Year: 2009

Roman Family Tomb from Tyre

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Interesting item in the Daily Star:

A burial cave dating back to the Roman and Byzantine eras has been discovered in the southern town of Burj al-Shamali near Tyre, the Lebanese Directorate General of Antiquities announced Monday.

A team of seven Japanese archaeologists led by the head of the Preservation of Cultural Properties Department at Japan’s Nara University Professor Mishyama Yushi made the discovery.

At the Beirut government’s request, the Japanese university deployed teams of archaeologists and students to Tyre in 2008 to work in coordination with the Lebanese Directorate General of Antiquities.

Like many coastal cities across Lebanon, Tyre, 85 kilometers south of Beirut, contains relics dating back to the Phoenician and Roman eras.

Archaeologists uncovered colored frescoes on the cave’s walls representing animal shapes such as a brown and green peacock, animal parts, pottery and other geometrical forms.

The drawings were in good condition and very well preserved after 2,000 years. About six underground tombs were also located inside the cave.

Japanese Ambassador Koichi Kwakawi visited the site on Monday and presented a technical report to prepare for further study into the significance of the discovered ruins.

Mosaics were also discovered in the grotto, as was a rock quarry, said archaeologist Nader Saqlawi of the Directorate General of Antiquities. “The quarry was probably used for the burial of a rich family of six members,” Saqlawi explained.

Excavations on the site started three years ago and were divided into three stages: Cleaning the ruins and the drawings, protecting them then restoring them and preserving them. “Similar excavations were launched in the 1960s but the site was then closed,” according to Saqlawi.

The Burj al-Shamali cave is 20 square meters wide and three meters high and is considered to be of great historical importance. “It could be very beneficiary in studying the arts of the two eras and the Roman burial rituals,’ said Saqlawi.

… be nice to see some photos …

This Day in Ancient History: ante diem iv nonas octobres

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

ante diem iv nonas octobres

  • fast in honour of Ceres — in 191 B.C., consultation of the Sybilline books ordered a fast to be held every five years in honour of the Roman goddess Ceres, who presided over grain and harvesting. By Augustus’ day, the fast was an annual event which curiously coincides fairly closely with the Athenian Thesmophoria.
  • ludi Augustales scaenici (day 2 — from 19-23 A.D.) — a festival in honour of Augustus involving primarily mime and pantomime theatrical displays
  • 1909 — birth of James. B. Pritchard (“Biblical” archaeologist and author of The Ancient Near East, among other things)

New Stadium for AS Roma?

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

There are plenty of articles kicking around out there about AS Roma’s plans to build an ‘English style’ soccer/football stadium … ANSA seems to be one of the few that I’ve come across, though, that mentions:

”If the culture ministry doesn’t say Ok they won’t go ahead,” Culture Undersecretary Franco Giro said at the presentation at Rome’s training camp.

Giro said he ”knew nothing” about reports that a Roman villa and necropolis had been unearthed during preliminary digs at the site opposite the Ancient Roman Via Aurelia about 10km from the city centre.

We’ll keep our eye open for developments on this one …

Search for Cleopatra’s Tomb to Resume

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ 1 Comment

Just so you know … from RIA Novosti:

Egyptian archeologists will carry out new explorations in October to search for the tombs of Cleopatra and her beloved Mark Antony, the head of Egypt’s Higher Council of Antiquities said on Monday.

“One of the most important projects is to find the tombs of the famous pharaoh Cleopatra, the seventh in the Ptolemy dynasty, and Mark Antony. These tombs might be located in the city of Taposiris Magna, 50 kilometers from Alexandria,” Zahi Hawas said at a news conference in Moscow.

Hawas, who is leading the expedition, said statues of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, coins bearing Cleopatra’s image and a large number of tombs had been found next to a temple where the couple might be buried.

“These necropolises on both sides of the temple in Taposiris Magna are important evidence that high representatives of the royal family were buried in the temple,” Hawas said.

He said his team would carry out their work in the middle of October, at which time they could find evidence to support their theory.

The archaeologist added that most Egyptian treasures have yet to be found, despite many years of excavations, as only 30% of sites have been explored.

“Seventy percent remain underground. The problem is that all these monuments are under buildings,” he said.

Hawas also said that Egyptian authorities would next week demand a Nefertiti bust from a Berlin museum as Cairo has proof the artifact was taken out of the country illegally.

The Nefertiti bust was discovered at the start of the 20th century by a German archeologist who took it to Berlin, where it has since remained.

… never have figured out why this Russian source always seems to get this particular story first …

CONF: Oikos Familia Gothenburg Nov 09

~ David Meadows ~ rogueclassicist ~ Leave a comment

Seen on the Classicists list

Below is a the programme for OIKOS FAMILIA The Family in Antiquity: Framing the discipline in the 21st Century.

For more information and registration forms please contact: arachne AT class.gu.se

You can also contact us directly: Mary Harlow m.e.harlow AT bham.ac.uk Ray Laurence r.laurence AT bham.ac.uk Lena Larsson Loven lena.larsson AT class.gu.se

Programme
THURSDAY 5th NOVEMBER

14.00 Registration opens
15.00 Opening of the conference and Welcome

Opening keynote lecture Mark Golden (Winnipeg): The future of the Ancient Greek Family

15.45 – 16.15: Coffee

Session I: The construction of kinship: Methods and Texts

Saskia Hin Building States, Building Families:
Birgitta Leppänen Sjöberg: Classical oikos as site for intersectionality
Ann-Cathrin Harders: Beyond domus and oikos: kinship studies
Emily Varto: The Classical Prototypes of Kinship

Session II: Marriage and Children – a family’s hope for the future or a disappointment

Keynote address: Christian Laes: Disabled children in Gregory of Tours

Maria Constantinou: The Dissolution of Marriage: evidence from marriage contracts and divorce documents in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt
Jayne Draycott: Healthcare at home in Roman Egypt
Rebecca Gowland & Rebecca Redfern: Childhood Health at the core and periphery of Roman world

FRIDAY 6TH NOVEMBER

Session III: Visualising the Ancient Family

Amalia Avramidou: Depictions of women and children pre-classical Corinth
Sandra Karlsson: Family images in Hellenistic funerary art
Jason Manders: Mors Immatura. Portraits of Children on Roman Funerary monuments
Margherita Carucci: Visualising daughters in the Roman Family
Jeannine Uzzi Ethnicity and Sexuality: the non-Roman family and the Roman gaze

Session VI: Religion and the Family

William Bubelis: Not the Oikos: Priesthoods and Succession in Classical Athens
Nicholas Kalospyros: Towards the Allegory of the Oikos: The family and cognates in Philo Judaeus
Katariina Mustakallio:The Sacred Couple in the Roman Context
Outi Sihvonen Vestal Virgins – Members of Two Different Families?
K.B. Neutal: Importance of Familia to Paul and his audience

Session V Commemoration of Family Members in the Roman West

Key note address: Maureen Carroll:“No part in earthly things”. The death, burial and commemoration of newborns and infants in Roman Italy

Linnéa Johansson:The Cult of the Genius as a Way of Commemoration
Francesco Trifilò: Vixit Annis: Regional Patterns and Commemoration
Sabine Armani Nieces and Nephews in Inscriptions from the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire

12.00 -13.30 LUNCH

Session VI The Greek Family

Florence Gherchanoc :Birth festivals in classical Athens
Elke Hartmann: The Concept of the Kyreia in Classical Athens
Agnieszka Kotlińska-Toma: Woman as the Pillar of the Family in Greek Funerary Epigrams
Sara Saba: Family and City Policy
Brenda Griffiths-Williams: Continuity and Conflict in Athenian Inheritance disputes

Session VII Female roles in the Roman family

Marja-Leena Hänninen: Gender, age and status in the Roman wedding
Karen Hersch: Not on the guest list: changing conceptions of the Roman family nuptial riutal
Dimitrios Mantzilas: Laudationes Mulierum as a source for the Roman Family
Pamela Johnston: Family Advisory Councils in the Roman Republic
Hanne Sigismund Nielsen: Who invented the univira?

Session VIII Greek and Roman childhood and adolescence

Mark Golden: Other People’s Children
Evrydiki Tasopoulou When Animals Show the Way: parenting and the emotional development of children in Classical Greece
Judit Pásztókai-Szeöke: Mother shrinks and child grows
Janette McWilliam : Aesthetics of Violence and Representations of Roman Children
Claude-Emanuell Challet Centlivres: Youth in Pliny the Younger: Traditional Gender Roles and Beyond

17.15 Keynote lecture Natalie Kampen (New York): Pompeian Painting and Domestic Emotions

18.00 Wine reception

SATURDAY 7th November

Session IX Roman and Early Medieval Family: across the generations

Liz Gloyn: Our House is a Very, Very, Very Fine House: The Family as a Philosophical Ideal in Seneca
Ville Vuolanto: Grandmothers and familial power in late antiquity
Emma Southon: Fatherhood in Late Antique Gaul
Photis Vasilou: The Brother-father and sister-mother: biological and constructed relationships in the works of Gregory of Nyssa
Eve Davies: The Life Course and the Family in the Byzantine Empire
Chris Callow: The family from late antiquity to early medieval west 300-600

Session X Agency, economics and domesticity

Justin Walsh: Artefact assemblages and human agency in ancient house
Lindsay Penner: Female workers in aristocratic Roman Columbaria
Lovisa Brännstedt: Familia urbana of Livilla Drusilla
John Starks: Actresses and the Roman family
Anna Sparreboom: Wet-Nursing in the Roman Empire
April Pudsey: Widows and familial networks in Roman Egypt

Session XI Dynastic, powerful Hellenistic and Roman families

Omar Coloru Family dynamics in Seleucid dynasty
Agneta Fulinska: Family Ties in Dynastic Propaganda of the Ptolemies
Jesper Carlsen: The Ahenobarbi and Calvini in Late Republican and Augustan Rome
David Salvo: The use of betrothals, marriages, divorces in the making on an imperial dynasty: the case of the Julio- Claudian dynasty
Gwyneath McIntyre: The creation of a dynasty: Adoption and deification in the Antonine family
Shaun Tougher: Imperial blood: Family relationships in the dynasty of Constantine the Great

12.30 – 14.00 LUNCH

Session XII Etruscan and Pre-Roman Family

Key note addres: Marjatta Neilsen: Etruscan familes – the deand and the living
Jenny Högström Berntson: Women, Children and Votives in Magna Graecia
Elisa Perego: Iron Age and early Roman Veneto
Rafael Scopacasa: Familial Segregation and Communal Drinking in Ancient Appenine Italy

Session XIII Families in Greek literature and drama

Tom Garvey: The House of Nestor
James O’Maley: Homosphrosyne in the Odyssey
Aspasia Skouroumoni: Inside and Out: The Dynamics of Domestic Space in Euripides’ Andromache
Dimitira Kokkini: Euripides Heracles Mainomeons: Domesticating the litmate hero

Session XIV Family members and politics in ancient texts

Sophia Panaretou: Who was Brauro?
Bryan Natali: Infelix Dido, nun te facta impía tangunt? Putting Dido in her political Context
Ida Östenberg: Killing Fathers: The title Pater Patriae and the deaths of Cicero and Caesar
Nani Moro: Violence and Maltreatment in the Roman Family: The Case of Tiberius Claudius

16.30. – 17.00 Concluding summary: Framing the discipline in the 21st century.

18.30 Concluding Dinner