This seems to be more covert hype for a(n interesting) book than ‘news’ per se (maybe not), but … from a Carlos III University of Madrid press release:

This line of research, coordinated by Luz Neira, who is a professor in the Department of Humanities: History, Geography and Art, as well as a researcher in UC3M’s Institute for Culture and Technology (Instituto de Cultura y Tecnología), continues on the path established by previous studies that examined the images of women and certain legends in Roman mosaics. “We had previously shown the memory and conscious, self-interested reuse of myths, but this new volume also examines the possibility that there is a subliminal message regarding the elites’ fundamental concept of the civilization versus barbarism binomial,” explains the historian, who was in charge of the coordination and publication of ‘Civilización y barbarie: el mito como argumento en los mosaicos romanos’ (‘Civilization and Barbarism: Myths as plots in Roman Mosaics’) (CVG, 2012). A variety of specialists in Roman mosaics also collaborated on this book, which offers a new perspective in the approach to mythology and its reuse throughout history, which was a result of “a conscious and self-interested phenomenon of re-semantization.”

Specifically, there are premeditated and conscious recreations of certain mythological characters and episodes from different areas of the Empire, which were selected and even distorted in order to generate a spirit, deepen principles, or recall the foundations upon which their privileged position within the Roman state had been established, the researchers explain. “They re-used certain Greek myths as symbols that reinforced what Rome stood for,” states Luz Neira, “because they were of transcendental importance, due to the universal values they depicted, and they became champions of civilization”.

The scene of Achilles in Skyros, one of the most frequently depicted among the mosaics of the imperial epoch and which can be found, for example, in the villa of La Olmeda (Palencia), seems to be intended to highlight the archetype of the hero who is capable of giving his life for his country. The legends of divinities such as Dionysius and Aphrodite, the Labors of Hercules, the Journeys of Perseus and the battles between Amazons and centaurs are some of the other mythological episodes that originated in Greece that the Romans appropriated as their own and converted into models to be followed. “The memory of a legendary war and a mythological hero would become with the passing of time, and even up to the present day, the phenomenon with the greatest impact on people and individuals; this is what led us to analyze the myth as the story of the struggle between civilization and barbarism,” concludes the researcher.

Historiography in mosaics

Until now, the concept of the civilization in the Roman Empire had been analyzed using written sources and official images found in public spaces, in sculptures or relieves of certain monuments, such as arcs, steles or commemorative columns. However, very little in-depth research had been done on the representation of these concepts in private spaces, perhaps due to their domestic character, the researchers point out. “We were surprised by the absence of references of this type in the form of mosaics, where due to their unusual circumstances of conservation in situ the mosaic documentation offers an authentic repertoire of tile work, with geometric, plant and human figure decoration, connected to the private domestic contexts that pertained to the most privileged sectors of Roman society in any urban or rural location of the Empire,” comments Professor Neira.

In this respect, according to this historian, it seemed unthinkable, a priori, that members of the elite, who were involved in the government and matters of the Empire, would not have made use of the significant surface area of the mosaics that paved the living spaces of their domus and villae to commemorate their victories and their identification with Rome as a guarantor of civilization as opposed to “barbarism”. “They did it,” states Luz Neira, “by depicting re-used myths that evoked the values that, from an ideological point of view, Rome wished to represent.”

• via: The Romans used Greek myths in their mosaics as symbols of civilization (Carlos III University of Madrid)

An excerpt from a LiveScience piece:

[...] Ancient Alexandria was planned around a main east-west thoroughfare called Canopic Road, said Giulio Magli, an archaeoastronomer at the Politecnico of Milan. A study of the ancient route reveals it is not laid out according to topography; for example, it doesn’t run quite parallel to the coastline. But on the birthday of Alexander the Great, the rising sun of the fourth century rose “in almost perfect alignment with the road,” Magli said.

The results, he added, could help researchers in the hunt for the elusive tomb of Alexander. Ancient texts hold that the king’s body was placed in a gold casket in a gold sarcophagus, later replaced with glass. The tomb, located somewhere in Alexandria, has been lost for nearly 2,000 years. [8 Grisly Archaeological Discoveries]

Building by the stars

Magli and his colleague Luisa Ferro used computer software to simulate the sun’s position in the fourth century B.C. (Because Earth’s orbit isn’t perfect, there is some variation in the sun’s path through the sky over centuries.) Alexander the Great was born on July 20, 356 B.C. by the Julian calendar, which is slightly different than the modern, Gregorian calendar, because it does not have leap years to account for partial days in the Earth’s orbit around the sun. On that day in the fourth century B.C., the researchers found, the sun rose at a spot less than half a degree off of the road’s route.

“With a slight displacement of the day, the phenomenon is still enjoyable in our times,” Magli told LiveScience.

A second star would have added to the effect, Magli said. The “King’s Star” Regulus, which is found on the head of the lion in the constellation Leo, also rose in near-perfect alignment with Canopic Road and became visible after a period of conjunction with the sun near July 20. Earth’s orbit has changed enough that this Regulus phenomenon no longer happens, Magli said. [...]

• via: Ancient Egypt City Aligned With Sun on King’s Birthday (Live Science)

… I wonder how they account for the half-degree-out-of-alignment; must look into this further …

UPDATE (a few minutes later): this appears to be the original paper the article is based on (pdf) … that link doesn’t appear to want to work, though, so cut and paste this into your address bar: arxiv.org/pdf/1103.0939

I first heard of this Free Rice site a year ago when some of my Grade Sevens were playing with it … essentially it’s an online quiz and for every question you get right, they’ll send the equivalent of ten grains of rice to a place/person in need. Well, now they have a Latin-based game and by the looks of it, it would be a great place for students to practice their Latin while providing some service, as it were, to a good cause. Heck, imagine if every Latin class around did this at least once a week … or if Latin teachers had students regularly go here for ‘free time’. Maybe on World Food Day or other appropriate days, Latin teachers could get together and have a Latinathon or something … just sayin’ …

Israel accuses French diplomat of ‘helping Palestinians rewrite history’

JTA

Israel’s foreign ministry has accused France’s consul general in Jerusalem of “denying Jewish connection to the Land of Israel.”

The statement by Yigal Palmor, a spokesperson for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, came in response to remarks made last month by Consul General Frederic Desagneaux in a speech on archeology. He spoke of “the important archaeological projects that French archaeologists had helped to uncover in Palestine,” including the Qumran Caves.

Desagneaux also praised French archaeologists for “helping to discover Palestine.” An approved copy of his speech mentions, in this context, the Qumran Caves, where archaeologists discovered the collection of biblical texts knows as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The text does not contain the word “Jewish” and Israel appears in it once, in a sentence about the “Israelo-Palestinian conflict.”

[...]

The fundamental problem is that “rabbinics” implies both a body of literature and a distinctive methodology or approach to that literature. In some quarters in Israel this perhaps accurately describes, for good or bad, how rabbinic literature is studied (e.g., philologically in a “department” of Talmud). In the American academy, however, “rabbinics” is not a discipline. Those of us who primarily use rabbinic literature are situated in departments of religious studies (most frequently), language and culture, and history. We are scholars trained in a particular discipline who use rabbinic texts for our data. I do not “do rabbinics.” I “do” Jewish history in antiquity, using rabbinic texts as one (even if it is the primary) set of sources.

Quite a lot of people said they were coming back to Latin after 30 years or so. … I had a fun discussion with Natalie Haynes about classics, blogging and …

From Mary Beard’s TLS blog: http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2012/10/classics-at-cheltenham-and-chedworth-roman-villa.html

Every now and then something happens in Grand Forks, North Dakota. This is generally a shock to both local residents and the larger world. So when Marilyn Hagerty’s review of the Olive Garden went viral last year and led to appearances on TV, collaborations with Anthony Bourdain, and national renown, it caught the community off guard. It got even more exciting and intentional when she won the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media this fall. This is a big deal.

It was really fun to meet and chat with Marilyn Hagerty last week about Latin at UND. Latin is one of her causes that she returns to regularly in her various columns (and North Dakota has a very strong tradition for teaching Latin in high school and several strong programs). You can read the resulting column here and be sure to notice the shout-out to the 2012 Cyprus Research Fund lecture. 

One thing that I tried to explain to her was the way that studying ancient languages introduced a sense of cultural quiet to our hectic worlds. Most readers get that studying languages can re-wire our brains, improve critical thinking skills, hone our memory, introduce the basic terms and rules of grammar, grow our vocabularies, and challenge us with a massive new body of cultural, literary, and social expression.

What I tried to explain is that the act of reading a Classical language – as much as they can instill panic when introduced in a classroom setting (and there’s no kind of panic like a Book Two of Thucydides panic) – requires a kind of concentration and quiet that our culturally chaotic world refuses to sanction.

This is the first year since I’ve been at UND in which I’m not doing anything with any ancient languages; even my Latin Friday Morning has fallen dormant. While I miss the camaraderie of toiling through a text with students, more than anything, I miss the quiet that preparing that class would bring. Sitting with a Latin or Greek text blocked out the other noise of the world and forced me to focus on one thing: that text, those sentences, those words. And, even acknowledging that our ways of reading are deeply embedded in our own cultural expectations, connecting with the ancient world through words forced me (quite violently at times) to confront how language works and worked in a way that nothing else has. More than that, however, it allowed me to participate in a ritual of reading that dated back thousands of years and eclipsed for just a moment my otherwise rapid fire, media infused, blogocentric, no huddle, world. (Something that Marilyn Hagerty would certainly appreciate.)

So, if you are reading this blog and having taken Latin or Greek, go and sign up for a Latin or Greek class today.

A few days ago, I posted the first half of a paper I was writing about inflation and archaeology wages in the UK. This is the second half to that work in progress:

Some decades have been kinder to an archaeologists purchasing power than others. Those archaeologists that started in the 1990s and early 2000s have made significant gains in pay. While those who have started archaeology in more recent years have seen inflation, severely in some cases, hurt their purchasing power. This of course assumes that someone does not move up the ladder of job opportunities for higher pay. These numbers are also based on either the use of an average UK family or a general set of goods that one may or may not buy. It would probably be safe to say that most field archaeologists do not live like or use the same amount of goods and services as the average British family. Here is a different look at inflation based on only a few select goods and services:

Figure 1: Look at RPI inflation for a selection of goods.

Figure 2: Look at CPI inflation for a selection of goods.

When looking at these individual goods and services and comparing them against wages we see a very different picture:

Table 3: Wages against inflation for individual goods and services for excavators for those that started in 1994 and 2005. Negative numbers indicate how much less of that good or service excavator wages buy. Positive numbers indicate how much more of that good or service excavator wages buy.

Again, we see the trend that those who started out in the 1990s doing better than recent entrants into excavator positions. More importantly it shows the great variability between different goods and services. Overall, wages have been good compared to clothing and footwear but poor against food and alcohol. This raises the question, what do field archaeologists spend their wages on? The current inflation figures are based on the average British family but that is probably not reflective of the spending habits of archaeologists. If would also be safe to say that spending habits will differ from position to position. It would be highly unlikely that a digger would be concern with payments on a house, but a project manager who must spend most of their time at the home office, or home if that is their office, would be concerned with a permanent place to stay. These are generalizations but they do highlight the fact that there is bound to be difference between positions and even within those positions if those generalizations do not hold true for everyone.

Instead of trying to create a specific index of inflation for archaeologists based on some sort of weighting of goods and services used by various different archaeologists, several tools were created to allow anyone create a custom index based on their individual circumstances. The primary tool is a custom spreadsheet that allows the user to create custom inflation calculations for their circumstances. It also allows the comparison between the average wages of archaeologists and these custom inflation rates. The full spreadsheet, and instructions on how to use it can be downloaded from http://jobsinbritisharchaeology.weebly.com/.

I’ve been wanting to post some thoughts that came up in my class on the Bible last week. We were discussing the Book of Ruth, which itself challenged Israelite laws and prejudices aimed at Moabites (that itself is a message that some Christians seem not to have grasped). In the process of discussing Ruth, the law pertaining to gleaning obviously came up, and so we took a look at the law in Leviticus requiring landowners to leave the edges of their fields ungleaned so that the poor could come and help themselves. Here’s what Leviticus 19:9-10 says:

When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.

This, it soon became evident, is a particularly clear example from the Bible of the sort of thing the wealthy in America are prone to denounce as “redistribution.”

If it is your land, and your crops, then who has the right to tell you to leave the edges for someone else? It is your property, and if it goes to serve the needs of others, that can only legally and legitimately be as a free act of charity on your part as owner. Right?

Not according to the Bible. The land, Biblical authors regularly assume and sometimes state, is regarded as God’s, not anyone else’s. And so you are immediately demoted from landowner to tenant. And as such, it is not your decision what to do with crops grown on God’s land. That’s fairly consistently the view that the Biblical authors adopt.

These were not suggestions. They were laws, intended to govern the nation. Whether their national life was overseen by kings, prophets, priests, judges, or local elders in a given period, there was an understanding that this was legislation, and that the community was responsible for observing it, and for enforcing it.

My point is not that we should start observing the laws of ancient Israel. But since there are those who insist that the Bible’s teaching is entirely about personal charity freely given, and never about social regulations and legislation aimed at providing systemic measures to address poverty, ones that infringed on what modern Americans consider their inalienable and inviolable right to personal property, I thought it worth taking a closer look at this particular law. Can anyone really claim that it doesn’t enact concern for the poor at the expense of notions of personal property that modern capitalists take for granted – but ancient Israelites apparently did not?

Lest anyone dismiss this as “merely the Old Testament,” it is to be noted that we see a similar concern for matters of social justice in early Christianity, in their practice of selling of property to help those in need.

On a somewhat related note, my pastor is currently in South Africa, and will be learning about the role of the church in the Apartheid and post-Apartheid eras, and he will be blogging about his experiences there.

Middle East Environment news for the Middle East.

The Archaeological Museum of Rabat was first built in 1932 and is badly in need of a renovation, so Archi5 submitted plans for a new solar-powered facility that would rise in harmony with its surrounding.

Comprised of a series of boxy ribbons filled in with glazing, the conceptual museum is a fluid space that provides “visual environmental comfort,” according to the design brief, as well as a protective shell for the museum’s numerous archaeological and earth science treasures.
See on www.greenprophet.com

See on Scoop.it – Archaeology News

Troy, the fabled city of the Bronze Age, sacked by the Greeks through trickery and a wooden horse, will be excavated anew beginning in 2013 by a cross-disciplinary team of archaeologists and other scientists, it was announced recently.

International project

The new expedition will be led by University of Wisconsin-Madison classics Professor William Aylward, an archaeologist with long experience of excavating the ruins of classical antiquity, including what is currently accepted as the site of Troy itself.

In ancient Greek it was called Ἴλιον, Ilion, or Ἴλιος, Ilios; and Τροία, Troia; Latin: Trōia and Īlium; Hittite: Wilusa or Truwisa  and still grips the imagination over 3200 years after the events described in Homer’s epic poem the Iliad. Troy VII has been identified as the Hittite Wilusa, which gives the probable origin of the Greek version Ilion and is generally (but not conclusively) accepted to be the Homeric Troy.

The new international project at Troy, to be conducted under the auspices of and in cooperation with Turkey’s Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, will begin a series of summer-time expeditions beginning in 2013.

“Troy is a touchstone of Western civilization,” says Aylward. “Although the site has been excavated in the past, there is much yet to be discovered. Our plan is to extend work to unexplored areas of the site and to systematically employ new technologies to extract even more information about the people who lived here thousands of years ago.”

4,500 years of occupation

Troy and the Trojan War were immortalized in Homer’s epic poem the Iliad centuries after the supposed events of the conflict. The site was occupied almost continuously for about 4,500 years, from the beginning of the Bronze Age to the 13th century A.D., when it was abandoned and consigned to myth. It was ‘rediscovered’ in the 1870s by the wealthy German businessman and pioneering archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann whose work at Troy laid the foundations for modern archaeology.

“Our goal is to add a new layer of information to what we already know about Troy,” says Aylward, who is contributing an international team of archaeologists and scientists to conduct what promises to be the most comprehensive dig since Troy’s discovery over 140 years ago. “The archaeological record is rich. If we take a closer look with new scientific tools for study of ancient biological and cultural environments, there is much to be found for telling the story of this world heritage site.”

A flashpoint for conflict

The site of what is known as Troy is in modern Turkey and is situated on the Dardanelles near the village of Hisarlik, a crossroads between East and West and a flashpoint for conflict in both ancient and modern times. The archaeological site is a complex layer cake of history and prehistory, with 10 cities superimposed one atop the other, some with clear evidence for violent destruction.

Following the demise of Troy at the end of the Bronze Age, the site was re-settled by Greeks, Romans and others, who all claimed Homer’s Troy and its cast of characters — Achilles, Helen, Patroclus, Priam and Ajax — as their own cultural heritage. The ancient city was visited by the Persian general Xerxes, Alexander the Great, and Roman emperors, including Augustus and Hadrian. Homer’s epic poems about a lost age of heroes and the legendary Trojan War have endured as sources of inspiration for art and literature ever since.

Although archaeologists have been digging at Troy for almost 140 years, with the exception of a 50-year hiatus between 1938 and 1988, less than one-fifth of the site has been scientifically excavated. With about 4,500 years of nearly uninterrupted settlement at a crossroads between Europe and Asia, Troy is fundamental for questions about the development of civilization in Europe and the Near East. “Troy deserves a world-class archaeological programme,” says Aylward.

Much of Troy unexplored

In its heyday, Troy’s citadel, with walls 12 feet thick and more than 30 feet high, was about 6 acres in size. A walled lower town covered an expanse of 50 acres, much of which is unexplored. Mysteries abound. Ancient Troy’s royal cemetery, for example, has yet to be discovered and archaeologists are eager to add to the single example of prehistoric writing known from Troy, a small bronze seal from the Bronze Age.

“Major gaps in our knowledge involve the identity of the prehistoric Trojans, the location of their principal cemeteries and the nature of their writing system,” says Aylward. “The enduring question of the historicity of the Trojan War is also worthy of further exploration.”

Deploying powerful new scientific techniques

In future work at Troy, Aylward plans an array of collaborations in order to deploy powerful new scientific techniques to reveal the hidden record of the ancient city and its inhabitants. New methods to examine chemical residues on pottery from ancient kitchens and banquet halls, for example, may reveal secrets of ancient Trojan culinary proclivities, and genomic analyses of human and animal remains may shed light on diseases and afflictions at a crossroads of civilization.

Much of the new work in the area of “molecular archaeology,” which includes DNA sequencing and protein analysis, will be conducted in collaboration with the UW-Madison Biotechnology Center, which has become an active partner in the new Troy project. This past summer, researchers from the centre participated in reconnaissance for future studies.

Fact File – The Phases of Troy

Plan of Troy / HisarlikBy Bibi Saint-Pol [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsTroy I 3000–2600 BC (Western Anatolian EB 1) Troy II 2600–2250 BC (Western Anatolian EB 2) Troy III 2250–2100 BC (Western Anatolian EB 3 [early]) Troy IV 2100–1950 BC (Western Anatolian EB 3 [middle]) Troy V: 20th–18th centuries BC (Western Anatolian EB 3 [late]) Troy VI: 17th–15th centuries BC Troy VIh: late Bronze Age, 14th century BC Troy VIIa: ca. 1300–1190 BC, most likely setting for Homer’s story[26] Troy VIIb1: 12th century BC Troy VIIb2: 11th century BC Troy VIIb3: until ca. 950 BC Troy VIII: around 700 BC Troy IX: Hellenistic Ilium, 1st century BC

Source: UW-Madison

More Information

• The Troy Project
• Project Troia
• Historicity of the Iliad
• Troy – UNSESCO WHS

For Archaeology News – Archaeology Research – Archaeology Press Releases

The hagiographical Life of the East Syriac Catholicos Mar Aba continues thus:

33. After the Mobed spoke thus to the Lordly one, the latter instructed him extensively from the Holy Scriptures on the true faith, the permanence of Christianity, the greatness of the economy of God, about the resurrection and the judgement, about the blessings which are prepared for the righteous in heaven, and the punishments which are prepared for the wicked in eternal hell with Satan and the devils.

When the Mobed heard this, he was seized with amazement and fear; he clapped his hands together at the great manysidedness and invincibility of these thoughts, and he stood up and recognised and praised God.  Then the Lordly one said, “Go and tell them: I am the servant of God and I do not transgress the command of my Lord, who says, ‘Go into all nations and baptise them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.’  I shall not go to eternal Hell with Satan and the devils; I am not afraid of the long agony of passing time, and I do not confuse the true life and eternal blessings with the corruptible (blessings) of this impermanent world.” When the Mobed went and said this to the Magians, they marvelled at the courage of the Lordly one and said, “You see that he does not obey us and does not give way so that we might release him from his fetters.  Now he can only blame himself.”  After a few days, when he was exhausted from his heavy fetters and the effort of (walking) the difficult paths, and had come to a stop in order to rest from the rigours, the Magians brought two pairs of thick, new fetters, took the old ones away, and left him bound with them hand and foot, so that he could no longer get up because of their weight.  He received these joyfully and confessed and praised God.

The Department of Philology (Division of Classics), University of Crete, is pleased to announce the organization and hosting of the 7^th Rethymnon International Conference on the Ancient Novel to be held on May 27-28, 2013. The topic of RICAN 7 is: ‘Slaves and Masters in the Ancient Novel.’

For further information please contact:

Michael Paschalis, michael.paschalis@gmail.com
Stelios Panayotakis, panayotakis@phl.uoc.gr

Southeast Asian Archaeology mentioned.

Restoration work on a pair of Cham Towers were recently completed in Vietnam’s Ninh Thuan Province.

Porome Tower in Ninh Thuan Province, Viet Nam News 20121012

Restoration work highlights value of unique Cham towers
Viet Nam News, 12 October 2012

Two ancient Cham towers in southern Ninh Thuan Province have been restored at a total cost of more than VND27 million (US$1.3 million) from the State budget.The Poklong Garai Tower, built by the Champa kingdom between the last half of the 13th century and early 14th century, is considered as a symbol of Phan Rang City. It’s an important relic and tourist attraction and also features three smaller towers, including the Cong, Lua and Chinh towers which range from 8.5 metres to 21.5 metres in height.

Chinh Tower was where Cham King Poklong Garai was worshipped. The restoration work on this site included building a new floor and stairs leading up the towers, along with installation of lighting and water supply systems and contraction of a reception house.

Full story here.

Southeast Asian Archaeology mentioned.

Haaretz’s article on the Third Temple and Jewish visits to the Temple Mount is probably the most thorough and helpful report I’ve read on the subject.

They are proposing what they consider to be the key to solving all of our problems: building a Third Temple. In the meantime, they are trying to get permission to pray on the Temple Mount, where Jewish religious ritual has been prohibited since East Jerusalem was taken by Israeli forces in the 1967 war.

Shortly after the war, the government decided not to allow Jews to pray on the Temple Mount ‏(which is known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, the Noble Sanctuary, and is the site of two major Muslim holy places, Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock‏). Jews could pray below the Mount, at the Western Wall, Israeli authorities decreed.

In terms of religious ritual, the Temple Mount remains a Muslim preserve. According to a survey conducted by the joint directorate of the Temple movements, only 17 percent of Israeli Jews, religious and secular alike, want to see a Third Temple built. However, the numbers shoot up in regard to the possibility of praying on the Temple Mount, with 43 percent of the secular public and 92 percent of the religious public in favor, which averages out to 52 percent of the entire Jewish public.

The police, though, are convinced that allowing Jewish religious ritual to be performed on the Temple Mount will stir unrest among Muslims on a scale that is hard to gauge. Accordingly, the police make every effort to enforce the long-standing government decision, even though this involves repeated skirmishes with the Temple movements. Some of their activists, Yehuda Glick among them, are barred from even approaching the entrance to the Temple Mount.

The full, lengthy article describes a meeting with leaders interested in rebuilding the temple, a visit to the Temple Mount on a bride’s wedding day, the modern Bezalel, preparations for rebuilding the sacrificial altar, and a plot to blow up Al-Aqsa Mosque.

HT: Bill Soper

Replica of the temple overlooking the Temple Mount
(Photo from the Pictorial Library of Bible Lands)