Studenda Mira

Anyone planning on visiting Hadrian's Wall this Saturday may want to note this bizarre little news item so that they can plan their visit accordingly. I have no pretensions to being a travel consultant, but my humble advice to such folks would be to schedule a late lunch: Choirs, including Carlisle’s Margaret Frayne Singers, will be accompanied by loofahs, bath toys and shower caps. That said, if anyone reading this is in the vicinity, I'd love some photos or video.

Breaking the silence with a link: The Times has a tight, evocative travel piece on Rome. I don't know what's so "sinister," as the headline claims (I'm fortunate to be permitted to write my own headlines, most of the time), but Salley Vickers gets to a handful of places that might not otherwise be on the itinerary of a first-time visitor.

Piazza San Silvestro, Rome By 799, they didn't observe the Robigalia in Rome anymore. Gods of mildew were a thing of the past, as were vile sacrifices of dog and sheep guts. But people still knew that a higher power had to be enlisted on April 25 to prevent the crops from succumbing to blight and mold. They turned to the bishop, as they had done for most things since the days when chunks of masonry first began falling off the empty buildings on the Palatine Hill. Just as his fifth-century namesake had interceded on Rome's behalf against other, more immediate (and better armed ) threats to the public interest, Pope Leo III stepped into the void. His service was not welcomed by all. Leo struggled to establish himself in the long shadow of his dynamic predecessor, Pope Hadrian, who had been dead for less than four years. Most of the awestruck pilgrims lining the papal procession route hadn't heard the rumors swirling around the new pope, which were scandalous. He...

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...

Salarian Gate, Rome Buses, scooters and Smart Fortwos roll through a breach in Aurelian's wall as wide as any made by the 19th century artillery that ended the last vestige of the Papal States . Their drivers meet only a little less resistance than the Italian army did when they blasted through , a few hundred feet to the east. The Salarian Gate didn't survive the onslaught, and when they cleared the rubble, it revealed the tomb of an 11-year-old poet laureate. In 94, Sulpicius Maximus won a poetry contest held in honor of Jupiter Capitolinus, but the light of his fame burned too briefly to prevent him from being lost under a pylon two centuries later. His monument was whisked off to the Capitoline Museum, and a replacement for the old gate was erected soon after. It, in turn, gave way to the march of progress in 1921; room had to be made for bigger things than salt merchants' carts. Now there's an enormous gap that would have horrified the city's anc...

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.