quidquid bene dictum est ab ullo, meum est
ante diem xiv kalendas sextilias
The incipit of a piece in the Guardian:
A battered and corroded thumb-sized piece of bronze has turned out to be a unique find, the earliest representation of an Egyptian deity from any site in Britain – and appropriately, after almost 2,000 years hidden in the ground, it is Harpocrates, the god of secrecy and silence.
The little figure was found at Silchester, site of an abandoned Roman city in Hampshire, in last summer’s excavation, but his identity was only revealed in months of careful conservation work. His Greek and Roman designation as Harpocrates, the god of spymasters, is actually a transcription error.
“In Egyptian mythology the figure is known as Horus, the child of Isis and Osiris,” said Professor Mike Fulford of the University of Reading, director of the Silchester excavation. “He is often shown with his finger in his mouth, a gesture that in Egypt represented the hieroglyph for his name, but was misinterpreted by the Greeks and Romans, resulting in his adoption as the god of silence and secrecy.”
He was originally an ornament on an object, which is itself unique. “The figurine was attached to part of a charcoal-burning brazier which would have been used to provide heating and lighting. This brazier is the only one found in England so we are doubly excited,” Fulford said. “The brazier, the sort of thing you would expect to find in Pompeii, is the first evidence of such a luxurious item from Roman Britain.”
The context of the find suggests the brazier was imported, and later thrown out into a rubbish pit, in the first century AD. […]
via: Relic of Harpocrates, the god of secrecy and silence, found at Silchester | Guardian
Alas, no photo of the object, either at the Guardian or at the dig website (unless in the latter case it’s one of the blobs of iron that has been cleaned up a bit). We have a nice image of Harpocrates in a previous post … we have had a fair bit of coverage of the Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum) in the past:
Interesting little debate …
The BBC has a very nice little slideshow of some of the skeletons from that dig at York which are claimed to be of gladiating victims. There’s actually some good stuff here, and since I can’t really embed the slideshow, I do want to make some comments (the numbers refer to the slide):
1. 60 of 80 appear to have died violent deaths; the implication is that all sixty were gladiators?
2. The one arm longer than the other “being consistent with one-sided work from an early age …” I’m not sure how this fits in; I highly doubt we’re dealing with people ‘raised’ to be gladiators. If this is an indication they were non-Roman warriors or something, that could work.
3. Very impressive deep cut going upward; does seem consistent with a gladiator-fight-style wound …
4. Very impressive bite marks; it should be possible to identify the animal from these, no?
5. shackled burial; I really wish we’d stop getting this sensationalism like “yet he received a proper burial” … outside of tossing emperors into the Tiber, the Romans seem to have long allowed execution victims’ remains to receive a proper burial.
6. the ‘hammer’ victim … shouldn’t there be some ‘point of impact’ mark? And shouldn’t the cracks radiate therefrom? This looks more consistent with being hit with a large sword across the top of the head …
7. very nice vertebrae cut; They might be solid ground with this one, although the ‘dispatching’ cuts in gladiating situations tended to be down the windpipe toward the heart rather than across the neck, no? 50 of the 61 skeletons had been so dispatched. In some of the early coverage from this site, though, there was the suggestion that many of the marks indicate the cuts had come from ‘behind’.
Taken together, I think 3, 4, and 6 have me leaning toward the ‘gladiator’ theory. At the same time, though, I think we should remind folks of Anthony Birley’s theory from a few years ago, that these might be victims of Caracalla‘s ‘killing spree’ shortly after Septimius Severus‘ death in 211. This ‘killing spree’ is hinted at in the first three sections of Dio 78, but it’s not clear whether this ‘spree’ happened at York. The Historia Augusta hints similarly, but is far too compressed to be useful. Again, I wonder aloud whether anyone has thought whether many of these victims might not be examples of decimation (although, of course, proving such would be difficult) Whatever the case, I think it safer to suggest that we’ve got a pile of execution victims … some of them might have died in the arena that hasn’t been found (yet?).
Those who teach grade-school level math or science are familiar with the concept of a ‘puddle question’. These are usually word problems of some sort which have more than one possible answer. From a teacher point of view, they are designed to assess how a student approaches a problem, comes up with a plan, then solves the problem. They tend to be ‘strange’ things in a math class like “How many raindrops make up a puddle?” (whence comes the name of this type of question) or “How many hours have you spent watching TV your entire life?” In Ancient History, we also have puddle questions, although not known by that name, and possibly the most common/famous one relates to “solving” why Alexander the Great died. Today, Discovery News presents a completely new theory, related to a bacterium from the Styx. Here are some excerpts:
An extraordinarily toxic bacterium harbored by the “infernal” Styx River might have been the fabled poison rumored to have killed Alexander the Great (356 – 323 B.C.) more than 2,000 years ago, according to a scientific-meets-mythic detective study.
[…]
“Indeed, no ancient writer ever casts doubt on the existence of a deadly poison from the Styx River,” Mayor, author of the Mithradates biography “The Poison King,” said.
The researchers believe this mythic poison must be calicheamicin. “This is an extremely toxic, gram-positive soil bacterium and has only recently come to the attention of modern science. It was discovered in the 1980s in caliche, crusty deposits of calcium carbonate that form on limestone and is common in Greece,” author Antoinette Hayes, toxicologist at Pfizer Research, told Discovery News.
Now called Mavroneri, “Black Water,” the Styx originates in the high mountains of Achaia, Greece. Its cold waters cascade over a limestone crag to form the second highest waterfall in Greece.
“Unfortunately, the geochemistry of the river has not yet been studied by modern scientists; therefore, there is no scientific data to support the plausible and interesting calicheamicin theory,” Walter D’Alessandro, hydro-geochemist at the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology in Palermo, told Discovery News.
Whether Alexander really died from poisoning, as some of his closest friends believed, is pure speculation, Mayor and Hayes concede.
“We are not claiming that this was the poison that killed Alexander, nor we are arguing for or against a poison plot,” Mayor said.
[…]
Retrodiagnoses for his mysterious death have included poisoning, heavy drinking, septicemia, pancreatitis, malaria, West Nile fever, typhoid, and accidental or deliberate poisoning (hellebore, arsenic, aconite, strychnine).
“Notably, some of Alexander’s symptoms and course of illness seem to match ancient Greek myths associated with the Styx. He even lost his voice, like the gods who fell into a coma-like state after drinking from the river,” Mayor said.
The poisoning diagnoses were rejected by many experts because few poisons induce fever. Furthermore, even fewer such poisons were available in Alexander’s time.
However, naturally occurring calicheamicin, which is extremely cytotoxic, could still be the culprit.
“Cytotoxins cause cell death and induce high fever, chills, and severe muscle and neurological pain. Therefore, this toxin could have caused the fever and pain that Alexander suffered,” Hayes said.
According to Richard Stoneman, the foremost expert on the myths of Alexander, the theory offers a good explanation for the Styx’s ancient reputation.
“I personally think that Alexander probably died of natural causes — either typhoid or an overdose of the hellebore used to treat his illness — but other views are possible,” Stoneman, author of “A Life in Legend: Alexander the Great,” told Discovery News.
via: Alexander the Great Killed by Toxic Bacteria?
Back in December of 2004, when West Nile Virus was being suggested as a possible cause of Alexander’s death, I said I would present a summary of the various theories ‘after Christmas’. I don’t appear to have actually ever done that but, fortunately for me, in the mean time an incredibly excellent article on the subject has appear in the January issue of Acta Classica and it’s online at the Free Library:
In brief, it presents Alexander’s symptoms, provides a timeline of what happened when according to the ancient sources, and then has an incredibly useful appendix of all the proposed causes of death and their merits or lack thereof. Just to give you an idea of the things that have been proposed:
Whatever the case, both the Discovery article and the Acta Classica one are must reading …
rogueclassicism 