Studenda Mira

After the last post , I poked around the library a bit to see if I could find more substantive information on Yemen's Akhdam and their traditional association with the region's 6th C. Aksumite conquerors. I found "Akhdam tribe in servitude," a 1976 Geographical article by James Horgen. His version of the "commonly held myth about their ancestry...heard from both illiterate tribesmen and learned scholars" goes something like this: After 570, Sayf ibn dhi-Yaz'an, the Jewish Himyarite aristocrat who'd successfully entreatied Sassanid Persia to deliver his people from Aksumite Christian dominion, was installed as Persia's vassal. He killed the surviving Aksumite fighters, save for a few who were kept as a ceremonial guard for his processions. Ceremonial or not, the Aksumites still carried spears. They played along with the pomp for a while, but one day, they turned those spears on Sayf ibn dhi-Yaz'an and assassinated him. This prompted the...

Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians came out in 2005, but the paperback only hit U.S. shelves a few weeks ago. Heather summarizes his thesis—yes, it was barbarians, and Rome made them—in a new essay at HNN.

Ruins of the Serapeum, Alexandria. Photo by Bernt Rostad . Serapis stood alone. The statue of Alexandria's patron god wore the same expression of divine detachment as it had for seven hundred years, with a grain measure balanced on his head to symbolize his blessings of plenty upon his city. But the people assembled before him now were not his followers. They were gone, fled or hidden after the imperial herald read a pronouncement from the Emperor Theodosius: The Hellenes, as the Christians called anyone who followed the old gods, would receive amnesty for their role in the bloody siege that had paralyzed "the crown of all cities" for weeks, but their cult was now illegal. Serapis had become deus non gratis in his own city, and this was his reckoning. As his followers scattered, the soldiers had marched confidently into the massive temple, but now they paused. Declaring a cult illegal and driving off its adherents was one thing. Raising arms against a god ...

A few days after Egeria's mention here, the Reverend Chloe Breyer gives her a more thorough treatment in Slate: The ease with which she attained military escorts through far-flung and dangerous places suggests high connections in the imperial court. Indeed, one line of research makes her out to be the daughter of a Spanish member of the court of Theodosius the Great, emperor from 379 to 395, and possibly the leader of what St. Jerome rancorously described as a wealthy and ostentatiously behaved travel party heading to the East at about that time.

The "Burning Bush" at St. Catherine's Monastery, Egypt. Photo by piddy77 . The NYT's Michael Slackman reports today on the doings of Egypt's chief archaeologist in the Sinai peninsula. His team has recently unearthed a military fort which dates to the period of the Exodus, but he doesn't think much of the Exodus itself: “Really, it’s a myth,” Dr. Hawass said of the story of the Exodus, as he stood at the foot of a wall built during what is called the New Kingdom. Whatever the official position of the state, local tourism businesses remain happy to capitalize on eager believers: In Egypt today, visitors to Mount Sinai are sometimes shown a bush by tour guides and told it is the actual bush that burned before Moses. It's unclear whether Slackman is referring to the bush in Saint Catherine's Monastery , which has enclosed the purported site of Moses' vision since the third century. In any case, pointing out the bush to wide-eyed religious ...

Old City Sana'a Photo by eesti . On the heels of the last post, I was entranced by this lush travel article in the New York Times (free registration required) about the Yemeni island of Socotra, off the Horn of Africa. It's not difficult to imagine traders on that Alexandria-India run porting here for one last pit stop before the big push across the Arabian Sea: Socotra is significantly inhabited, and has been for some 2,000 years. More than 40,000 people now live there: many in Hadibu, the island’s main town, the rest scattered in small stone villages, working as fishermen and semi-nomadic Bedouin herders. Nature and culture are longstanding neighbors. I especially liked this bit: Lying on the rocky ground, with the scent of frankincense fresh in memory, I felt as though I had stumbled into a chapter of the Old Testament. Well before dawn I woke to the sound of the family patriarch’s voice warbling a long, mournful prayer. He finished after a few minutes, and the ni...

Fordham University's Kimberly Bowes will explore the division between public and private expressions of Late Antique Christianity in her upcoming book , Possessing the Holy: Private Worship in Late Antiquity . From the article: In the fourth century, said Bowes, the concept of “church” was not yet defined—many people still worshipped in private home chapels or in estate churches which served both their owners and local peasantry. “There was no consensus on what the church was,” said Bowes. Once the Christian church became established, the bishops, who often called such worship heresy, condemned private gatherings. “You’ll find some really angry texts [written by bishops] from this period,” said Bowes.

Anthropologist Stefano Fait offers an essay on the 5th century invasions that nicely surveys the major events of the period while framing the "barbarians" within the modern debate on immigration, assimilation and ethnic identity.

6th C. tomb epigraph, S. Silvestro in Capite I'm back from my first visit to Rome, where I discovered that one can pack a lot of quality sightseeing into 60 hours if one picks their spots carefully. I also discovered how very, very little I really know and understand about the Roman world, despite all the reading and studying I've done. I was an armchair expert without my armchair. It was very humbling (in a good way). Just breaking the silence for the moment; there is more to come on my weekend in Urbs Aeterna. In the meantime, enjoy this 6th century tomb epigraph (I think? Anyone?) from San Silvestro in Capite . ETA : As Judith mentions in the comments, she wrote about San Silvestro in Capite just a few weeks ago.

This is premiering on the History Channel next weekend. So much for the mostly-benign Christian metamorphoses of Late Antiquity, huh?