text one can clearly read the sentence “Year 4 to the destruction of Israel”. This is likely to be the year 74 CE – in the event the author of the document is referring to the year when the Second Temple was destroyed during the Great Revolt. Another possibility is the year 139 CE – in the event the author is referring to the time when the rural settlement in Judah was devastated at the end of the Bar Kokhba Revolt.

The name of a woman, “Miriam Barat Ya‘aqov”, is also legible …Also mentioned in … legal wording which deals with the property of a widow and her relinquishment of it. …

For downloading a high resolution image – click here

The genuineness of the document has yet to be established, they add, cautiously. 

This highlights that the desert regions of the Middle East still contain considerable numbers of books and documents, lying around, awaiting discovery.  Yet what efforts are being made to discover them?  Almost all the discoveries of books are accidental, made by fellahin in Egypt and promptly sold to dealers, or by bedouin in Israel and sold to dealers there.  Are any systematic searches being done?  If not, why not?

Note also how the finds always come from the two countries where an art-market exists.  What about the Jordanian desert?  The conditions for preservation are at least as good as those two countries.  Why aren’t we seeing mss from there?  Can’t someone persuade king Abdullah to do something?

I am reminded of a letter of the 9th century Nestorian Patriarch Timothy I, who records a find of Psalms in a manuscript in this region, in just the same manner as today.  The books are out there.

Thanks to Evangelical Textual Criticism and Paleojudaica for the info.  The Israeli link is apparently temporary, but the full text is at Paleojudaica.

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The Antiquary’s shoebox

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Bill Thayer has transcribed a bunch of out-of-copyright scholarly articles and created a subsite called the Antiquary’s Shoebox to hold them.  This sort of stuff is normally only on JSTOR, so very valuable to we helots whose duty in life is to pay for the latter, without getting access to it.

Excellent stuff.  Bill summarises the content of each article in a line or two, indicating why we care.  This aspect of the site is very well done indeed, and very useful; indeed here it is superior to JSTOR.

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Photos of Baalbek

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Some nice photos of decoration on the monuments at Baalbek in Lebanon here.

I so want to go to Baalbek.  Unfortunately it’s located in the Bekaa valley, which is where the Hezbollah are currently hunkered down and doing their gun-running from Iran.  I can imagine three doors at the site entrance: “Men”, “Women”, “Hostages.”

I can’t talk about Baalbek without reproducing the 19th century Roberts‘ picture:

David Roberts at Baalbek
David Roberts at Baalbek
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Another snippet from Agapius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Agapius continues to make interesting statements.  There’s this one:

Starting from this period, among the Greeks, Josephus (Yousifous), i.e. Aesop (Yousfâs) the fabulist began to be illustrious.

Well, no wonder names get mangled!  Who would have thought Aesop = Josephus?

Just before that, I’ve seen a discussion of why rulers speak in the plural; “We order that…” rather than “I order that.”  According to Agapius, Romulus is responsible (the founder of Rome, O Star-Trek viewer!).  After the murder of Remus (whom for some reason I imagine as being short), Rome was shaken by perpetual earthquakes and the inhabitants kept knifing each other in the forum.  Romulus then prayed to the gods, who told him that his fratricide was responsible.  But if he put Remus on the throne beside him, all would be well.  Romulus then prepared a gold statue of Remus, which he placed on the throne and then issued his commands as “We order…” (i.e. Romulus and Remus order).

I wonder what the real reason is?

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The anti-pagan legislation of Constantius II

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In 356, Constantius issued the following edict from Milan, one of a series issued in the west and prohibiting pagan sacrifices:

Idem a. et Iulianus caes. Poena capitis subiugari praecipimus eos, quos operam sacrificiis dare vel colere simulacra constiterit. Dat. XI kal. mart. Mediolano Constantio a. VIII et Iuliano caes. conss. (356 febr. 19).

“If any persons should be proved to devote their attention to sacrifices or to worship images, We command that they shall be subjected to capital punishment.  Milan, in the 8th consulate of Constantius with Julian Caesar” 1

From two mentions in Libanius we learn that people at Antioch could not pray or offer sacrifice in public for the success of Julian the Apostate’s campaign against Constantius 2, although the accounts leave unclear whether this was because the object of the prayers was attempting to seize the throne, or just because pagan prayers were illegal.  Soon after 341, well before this:

[Aristophanes] came to what was left of our temples bringing no incense or victim, no burnt-offering or drink-offering — for that was not allowed.  But he brought a sorrowing heart and a voice of grief as he had just been crying or was about to cry.  He gazed on the ground, for it was a dangerous business to gaze up to heaven, and asked the gods to call a halt to the ruination of the world.3

The atmosphere of the reign of Constantius was clearly unfavourable to paganism. The general climate of fear that is so ably recorded in Ammianus Marcellinus will have discouraged anyone from doing anything that anyone else might denounce. It will also have encouraged officials to “show their loyalty” by taking informers seriously and harshly punishing those seen to violate the will of the emperor.

Yet in 357 the emperor made a visit to Rome, and the pagan Symmachus records the attitude of the emperor:

“He made no diminution in the privileges of the vestal virgins; he filled up the priesthoods with aristocrats; he did not refuse financial support for the Roman ceremonies; and following the delighted Senate through all the streets of the Eternal City, he gazed calmly at the temples, read the names of the gods inscribed on their facades, inquired about the dates of the buildings, and expressed admiration for their builders.” 4

The contradiction in the portrait of Constantius given in these two accounts is striking.  How is it to be explained?

One anachronism must be avoided.  The Roman empire was not a state like the modern USA, or UK, where the rule of law prevailed, and a government must pass a law to make its will effective.  It was a despotism, where the will of the emperor was the real law, and paper laws held a lesser status, if any.  Much the same position applies in black Africa today, where the “law” can be merely a piece of paper.  Real authority is the wishes of the “Big Man” who does as he pleases and may, if he chooses, enact a “law” to justify it.

Nor is this situation unknown in the west.  The ancient English law of blasphemy remained unused for 50 years, and was then invoked in 1977  after Gay News published a crudely blasphemous article about Christ.  At that time there was no support for the offender, and no demand for the law to be repealed.  But I remember how, after the trial, the establishment made it known that if the law was invoked again, it would be repealed.5   But in general laws in the west are either enforced or abolished.

The fact that Constantius issued an edict, therefore, need not have the significance that we would attribute to it today.  Unless the emperor chose to enforce it, it remained merely paper.  The imperial civil servants would know whether to take action or not.  In fact paganism remained legal, and even the religion of the state, throughout this period.  But what the edicts did do was to set a tone, to “chill” the expression and practise of paganism, to open the door to the extremist and the informer.  We are familiar today with the way in which “anti-hate” legislation has been deployed, not for use but for threat. Doubtless these edicts made clear in a similar way the general preferences of the government, and, in cases of doubt, which way the verdicts would go.  They made clear who was up, and who was down; who would be heard, and who would not.

1. Codex Theodosianus 16.10.6, trans. by Clyde Pharr, extra bit by me.   The Latin of book 16 is here.
2. Libanius, Oratio 18:114. Tr. W.V.Harris, The spread of Christianity in the first four centuries, p.102 f.
3. Libanius, Oratio 14:41, ibid.
4. Symmachus, Relationes 3.7, MGH 6, ed. Seeck, tr. C. Forbes, Firmicus Maternus, ACW 37, p.133.
5. It was finally abolished in 2008 as part of a raft of laws to promote sodomy and Islam and silence criticism of either. 

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Sale at Les Belles Lettres

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There’s a sale on — 30% off — at Les Belles Lettres, the French publishers of a great number of classical texts in parallel Latin-French editions.

That takes a volume of Photius down from 30 to 20 euros.  Of course British people who’ve just watched the pound sterling fall like a paralysed albatross will still find it expensive, tho!  But… do we really want these sort of books in paper form any more? or in nice OCR’d PDF form?  If I buy any, where will I put them?

Thanks to Fr. Dominique Gonnet in LT-ANTIQ for this one!

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A Byzantine exegesis of Paul in the “depth of the sea”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The following interesting passage can be found in a work by the Venerable Bede 1:

The same apostle (Paul) said, “a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea’ (2 Cor. 11:25).  I have heard certain men assert that Theodore of blessed memory, a very learned man and once archbishop of the English people, expounded the saying thus: that there was in Cyzicus a certain very deep pit, dug for the punishment of criminals, which on account of its immense depth was called the depth of the sea.  It was the filth and darkness of this which Paul bore, amongst other things, for Christ.

Theodore was a Greek from Tarsus, who happened to be in Rome in 667 AD at the moment when a Saxon archbishop-elect of Canterbury had died while in Rome to get his pallium. Pope Vitalian was open to eastern influence, and promptly appointed this 67-year old man (d. 690) as archbishop.  His episcopate was a considerable success, he increased the status of the clergy, reorganised the diocese, and Bede says of him that he was the first archbishop whom the whole English church willingly obeyed.  This in turn helped to foster English political and cultural unity.  He brought knowledge of Latin and Greek to Dark Ages England, and interesting snippets like this from a part of the ancient world where the darkness had yet to fall.

1. Liber Quaestionum, Patrologia Latina 93, cols. 456D-457A.  The reference comes to me from Henry Mayr-Harting, The coming of Christianity to anglo-saxon England (1972), repr. 1977, p.207, n. 58 (on p.312).

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Literary references to the taurobolium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are only four literary texts that mention the Taurobolium.  I’ve already posted translations of the relevant passage from the Peristephanon of Prudentius, and the anonymous carmen adversus paganos.  The other mentions are in Firmicus Maternus and the the Augustan History, under Heliogabalus.  A look in Clauss-Slaby’s database of inscriptions reveals a lot of people and altars that have undergone the rite too.

The Vita Heliogabali 7 online at Lacus Curtius gives this mention.

7. He also adopted the worship of the Great Mother and celebrated the rite of the taurobolium; and he carried off her image and the sacred objects which are kept hidden in a secret place. 2. He would toss his head to and fro among the castrated devotees of the goddess, and he infibulated himself, and did all that the eunuch-priests are wont to do;35 and the image of the goddess which he carried off he placed in the sanctuary of his god.

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