Dining Divinely: Banqueting in Honour of the Gods
July 7-9, 2010
The Department of Classics at the University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand
Commensality marked a range of public and private occasions in the
ancient Mediterranean world. This colloquium will explore the evidence
for banquets and feasts held in conjunction with or as a form of
religious observance. Offers of papers from any branch of Classical
Studies concerning the following topics are welcomed:
• The archaeological evidence for banquets (architecture, furnishings,
food remains, representations of banqueting) with a religious dimension.
• Banquets associated with particular religious festivals or rites, or
part of private occasions with a religious dimension (eg funerals).
• Literary or epigraphical evidence for religious banqueting.
An abstract of 250 words indicating the thesis, evidence and conclusions
of the paper offered and including the name, academic affiliation,
postal address and email address of the presenter should be sent to the
conference organiser at the address below. Email attachments and
facsimiles are preferred. Papers will be 20-30 minutes long, depending
on the final number of participants.
Abstracts must be received on or before October 1, 2009. Authors of
accepted papers will be notified by December 15, 2009. The registration
fee will be around US $120/€85/ NZ $175 (postgraduates US $85/€60 /NZ
$125).
Organiser:
Alison B. Griffith, Department of Classics, University of Canterbury,
Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140 NEW ZEALAND
Ph: ++64-3-364-2987 ext. 8578
Fax: ++64-3-364-2576
alison.griffith AT canterbury.ac.nz
Despite the piles of news coverage of this one, it probably needs to be pointed out that we’re still in the early days of research. A vary large underground man-made cave — originally a quarry, apparently — has been found near Jericho. Coverage from PhysOrg seems to be the best on this one, inter alia:
The enormous and striking cave covers an area of approximately 1 acre: it is some 100 meters long and about 40 meters wide. The cave is located 4 km north of Jericho. The cave, which is the largest excavated by man to be discovered in Israel, was exposed in the course of an archaeological survey that the University of Haifa has been carrying out since 1978.
As with other discoveries in the past, this exposure is shrouded in mystery. “When we arrived at the opening of the cave, two Bedouins approached and told us not to go in as the cave is bewitched and inhabited by wolves and hyenas,” Prof. Zertal relates. Upon entering, accompanied by his colleagues, he was surprised to find an impressive architectonic underground structure supported by 22 giant pillars. They discovered 31 cross markings on the pillars, an engraving resembling the zodiac symbol, Roman letters and an etching that looks like the Roman Legion’s pennant. The team also discovered recesses in the pillars, which would have been used for oil lamps, and holes to which animals that were hauling quarried stones out of the cave could have been tied.
The cave’s ceiling is some 3 meters high, but was originally probably about 4 meters high. According to Prof. Zertal, ceramics that were found and the engravings on the pillars date the cave to around 1-600 AD. “The cave’s primary use had been as a quarry, which functioned for about 400-500 years. But other findings definitely indicate that the place was also used for other purposes, such as a monastery and possibly as a hiding place,” Prof. Zertal explains.
The main question that arose upon discovering the cave was why a quarry was dug underground in the first place. “All of the quarries that we know are above ground. Digging down under the surface requires extreme efforts in hauling the heavy rocks up to the surface, and in this case the quarrying was immense. The question is, why?” For a possible answer to this mystery, Prof. Zertal points to the famous Madaba map. This is a Byzantine mosaic map that was found in Jordan and is the most ancient map of the Land of Israel. Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley are depicted with precision on the map, and a site called Galgala is depicted next to a Greek inscription that reads “Dodekaliton”, which translates as “Twelve Stones.” This place is marked at a distance from Jericho that matches this cave’s distance from the city. According to the map, there is a church next to Dodekaliton; there are two ancient churches located nearby the newly discovered cave. According to Prof. Zertal, until now it has been hypothesized that the meaning of “Twelve Stones” related to the biblical verses that describe the twelve stones that the Children of Israel place in Gilgal. However, it could be that the reference is a description of the quarry that was dug where the Byzantines identified the Gilgal. “During the Roman era, it was customary to construct temples of stones that were brought from holy places, and which were therefore also more valuable stones. If our assumption is correct, then the Byzantine identification of the place as the biblical Gilgal afforded the site its necessary reverence and that is also why they would have dug an underground quarry there,” Prof. Zertal concludes. “But” he adds, “much more research is needed.”
Much excitement over the past few days over the ‘re-exposure’ of the very nice 4th century Roman mosaic from Lod. It was originally discovered back in 1996, then recovered because funds weren’t available at the time for its preservation. Now, however, the Leon Levy Foundation and the Jerome Levy Foundation are partnering up with the IAA to preserve this very impressive bit of flooring. It is destined to be removed from the site and given ‘proper’ conservation treatment, whence it will spend some time, apparently, at the Met.
The IAA has a zip file of some high resolution images which you might want to check out; seems to be an awful lot of animals-eating-other-animals in this mosaic.
This is interesting … we have reported in the past of various studies etc. which have demonstrated/recreated the colours which originally adorned ancient statuary and temples, but apparently no trace of paint has ever been found on the Parthenon before. Recently, however, a researcher at the British Museum — Giovanni Verri — has developed a technique to detect at least one colour (Egyptian Blue) on the Parthenon/Elgin Marbles. An excerpt from the coverage in New Scientist:
Verri shines red light onto the marble, and any traces of paint that remain absorb the red light and emit infrared light. Viewed through an infrared camera, any parts of the marble that were once blue appear to glow.
Egyptian blue has shown up on the belt of Iris, Poseidon’s messenger goddess (see image), and as a wave pattern along the back of Helios, god of the sun, who is shown rising out of the sea at dawn. It also appears as stripes on the woven mantle draped over another goddess, Dione (see image).
If you look at the images accompanying the New Scientist article, you can see we’re definitely talking about ‘traces’. Of course, Dr. Verri has a paper on the technique, the abstract (and possibly full text) of which is available here.
rogueclassicism 
