Antiquitopia

The London Times reports that archaeologists have unearthed a private amphitheater for the emperor at Portus, a site near Rome's Fiumicino airport. This is the first time that a large-scale dig has taken place at the site, known as Portus, which was discovered in the 16th century and excavated in the 1860s. Now two miles inland, it would have been twice the size of the port of Southampton and an important gateway between Rome and the Mediterranean. It is possible that it was frequented by 2nd-century emperors. British excavators, including staff from the University of Cambridge and the British School at Rome, said that the amphitheatre was likely to have been built for the private entertainment of a senior statesman or emperor and could have held up to 2,000 spectators. Professor Simon Keay, the project director, said: “[The amphitheatre’s] design, using luxurious materials and substantial colonnades, suggests it was used by a high-status official, possibly even the emperor himself...

Seek we then ourselves in ourselves; for as Men force the sun with much more force to pass, By gathering his beams with a crystal glass; So we, if we into ourselves will turn, Blowing our sparks of virtue, may outburn The straw, which doth about our hearts sojourn. (John Donne, "To Mr Roland Woodward")

I just completed Swann's Way , the first part of Marcel Proust's magnum opus, In Search of Lost Time . It is an absolutely beautiful book. It captures the always escaping evanescence of our memories, but fully sensually. It is the luxurious perfume that triggers something within us and sets out minds into places in our past, places that can never be the same again because we have changed. Lost places are the other dimension of lost time that slip on by, wafting and then dissipating in the air. The last line of the book captures the temporality of place beautifully: The places we have known do not belong only to the world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. They were only a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that composed our life at that time; the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years. (Marcel Proust, Swann's Way , In Search of Lost Time ; ...

Yom Kippur is coming up on Monday. In Leviticus 16, the real action of the ancient ritual concerned two goats. One goat was slaughtered and the blood cleansed the sanctuary. The other, the "scapegoat" or the goat "for Azazel," had the people's sins passed upon it and it was driven into the wilderness (evidently where Azazel was). In Brooklyn on Monday Hasidic Jews will sacrifice a chicken in the " kapparot ." The idea is that sins are transferred to the bird and then disappear at its death. I don't know much about this ritual, its origins, its explanations, and its developments. But it sounds like the two goats from the ancient ritual combined together into a single chicken. Interestingly, it seems that this ritual contravenes rabbinic rulings on proper slaughter of animals.

I am about to teach the Epic of Gilgamesh again. My students read the Standard Babylonian version, basically since it is the best preserved. This version transforms the earlier epic versions into something of an epic wisdom text, particularly regarding the Utnapishtim's speech at the end. This speech and the Standard Babylonian version as a whole remind me of Ecclesiastes in many respects. They both concern themselves with the inevitability of death and, in a way, the meaninglessness of much of life. Coming to terms with both aspects leads to wisdom. Nonetheless, they approach this whole coming-to-terms-with-death-is-the-foundation-of-wisdom in different ways. Of course, one is narrative and couched in conversation between Gilgamesh and Utnapisthim. The other is a more wisdom text--a radical one, in fact--but appears more in the form of a treatise as the "Preacher" goes through all aspects of life to show how they are all a "chasing after the wind." The...

Let everyone look at the space around them. What do they see? Do they see time ? They live time, after all; they are in time. Yet all anyone sees is movements. In nature, time is apprehended within space--in the very heart of space: the hour of the day, the season, the elevation of the sun above the horizon, the position of the moon and stars in the heavens, the cold and the heat, the age of each natural being, and so on. Until nature became localized in underdevelopment, each place showed its age and, like a tree trunk, bore the mark of the years it had taken it to grow. Time was thus inscribed in space, and natural space was merely the lyrical and tragic script of natural time.... With the advent of modernity time has vanished from social space.... Economic space subordinates time to itself; political space expels it as threatening and dangerous (to power). The primacy of the economic and above all of the political implies the supremacy of space over time.... Our time, t...

Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present. Footfalls echo in the memory Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose-garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind. ("Burnt Norton," Four Quartets ) In my beginning is my end. In succession Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass. Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires, Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth Which is already flesh, fur and faeces, Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf. Houses live and die: there is a time for building And a time for living and for g...

The Iliad contains within it, I think, a very interesting, and perhaps psychologically sensitive, concept of the person, the self. It is a self that is composed of multiple elements that are divided against themselves. This divided self can be found in the formulae regarding internal deliberation--and I think it is significant that the Iliad actually has formulae of internal deliberation. The first type of formula has to do with the division within a particular element of the person: these elements include the heart, the mind, and the spirit. It first appears with regard to Achilleus in 1.188ff: So he spoke. And the anger ( achos ) came on Peleus' son, and within his shaggy breast the heart was divided two ways, pondering whether to draw from beside his thigh the sharp sword, driving away all those who stood between and kill the son of Atreus, or else to check the spleen within and keep down his anger ( cholos ). Now as he weighted in mind and spirit these two courses.... (tra...

Peter Schaefer has published a new book with Mohr-Siebeck entitled the Origins of Jewish Mysticism . Here's the (English) blurb: This book provides the reader for the first time with a history of pre-kabbalistic Jewish mysticism. It covers a wide range of quite diverse literatures, from the biblical book of Ezekiel to the ascent apocalypses, the Qumran literature, Philo, Rabbinic literature, and finally the Hekhalot literature, which provides us with the first full-fledged mystical movement in late antiquity (Merkavah mysticism). Instead of imposing on these different literatures a preconceived notion of "mysticism," Peter Schäfer offers a close reading of the key texts and asks what they wish to convey about the age-old human desire to get close to and communicate with God.The author of this book has dedicated much of his scholarly life to the history of Jewish mysticism. The Origins of Jewish Mysticism summarizes his views in an accessible way, directed at specialists a...

A horde of Bar-Kochba coins have been discovered , some of which have an image of the facade of the temple on them! Via Agade: Bar-Kokhba Treasure Chest Discovered in Judean Hills by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu The largest-ever known number of coins from the time of Bar-Kokhba, the Jewish leader against Roman invaders, has been discovered in the Judean Hills by cave researchers from Hebrew and Bar-Ilan universities. The research team found three batches of bronze, silver and gold coins in a deep cavern in a nature reserve. Pottery and weapons also were discovered during a research project by Prof. Amos Frumkin of Hebrew University and Prof. Hanan Eshel and Dr. Boaz Zissu of Bar-Ilan. .... Most of the coins are in excellent condition, and Bar-Kokhba's followers imprinted their own designs over the currency, which is of Roman origin. The new imprints show Jewish images and words, including the façade of the Hole Temple and the slogan “freedom for Jerusalem.” Bar-Kokhba coins of this quality a...

Pathos is the moment in a great piece of literature, or film, etc., where you get that lump in your throat and a tug at your heartstrings. It is when a work elicits from the reader an overwhelming sense of compassion (in a way, anticipating and manipulating reader response). I have yet to read anyone who does this better than Homer (if there was a Homer). He does this in many ways. He tells us the back stories of each individual fighter who dies, whose family depends upon him and who will no longer be able to provide for them in death. Yet I think the most pathos-ridden passage is the one where Priam visits Achilleus in the latter's tent to beg for the return of Hektor's body. After kissing Achilleus' hand and supplicating at his knees, the great Priam, king of Troy, says: I have gone through what no other mortal on earth has gone through; I put my lips to the hands of the man who has killed my children. ( Il . 24.505-6). Now that's Pathos.

I was just perusing the NYTimes (online) and glimpsed a familiar face on the front page tonight: a fellow preceptor in Literature Humanities, by all accounts a fantastic instructor, who came in at the same time I did, Zayd Dohrn. I was somewhat surprised seeing his face in the NYTimes. We chat occasionally about class and the literature we're teaching (I just saw him Tuesday with his copy of the Iliad in hand), but I don't think I realized he was a playwright (although I knew he was in theater), didn't really know he was much interested in politics, and didn't know much about his personal life (other than the fact that he has a young child). It turns out he has been busy turning out plays resonant with timely political themes. From the New York Times of the political plays of Zayd Dohrn: September 3, 2009 A Playwright’s Glimmers of a Fugitive Childhood By PATRICK HEALY When Zayd Dohrn began writing "Sick," a play about a Manhattan family going to extremes...

All these memories, superimposed upon one another, now formed a single mass, but had not so far coalesced that I could not discern between them--between my oldest, my instinctive memories, and those others, inspired more recently by a taste or "perfume," and finally those which were actually the memories of another person from whom I had acquired them at second hand--if not real fissures, real geological faults, at least that veining, that variegation of colouring, which in certain rocks, in certain blocks of marble, points to differences of origin, age, and formation. (Marcel Proust, Swann's Way , In Search of Lost Time ; trans. Moncrieff, Kilmartin, and Enright)

Here's a scenario. A person hears a voice. They think it is God. And this voice tells them to kill their own child. And they actually decide to do it! At that point, it is time for the police, perhaps the people in white coats, and child services to step in, right? Well...that's what happens in Genesis 22, making Abraham the paragon of bad parenting, at least according to the theologians of Family Guy. I might have responded similarly!

Columbia University president Lee Bollinger has an article in the Huffington Post on the role of New York universities and research institutions in the development of new technologies, particularly media, that create new businesses, etc.

BAR has posted the top ten archaeological finds that has been reported in its pages. Listed WITH PICTURES(!!!) are: Ashkelon's arched gate Stepped Stone Structure in Old City Jerusalem 'Ain Dara temple--which has a similar layout to Solomon's temple Tel Dan Stele--the only mention of King David outside of the Bible "Yahweh and his Asherah"--an actual depiction of the god and the goddess.... Babylonian Siege Tower and Arrowheads in Jerusalem St. Peter's House The Siloam Pool Mona Lisa of the Galilee The Nag Hammadi Library This are all fantastic discoveries, but I scratch my head along with Jim Davila at the exclusion of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Perhaps they only wanted to include one textual discovery that completely transformed our views?

Scholars of the ancient Israelite sanctuaries often discussion the construction, plan, and symbolism of those spaces, yet one of the more interesting recent readings of a sanctuary is Mark K. George’s Israel’s Tabernacle as Social Space , in which he develops a “spatial poetics” to discuss the social dynamics of the tabernacle in terms of “spatial practice,” “conceptual space,” and “symbolic space.” He models his categories off of the French Marxist spatial theorist, Henri Lefebvre’s La production de l’espace [ The Production of Space ], who spoke of spatial practice, representations of space, and spaces of representation with the heaviest emphasis on the last category, which Lefebvre saw as having the greatest revolutionary potential against capitalism. Spatial practice refers most directly to the physicality and materiality of space—how humans shape spaces (such as buildings, parks, and roadway systems) and how those buildings in turn shape human behavior, or, for our purposes, th...

Deidre Good posts on a report from the Guardian of a new Sinaiticus fragment found as part of the cartonnage, or binding, of another book. This reuse of old writing materials to form the binding of new books was common in antiquity (check out the bindings to the Nag Hammadi Codices, for example). With our current technology, we can view the piece without destroying the underlying papyrus it protects as cartonnage, although St. Catherine's does not quite have that technology yet. The fragment, by the way, is of Josh. 1:10.

In the NYTimes : September 2, 2009 Purge of Iranian Universities Is Feared By MICHAEL SLACKMAN CAIRO — As Iran’s universities prepare to start classes this month, there is growing concern within the academic community that the government will purge political and social science departments of professors and curriculums deemed “un-Islamic,” according to academics and political analysts inside and outside Iran. .... Ayatollah Khamenei said this week that the study of social sciences “promotes doubts and uncertainty.” He urged “ardent defenders of Islam” to review the human sciences that are taught in Iran’s universities and that he said “promote secularism,” according to Iranian news services. “Many of the humanities and liberal arts are based on philosophies whose foundations are materialism and disbelief in godly and Islamic teachings,” Ayatollah Khamenei said at a gathering of university students and professors on Sunday, according to IRNA, the state news agency. Teaching those “scienc...

Our rabbis said: Even those things which you may regard as completely superfluous to the creation of the world, such as fleas, gnats, and flies, even they too are included in the creation of the world, and the Holy One, blessed be He, carries out His purpose through everything, even through a snake, a scorpion, a gnat, or a frog. .... R. Eleazar was sitting to ease himself in the privy, when a Roman came and drove him away and sat down. 'This has a purpose,' remarked he [R. Eleazar]. Immediately a snake emerged and struck and killed him. At that he applied to himself the verse, Therefore will I give a man for thee (Is. 43:4) .... When the wicked Titus entered the Holy of Holies, he dragged down the veil, blasphemed and reviled [God]. On his return a mosquito entered his nose and began piercing his skull. And when he died they split open his nose and found that it was like a bird weighing two pounds. (Genesis Rabbah 10.7; trans. Freedman) I have highly edited this, removi...