Seen on the Classicists list:

Ruin or Renewal? Places and the Transformation of Memory in the City of Rome
The University of Wales Trinity Saint David (Lampeter Campus)
The City of Rome Project (www.city-of-rome.org)

9-10 March, 2012

This conference aims to explore the connections between memory and the topography of the city of Rome, with a particular focus on the afterlife in antiquity of monuments, buildings and places. Papers will explore such themes as the natural transformation, or the deliberate appropriation or manipulation, of the memories associated with monuments, by means of relocation, restoration, embellishment, neglect or demolition.

Speakers:

Dominique Briquel (Paris-Sorbonne): ‘Monuments of the Regal Period and the Beginnings of the Republic: the Ambiguity of realia’

Amanda Claridge (Royal Holloway): TBC

Marta García Morcillo (Trinity Saint David): ‘Topography of Terror: Proscriptions and the City of Rome’

Lucy Jones (King’s College London): ‘Movemur enim nescio quo pacto locis ipsis: Nostalgia and the Ethics of Social Memory’

Don Miller (Newcastle): ‘For God, Country or Self? Religious Dedications and the Construction of Public Image in Republican Rome’

Jill Mitchell (Trinity Saint David): ‘The Religious Transformation of the Caelian Hill in the Late Fourth Century’

John Patterson (Cambridge): ‘The Imperial City of Rome and the Demise of the Republican Nobility’

Cecilia Ricci (Molise): ‘Memory and Epigraphy. The pauper in First Century Rome, an ongoing research project’

James Richardson (Trinity Saint David): ‘Poetry, Performance and Place in Archaic Rome’

Federico Santangelo (Newcastle): ‘The Statue of Marsyas’

Alexander Thein (Trinity College Dublin): ‘The Myth and Monuments of Castor and Pollux circa 168 B.C.’

Lily Withycombe-Taperell (Royal Holloway): ‘The Temples of Jupiter Feretrius on the Capitoline Hill in Augustan Rome’

The conference is part of the City of Rome Project, and is timed to coincide with the inaugural City of Rome lecture, which will be given by Professor Tim Cornell. The lecture will take place on Thursday, 8 March at 6.00 pm, and will be on ‘The City of Rome in the Archaic Period in the Light of Recent Discoveries’.

Please direct any inquires to the organisers:

Marta García Morcillo (m.morcillo AT tsd.ac.uk)
James Richardson (J.Richardson AT tsd.ac.uk)
Federico Santangelo (F.Santangelo AT ewcastle.ac.uk)

Khufu’s second solar boat will soon be displayed in it’s own museum beside the Great Pyramid with an announcement to be made Monday.

Khufu's 1st Solar boat in it's own museum built above it's grave

At an international press conference held on Egypt’s Giza Plateau next Monday, Egyptian Minister of State for Antiquities Mohamed Ibrahim is expected to announce the launch of the second phase of the Khufu solar boat restoration project, which is being carried out in collaboration with a Japanese archaeological team from Wasida University.

Ibrahim told Ahram Online that the team would collect samples of the boat’s wooden beams for analysis on Monday in order to draw up accurate plans for the boat’s restoration in a special museum located on the plateau.

The first phase of the project, carried out two years ago, assessed the area surrounding the second boat pit with the use of topographical radar surveys. A large hangar has since been built over the second pit, with a smaller hangar erected inside to cover the top of the boat itself. The hangars were especially designed to protect the wooden remains during the project’s analysis and treatment phases.

Read more: Ahram

Photo by zolakoma CC By

No related posts.

The incipit of a brief item from UPI:

Archeologists found an ancient hut from the Bronze Age during construction work on the southern Italian resort island of Lipari, officials said.

The hut was uncovered, along with Roman-era Hellenistic slabs, during work in a town square, Italian news agency ANSA reported.

The age of the hut was not immediately determined, but the Bronze Age is generally recognized as extending from 1800 B.C. to 1000 B.C. [...]

• Bronze Age hut found on Italian island[UPI via Outcome Magazine]

The ANSA coverage (similarly brief):

• Archeologia: scoperta a Lipari capanna dell’eta’ del bronzo (ANSA)

Archaeomolise is a bit more extensive: Lipari: scoperta capanna dell’età del Bronzo

Seen on various lists:

University of British Columbia
Faculty of Arts
Assistant Professor in Classics/Biblical Hebrew for 2012-13

Applications are invited for a 9-month position in Classics at the
level of Assistant Professor, without review, in the Department of
Classical, Near Eastern and Religious Studies (CNERS) in the Faculty
of Arts, University of British Columbia. The successful candidate will
be expected to teach five courses over the two terms, including Roman
Law and some combination of Ancient History, Classical Studies, Greek
and/or Latin courses. The ability to teach Biblical Hebrew at either
beginners’ or intermediate level will be an advantage but should not
deter applicants who do not have this skill. The successful candidate
will also be expected to conduct an active program of research and to
participate fully in student advising, departmental service, events
and initiatives. This position is subject to final budgetary approval.

Ideally candidates will have completed their PhD and will be able to
demonstrate excellence in both teaching and research. The appointment
will run from August 1st 2012 until April 30th 2013. Informal
enquiries may be made to the Acting Head of the Department of CNERS,
Professor Susanna Braund, at the email address below. Please visit
www.cnrs.ubc.ca for information about the department.

Applicants should send a letter of application, a CV, a scholarly
writing sample, and the names and e-mail addresses of three referees.
Please ask your referees to write separately to the address below, to
reach the Department not later than the date specified. We cannot
accept e-mail applications, but referees’ signed letters of support
can be sent forwarded as .pdf attachments. Applications and letters of
reference should be sent to the Chair of the Search Committee,
Professor Susanna Braund, CNERS, Buchanan C227, 1866 Main Mall,
Vancouver, BC Canada V6T 1Z1, to reach her not later than March 19th
2012. E-mail: susanna.braund AT ubc.ca.

UBC hires on the basis of merit and is committed to employment equity.
All qualified persons are encouraged to apply. UBC is strongly
committed to diversity within its community and welcomes applications
from visible minority group members, women, Aboriginal persons,
persons with disabilities, persons of any sexual orientation, and
others who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas.

We encourage all who are qualified to apply; however, Canadians and
permanent residents of Canada will be given priority. Applicants from
this group are encouraged to self-identify.

Last Saturday (11th Feb) I met with a group of 18 people, mainly from local churches, at 4pm.  Destination: Israel!  The tour was organised by a clergyman as a pilgrimage, through a firm called McCabe.  Our flight from Heathrow was at 22:30, so we departed in order to have plenty of time.  Unfortunately the McCabe arrangements only begin at Heathrow, and our party had hired a minibus which broke down!  The driver seemed to have no idea what to do.  We ended up calling the police, being towed off the road, and getting some taxis ourselves.   That was very high stress, but we arrived OK.  The temperature on the M25, as we travelled, hit -8C, which was a little low. 

At Heathrow we were met by McCabe representatives, and really spent very little time going through the security and waiting around.  When we arrived at the departure gate, various people from the couple of hundred travellers there were called over for an extra grilling in a little room.  Nearly all the travellers were older, so it was quite curious that two of the three so chosen happened to be young, pretty and female.  El Al, you need to clamp down on this.

Then we had an overnight flight of some four and a half hours.  In truth it was impossible to sleep in the cramped conditions, so it was with some relief that we arrived at Tel Aviv at 05:15 on Sunday.

We were met by a local guide calling himself “Johnny”, who shepherded us onto coaches.  It was already light, and we drove to Jerusalem, stopping on the Mount of Olives for a view over the city.  This was pretty chilly, although the sun was up. 

By 8am we were at our hotel, the Golden Walls in Jerusalem, where a breakfast had been laid on.  I ate very sparingly, since I wanted to get some sleep.  We were allocated three hours to rest, and then off again.  There was an alternative of going to church, which a couple of people did (and paid for in exhaustion later).

This part of the tour was rather daft, in truth.  I slept for two hours and woke feeling really sick.  Fortunately I recovered somewhat during the next hour.  We were then taken to the Jerusalem hotel for lunch.  A lot of food on a tired stomach is never a good idea, so I stuck with a bit of bread and water.  We then walked through the old city to the wailing wall area.  I was struck with the reflection that, in the womens’ section, probably very few of those visiting were praying for a life of singleness!

Some of the party then got back on the coach to go back to the hotel, while the rest of us walked back through the old city.  This turned into quite a route march, which was probably a mistake again.  However we got back to the hotel at sunset, and there was an excellent buffet.

The Golden Walls hotel is a 3* establishment.  Externally it consists of a doorway between some scruffy shops.  Internally it is much better.  The rooms are adequate, rather than special.  There was a very thin connecting door from my room to the next one, which I had to lock myself (!)  More concerning was the lack of any curtains other than some bits of gauze.  These turned up the following day.  The food on offer was a hot buffet and was excellent.  And even I — a light sleeper — was so tired that I slept quite well. 

On Monday morning it was breakfast again — all meals were included.  I noted that the hotel contained at least four different McCabe pilgrimages, as tables were reserved “for Revd XYZ” with the company name on.  The breakfast was good.  We had a wakeup call for 06:30, breakfast from 07:00, and onto the coach at 0800.  Remember that Israel is 2 hours ahead, so these were early hours, as far as our body-clocks were concerned!

The morning was spent visiting the churches on the Mount of Olives, and then going to the pool of Bethesda.  One feature of the trip was that a hymn book (well, pamphlet) formed part of the tour materials, so we all sang a hymn in the crusader church of St Anne’s next door.  Then there was lunch at the Ecce Homo convent in the Old City — a really excellent establishment, where we met other people from Ipswich.  The afternoon was spent in the Old City, and visiting the church of the Holy Sepulchre, where I got to see the tomb of Christ for the first time, thanks to some reasonably small queues.  Then we headed out to the garden tomb, and then back to the hotel.

One nice feature of the location of the hotel is that there are shops nearby.  We were hastened past any of the shopping in the Old City — indeed this was a rather curious feature of the tour — but I was able, in the evening, to locate somewhere that I could buy some crisps and chocolate.  For what is life without these?  Even so, with all the exercise, I lost quite a bit of weight on the tour.  Not that I am complaining, I should add!

On the Tuesday it was another early start, this time vacating our rooms as we were on our travels.  The morning involved a visit to the Shepherds’ fields — where the angel announced the birth of Jesus, where we had a communion service.  This meant passing through an Israeli checkpoint — very easy — and into the West Bank.  Sadly it also meant a lot of pro-Palestinian propaganda about how nasty the Israelis were for building a barrier.  Since I didn’t hear the words “suicide bomber” at any point — the reason for all that expenditure — I tuned out the lot as special pleading, which it was. 

We were then taken into a local shop and stood there with the door closed for 45 minutes while they tried to sell us stuff.  I proved resistant to this, as I don’t care for this kind of organised pocket-emptying.  Indeed, given that we were rushed past everyone else, I really didn’t like this at all.  But here’s a photo of our bus outside the tourist trap.

Then onto Bethlehem, to Manger square, and into the basilica, which turns out to be the work of Justinian.  Interestingly this time we saw the caves where St. Jerome lived when he was there.  It’s hard to imagine that he worked down there, tho — wouldn’t all that literary work have required more light?  Lunch was next door at a place called the Casa Nova, which was — as usual — very good. 

In the afternoon we went to the Israeli Museum to see the model of ancient Jerusalem, and the Shrine of the Book.  While there some dignitary arrived, shepherded by policemen in cars without number plates — only unimportant people need number plates, it seems.  The Shrine of the Book was cunningly designed with invisible steps in darkness inside so that people fell over them.  The light level was so low, indeed, that I was unable to read much of the material in there.  The replica of the Isaiah scroll from the Dead Sea was interesting, in that it was largely intact.  The divisions in the text, and the horizontal line in the margin indicating verse divisions, was interesting to see.  Text divisions in ancient texts are, as regular readers will know, an interest of mine.

Finally we drove into the Judaean wilderness, stopping to climb a hill and look out over some of the bleak landscape.

Then back on the bus, and we drove down to Jericho, ears popping as the road descended below sea level.  We stayed at the Intercontinental hotel.  This was a curious place, originally built as a casino, and now stood in the middle of nowhere.  The bags didn’t turn up at all quickly and I had to go and get mine from the slothful hands of a bell boy who showed no disposition to release it to me.  The food buffet wasn’t very good, and much of the same stuff appeared at breakfast where it was most unwelcome.  I can’t recommend this hotel, particularly as I was placed in room 212, right next to the service lift.

Back into the bus early on Wednesday, and a short drive to the dead sea.  I had provided myself with swimming trunks — never had an M&S sales assistant apologise for their range before, and mine came from Debenhams — and so made the splash.  The facilities were very basic, which meant that it took a long time to get out of the water and get dressed without ending up with sand in your shoes for the rest of the day.  It was interesting to see one girl simply too nervous to sit down in the water and lie back.  It was quite cold, tho.

Then on to Nazareth, to a theme park called the “Nazareth Village”.  I admit this wasn’t for me, and neither was the food which seemed in rather short supply.  After lunch we went into Nazareth and to the basilica of the Annunciation and to the Synagogue church.  After that, a drive to Tiberias, although we did visit Cana along the way.  We were rather grateful to reach Tiberias, where we stayed at the Ron Beach hotel.  The room I had looked out over the sea of Galilee, and the food here was good (although not as good as the Golden Walls).

One interesting feature of the Ron Beach was an atrium lounge, where there was a piano.  We quickly found that another McCabe group was staying there, who were on a 10-day tour (these seem better value than the 5 day tours), and were Scottish.  In the evening they gathered around the piano and hammered out and sang loudly various songs from the Second World War, such as “It’s a long way to Tipperary”.  We all joined in, of course.  What the hotel staff made of all this I don’t know, but it was great fun!

On Thursday we drove to visit various sites associated with Jesus’ ministry, including Capernaum and a communion at the church of the loaves and fishes.  There was quite a bit of rain around today.  Lunch was at the church of the Beatitudes, where we were offered St. Peter’s fish (I, as ever, stuck to bread during the day).  In the afternoon there was a boat ride from a Kibbutz, and, fortunately, it did not rain while we were out there. We got back around 16:00.  A few of us walked into Tiberias, although the town is not really that interesting.  After dinner, to bed around 21:00; for the wakeup call to go home on Friday was at 03:00.  That night it rained and rained!  A very long day of travel then brought us home. 

It was a great tour.  The people I was with were very nice people, and I found plenty to talk about with many of them.  I also met a couple of people whom I hope will become friends — indeed I met one of them in town today.  It was sad, indeed, when we all disappeared in different directions on the last day.  It was,  in truth, a very nice way to meet people.

With Amit Poznansky’s soundtrack alternating between Hitchcockian music and frothy beats, the two themes seeming to change suddenly, the stage is set for suspense with a satirical dimension aimed at showing academic infighting that is as much a factor in Israel as it is in America. Will Uriel risk enraging his dad by telling him the bad news? Strange to say, this conflict over a remote scholarly endeavor provides as much tension in the audience as would a thriller with Uzis and exploding cars.

The site of Ramat Rahel located high on a hilltop above modern-day Jerusalem has long fascinated archaeologists. This is the site of the only known palace dating back to the Kingdom of  Judah (8-7 centuries BCE), but excavations have also revealed a luxurious garden created by the Persians.

Since excavators discovered the garden area in the 1950s and 60s with its advanced irrigation system, they could only imagine what the original might have looked like in full bloom — until now.

Using a specialised technique for separating fossilized pollen trapped in the layers of plaster found in the garden’s waterways, researchers from Tel Aviv University’s Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology have now been able to identify exactly what grew in the ancient royal gardens of Ramat Rahel. By examining the archaeological evidence and the likely settings of specific plants they have also been able to reconstruct the lay-out of the garden.

According to Prof. Oded Lipschits, Dr. Yuval Gadot, and Dr. Dafna Langgut, the garden contained the usual local vegetation such as common fig and grapevine, but also included a selection of exotic plants such as citron and Persian walnut trees. The citron, which apparently originated from India was then transported on through Persia and seemingly made its first appearance in Ramat Rahel’s royal garden.

Persian Walnut. By Böhringer Friedrich, (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0) via Wikimedia Commons

Plaster “pollen trap”

One of the remarkable features of Ramat Rahel’s garden is the advanced irrigation system. The presence and size of the garden is even more impressive, says Dr. Gadot, because there was no permanent water source at the site. Rain water was collected from roof tops and stored in reservoirs before being  distributed throughout the garden with aesthetic water installations that included pools, underground channels and gutters.

It was these plastered water channels that finally allowed researchers to recover what they had been searching for. Early attempts to remove pollen grains from the site’s soil in order to reconstruct the botanical components of the garden were unsuccessful because the pollen had oxidized. But when it was noticed that the channels and pools themselves were coated with thin layers of plaster during frequent repairs and renovation, the researchers theorized that if the plaster had ever been renewed while the garden was in bloom, pollen could have stuck to the wet plaster, acting as a “trap,” and dried within it.

Aerial view of site and digital reconstruction of Ramat Rahel site. © Image credit:American Friends of Tel Aviv University

A Picture of the past

Using new techniques to achieve the goal of extracting these microscopic grains of pollen the researchers were successful, the pollen was there to be found, and more surprises were in store. While most plaster layers included only typical native vegetation, one of the layers, dated to the Persian period (the 5th-4th centuries B.C.E.), also included fruit trees, ornamental plants, and imported trees from far-off lands.“This is a very unique pollen assemblage,” explains Dr. Langgut, a pollen expert. Among the unusual vegetation are willow and poplar which required irrigation in order to grow in the garden, ornamentals such as myrtle and water lilies, native fruit trees including the grape vine, the common fig, and the olive and imported citron, Persian walnut, cedar of Lebanon and birch trees. Researchers theorize that these exotics were imported by the ruling Persian authorities from remote parts of the empire to flaunt the power of their imperial administration.

This is the first time that the such a detailed picture of botanical elements have been reconstructed in an ancient royal garden, say the researchers. The botanical and archaeological information they have collected will help them to re-create the garden so that visitors can soon experience the floral opulence of Ramat Rahel during the life of the grand palace.

Human beings distributed different plants and animals throughout the world, mostly for economic purposes, says Dr. Gadot. In contrast, at Ramat Rahel, royalty designed this garden with the intent of impressing visitors with wealth and worldliness as well as creating a comfortable retreat from the world beyond the walls.

Source:  American Friends of Tel Aviv University (www.aftau.org)

More information:

Ramat Rahel Archaeological Project

Tel Aviv University’s Sonia and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology

Cures, near Fara in Sabina

Nothing earth-shaking, but at least I haven’t added Latin nonsense or falsified mileages: the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica article “Cures” — being the little town in Sabine country that Titus Tatius and Numa apparently came from, and which was deemed in Antiquity to have been the origin of the name Quirites applied to the Roman people.

A brief article cribbed from a common 101‑year‑old encyclopedia should hardly be news, but alas it is, sort of. Wikipedia too, bless ‘em, reproduces the same article, making essentially no changes: but the only two significant changes it does make are both mistakes. Small ones, but mistakes none the less: the ager Sabinus becomes an “alter Sabinus“; and 26 miles has been turned into 26 km. That in turn wouldn’t be terribly interesting if it weren’t that (a) the introduction of errors into the EB articles is very common at Wikipedia, maybe more common than not; and (b) the prevailing wisdom there, usually delivered with a sniff, is that the 1911 EB is antiquated, sexist, written in stodgy old English, and generally we people can improve all that.

And so we can. Our first step though, is to introduce no mistakes of our own. The next, which I’ve attempted to do on my own page, would be to add the source citations, links to what further websites may be relevant, and in this case a GoogleMap; and the dozen or so times Cures appears elsewhere onsite are now linked to it. Nothing major, but at least it’s not nonsense.

Being offline last week for almost a week felt like a bit of a risk.  But in fact my email inbox is not too bad, and I have processed most of these.  A couple require a more considered response — or a longer response!  Nothing was shrieking for my attention.

I notice that it is Lent next week.  There is a case for giving up TV “news” for Lent.  I didn’t see any News while I was in Israel, and, in truth, I didn’t miss it.  Why do I need a daily digest of miseries, about which I can do little?  I did mention this to someone on the tour, and the response was that we need to pray for the world.  This is scriptural, of course, but there is probably a balance somewhere.

One of the emails that I received was from my local library, telling me that Roger Cowley’s Ethiopian Biblical Interpretation is in.  So I went into town and picked it up.  The material in this volume will be unfamiliar to most of us, so I will probably post a digest of the interesting bits here at some point.  Few of us can have any idea what kind of literary sources and approaches were used for biblical study in medieval Ethiopia.  But since the country was evangelised from the Byzantine empire, it is likely that the catena model was in use.  What other pattern could there be?

Another thing that I did today was to copy all the digital photos that I shot in Israel — more as a keepsake than anything else — onto a memory stick and take them to Boots to be printed off on the 1 hr service.  This produces really good results, as a rule; equal to those that we got in the film days.  The photos are better than I recalled, in truth.

On a different note, I’m toying with the idea of adding a photograph to the blog header.  This needs to be professionally shot, of course — some may feel that *I* need to be professionally shot, in a rather different sense! — and so I’ve contacted a photographer and we’ll see what happens.  In fact I contacted him before I went to Israel, but I emailed him today to say that I was back.  Curiously he omitted to discuss the little matter of copyright release, which I did mention, so I have asked for specifics. 

While I was in Israel, I found myself starting to write another song.  It was on Thursday evening, while in the Ron Beach hotel in Tiberias.  I found myself outside by the pool, in the dark, with rain pouring down on me, as I walked up and down trying to work it out.  There was no useful indoor area, and I needed the beat of the feet on the concrete!   Sadly, in the absence of a tape recorder, I am left only with the idea and the hook.  Today I have dug out a voice recorder from the drawer, and … discovered the need for AAA batteries!  Rather droll, I thought — determination is all very well, but you still run into these intractable sorts of barriers.

There are various projects that need my attention, but that will not happen today.  The Origen book needs finishing off, and I ought to start typesetting it (and learning how to typeset it).  A proposal for a further book needs attention, or else rejection.  There are also various Christian things that I need to do, and events that I need to attend.

Pedal to the metal, in other words, comme d’habitude.

Seen on the Classicists list:

The British School at Athens, an institute for advanced research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, seeks a fixed term (5 year), full-time Curator to manage its research centre at Knossos and to conduct original research. You will be capable of combining academic and managerial tasks in a flexible manner, of facilitating the work of resident and non-resident scholars using the Knossos facilities, and of representing the British School on Crete. Residence at the Knossos research centre is a requirement. You will have completed a doctorate or have comparable relevant experience (e.g. in conservation or collection management), and have defined an original research project which can be completed while in post (and resident) at Knossos (preference may be given to applicants proposing a project which focuses on Knossian collections). You will be able to communicate effectively in Greek, or to demonstrate how you will acquire this level of command before taking up the post.

The salary will be up to £23,000, including health insurance. The position is available from 1st July 2012. A probationary period will apply.

Further details are available at: http://www.bsa.ac.uk

Informal enquiries about the post may be addressed to the School Director, Professor
Catherine Morgan (director AT bsa.ac.uk) or the Chair of the Crete SubCommittee,
Professor Todd Whitelaw (t.whitelaw AT ucl.ac.uk).

The closing date for applications is Monday 23rd April 2012. Interviews will be held in late May.

One feature that young-earth creationists, mythicists, and other proponents of pseudoscholarly ideas have in common in the way they treat the writings of actual experts in the field in question.

On the one hand, they will mine the writings of experts for sound bites and quotes that seem to support their viewpoint, and will pepper their blog posts and discussion board comments with them liberally.

On the other hand, they dismiss at least one of the central conclusions drawn by those experts, and write about them in relation to that particular matter as if they were completely incompetent ignoramuses who cannot be trusted to draw logical, reasoned conclusions.

I think we should call this the “Schroedinger’s Scholar Fallacy.” Clearly both characterizations of experts in a field cannot be right simultaneously. Either they are capable of doing valid work in their discipline, in which case their acceptance of evolution, or the existence of a historical Jesus, or whatever else, cannot be chalked up to stupidity; or they are indeed incompetent, in which case they cannot serve as authorities to appeal to in order to bolster one’s own case, since they are just as likely to have botched those points as any others if they really are as gullible and illogical as is claimed.

But in the realms of mythicism and creationism, scholars seem to exist in a state of quantum paradox, like Schroedinger’s cat, being both reliable authorities with genuine expertise, and ignorant fools, and coexisting as both simultaneously.

It is time, I suggest, for mythicists, creationists, and other denialists to open the box and look inside. The experts whom they selectively quote are either one or the other – either authorities who can be cited as providing a perspective with genuine expertise that carries legitimate weight, or people whose expertise cannot be relied upon and should not be taken seriously.

On a related note, Bob Cargill said the following on Facebook, and it seems to me germane to the current topic:

‎’God of the gaps’ creationists are like defense attorneys defending a murderer: they want you to focus on the unaccounted for 38 seconds and ignore the smoking gun, body, fingerprints, and incriminating surveillance video while they try to suppress it.

The Department of Classics and Philosophy is pleased to announce their new “Classics Excellence Scholarship”. The Scholarship will be awarded to a student entering in September 2012 to study full time Single Honours BA degrees in Classics, Classical Studies, Ancient History, Latin or Greek, and covers full Home/EU fees for three years of undergraduate study at RHUL (under the new £9,000 fees regime).
The award will be offered to an exceptional student. As part of the application candidates will be asked to submit a statement explaining their skills, interests, and what they can bring to the department, and to provide a supporting reference. Full details are available at

classics excellence scholarship

The deadline for applications is 30 March, 2012.

The “Classics Excellence Scholarship” is made possible by a generous gift from “a grateful parent”, who wishes to remain anonymous, in recognition of the “wonderful experience and support” their child had received as a student in the Classics and Philosophy Department at Royal Holloway.

Assorted outlets in the Italian press are mentioning the excavation of a sculpture, identified as a maenad, from a depth of 27 metres, on the Quirinal. It is thought to date from the third century A.D. and archaeologists involved in the dig think they have found the site of the Temple of Quirinus and are sitting on a “gold mine”. This appears to be adding weight to Andrea Carandini’s suggestion some five years ago that the temple’s remains were in the gardens of the Quirinal Palace (see: Temple of Quirinus?).  It would have been kind of nice if they had held off the original reporting of this (on February 14th) to February 17th, which would have coincided with the ancient date of the Quirinalia, which presumably would have happened in the area as well, but oh well …

Il Messagero has the best coverage, including  brief (unembeddable, alas) video which show the sculpture that was brought out (not quite sure how it is being identified as a maenad, other than the fact that it seems to be nude):

• Un tesoro nascosto sotto il Quirinale: statua a 27 metri di profondità (Il Messaggero)

… the video, in case you missed it, is here.

More coverage:

• Trovata una Menade sotto il Quirinale (Il Tempo)

• Archeologia: Godart, sotto il Quirinale c’e’ una miniera d’oro (Libero)

For info on the Temple of Quirinus:

• Sacellum et Aedes Quirini (Platner and Ashby via Lacus Curtius)

• Quirinus, Aedes(Richardson)

Interesting item from Yale Daily News:

With the help of one Yale alum, a ’90s historical comic book series is gaining a new, educational edge.

Thomas Beasley GRD ’09 said in a Tuesday talk at Sterling Memorial Library that he hopes to put a modern twist on the study of ancient Greek history with the publication of a reader’s guide to a comic book series about the Trojan War, “Age of Bronze.”

The digital media publisher Throwaway Horse is currently adapting creator Eric Shanower’s 31-issue comic series into a digital format. In reconfiguring the comic, Throwaway Horse brought in Beasley, a classics scholar, to write an embedded page-by-page reader’s guide for each issue, which acts as a didactic extension of the comics describing the Greek mythological figures referenced in the material and providing historical context for each story. Since the project’s inception in October 2011, three issues of the newly digitized comic have been made available for the iPad.

Beasley said that the comic series could be useful in academic settings, as the series seeks to represent the full length of the 10-year-long Trojan War and not just the last few years covered in the epics of Homer.

“While the books are not well-known in the academic community yet,” said Beasley. “They would be ideal for a class on the Trojan war because they are less anachronistic than [the works of] Homer.”

The guide is intended as an academic jumping-off point for those whose curiosity about Greek history and mythology is piqued by the comics, Beasley said the guide is intended as an academic jumping-off point for a reader whose curiosity about Greek history and mythology may be aroused by the comics. The guide is also equipped with a discussion forum, Beasley said, to enable readers to engage in conversations about the material.

The guide includes biographies of key characters, as well as maps of the region and descriptions of Bronze Age paintings and pottery that inspired the comic’s style.

But the series and the guide are not meant to substitute for Homer’s works, Beasley noted.

“It doesn’t seek to replace any of the texts from which it draws,” Beasley said. “I certainly wouldn’t recommend reading it instead of reading the works of Homer.”

Audience members interviewed said they appreciated Beasley’s attempt to make the classics more easily accessible to a broader audience.

“It has a wide range,” said Lindsay King, a librarian at the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library. “You could use it just for fun or you could use it for some really serious investigations.”

Caroline Caizzi, King’s colleague at the Haas Arts Library, said that while many would typically associate the Classics Department with a traditional teaching style, she appreciated the unconventionality and visual nature of comics as a medium for education.

Beasley’s talk is a part of the Teaching with Technology lecture series held in the International Room of Sterling Memorial Library every Tuesday.

• via: Newly digitized comics teach Trojan War (Yale Daily News)

We used to mention the Age of Bronze series semi-regularly as new installments came out. Our last mention, I think, may have been an interview with the creator of the series, Eric Shanower. The official homepage of the comic will give you a taste of the work …

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