Archaeological Museum, Bruges

Archaeological Museum, Bruges

Archaeological museums are almost never about archaeology. They usually show excavated objects, adding dolls, models, and maps to explain how these objects were once used. This is not without risks, because this type of museum contributes to a false sense of certainty. People believe that a cup was made in the second half of the eighth century BCE, because that’s what they’ve read on the explanatory sign. It is not always understood that behind this date lies a pottery chronology that is built on conjectures. Unfortunately, even professional historians and classicists are quite capable of accepting as certainties what are in fact archaeological interpretations.

The Archaeological Museum of Bruges may be small, but the people at least realize that they must make people understand how archaeologists actually work. So, you can learn how archaeologists establish the date of an object, or how they know where they have to look. At the same time, the museum offers a lot of information about daily life in medieval Bruges.

Although the museum is small, and only a few questions are answered, I believe it shows us a way forward. If I may quote the concluding remarks of my next book, De rand van het Rijk. De Romeinen en de Lage Landen (“At the edge of the Empire. The Romans and the Low Countries”):

Museums ought to devote more attention to the choices archaeologists make. They must also explain why some historical explanations are better than others. We now have an opportunity to improve the visitor’s understanding of archaeological interpretation, because archaeological remains are increasingly often embedded into large building projects and the objects are increasingly often displayed near the place where they have been found. Since the objects can now be found anywhere, museums can focus on explaining how archaeologists arrive on their interpretations.

So, if you happen to visit Bruges, take some time for the archaeological museum. It’s opposite the Church of Our Lady, so you don’t have to make a detour. Even better, for a moment you can escape from the maddening crowds of tourists.

Lion and Bull

Bull and lion on a relief from Persepolis.

I usually hesitate to read books about art. Art historians always seem to directly start with the interpretation of the paintings or sculptures. Somehow, they often appear to ignore that beautiful things can also be made to be precisely that: beautiful things. Art is meant primarily to be enjoyed, not studied.

Take the fight of the bull and the lion that is shown so very often in Achaemenid art. I once read that it represented the eternal cosmic struggle between the forces of good and evil; I also read that they represent two constellations, Taurus and Leo; and I also read that these two theories are not mutually exclusive. But the truth is that we don’t know what it symbolizes.

Actually, we do not even know what it represents. I once believed that the struggle was equal, until I showed one of these reliefs to a man who worked at a zoo. He told me that the lion had already lost the fight, because this animal kills its prey by attacking its victim’s head. Obviously, that’s not what we see: the lion has leaped and has landed on the wrong place – the bull will escape.

Coin of Mazaeus

I recently told this to someone who had lived in Tanzania. She said that she had once witnessed this very type of fight, and added that the lion always leaps to the lower part of an animal’s back. He will remain hanging over there, until his prey is tired. It is only then that the lion kills its victim. This may be shown on the coin of Mazaeus to the left.

So, next time I have to explain this relief, I will do what I always do: explain why we don’t know.

Meanwhile, I learned one thing else. The astronomical explanation is almost certainly incorrect. The next example of an animal representing a celestial sign is the horoscope at Nemrud Daği, which is four centuries younger. Under the Roman Empire, this type of picture rapidly spread, which is why we’re accustomed to it, but it simply had not yet been invented when Persepolis was built.

Danube

An der schönen grauen Donau

Together with the Rhine, the Danube was the northern boundary of the Roman Empire. Springing from two wells in the Black Forest and emptying itself into the Black Sea, it has a length of 2860 kilometers and is the largest river in Europe. All in all, ten legions guarded the border. As Procopius was to declare in the sixth century:

The Emperors of former times, by way of preventing the crossing of the Danube by the barbarians who live on the other side, occupied the entire bank of this river with strongholds, and not the right bank of the stream alone, for in some parts of it they built towns and fortresses on its other bank.

[Buildings, 4.5.2]

I have written a small piece on it, which will be expanded when I have some time. You can find it here and that lovely piece of kitsch you’re now all thinking about can be heard here.

Why?

Göbekli Tepe

If no one is interested in your excavation, you can always give your site a different name, like Palmyra, which immediately generates a lot of publicity. Alternatively, you offer an exaggerated interpretation of the finds: you’ve not found a cave with splendid mosaics, but the Lupercal; you’ve not found a tenth-century BCE Hebrew ostracon, but a Biblical text; you’ve not found a villa, but the villa of Vespasian. Or you just recycle some old news, because journalists never check their stories.

That seems to have happened in this article, based on an article published in a Turkish newspaper on either 10 or 17 March. From it, we learn that near Harran, the world’s oldest temple has been discovered. Although the name of the site is not mentioned, it’s clearly about Göbekli Tepe, a very famous site. It’s like claiming you’ve found the Acropolis or the Forum Romanum.

Who is responsible for this piece of archaeological non-news? Of course, Hanlon’s Razor applies and we should not attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere carelessness. Yet, given the fact that archaeologists are well-known for their exaggerations, I am not so sure, and I would not be surprised if someone is misleading us.

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea near Ramsar

As a boy, I was already dreaming of visiting the Caspian Sea. The Mediterranean Sea was far away, the Black Sea sounded even more exotic, but the Caspian Sea – that was at the edges of the earth. Two weeks ago, I finally visited Mazandaran and saw what I had been longing to see for such a long time. The country between the sea and the Elburz Mountains offers a spectacular landscape, but not the almost tropical climate I expected. Yet, there were forests (our word jungle is a loan word from this area) and there were several splendid medieval tombs at a/o Lahijan and Sari.

Because I had no camera with me, I took a photo of the sea with my telephone. I also used the small toy to call a friend in Holland, who could hear the surf, and in return told me the results of the past elections and the soccer matches. In the evening, we had White Fish for dinner. There’s more here.

He shoulda watched where he stepped….

McClellan

What’s a poor writer to do? someone, some day, for some reason, will annotate you: and naturally, being long dead, you won’t be up to defending yourself. And so it is with the writer of a biographical sketch of the 19c American general George McClellan, famous for being so cautious not to lose battles that he would have lost the war had he not quickly been replaced by President Lincoln: our anonymous writer had the misfortune to use what was at the time a fairly conventional phrase — but one that in our own age, less attuned to the classics, got him a dose of annotation right between the eyes. I prolly wouldn’t mention any of this if (a) it weren’t a somewhat out-of-the-way place for this item; and (b) if it weren’t considerably better than the corresponding Wikipedia entry, yet very likely at the cost of half the expenditure of time. Jona, you’ve been there, and will doubtless have further, um, annotations on it all.

LacusCurtius offline briefly

A note to let those of you who use my site frequently know that it’s offline, probably for no more than about four or five days. A computer is being moved, whence a new IP number and the world’s Domain Name Tables have to find it again. (I can’t be reached by e-mail, either.)

Back up 1200 GMT Mar 19; everything back to normal, exactly as before. Turned out to be only two days, nice! (The physical computer had to be moved from one office at the University of Chicago to another.)

Persepolis and Priorities

Darius' palace used to be accessible

I just returned from Iran. In Tehran, I met a man who told me that he had recently visited Persepolis, and had been a bit disappointed. There were weeds everywhere, the site looked neglected, and there was no path to the rock tombs, he complained. I was surprised to hear this – and not because the third complaint was a bit unfair. (Persepolis is an archaeological site and the construction of a path, even on a rock, might damage what’s still in the ground.) Yet, before I left Holland, I had already read this news article, so the man’s complaint seemed corroborated. Wondering what to expect, I traveled south.

And indeed, the site appears to be a bit neglected. Many sites are fenced off: the palace of Darius, the palace of Xerxes, the Tripylon – all inaccessible. The small restaurant on the edge of the southern terrace (inaccessible since at least 2004) was closed, which is something of a disaster, considering the fact that Persepolis is a very large complex and even a superficial visit takes several hours. When I take a group around, we stay in a nearby hotel and return next day.

The bookshops and souvenir shops were also closed, but I can live with that, although I would have liked to buy a postcard or two. The site also looked a bit dirty, as if the cleaners were on strike. But as long as the site is not damaged, I can live with that too. It will no doubt be temporarily.

All this will of course be hailed with joy by those people who only like to read articles about sorrow & misery in the Islamic Republic. To be fair and balanced, I add that there are now finally fences at the rock tombs, that closing the palace of Darius is due to restoration works, and that the subsite at Istakhr has been made more accessible. As usual, it’s all about priorities.

Hieroduli

I know the rule on this blog is to provide a nice little image to illustrate the matter at hand, but the gentle reader will pardon me if I forgo it in this particular case: today’s item on Lacus is another Smith’s Dictionary article: Hieroduli. It’s about temple slaves, some of it involving prostitution; if so inclined of course, you may supply your own illustration. It’s not as prudish an article as one often reads for the mid-19c, but there’s really no need to be as prurient as our age seems to enjoy, so a happy balance is struck. The value of the article, again, lies in its collecting the classical loci.

Pigments

Today’s item on Lacus has been made completely obsolete by the constant advances of chemistry and the methods of chemical analysis; except of course for the citations of classical texts: the Smith’s Dictionary article Colores (Pigments). Not to worry, a great deal of our own modern endeavors will be obsolete soon; if you are young, by the end of your lifetime.

Curator laborum asinariorum

Now there’s no way I can compete with Jona for interesting posts discussing what things mean or the various opinions of scholars — but I’m taking “New at LacusCurtius” literally, and there’s a new item: someone has to do the donkey work —

For wel ye knowe, a lord in his houshold,
He nath nat every vessel al of gold;
Somme been of tree, and doon hir lord servyse.
God clepeth folk to hym in sondry wyse,
And everich hath of God a propre yifte,
Som this, som that, as hym liketh shifte.

The new item then: an entry in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, a collection of Roman administrative officials all called Curatores.

Historia Augusta – more than one author after all?

Bust of Aurelian or Diocletian; Archaeological Museum of Istanbul

Ouch. The press release over here is written in Dutch, or perhaps not even that, because it contains a terrible Germanism in the headline. That’s not a recommendation for an article on linguistics. The fact that the author of the press release dates Diocletian to 284 Before Christ does not inspire much confidence either.

Yet the article is actually interesting. It’s about a Ph.D. thesis, Style and structure of the Historia Augusta, by classicist Diederik Burgersdijk; he argues that there are substantial differences between the various parts of the Historia Augusta, which he connects to the use of different sources. We already knew that, but if the press release is correct, Burgersdijk also argues that there were various stages of composition as well. And that is, as I said, quite interesting.