This is an issue facing many undergraduate level classical studies programs throughout Canada and the United States:  how to encourage enrollment, how to maintain the high level of academic tuition, how to keep classics in the curriculum.  In very few cases, attempts have failed and the department of classics has either been absorbed into a larger unit, such as History or Near Eastern Studies or Religion, or done away with entirely apart from a few vagrant courses.

From reviewing the UIC Department of Classics website recently, I have noted that an alternative solution to the single major was developed and, thus far, seems to be doing well.  There are now two majors for UIC Classics students:  Classical Languages and Literature and Classical Studies.  In fact, it appears that the original three majors have been simplified:  Latin and Greek are included under a single umbrella major with a specialization in either or of the ancient languages.  A student no longer has to choose one or the other, languages or history, but can incorporate the two to establish their own academic specialization while still meeting the university requirements in the Faculty of Liberal Arts.

The solution from UIC’s Department of Classics is just one of a variety of options available to other departments and faculties facing tough times.  I for one am relieved to see that Classics at UIC was not absorbed and disbursed throughout the larger faculty and that it is still on the radar for students wishing to study the ancient world.  The creativity of academics is rarely so self-evident as in situations where their very survival depends on their ability to be flexible, sensible, and demanding simultaneously.

There’s hope for the fossilized bookish types yet!

The project has been met with praise across the country.  York University President Mamdouh Shoukri states that a competitive society needs to use its knowledge.  Project head David Yetman reports:  “Persuading faculty to look beyond the lecture hall and the library is not always straightforward.  Academic success – and tenure – is based primarly on published research, not public works, making participation in such projects entirely voluntary”.  Mr. Yetman calls Yaffle the Google of university research, something that allows researchers, students, and professors to connect, share, trade, and unite their research into work that is mutually beneficial.

Hopefully this project will catch on at other universities – currently it is only linked to Memorial University projects – so that the globalization of knowledge can be developed and augmented.

According to Mr.Finkel, Mr. Simmons’ tablet is the first on record to describe the shape of the vessel:  round, circular, and made from reeds.  The ark did not have to be an ocean-going vessel with a prow and keel; it merely had to float as the flood waters rose.  Vessels of similar design are still used in Iraq and Iran to float livestock during river floods.

The original article from The Globe and Mail weekend edition of 2 January 2010 by Guardian Press Service reporter Maev Kennedy has proved rather difficult to find again.  However, Ms. Kennedy’s article suggests that further questions remain to be answered.  In particular, whether a replica of the ark recently opened to the public in Hong Kong will be considered inaccurate so soon after its unveiling.

In addition, I recently read a verse translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh by Hugh Mason that includes several new tablets that previously had been omitted for editorial reasons.  In the story, Gilgamesh meets Utnapishtim, who drank from the Fountain of Immortality after surviving a flood sent by the gods.  Unerringly similar to the Biblical Noah, Utnapishtim unites the Mesopotamian and Hebrew traditions and suggests, at the very least, a common cultural association between an ancient flood and the reverence due to the survivors.

Archaeology Magazine’s website has an excellent list compiled from the summer 2009 season of underwater sites that made the news when they first appeared but have since fallen out of the public eye, as the intensive archaeological excavations and analyses continue.  In particular, a Phoenician ship discovered off the coast of Cartagena has yielded vital information suggesting that Phoenician traders were interacting with peoples on the Atlantic coast west of the Straits of Gibraltar in the sixth century BCE.  There is also evidence of the diet – primarily nuts – that these ancient sailors could have expected during these long merchant voyages.  A Roman stone carrier was also discovered and, four years on, the site is still thrilling archaeologists.  Nautical archaeologist Deborah Carlson notes that this ship was carrying a marble column that, once assembled, would have been 30 feet high and included a Doric capitol.

There was also a Roman sewn ship discovered in Croatia in May of 2009 at the site of ongoing excavations of the Roman town of Kissa that has sunk into Caska Bay since the Romans inhabited it.  The remains of this ship will enlighten researchers about the process of manufacturing such a light, portable vehicle in this area of the Roman world.

The English Heritage website has also compiled a short list of ongoing projects in the UK that, from the moment of their identification, have had the Roman archaeological world all atwitter.  The most obvious of these are the Chester amphitheatre first discovered in 2004, the Roman villa at Groundwell Ridge, and the Cawthorn Roman camps.

Surprisingly missing from this list is the 2005 discovery of a Roman circus in Colchester, the first of its kind to be found in Britain, thus dispelling all theories about British art depicting the horse races based on stories and travels disseminated to the natives by non-Britons.  This discovery followed quickly on the heels of that of the amphitheatre at the same site in 2004.  The circus has been commemorated with a mosaic created in the Roman tradition by modern artists, and its unveiling was captured in this youtube video.

Also missing from the English Heritage site is the work currently ongoing at the site of the London amphitheatre, discovered in 1988 underneath the late medieval Guildhall of Britain’s capital.  An impressive if surprisingly short tour of the archaeological remains is available, after descending through the Guildhall Art Gallery into the dark underground beneath the Guildhall plaza itself.  Engineers have included a slate ring on the outer floor of this plaza that identifies the limits of the original Roman arena.

The Sagalassos Archaeological Project in recent years has yielded some of the most amazing artifacts ever discovered.  The site, first identified in the nineteenth century by French archaeologists, has since been found to include a large bath complex.  Beginning in July 2007, archaeologists discovered the remains of colossi of Hadrian, the Empress Faustina, and the Emperor Marcus Aurelius.  The colossus of Hadrian made its international debut at the British Museum’s ‘Hadrian:  Empire and Conflict’ exhibition.  The hope is that excavations in coming years will reveal colossal statues for each of the three remaining alcoves in the frigidarium of the baths, perhaps representing the Emperor Antoninus Pius, Hadrian’s wife Sabina, and Marcus Aurelius’ wife Faustina the Younger.  This find potentially represents the first example of imperial statuary limited to a single family, the Antonids, the last three of the traditional Five Good Emperors.

The Pylos Regional Archaeological Project concluded in 2005 after fifteen years of work in Greece at a Bronze Age site dubbed the ‘Palace of Nestor’, after the famously wise king of Homeric epic.  At this point, research and analysis are continuing in the lab and office to compile a publication of this successful dig.

In 2008, news came through the wire from the Egyptian Higher Council of Antiquities that archaeologists had eliminated all but three possible locations of the tomb of the Pharaoh Cleopatra and her doomed lover, the Roman general Marc Antony.  Excavations have, as of October 2009, resumed in Egypt at a site 50 kilometres from Alexandria in the hopes of unearthing the final resting place of this infamous pair.

What is being called the Staffordshire Hoard - a massive find of 1500 gold and silver pieces, larger than the famous Sutton Hoo hoard by a remarkable 6kg – has formally become part of the Department of Prehistory and Europe’s displays at the British Museum.  These pieces, featuring some of the most exquisite goldworking known from the Anglo-Saxon world, was discovered in September 2009 by amateur archaeologist Terry Herbert using a metal detector on a farm in Southern Staffordshire.  Dated to approximately the seventh century, it is the largest gold hoard ever discovered and has been equated with the Lindisfarne Gospels and the Book of Kells for its priceless value to the study of this period of history.

The mighty Perseus Digital Library continues to grow, with further texts by Seneca, Quintillian, Flaccus, Cicero, Aulus Gellius, Ammianus and Petronius.  In addition, they are looking to expand their Greek word database, improve their general searchability, and have recently announced the first release of their Arabic Collection.

And finally, for all those literary projects that I have not yet mentioned, the Athena Review has a substantial and comprehensive list of ongoing work worldwide.

Onward!

NOTE:  The titular quote is from Poem 54, line 63, by Michelangelo Buonarroti as translated by Anthony Mortimer.

The new station, a significant improvement on the old yellowed tile walls much in need of renovation, has pillars in the shape of figures including West Coast totem poles, Central American gods, Egyptian sarcophagi, and Doric columns.  In addition, the TTC text identifying the station now showcases Egyptian hieroglyphs from behind a clear cut-out.

In a single move, the Royal Ontario Museum has highlighted the best of its collections – images that are immediately evocative of coming face-to-face with magical statues as a child visiting the museum for the first time.  As part of the TTC’s revitalization project, architectural firm Diamond and Schmitt have designed and achieved a very appealing result for Museum station. 

Following further investigation, however, I found that there are few who think highly of the new design and instead they lament what one article called the TTC’s quintessential ‘washroom stations’.  One piece in Transit Toronto by Alex Bozikovic highlights the issues surrounding the lukewarm reception the renovation has received:  the TTC’s graphic identity.  Like Transport for London in the UK, who similarly hold the copyright on the font used for the graphic text on the Underground (Johnston, or Johnston Sans), the TTC’s famous font - Toronto Subway Regular – is the exclusive property of the TTC.  As one element that contributes to the Toronto subway’s graphic identity, this font as well as the tiled designs in most of the stations created in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s are treated as a child treats a worn-out favourite teddy bear:  they will fight for it to stay exactly the same, missing limbs and loose button eyes and all, and will fight vehemently.

I think the character of public transit should be cultivated so that the public takes an active and personal interest in its welfare.  But taking it to the point where anything new is treated as a visual irritation, forcing die-hard enthusiasts to avert their eyes, is ridiculous.  Character is not static, not immutable, but polymorphic and eternally so.  It doesn’t matter if that character belongs to a person, an inanimate object, or an ideal.

I think that the newly renovated Museum station draws the eye to the ROM above the same way that, for example, Holborn station does for the mighty British Museum nearby.  You know a cultural centre is nearby, and a spur-of-the-moment decision could get you there.  And remembering to think about your surroundings is something that more people should do generally.  I applaud Diamond and Schmitt for their creative efforts, and look forward to seeing their designs for two further stations – St. Patrick (Art Gallery of Ontario) and Osgoode (Toronto Performing Arts Centre) – come to fruition.

Part way up the hillside – artificially increased by Herod himself to a further height of 65 feet and overlooking a vast expanse of desert, with Jerusalem to the east - Netzer’s team have found architraves, friezes, and cornices all decorated with various Judaea and Nabataean funerary motifs (Herod’s mother was from Petra, capital of the Nabataeans).  However, the most stellar discovery thus far has been the remains of a smashed sarcophagus, and specifically its red limestone fragments decorated with rosettes.  It appears that the mausoleum stood on the eastern slope of the great palatial fortress – the largest in the Roman world, author Barbara Kreiger points out - on a base 30 by 30 feet and originally standing approximately 80 feet high. 

Without letting assumptions cloud observations, the whole site seems to indicate nothing less than the mausoleum of the king himself.  Jodi Magness, an archaeologist in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Maryland, and Ken Holum, curator of the Smithsonian exhibition ‘King Herod’s Dream’ both feel that Ehud Netzer has found what has eluded archaeologists for two hundred years.

From Herodium’s first identification in 1838 by Edward Robinson who, like Heinrich Schliemann with Homer at Troy, used the extant works of Flavius Josephus to seek out the site, to confirmation of that identification by german archaeologist Conrad Schick, Herodium has been under the scrutiny of diligent archaeologists for two centuries.  In the 1860s, French explorer Felicien de Saulcy, began an outright search for Herod’s tomb.  From 1963 to 1967, Father Virgilio Corbo of the Franciscan Faculty of Biblical Sciences and Archaeology in Rome scoured the summit.  Lambert Dolphin, an American geophysicist, worked through the 1983 dig season analysing the base of the highest of the fortress’s four towers.  Netzer’s own work, begun on the site in the 1970s and continuing since then, allowed him to further narrow down possible locations for the tomb.  His 2007 discoveries are, he believes, as conclusive as can be expected.

However, Duane Roller, professor emeritus at Ohio State University, suggests instead that Herod’s tomb is at the base of the summit tower and not part-way up the slope at the site of Netzer’s dig.  One of Roller’s main arguments against this site as the location of Herod’s tomb is that no inscriptions have been found to positively identify the mausoleum.  Refuting this comment is the evidence that inscriptions were not the norm in Judaean burials during the first century CE when Herod died.

More to the point, the body of King Herod is no longer entombed at Herodium.  Coins recovered from the site, along with the obvious destruction pattern of the sarcophagus itself, suggest that the mausoleum was desecrated some time during the first Jewish Rebellion against the Romans in 66-74 CE.  Herod was a particularly ruthless king who killed much of his own family before he died, fearing they were plotting against him.  He had come to power with the support of the Roman princeps Augustus, whom he had befriended while in exile in Rome, and his reign was marked with ambitious building projects throughout Judaea.  Among his most famous were the fortresses at Herodium and Masada and the great temple at Jerusalem, built to replace the First Temple that was destroyed by the Persians in the sixth century BCE.

Archaeologists who are not already affiliated with the site and those scholars who find ancient Judaea endlessly alluring will, if they have not already, begin flocking to the site and those who do not will watch avidly for news of further discoveries at Herodium.  It is clear that Ehud Netzer’s career as an archaeologist has reached new heights of success, and we can only hope that his team will continue surprising the world with news of King Herod.

In the nineteenth century, Lord Elgin, with permission from the Ottoman Empire that ruled over a not-yet-unified modern Greece, removed several large sculptures from the Acropolis in Athens that were originally part of the Parthenon.  These sculptures have, since Elgin sold them for £35,000, been on display in the British Museum in London for anyone and everyone to see, free of charge.

In the last decades, the Greek state has been continuously demanding the return of these sculptures, arguing that they are cultural property that were unlawfully removed from their country of origin.  At first, it was relatively simple:  curators of the British Museum suggested that the Greeks were unable to provide proper housing for the sculptures and that, until such a structure was available to safely protect the marbles, Greece would have no hope of getting them back.

In just under a week, Athens will unveil its newly completed New Acropolis Museum, built parallel to the Acropolis itself and with a singular purpose:  to properly house and display those sections of the Acropolis buildings that can no longer remain outside but should still be accessible to the world to see.  Inside, are the Caryatid statues from the Erechtheon and the remnants of the mighty frieze that decorated the exterior wall of the cella among other artifacts associated with the Acropolis.

The British Museum has denied that any overtures were made to the Greek government about permanently returning the Parthenon marbles that they hold to Greece.  In reponse, the New Acropolis Museum will also display plaster molds of those pieces that have not been returned – ‘reunited’ is the word the Greeks use, something that Mr Moss very astutely points out to focus on the attitudes of the situation – to accent what is still missing from the original collection.

In the British Museum, in the rooms immediately before the Parthenon gallery, is a short but accurate history of the marbles from when they were first constructed in the fifth century BC to when they were acquired by the British Museum, and includes a continuing summary of the international debate about their restoration to Greece.

The Brits make for a good argument:  the area known today as Greece was not a stable independent state in 1806 when Lord Elgin was studying the Acropolis.  Indeed, he sought permission to remove some of the sculptures from the only authority available at the time – the Ottomans – and it was granted to him.  When, ten years later, Elgin was short of funds, he sold the pieces to the British Museum where they have been on display to the world, free of charge, ever since.  The British Museum has never denied access to anyone and the marbles have been seen by millions of people since their arrival in London two hundred years ago.

However, the Greeks make a good argument as well:  the marbles are part of a structure that symbolises one of the lasting ideas Ancient Greek thinkers bestowed on the western world:  democracy, and that the permanent separation of the Acropolis’ constituent parts detracts from the original magnificence envisioned by Pericles, one of the heads of the state of Classical Athens.

Both institutions and governments are taking the high road saying that only in their possession will the true value of the Parthenon Marbles be communicated to the world at large, that the culture of Ancient Greece is a culture inherited not just by the modern western world but by the whole of human society.  The marbles represent the pinacle of the Classical Age of philosophy and government and of a culture that was capable of creating such beauty from stone.  But both also argue the selfish side, which has become so painfully obvious in the decades’-long debate because neither side is willing to compromise on any front, moral or practical.

This argument will continue to rage, and most likely without resolution, for decades more.  Until human society can recognise that human culture is pervasive and not the realm of one group over another, the Parthenon Marbles will exemplify our current conception of culture wherever they are.

The TOCS-IN project (Table of Contents of Indexes of Interest to Classicists) is run by several people out of Toronto (Canada), Louvain (Belgium) and Baltimore (USA) and I’m happy to say that I now consider myself a contributing volunteer to this monumental work.

TOCS-IN is designed to provide an interactive reference for classicists to find articles from all the available scholarly journals.  The project itself has been divided into two:  the Louvain group is focusing on all journals published before 1992 while the Toronto and Baltimore branches are working on anything published after 1992 and are also keeping the indexes up to date with new publications.

TOCS-IN is looking for volunteers who have the time, interest and inclination to scour through back issues of an incredible number of scholarly journals and compile .txt lists (using specific formatting) of the tables of contents of each and every issue.

I have offered to take on the Papers of the British School at Rome, The American Journal of Archaeology and the Cambridge Classical Journal.  My choices are based on my interests (history and archaeology) and the regularity with which I have found articles for various research projects in the past (the American Journal of Archaeology, for example), and I feel that I could make a positive contribution to this project and facilitate the research of numerous classicists around the world.

Just another reason to keep on networking.

As always, the British Museum has the knack for bringing history into a context where its present-day value can be gaged more readily, and without the usual strain that many historians and essayists force upon that connection.

I found, aesthetically, that the show was well lit and laid out, allowing visitors to traverse the exhibit with relatively ease (despite the crowds) and to view the artifacts, artworks and other aspects of the exhibit in a freeform manner (to a certain extent, anyway).  I am always appreciative of any museum that includes panoramic glass display cases, since I have always wanted to look at an artifact around 360 degrees, particularly if I can’t hold it in my hands too.  This allows audiences to view the work from more than one angle and in more than one place within the exhibit, adding a more visceral visual experience for the visitor.

In terms of the content of the exhibit, the combination of artifacts, ancient and modern art, Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, among others, was precisely what I was expecting.  This combination highlighed the uniqueness of the ancient artifacts and gave the visitor a visual experience of the city that, for all intents and purposes, has practically no visual remains.  And yet, this lack is irrelevant, since the concept of Babylon transcends any archaeological site and instead sits patiently in the mindset of the western world.  The inclusion of the table of the first map of the world and William Blake’s Nebuchadnezzar in particular were powerful elements:  the former because of its surprisingly awesome place in world history, and the latter because of its powerful if regluar evocation of ancient Babylon.

I did find, on occasion, that the modern art works seemed to clump together, apart from the ancient artifacts and thus dimished from the correlation between them.  This, however, may have been a product of space limiations and variety of modern art versus ancient artifacts.  And yet, it was only a minor sense of aesthetic and experiential weakness of the exhibit.

I would recommend this show for anyone looking to spend an hour staring at something completely different, for those who are fascinated by Ancient Mesopotamia and Babylon, and for those looking for a connection between the old world and the new, spanning time, space, and reality – for anyone looking for something and feels that they might find it here.

There is a lovely bit of a joke here as well. Written across the pediment of the new building are the words “Department of Household Science”, something I believe Classics should be: something everyone knows a little about.

So congratulations to the Department on their new home! And a little bit of envy too, since I won’t be a student there to have the run of the place.