The Eburones

Model of the Eburonian village at Hambach-Niederzier (Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn)

In 57 BCE, Julius Caesar conquered the valley of the Upper- and Middle- Meuse, which, he said, was inhabited by Belgian tribes. Among the members of the Belgic confederation were the Eburones. In his campaign notes, the Roman general mentions them together with three other tribes, adding that they were called Germanic (Gallic War, 2.4). This may indeed mean that they were of Germanic descent, but the four Eburonian names we know are perfectly  comprehensible in Celtic (Eburones is related to the word for yew; Aduatuca means “place of the soothsayer”; Ambiorix means “ruler-king”; and Catuvolcus means “hero”).

Caesar explains that the heartland of the Eburones was between the Meuse and Rhine (Gallic War, 5.24), which probably is more or less identical to the Belgian and Dutch provinces called Limburg, and the western part of Nordrhein-Westphalen. In any case, it was north of the Ardennes. South of these old mountains lived the Treverans, of whom the Eburones were a client-tribe, which was protected by the mightier tribe (Gallic War, 4.6).

Caesar tells his most important story about the Eburones in Gallic War 5.24-37. In the winter of 54/53 BCE, the Fourteenth Legion had its winter quarters on a place called Aduatuca or Atuatuca, when the Eburones attacked the Romans. Its commanders, Sabinus and Cotta, trusted the Eburonian king Ambiorix, who appeared to be trustworthy, even when he could not control his men. However, when the legionaries left their camp and started to march in the direction indicated by the Eburonian leader, they were unexpectedly attacked. After returning to Atuatuca, the Roman soldiers committed suicide.

This story is problematic. In the first place, we do not know where it happened. It is tempting to identify the Atuatuca of the Eburones with the later Roman city with the same name, modern Tongeren. However, there are no Roman finds that confirm the presence of the legion: it seems that the Roman city of Atuatuca was built on virgin soil. The objection that “absence of evidence is no evidence of absence” does not apply, because Tongeren has been investigated on many places.

The second problem is that the Eburones were a very small tribe. Caesar mentions them as being able to raise 40,000 soldiers together with three other tribes. Even if we assume that the Eburones were the largest of these four, it is impossible that they could raise sufficient warriors to annihilate a well-trained, heavily-armed legion.

Perhaps we will have more certainty about the campaign once Atuatuca has been identified. It must have been close to modern Tongeren, because the name was transferred from the camp of the Fourteenth to the later city. Two treasures from the mid-first century, found at Heers (2000) and Maastricht-Amby (2008), also suggest military activity in the neighborhood. A possible location is Caestert, where a Late Iron Age-hillfort has been identified; its excavator, Heli Roosens, has mentioned mass cremations, but has never published them, and it is not known where he has found it.

Caesar’s revenge was terrible. In the Spring of 53, he invited everyone who wanted to join him, to help massacre the Eburones. Ambiorix managed to escape (Livy, Periochae, 107) and his fellow-leader Catuvolcus committed suicide. Nothing more was heard of the Eburones. About three hundred days after they had defeated a Roman legion, they no longer existed as a political entity. Later, a tribe called the Tungri was living in the area.

However, it remains to be seen whether the Eburones were all wiped out, as Caesar claims. The ancient armies could hardly exterminate complete nations. On the other hand, from pollen findings in the area of Jülich (north of Aix-la-Chapelle), it appears that the number of pastures and cornfields fell from the mid-first century BCE and that forests were again growing there. On this land at least, there were no farmers any more. However, it is not clear if this is representative of the whole country of the Eburones, so this remains an open question.

Literature

• Toorians, L., “Aduatuca, ‘place of the prophet’. The names of the Eburones as representatives of a Celtic language, with an excursus on Tungri”, in: Creemers, G. (ed.), Archaeological contributions to materials and immateriality, Atvatvca 4 (2013) 108-121.

Why Pearse’s Mithras Pages Are Important

Mithras relief from Dormagen

When, in 2040, the departments of humanities will be closed, an elderly historian will perhaps wonder what caused the demise of scholarship. Probably, he will answer that the humanities no longer wanted to live. Somewhere between 1995 and 2005, the will to survive vanished. The ancient, venerable scholarly disciplines no longer wanted to add something meaningful to the shared heritage of mankind.

The turning point, our historian will find out, had been the invention of the internet. Until then, scholars and scientists had communicated their results to the larger audience in a way that can be described as transmitter and receiver: researchers sent out information – books, journals, TV – and the people listened. But at the turn of the millennium, communication became more interactive. People could talk back and could shape the nature of the discourse. Our historian will gladly quote from Time Magazine, which had chosen “you” as the person of the year 2006. The transmitter-receiver metaphor no longer applied; the best metaphor to describe the way in which scientists and scholars explained themselves to the people, became the dialog.

A fine example, our historian will conclude, is Wikipedia, which was a kind of meeting place of good and bad information. Our historian will concede that the designers of the encyclopedia had realized the importance of debate from the very beginning: if someone had a question about someone else’s contribution, they could discuss these issues. It was good that in these debates, people immediately started to refer to their sources, and our historian will recognize that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, everybody recognized the importance of at least looking scientific or scholarly. Compared to the beginning of the twentieth century, that was a leap forward. The greatest achievement of western civilization in the twentieth century was that one-third of the population had had access to higher education.

Unfortunately, our historian will notice, this was not a guarantee of quality. He will discover that the online debates were easily hijacked by activists, because in the debate between good and bad information, between good and poor scholarship, bad information drove out good. Our historian will find it incredible, but he will establish that reliable information was, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, deliberately kept away from the larger public by pay walls. In the fight against activists, bona fide scholars and scientists fought with their arms tied, and by 2005, the damage was done.

This being the nature of the game, one would have expected that philologists, historians, archaeologists, theologians, philosophers, and other scholars would have fought back, but our future historian will discover that this rarely happened. If something was done at all, it was just presenting the facts, which were often correct indeed, but they were offered without any further explanation.

Still, there were professional researchers who investigated how to explain science and scholarship to the people successfully. They recommended scientists and scholars to explain methods and theories, but few scholars bothered to take care. Where was the book, our historian will be wondering, that explained the Lachmann method or the hermeneutic cycle to the larger audience?

Slowly, he will start to understand why so many people could, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, claim to be scholars, and were never contradicted: the scholars never explained how they achieved their results, giving the impression that scholarship was not a real, professional discipline, but a kind of amateurish hobby to which anyone might contribute. Precisely when information was transferred less by transmitter-receiver and more as a dialog, and when a highly educated audience demanded more information than just facts, the scholars retreated from the debate, not explaining what mattered most.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, our historian will think, three things ought to have been the top priorities if the humanities were to survive:

1. online encyclopedias, written by professional scholars – and of course for free, because the people had already paid taxes and the information was already theirs;
2. a sound explanation of methods and theories;
3. an active policy to refute errors and mistakes.

Our future historian will notice that scholars refused to live up to the expectations. Of course, there were exceptions. There were some websites on which something was explained, but they were rare, they were created after the damage had been done, and they covered only the first of the three requirements. Too little, too late, too incomplete. There will be a wry smile at the historian’s face when he writes about the self-pity of the early twenty-first century scholars: they were never tired of complaining that nobody seemed to understand why the humanities mattered, but they rarely explained.

The historian will conclude that the humanities had committed suicide. Still, there had been people, inside and outside the universities, who had done their best. People who had refused to join the academic rat race, who had not been interested in the length of their publication list, who were really interested in the dialog with the larger audience.

***

One of these is Roger Pearse, the webmaster of Tertullian.org and a tireless fighter against quack history. In December, he has started a website on the Roman god Mithras. It offers a basic account of the Mithraic mysteries, it offers the sources, and most of all: it offers the arguments to refute theories that present Mithraism as an essentially Persian cult (it isn’t) and that it heavily influenced Christianity (it didn’t).

If we want to avoid that a historian, writing in 2040, will conclude that our generation is the one that killed scholarship, we desperately need more websites like these. But I am not optimistic. As long as our academics are more interested in the length of their publication list than in their duty to the larger audience, the humanities are doomed.

Lebanon, again

Beirut (in the distance) seen from Byblos

For the second time in less than a year, I had the privilege to visit Lebanon. Starting in Beirut, where we visited the splendid National Museum again, we embarked upon a very, very leisurely trip around. At the Nahr al-Kalb, we managed to reach the inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, which is covered by all kinds of vegetation, and will soon have disappeared.

Byblos, which I could not really appreciate during my earlier visit because I did not understand its stratigraphy, turned out to be a lot more accessible now that I knew what to expect. It was interesting to think where Wen Amun must have built his tent and where the king must have had his throne.

We proceeded to the Kadisha valley, which is the heartland of Maronite Christianity. Before entering it, we visited Amioun, Bziza, and Aïn Akrine, three sites with Roman temples. In Bsharre (the town of Kahlil Gibran), we climbed to a Phoenician tomb, and had lunch with a view of the snow-covered cedar trees.

Cedar tree

After this, we visited the Bekaa valley and Baalbek. Because we had started early and had slept in a hotel in the valley, we could arrive very early in the morning, and were almost the only people at the site, except for the guards. Returning to our hotel, we passed along Qsarnaba, Niha, and Nabi Ayla.

We also saw the Palestinian refugees who had been bombed away from Damascus – but this is not the place to write about those poor people, who most certainly did not deserve this.

Sidon

Next day, it was raining cats and dogs, but we were in Sidon, where we greatly enjoyed watching how the storm pushed the surf against the sea castle. Some of the waves must have been fifteen meters high and it was really spectacular. The same can be said of the lovely mosaics in the Beiteddin palace. The last place we visited in Beirut was the museum of the American University.

There was a bonus, though: our airplane was delayed and we were unable to catch the connecting flight in Istanbul. So, our trip lasted an additional day, and we saw a snow-covered Hagia Sophia and, in the archaeological museum, the royal sarcophagi from Sidon.

Beiteddin

I cannot wait to go back to the only place in the world where you can listen to “o come let us adore him” and at the same time hear a mu’ezzin’s call for prayer. My Facebook photos are here and here; and today I added photos of the temples of Aïn Akrine, the rock tombs of Amioun, the Phoenician tomb at Bsharre, the sanctuary at Bziza, and the temple at Qsarnaba. Some older stuff from Lebanon is here.

Bagacum (Bavay)

The Basilica

I visited Bavay in northern France several years ago, returning from Saulzoir, where Julius Caesar had once defeated the Nervii. The ruins of Bavay were something of a bonus after a day that had been very well-spent, and we were not in a particular hurry. So, we were too late to see the exhibition, but could take some photos of the forum and the basilica. They were impressive, which comes as no surprise, as Bagacum, as it was called, was some kind of showcase of Roman power.

Although I still hope to see the exhibition, some information is already available here.

Mikulov, Regional Museum

Tile with stamp of X Gemina from Mušov.

Mikulov is just north of the Austrian-Czech border. It is dominated by a beautiful castle on a mountain, in which you will find several museums, one of them dedicated to the archaeological evidence for the presence of Romans and Germans in southern Moravia. It is not a very large exhibition – in fact, it consists of only three rooms.

Still, it is worth a brief detour. Situated some seventy kilometer north of the Danube, this region never belonged to the Roman Empire, but it is undeniable that the people living here were dominated by their powerful southern neighbor. So, the numismatic display contains coins of almost every emperor, proving that trade between the Marcomanni and the Romans was very important.

Occasionally, the Germanic tribes living in Bohemia, the Marcomanni and the Quadi, attacked the Roman Empire. The emperor Marcus Aurelius was even forced to retaliate, and fought a long war in this area. The base of the Tenth Legion Gemina has been found near Mušov. There has been some debate about the question whether the Romans intended to create provinces north of the Danube, but the fact that locally made roof tiles have been found is, in my view, conclusive evidence that the Romans were not just having their winter quarters north of the river, but were building permanent barracks.

Mušov is also the place where a local Germanic chieftain was buried. In his tomb, a large treasure was found, which is now shown in the last room of the Mikulov museum. The objects themselves are not extremely special, but there are very many of them, proving that this man was really important.

I was glad to have visited the museum. Next to the castle is Mikulov’s central square, where we had lunch. After that, we went to the Oberleiserberg, a Celtic oppidum in northern Austria that was later reused by the Bavarians, and returned to Vienna. It had been a nice day.

Velsen

There’s no particular reason to put online this drawing by Graham Sumner, except for the best reason of all: that I like it. What you see is the Roman naval base at Velsen, just west of Amsterdam, which was in use during the reign of the emperor Tiberius. It is almost certainly identical to the fort named Flevum mentioned by Tacitus. You can read more about it here, or in Edge of Empire.

Viminacium

Explaining the gate of the legionary base

The ancient city of Viminacium is situated at the place where the river Mlava empties itself into the Danube. This means that here, three important roads came together: the road upstream along the Danube to Pannonia and the Adriatic Sea, the road downstream to Moesia and the Black Sea, and the road along the Mlava to Naissus and the Aegean Sea.

It comes as no surprise that in Roman times, a legion, VII Claudia, occupied the city, while subunits of IIII Flavia and V Macedonica must have been stationed here as well. It would seem that Trajan used this place as his headquarters for the invasion of Dacia.

Today, there’s a big quarry, which is slowly “eating” the ruins. As is customary, the organization that destroys an archaeological site, has to pay for the excavation, and this means that Viminacium is now being excavated at a truly grand scale. It measures 450 hectares. A necropolis has already been investigated: there were no less than 13,000 tombs.

If you visit the place today, you can see the remains of an amphitheater (currently excavated with some American help), the northern gate of the legionary base, a bathhouse, and a mausoleum. Now this was really something! The pretty large tomb was the final resting place of a young man, and an older woman has been buried close to him, in a separate tomb within the enclosure. It has been assumed that these were the tombs of one of the sons of Decius, Herennius, and of Herennia Etruscilla. If this identification is correct, it’s the first time that archaeologists have found the actual physical remains of a Roman emperor.

The so-called “Mona Lisa”

If you visit the place, a guide can show two underground tombs, both Christian, with very special paintings. You must not be claustrophobic, because the very low corridor is deep underground. Nevertheless, this visit is certainly recommended, if only because here you can see a beautiful portrait of a woman, called the Mona Lisa.

Viminacium is, from Belgrade, an easy drive to the east. It takes about an hour an a half. There are many road signs and you cannot possibly miss the place. The finds from the necropolis, and other finds as well, are now in the three room museum of nearby Požarevac. We found it closed, perhaps because it was lunch time, but when we stayed in the garden to admire the nice tombs, someone arrived and opened the door. (If there’s one thing I learned during my visit to Serbia, it’s how very kind the Serbians are.)

Generally speaking, I think Viminacium is going to be a very, very important site, comparable to Xanten, Carnuntum, or Aquincum. There’s already a hotel for visiting scholars and scientists, and I expect this to become a real meeting place for visitors from all countries. I am really looking forward to returning to Viminacium every now and then, every time seeing how new things have been excavated.

The official website is here, my webpage is there.

Sremska Mitrovica, Archaeological Museum

Harpocrates

Situated on the North bank of the Sava, not far from the Danube, Sirmium was one of the most important cities in the Roman Empire. The Second Legion Adiutrix stayed here for a while, Trajan used it when he attacked Dacia, it was the place where Marcus Aurelius presided the trial of Herodes Atticus. No less than ten emperors were born in or near Sirmium, which became an imperial residence in the fourth century.

Today, it is a provincial town in northwestern Serbia, not far from the Croatian border. There is a beautiful church in the center, dedicated to Saint Demetrius. Next to it is the small archaeological museum. In the neighborhood, there are two excavations – the one in the northwest may have been a bathhouse, the other is a building next to the ancient hippodrome, which is now covered by a park.

The ancient imperial basilica – is this the place where Theodosius was presented as Gratian‘s coruler? – is now in a special hall, which I was not able to visit because it closed earlier than I had expected: at four o’ clock in the afternoon. Nevertheless, there were large windows, which allowed you to see quite a lot.

The museum is nice. Upstairs, there are several rooms with archaeological finds from the ancient city. You will see many objects from daily life, some small sculpture, weapons, a couple of frescos, a few inscriptions, and a bit of pottery. I liked the roof tile, made in 582, containing a prayer: Christ was asked to help the city halt the Avars, to protect the Roman Empire and the maker of the tile.

There’s also a courtyard with inscriptions. I saw records of II Adiutrix, XIII Gemina, I Minervia, and VIII Augusta, several nice reliefs, a couple of beautiful tombs, a mosaic, and – most of all – a wooden boat that lay almost unprotected. I was surprised to see a dedication to Neptune, so far from the sea. It is of course not the most beautiful museum in the world, but the people are friendly, and it is certainly worth a visit.

My article on ancient Sirmium is here, with many photos from the museum.

Edge of Empire

Cover

So, here it finally is: the cover of Edge of Empire. Rome’s Frontier on the Lower Rhine. The book is about the Roman occupation of the Low Countries – say Belgium, Netherlands and northern Germany – and contains every relevant literary text, the more interesting inscriptions, and a lot of archaeological information. Basically, my coauthor Arjen Bosman and I use the archaeological data to illustrate that all sources are prejudiced about the people living on the edge of the earth; at the same time, we try to show that you cannot interpret archaeological finds without a profound understanding of textual analysis.

The book has a history of its own. I wrote it in 1999 and it was published in 2000. The reviews were extremely favorable and it was recommended to university students. However, there was a quarrel within the publishing house, and the woman whose project it had been, went away. My book was sort of forgotten and disappeared from the bookshops. Still, I continued to keep notes and improve the text.

The “Lord of Morken”, a Frankish warrior (drawing Johnny Shumate)

Two years ago, another publisher, Athenaeum, decided to reprint it. I asked my colleague Arjen Bosman, who is a professional archaeologist, to contribute, because he knows a lot about the ancient Frisians, a subject that needed more attention. The book was adapted, renamed, and republished with all kinds of illustrations. Again, good reviews and even an award.

And now, Karwansaray publishers makes it available in English. This is also the publisher of Ancient Warfare, which means that it will have the same superb illustrations by people like Johnny Shumate, José Antonio German, and Graham Sumner, and maps by Carlos Garcia.

Publication date is, probably, November 11; ISBN 9789490258054. And if you want to order a copy, you can do it here.

Baalbek, Tyre, Belgrade

Tyre, Al-Bass: Great Arch, probably dedicated to Hadrian.

Over the past months, I have traveled to Lebanon and along the Danube. I have put online quite a lot of stuff.

• Baalbek: some twenty pages, including an interesting inscription
• Tyre: forty-seven pages – history, sources, photos
• Belgrade (ancient Singidunum): one page about a not-so-interesting site
• The cedar
• Menander of Ephesus: a Phoenician historian, quoted by Flavius Josephus

That’s it for today.

 

“Die Welt der Kelten”, Stuttgart

Glass bracelet

When archaeologists talk about the Celts, they are usually referring to the Hallstatt and La Tène civilizations: the Iron Age cultures of the people living in Central Europe between, say, 850 and 50 BCE. Right now, there are two exhibitions in Stuttgart about the Celts, together called “Die Welt der Kelten”.

The first exhibition, “Kostbarkeiten der Kunst”, is in the Altes Schloβ. I liked it, even though I profoundly hate it when objects are left in the half-dark, just being beautiful in poorly-illuminated rooms. The quality of the information – important questions like “is this art?” were not ignored – offered sufficient compensation. Moreover, this exhibition is important. The idea is still alive that the Celts were making primitive imitations of classical art. The fact that Paul Jacobsthal’s Early Celtic Art, which was published in 1944, is still a standard work, proves that the subject is a bit ignored.

Princely tomb

The other exhibition, “Zentren der Macht” in the Kunstgebäude, was even better. It is about the history of the Celts, and while the first exhibition was a successful attempt to explain an unusual type of aesthetics, the second one is an extremely successful attempt to introduce you to the ancient people themselves. The two first rooms allow you to understand the problems (“what is a Celt?”, “how reliable are the sources”), and after that, there is the real story.

Dying Gau (Rome): a Celt from the migration age

You can see how social stratification came into being when Celtic leaders managed to control the trade in Mediterranean products. These people were very rich, as you can deduce from their splendid tombs. Agricultural innovations made them even wealthier. After 400, the Celts started to migrate: peasants and bands of warriors reached Italy, Greece, and Turkey.

The end of the exhibition illustrates its high quality. You learn that around 80/70, the great settlements came to an end, and after that, you get information about the campaigns of Julius Caesar (58-50) and Augustus (20-15). In this way, the traditional account, based on written sources, that the Roman conquests put an end to the Celtic states, is challenged. You learn that textual and archaeological evidence are asymmetric.

Yes, this is a good exhibition. And it is so nice to see al those objects together: the Coligny calendar, the Warberg warrior, the finds from Eberdingen-Hochdorf, a copy of the Vix crater. There are animations, models, and drawings; quotes from the ancient authors are written on the walls, and are clearly secondary to the archaeological evidence.

I would have loved to know more about the place of the Celts in nineteenth-century European culture. It was believed that they were, for their own good, subdued by the Romans, and this made them the ancient counterparts of the subjects in the European colonies. I am not convinced that this image is now completely dead.

Heuneberg

Another point of criticism is that photography is prohibited. Granted, there is a good catalog, but catalogs never show the objects from the angle from which you want to study the object. There ought to be some kind of rule against this prohibition, which is the museological equivalent of the paywalls that scientistific publishers use to keep information away from the people who are most interested.

There are two small additional exhibitions, one for school classes and one about the excavations at the Heuneberg (“das Schwäbische Troia”). You will need about five hours to see it all.

Thuin

The same excavation, two times

Last Tuesday, we visited Thuin, not far from Charleroi in Belgium. It is, at the moment, the place that is considered the most likely location of the Belgian defeat against the legions of Julius Caesar. Absolute certainty cannot be achieved, but it is not too far from the Sabis battlefield and Caesar’s description fits the situation quite well. The matter is dealt with in N. Roymans e.a. (eds), Late Iron Age gold hoards from the Low  Countries and the Caesarian conquest of Northern Gaul (2012), and you can read more here, here (with map), and here.

To be honest, Thuin is not worth a detour, and we only went there because we wanted at least one photo for the English translation of De rand van het Rijk, the book Arjen Bosman and I wrote about the Roman presence in the Low Country (scheduled to appear in October 2012, and probably called Edge of Empire).

The site is covered by a nice forest where it is nice to walk; it’s called the Bois du Grand Bon Dieu, and there’s a nice chapel. It is best approached from a country house called “l’Ermitage” in the southwest or from northeast; over here, you can still see the remains of an old excavation – see photo above.

Other photos here.

Caesar and the Aduatuci

Caesar (Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden)

Today, the Gallo-Roman museum in Tongeren (Belgium) announced the discovery of the site where Julius Caesar besieged and conquered the Aduatuci (in 57 BCE). The ancient hill fort was south of the town of Thuin, just west of Charleroi. This is the nicest archaeological news from the Low Countries in years.

In 58, Caesar had discovered that Gaul was essentially undefended. In the next year, het conquered the northern part of what is now called France and defeated, in modern Saulzoir, the Nervians, which he presents as terrible savages. After this, he invaded the area that is now called Belgium, where the Aduatuci were his first victims. You can read the story here, with photos of Huy on the Meuse, one of the locations which, until today, were believed to be the location of the oppidum of the Aduatuci. But it was, in reality, at Thuin, which suits Caesar’s description, and where sling bullets and several treasures have been found.

Press release by the Amsterdam Free University: here.

Meanwhile, in Syria

Shelled: Crac des Chevaliers

There’s a civil war in Syria. I always feel it is somehow inappropriate to talk about archaeology, classics, or heritage, when people are fighting to survive. Nevertheless, I think it is not unimportant to pay some attention to the damage to the cultural damage. Here is a report by the Global Heritage Network. It’s quite depressing. Below is a quote from page six. After that, there are forty-five other pages.

Sites known to have been affected by the shelling are:

• World Heritage Site – (parts of the) Archaeological Villages of Northern Syria, in particular al-Bara, Deir Sunbel, Aïn Larose.
• World Heritage Site – Bosra.
• World Heritage Site – Crac des Chevaliers.
• Tentative World Heritage Site – Apamea and the citadel of Qal’at al-Mudiq. Also the town surrounding the citadel, which is known to date from at least the 16th century. Damage has been confirmed at the 16th century Mosque al-Tawhid, and is suspected at the Islamic caravanserai which forms the museum.
• Tell Sheikh Hamad (Dur Katlimmu) – Assyrian temple collapsed after shell fire and the site was “transformed into a battlefield between deserters and army”.
• Mosque of Idlib Sermin (Fatimid era).
• Mosque of al-Tekkiyeh Ariha minaret destroyed.
• Al-Qusaayr – Great Mosque and Mar Elias monastery damaged.
• Mosque al-Herak in the Dara’a region.
• Oldest mosque in city of Sermin.
• Our Lady of Seydnaya Monastery – Earliest part of monastery dates to early Christian era (circa 547AD) – shell through back wall.
• Tomb of the Sheikh Dahur al-Muhammad in Rityan, in Aleppo province.

Additions to Livius.org (very minor)

The entrance of the Hellespont

I visited Turkey and returned with some new photos. You can find them on the pages dedicated Tenedos, Abydus, to Adana (a nice photo of Hadrian), the Hellespont, Alexandria in the Troad, Alexandria near Issus, the river Scamander (I like this page because it combines photos from four places), and the funeral mound of Caracalla’s favorite Festus at Üvecik Tepe (scroll down a bit). It’s mostly from museums I visited, and not really important.

There’s also a photo of the battlefield at Aigospotamoi, but the steep shoreline on the site made me wonder whether the identification was right.

Çanakkale, Archaeological Museum

Phial from Tenedos

Çanakkale is a few kilometers east of the ruins of Troy, but it appears that few visitors of the ancient city also go to the museum. We were the only ones over there, and the guards had to switch on the light for us.

It’s a shame, because the four large rooms of the Çanakkale museum are very much worth a visit, and the collection is larger than you realize when you are standing in the garden. The finds are from several archaeological sites on both sides of the Dardanelles.

Among the highlights are some figurines of musicians from Assos, ceramics from Tenedos (Bozcaada), a sarcophagus from Atikulac with obvious Persian influences, and a late archaic sarcophagus with the killing of Polyxena that ought to be shown in any textbook of art history. You will be surprised to see the finds from the Dardanos tumulus, which reminded me of the rich funeral mounds from fourth-century Macedonia: very nice wreaths made of gold for example, and fine statuettes, including a beautiful Aphrodite, inspired by the Cnidian statue of Praxiteles.

I was surprised that there were so few finds from Abydos, ancient Çanakkale. Nevertheless, they include a splendid archaic Perseus and the lovely tombstone of one Agathe, daughter of Papos, buried by the Boule of Abydos.

So, this is a museum that is certainly worth a visit, and a visit can easily be combined with a trip across the Dardanelles, to Eceabat, ancient Sestus: the ferry is not far from the place that was once bridged by Xerxes. On the European shore are the monuments of the soldiers who fell during the Great War; after a visit to that delightful and nice museum, where you realize which beautiful things humans can make, a visit to the battlefield memorials makes you realize that we’re also capable of doing the worst.

Nahr al-Kalb

Reliefs of Ramesses II (left) and Esarhaddon (right).

In the thirteenth century BCE, the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II left three reliefs on the south bank of the Nahr al-Kalb, north of Beyrut, which commemorated the northern campaigns that culminated in the battle of Kadesh (1274). Several centuries later, the Assyrian king Esarhaddon conquered Egypt, and chose to put a memorial opposite the relief of Ramesses. Ever since, armies have left inscription at the Nahr al-Kalb, a custom known to Herodotus (more).

All in all, there are twenty-two inscriptions and two monuments, with texts in seven languages (Egyptian, Akkadian, Greek, Latin, Arabic, French, and English). Together, they give a nice overview of Lebanese history.

A complete overview is here (and an overview of all Lebanese posts on this blog is here).

Roman Beyrut

Roman baths

I have now blogged about the new web pages about the Bekaa Valley and the Lebanon, about Niha, about Faqra, and about Machnaqa. There’s a lot more to be written – think of Baalbek, Byblus, Sidon, and Tyre – but for the moment, I will only add Beyrut.

We found it a lovely city, with two beautiful museums (the National Museum and the Archaeological Museum of the American University) and a couple of ancient ruins, which were not very special. Nevertheless, the city’s history is quite interesting, and some objects from the museums are really important.

My favorite is an amulet from the Louvre, in which many celestial beings are invoked to protect one Alexandra. Officially, she was Christian, so she mentions “the One who sits among two cherubs” and “the One God and His Christ”, but after that, we read about the seven lords of the seven heavens (Marmarioth, Uriel, Ael, Gabriel, Chael, Moriath, Chachth), the beings responsible for the weather (Riopha, Zonchar, Tebriel, Tobriel), the protectors of the sea and mountains (Suriel and Nuchael), the celestial dragon keeper Iathennuian, and a protector of the firmament named Chrara. So much for orthodoxy.

Two new webpages can be found here. Enjoy!

Faqra (Lebanon)

The Small Altar at Faqra

One of the most spectacular sites we visited during our trip through Lebanon was Faqra. It is situated along the road from the coast to a ski resort with the same name.

When we visited the place, it was covered with snow.  It was the Easter Weekend (according to the Maronite calendar) and many people had a day off, which meant that they were snowboarding, picnicking, barbecuing, and even dancing at the place where – in the Summer – you would have crossed the mountain pass. To judge from the scarfs, Christians were not the only one enjoying a holiday.

Faqra itself consists of two parts. To the north of the road are four altars, to the south are two temples, dedicated to Adonis and Atargatis, and a church.

Eight small but new pages on the Livius website can be found here. Other recent pages are about the Bekaa Valley and the Lebanon, about Niha, and about Machnaqa.

Machnaqa

Machnaqa

As some readers of this little blog will have noticed, I am currently uploading photos from my trip to Lebanon. I already mentioned Niha, the Bekaa Valley, and the Lebanon Mountains, and I still hope to add Beyrut and Faqra.

Today’s addition is Machnaqa, a sanctuary along the road from Byblus to Afqa and Baalbek. There’s tower altar (photo), a number of rock tombs, and some weathered reliefs. It’s not of the greatest historical importance, but quite beautiful.