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The journal of a French visitor to Antinoupolis in 1672-3

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are many good things to be found online these days.  Among them is Father Vansleb Nouvelle Relation … d’un Voyage fait en Egypte, Paris 1702; the diary of a journey into Egypt in 1672-3.  On p.386, we find an account of his visit to Antinoupolis.

I don’t guarantee the accuracy of my translation; but I want to see what he has to say, so as I am reading it, I thought that I would share it.

On April 3, Monday of our Easter, I had myself taken to the ancient town of Insine, so  named in the Coptic dictionaries, once known as Antinoe, once as Thebes.

First I went to see the tomb of Mahomet Bey, who was Bey of Girga forty years ago.  But after taking up arms against Gaza Pasha, he lost the battle at Melave; and, abandoned by his allies, he was defeated, captured and strangled.  His tomb is outside the town, in the communal cemetery, and, although nothing out of the ordinary, I still wanted to see it because he had, and has still, a great reputation among those of his country.  His justice and his good government is missed even today in all of Upper Egypt.

After visiting his tomb, I went into the town; and the first thing that I looked at, as a very remarkable antiquity, was the column of the emperor Marcus Aurelius.  It is made of five parts, of which four are joined together and the fifth, closest to the ground, is surrounded with decoration.  On the pedestal there is a Greek inscription of thirteen lines.

Near this column I saw three others, very similar to it, scattered on the earth, and only the pedestal of one was standing.

From the column I went to see the triumphal arch, which is still almost complete.  I gave myself the pleasure of ascending it, by means of a little staircase made in the body of the wall of the arch, which contained fifty steps, or thereabouts.  I lay down at the largest window, which was over the principal arch, from where I had the satisfaction of seeing the entirety of the ruins, and the situation of the town, once so illustrious.

This triumphal arch was alone, and entirely detached from the rest of the ruins, being only four steps from the Nile.  But in the absence of an inscription, one cannot say by whom or for whom it was raised.  There are no sculptures, as with those at Orange or Rome; but it does not fail to be one of the most beautiful that I have seen.

One of its faces is 80 royal feet in length, and one side is 24.   The great arch in the middle, which is between two small ones, is 60 feet high, and each of the little ones is 7 feet high.  The thickness of the wall between the large and the little arches, which is only a single stone, is 6 feet and 2 inches.  The spacing between the little arch and the outside angle of the Arch is 5 feet.  The side that faces the Nile faces south-east.

There are still forty fine columns of granite on the right hand side of the arch, in a straight line, leading towards the Nile.  Some still have their capitals.  Some stand alone, and others are attached to the huts of the Arabs who live there.  On the same side, going towards the monastery of Abuhennis, one can see three fine columns of porphyry, two of which are still standing and one which has fallen down.

In the mosque of this town there is a “sheikh” or “saint” whom the Arabs called Sheikh Abade, and for whom they have a particular veneration, believing him to be a muslim.  But here they are mistaken. He was a Christian, the bishop of Esna, and was martyred at Insine.  They call him Sheikh Abade by mistake, caused by the surname of this bishop.  He was called Ammonius the Abed, i,e. Ammonius the Devout; and the Arabs have manipulated the adjective of Abed and turned it into a proper name.  His relics are preserved in the “Heikel” of the church, which is now a mosque.

I was going to view the remains of a magnificent palace, which the Arabs call “Abulkerun”, or “the horned building”, because, I think, the columns which stand before this building have such large capitals that they resemble horns; this is the true signification of the word “Kern”.  But the multitude and variety of so many fine antiquities left me with a tired spirit, and the heat was violent.  I was constrained to retire to the monastery, with the intention to return another day, to examine it all more carefully.

…

On Wednesday, the fifth of the month, I went for the second time to the town of Insine, to examine the ruins with more attention, and particularly the columns before the Abulkerun, on the northwest side.

There are four in all, planted before the frontispiece of the palace, once very magnificent, but of which only a small part now remains, surrounded by its own ruins.  … [description of the columns] …

There were also behind the palace to the south east four other columns of the same grandeur, of the same form and the same material as those that I have just described.  But these were thrown down on the ground, and I could only see their pedestals.  The column of Marcus Aurelius was to the north west of the ruins of this palace.  [Then measurements of the column of Marcus Aurelius]

I saw that there were once two avenues in the town, which were more considerable than the others.  One commenced from Abulkerun, and finished at the four columns of Marcus Aurelius, running from east to north.  This road was bordered by columns on both sides.  The second commenced at the triumphal arch, which is at one end of the town to the south east, and which runs toward the north east.  These roads are very long, very wide and very straight, and filled with ruins of magnificent palaces.

…

In Insine, as well as in the caves in the mountains, there are found pitchers in the earth, in which the inhabitants of the Thebaid kept their wine … they are pointed at the bottom, in order to plant them in the ground.  My guide had the address to find them … I took two to Paris.

That’s a lot of words for not very much information.  The actual measurements might be of value in some cases, admittedly.  But what a pity that he didn’t give us a sketch!

(I also found online an Italian encyclopedia article here,[1] But probably this merely repeats information gathered at the time of Napoleon.)

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  1. [1]Francesco Milizia, Dizionario delle belle arte del disegno, 1797, vol. 1, p.39.↩

Antinoupolis at the British Museum – a project

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was delighted to discover that the British Museum has initiated a project to catalogue its holdings from Antinoupolis in Egypt.  It seems that in 1913-14, John de Monins Johnson excavated at the site; but did not publish his work.  All that appeared in print was literary and documentary texts on papyrus!  The link above takes you to a bunch of objects that the BM holds; and they intend to sort the matter out and publish his papers, etc.

Truly this is a solid and worthwhile enterprise – but then I expect no less from the British Museum, an organisation that has consistently understood what the internet age means for museums and outperformed expectations.

One item on their site caught my eye:

EA1648. Limestone(?) monumental inscription broken away at the right-hand side and bearing seven lines of Greek. The text honours Flavius Maecius Severus Dionysodorus, Platonic philosopher, in a dedication by the Senate of Antinoopolis.

Here it is:

antinoupolis_bm_inscription

The British Museum link gives a transcribed text, and a translation:

For Good Fortune.
Flavius Maecius Sev[erus]
Dionysodorus, one of those
maintained by the Museum, exempt from taxes,
Platonic philosopher and
bouleutes (is honoured by)
the Boulê of the new Hellenes of Antinoupolis.

The city was founded in 130 AD.  The item was purchased on site, not excavated.  If it relates to the Platonic philosopher Severus – quoted by Eusebius, Porphyry and Proclus – then it must be late 2nd century.  This I learn again from the exemplary British Museum page.

An interesting item, on an interesting web site.

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Antinoupolis in 1843 – the traveller John H. Allan

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The English traveller John H. Allan went up the Nile, and published his account, with drawings, in 1843, under the name A Pictorial Tour in the Mediterranean (online here).

Coming back down the Nile from Nubia, he visited Antinoe or Antinoupolis, and included a sketch:

John H. Allan. Antinoe. 1843
John H. Allan. Antinoe. 1843

He wrote as follows:

January 31st. – Sheik Abadeh, site of the ancient Antinoe, founded by the Emperor Hadrian.  A walk the village brought us to the remains of a colonnade of granite pillars without capitals. At the back of heaps of rubbish containing many architectural remains we saw a large enclosure said to be the ancient Hippodrome. The direction of its streets is still to be traced running in a regular manner, and judging from the fragments, it must have been a city of great magnificence. A large portion of the ruins were used in constructing the Pasha’s sugar manufactory at Al Rairamoun, on the opposite side of the river, amongst large plantations of sugar cane.

I wonder what became of the granite columns?

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Antinoupolis today

Posted on by Roger Pearse

After my last post about Antinoupolis in Egypt in the Napoleonic period, I find that Google Maps can give us interesting pictures of the modern site, a village named Sheikh Ibada / Abada / Ebada (etc).

I also learn from this site that the revolution in Egypt has been a disaster for the site, where the locals have been bulldozing the Hippodrome and other sites.  James B. Heidel, president of the Antinoupolis Foundation writes:

“Each year vast new swathes of ancient cemetery, parts of the ancient city wall, and in the last two years even half of the ancient hipprodrome, have been bulldozed flat, raked with a front loader and marked out with white blocks for new cemetery plots,” Heidel says.

“Two years ago fully half the hippodrome was leveled, and in spite of our protests to the Ministry of Antiquities, no protections were put in place,” he says.

“This year a further, smaller area of it was bulldozed flat, and the construction of walls for tomb plots were completed which were the year before only marked out with pebbles,” he adds.

Those wishing to locate the site will find that the name is given as El-Shaikh Ebada, 10km north of Mallawi in Menia governorate, which is here on Google Maps.

antinoupolis_googlemaps

The satellite view of the ancient city area is as follows, with the Hippodrome clearly visible!  The dark area is the ancient city:

antinoupolis_googlemaps_satellite

Zooming in, I get this:

antinoupolis_googlemaps_satellite_hippodrome

This shows the damage to the Hippodrome clearly, and the encroachment of the fields of modern tombs.

In fact the blog post linked above gives the following picture of the damage, recorded by the Italian excavation team.

antinoopolisdestruction22

Few of us perhaps would ever visit Antinoupolis.  But somehow we are all impoverished by this useless, needless destruction.

UPDATE: I found this small satellite image, from a site dated 2008.  At that time, the left hand side of the Hippodrome was complete.  Apparently “building cemeteries” is a standard ploy for those wishing to dig without permission in Egypt.

2008 Roman circus of Antinoupolis.
2008 Roman circus of Antinoupolis.
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The lost city of Antinoupolis in Egypt, as seen by Napoleon’s expedition

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The emperor Hadrian founded (or refounded) a city in Egypt which he called Antinoupolis or Antinoe, in memory of his favourite Antinous.  The city was of considerable extent, and existed into the Islamic period.

The ruins were destroyed in the 19th century for building materials to erect a sugar factory.  However they were still visible as late as 1798, and the Napoleonic Description de l’Egypte (list of volumes here) contains plans and drawings which are, frankly, rather impressive.

Book 14 (1809), Volume IV – Planches : Antiquités, online at Heidelberg, gives us the pictures and plans.  Planches 53-61 are the images from Antinoupolis.  Here is a view of the site:

The ruins of Antinoupolis. Description de l'Egypte.
The ruins of Antinoupolis. Description de l’Egypte.

And here is the plan of the city, albeit at low resolution.  Note the Hippodrome at the top, and the Nile and the modern village at the bottom.

Antinoupolis. Plan of the city ruins.
Antinoupolis. Plan of the city ruins.

I recommend downloading the PDF from Heidelberg – you can zoom into the pictures and see incredible details.

There are still ruins at Antinoupolis, of course.  A Pharonic temple of Ramasses II still stands, sort of.  Modern excavators have been at work.  But I think we must all mourn the loss of the magnificent colonnades still visible to Napoleon’s men.

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Snapshots of the secret world

Posted on by Roger Pearse

They play an unacknowledged part in our universe, yet when they vanish few remember them, and there are no records of what they looked like or contain.

For the last few years, there have been a number of websites which contain large numbers of books in PDF or other format, making them available for free download.  The books are often (but not always) in copyright.

Here’s a screen shot of one of them, which I was sent.

libgenesis

I’m giving this, because these sites vanish quickly, and in a few years time, we may be curious to see what was available in the “Wild West” days of the internet!

Few of us could afford to purchase all the material held here, or even much of it. As library facilities collapse, as inter-library loans become prohibitively dear, such sites are invaluable to researchers who live in rural areas or do not have access to the very extensive (and expensive) collections of major research libraries.

The prices demanded for academic eBooks are very high, when you consider that they require no manufacturing process, and cost nothing to distribute.  It is not unusual to see a frivolous demand for an eBook which is the same as that for a paper copy.  Such greed naturally creates incentives for piracy.

In some countries the ruling elite behaves as if it is almost entirely uninterested in the welfare of the general public.  In Germany the elite have made that clear by importing 1 million able-bodied foreigners in one year and quartering them on the hapless German population.  That’s not going to be good for the Germans; but clearly there is profit to the elite in votes and cheap labour.

But that German elite has the same contempt when it comes to learning, for it has allowed the publishing companies to dictate some of the most oppressive “copyright” laws in the world.  One consequence of this is that there is really very little of use on the German internet.  Another consequence is that Google Books is basically useless outside the USA.

In fact there is not even much Wifi in Germany, because those same greedy publishers made “laws” such that Wifi hotspots were legally responsible for ensuring that only “legal” content could be viewed, despite the free-for-all nature of the internet.  (Although the elite have realised that this is inconvenient to themselves, so are going to rescind that particular despotic law).  To the German elite, seemingly, the German people are just cattle and sheep, to be fleeced.

But it is not just Germany, although that country is singularly unfortunate.  The same attitude may be found among the ruling elite in many countries, including the USA.

One symptom of this disconnect is the banning of pirate PDF websites, at the behest of publishers, without considering what the public welfare really is, or should be.  Education is essential.  Books are essential for education.  Yet access to books is obstructed by the greed of companies that charge impossible prices for textbooks.

I don’t know what the answer is.  But I really wish that our ruling elites would address it.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My house is still being painted.  My books are still in 70 plastic crates in the garage.  But this weekend I’ve managed to sneak my laptop back into the house.  I’ve brought in the router and got my internet working again!

It is such a relief to be able to get online at home.  I can get online at work at my current client, but since I know that their office network is subject to repeated virus outbreaks, I don’t connect to my email there.

Here I am still surrounded by painter’s gear, and nearly everything still is packed up in boxes in my garage.  The smell of paint is everywhere.  The carpets are being taken up, and there is dust and dirt in all sorts of places.  Living in a building site is challenging, particularly when you have to wipe the paint off your taps, or your vacuum cleaner, where the painter has carelessly handled them.  It has become part of my routine every evening when I get home.

Also I’m finding that one thing leads to another.  What was originally just a job painting all the walls and ceilings and white woodwork is now going to involve replacing all the carpets.  Pulling up the carpets reveals damaged floorboards.  I’m trying to get a carpenter in, and deal with this.  My, these people are difficult to contact!

Tacking down a damaged floorboard was enough to stick a nail through a pipe, which meant a plumber, which meant lots of air into the radiators.  I’m still bleeding the radiators at intervals.

Meanwhile I decided that my original choice of replacement carpet colour – beige – would be depressing when it’s dark or raining, i.e. for 9 months of the year.  So I’m spending all my spare moments traipsing around carpet shops.  I would just buy the same type as I currently have;  but they do not make it any more.  You can only buy what they sell.

This leads me to wonder … will future archaeologists date our dwellings, not by types of non-existent pottery, but by types of polyester carpet?

So there’s no time for Thoughts on Antiquity.  But then, I am lucky.  If I was married, I’d have no time to do anything.

The most interesting thing today is a 1954 aerial photograph of the London Mithraeum, which was here.  Sadly it’s not that clear which bit is the temple.

walbrook_mithraeum_aerial_view_1954

Not very exciting, perhaps… but as good as it gets!

I’ve been thinking again about ways to manage my books.  One item that I could happily dispense with is Bart Ehrman’s Forgery and Counterforgery, a big fat worthless book of which I reviewed bits some time back.   I wish someone would make a PDF of it; I’m  not sure that a Kindle download is quite as useful for reference purposes.

I’d also like to see the back of my Ancient Christian Writers series volumes.  I don’t have many, but they’d be far more useful in eBook form, and they would take up less space.  But I couldn’t see any sign that you can buy eBooks of them.

Basically if it is a translation of an ancient text, in the majority of cases, I don’t want it in paper form.

The exception, of course, is translations that one can read for pleasure.  My copy of the Penguin translation by Betty Radice of Pliny’s Letters is one such example.  It can be read for pleasure, and I have done so, many times.

The four volumes of Cicero’s letters to Atticus, and to his friends are another – and I have no idea at all how to get an eBook of these, long out of print, volumes.  I’m not quite sure whether I will read through these again.  At the moment I am not in the mood; but I have done so several times in the past.

Maybe the answer is to find some young man with time on his hands who would sit in front of the scanner for a few hours, and create eBooks of some of my crucial books.  But where do I find this person?

Somehow, I must regain control of my book collection.

I’ve also been reading Lindsey Davis’ “Flavia Albia” books on my smartphone, via Kindle.  Davis is famous for the “Falco” series of Roman detective novels, set in the Flavian period.  The “Flavia Albia” series are “Son of Falco”; or rather, “Daughter of Falco”.  I bought the first three volumes on Kindle and read them, and they slipped down easily enough.

Recently volume 4 of this series appeared, and I bought it on paper; but in fact I would have been just as happy or happier with it on Kindle.  I don’t know that I shall read it again, so the paperback will go out to a charity shop.

Maybe one-time or two-time novels should be read electronically, rather than on paper?  But … what about our eyes?  Eyestrain is such a problem for smartphone users.

Today I broke off from my house-related chores, and took a restorative walk by the sea.  While doing so, I saw that a new information board had appeared there.  This referred to a building on the sea front, which was recently – within a year or two? – demolished, and was called the “long shelter”.  I always felt that it was an attractive building, and that it should have been repaired rather than demolished.

Well, the information board told me that the demolition took place in 2008!  Was it really 8 years ago?  How fast the years now fall, like leaves in autumn after the first frost.

I was reminded yesterday of “Thoughts on Antiquity”.  This was the blog, at http://neonostalgia.com/weblog/, on which I started blogging.  It was the blog of Chris Weimer, who invited me to write a few posts.  These I copied here long ago; and just as well, for his blog has pretty much vanished.  Looking at Archive.org, I see the last post was 24 May 2010.  The last snapshot to show it was on September 26, 2010, and the next snapshot, December 17 2010, shows only an HTTP 301 code.  I wonder what happened to it?  Indeed I wonder what happened to him?  I see that I have an email address … I must write and ask.

I’ve had a series of minor health problems for most of the year, although I don’t believe anything is really wrong.  On Tuesday I go into hospital as an outpatient for a somewhat unpleasant examination.  Wish me luck!

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Petronius Secundus, Prefect of Egypt, at the Colossi of Memnon

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The “Colossi of Memnon” at Luxor in Egypt were a recognised tourist sight in antiquity, because one of them made a “singing” noise at dawn.  Few will be aware that the lower portions of the statues are covered with ancient graffiti and inscriptions.

Among these, I learn from David Blocker, is an inscription by “Petronius”.  This is not the literary author, Petronius Arbiter, but rather the prefect of Egypt under Domitian, Petronius Secundus.  The inscription is as follows:

Imp(eratore) Domitiano
Caesare Aug(usto) German(ico) XVI c(onsule)
T(itus) Petronius Secundus pr(aefectus) Aeg(ypti)
audit Memnonem hora I pr(idie) Idus Mart(ias)
et honoravit eum versibus Graecis
infra scriptis:
φθέγξαο Λατοΐδα, σὸν γὰρ μέρος ὧδε κάθηται,
Μέμνων ἀκτεῖσιν βαλλόμενος πυρίναις.
curante T(ito) Attio Musa prae[f](ecto) coh(ortis) II
Thebaeor(um).

I.e.

When the emperor Domitian Caesar Augustus Germanicus was consul for the 16th time, T. Petronius Secundus, prefect of Egypt, heard Memnon at the first hour on the day before the Ides of March, and honoured him with the Greek verses written below:

“You sent forth your song, O Memnon, because a part of you is seated here, when the son of Latona struck you with his brilliant rays.”

This work carried out by T. Attius Musa, Prefect of the 2nd cohort of Thebans.[1]

The date is 92 AD.  The graffito makes clear that it was the action of the sun that caused the sound.

Early travellers drew and published pictures of the statues and the graffiti, the latter often recorded very inaccurately.  Some tweets of these can be found here, although not ours.  French translations of the inscriptions can be found online here.

The statues themselves are actually of Amenophis III, and originally stood in front of his now-vanished mortuary temple.  But an earthquake damaged one of them.  After this, at dawn, the statue vibrated and gave out this peculiar noise.  The noise ceased after Septimius Severus had the statue repaired in the 3rd century AD.

memnon

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  1. [1]The inscription is CIL III 37 = ILS 8759d = Bernand Memnon 13.  André et Étienne Bernand, Les Inscriptions grecques et latines du colosse de Memnon, Bibliothèque d’étude de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale, vol. 31, Paris (1960).  The inscriptions are online here.  The item is 217995, IGR I,5 1198.↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have lived at my current address for nearly 20 years.  When I took possession, on 10th February 1998, I was staying in a hotel with my property in storage.  So I arranged for the place to be painted throughout before I moved in, on the 20th.  I have never been able to arrange for a painter to work without moving out again, so the house decoration has gradually grown rather tired.  It is not bad, but it won’t do for another 20 years.  I must repaint now.

This summer I was finally able to find a painter who was able and willing to do the deed.  He arrives on Monday 17th October, 2016, in fact, if all goes well – for these gentry are notoriously unreliable.  He will move large chunks of furniture around, in order to paint.

But there is one important exception.  Nobody can move bookcases which are full of books.  So this requires me to empty my book cases, which are mostly in my study bedroom.  This I have been doing, for over a week now.  The cartons I have placed in my garage; 24 of them so far.

It is difficult to find cartons suitable for books.  I have been driven to buying 32 litre shallow “underbed” plastic boxes with lids, available at £3 each, from Wilkinsons.  This evening I collected a further 30.

The process of packing is itself a painful one. Without a copious supply of boxes, it is even more stressful.  You find yourself agonising over how to fit stuff into the boxes.  With enough boxes, you don’t worry.  Buy lots of boxes.  It reduces the stress.

Tonight I have at last emptied every visible shelf in my study.  However there still remain many shelves in the large cupboard, including a stack of academic books.  Even these I have started, and may hope to complete tomorrow night.  This is well; for I have little space remaining in my garage.  It has been a heavy task for a man no longer young.  Will I ever have the strength to do it again?

In a way, this makes me think.  Should I really own so many books that I can’t manage them?  I say that I own many; but it is little more than 3,000, I would guess.  How many of these books will I never look at again?  It is all very well to retain books, especially academic books.  But I do wish that I had almost all the academic books in PDF, rather than in paper.  Will I have another purge, I wonder?

Clearing my shelves is like a journey into my own past.  I come across offprints, send unsolicited by a kindly academic.  Vast amounts of old hard disks litter my cupboard.  There are endless dictionaries of ancient Greek, from the days when I hoped to write a Greek translation tool.  Should I dispose of these?  Probably I should … for I no longer have the energy that I did.  In other cases I come across books that I know I will never reread, for I have read them out over the years.  Yet they are part of me, and made me who I am.  What to do?

Men of my age commonly deceive themselves that they will have more time when they retire.  If any of my generation can ever afford to retire, they may find different.

I spent two months at home this summer, in indifferent health.  Five days ago I went back to work, and found the first two days very awful.  I then had some very stressful and tiring days.  Yet … I find myself more alert, fitter, and in better health, now that I am working.  The “curse of Adam”, that all of us must work, turns out to be a blessing.  With “retirement” often comes a vegetable state.

As eBooks become more common, possibly it will be possible for me to buy or otherwise acquire eBooks of some of the academic stuff.  I must invest the money, I think; and buy back control of my shelves!

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A Japanese Edo-period woodblock image of the Roman forum

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Here’s a curiosity!  Have you ever wondered what Rome would look like, to someone from the alien cultures of China or Japan?

David Blocker kindly emailed me the following image, which he found on Wikipedia here.  It was made by a Japanese artist who had never seen Rome, and to whom a ruined stone city was utterly alien since he lived in a world constructed mostly of wood.

utagawa_toyoharu_rome

I learn from Wikipedia that the artist was Utagawa Toyoharu (d. 1814), and is based on an 18th century western print of various monuments of Rome.  It belongs to the Edo period, when Japan was closed to westerners.

Fascinating.  Thank you David!

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