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Tag: Ancient Greece

Greco-Roman Mummy Masks in the Egyptian Museum

Greco-Roman Mummy Masks in the Egyptian Museum

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Mask of a boy named Heraklion, Roman Period 2nd century AD.
This painted plaster mask covered the head and chest of the
mummy. Heraklion offers a bunch of grapes to a small bird.

Visitors to Egypt tend to want to see the great sites of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. The pyramids, the Valley of the Kings, and the splendid temples around Luxor are all well worth a visit, but Egypt’s later periods are of interest as well. I just went on one of my semi-regular trips to Egypt with the specific intent to study the Greco-Roman period. It plays a role in the third book in my Masked Man of Cairo neo-pulp series and there’s no better inspiration than actually seeing the sites and artifacts themselves.

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Music in Antiquity on Display in Madrid

Music in Antiquity on Display in Madrid

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Attic red figure cup of a female musician playing at an altar, c. 480 BC.

It’s the summer art season here in Madrid, and tourists, locals, and immigrants like me are fleeing to the air conditioned sanctuaries of major exhibitions to avoid heat stroke and see some culture.

One of the more interesting exhibitions is at the Caixa Forum, an exhibition space run by one of Spain’s major banks. Music in Antiquity traces the development of various musical instruments in Europe and the Middle East, and looks at how music was used in various ancient cultures.

About 400 artifacts from the Louvre, the National Museum in Athens, Metropolitan Museum of Art and other institutions trace some 3,000 years of history.

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Greco-Roman Treasures in the Egyptian Museum

Greco-Roman Treasures in the Egyptian Museum

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Mummy portrait from the 2nd century AD
of two brothers who appear to have died together

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is an addictive place. On my two writing retreats in Egypt last year I found myself returning again and again. The collections are so vast, the displays so stunning, that no matter how many times you go you always find something that bowls you over.

Much of the museum is laid out chronologically, from the predynastic era all the way up to the Greco-Roman period (332 BC – 395 AD). This last period of ancient Egypt is often overlooked except for the famous mummy portraits like the one pictured above, lifelike paintings of the deceased. The rest of the art from this time is less compelling. Some of it is overdone, almost cartoonish, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting. Here’s a small sample of what the museum had to offer.

I apologize for the quality of some of these photos. The Egyptian Museum is poorly lit and many of the cases are dirty, making good photography difficult. Hope you enjoy them anyway!

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Competition in Ancient Greece

Competition in Ancient Greece

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Marble statue of a discus thrower. Second century A.D. copy
of a fifth century B.C. Greek original. Said to have been found
in Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli. The Emperor Hadrian had quite a
thing for beautiful young athletes. His favorite youth, Antinous,
was immortalized in numerous statues. Antinous didn’t have
those awesome deltoids, though.

It’s autumn, and that means here in Madrid the summer art shows are wrapping up and the autumn exhibitions are upon us. Madrid has several fine galleries and world-class museums to choose from, and the line-up this year is looking pretty good. Stay tuned for some fun shows here on Black Gate.

In the meantime, one of the last of the summer shows to finish is Agon! Competition in Ancient Greece at the Caixa Forum, a private gallery owned by one of the big Spanish banks. The show brings together dozens of objects from the British Museum in London, some of which are usually on permanent display there and others that I’ve never seen before.

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Underwater Archaeology at the Ashmolean Museum

Underwater Archaeology at the Ashmolean Museum

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3. Amphora with coral. Lent by Soprintendenza del Mare -® Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Roman amphora with coral, from the Levanzo shipwreck AD 275‒300

Sicily has been the center of Mediterranean history for centuries. Positioned at the halfway point between the western and eastern halves of the sea, and between Europe and Africa, it has been a nexus of trade and warfare ever since humanity started sailing. Now a major exhibition at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum looks at the discoveries by underwater archaeologists around Sicily’s shores.

Storms, War & Shipwrecks Treasures from the Sicilian Seas brings together more than 200 objects for a variety of civilizations to highlight Sicily’s importance in ancient shipping.

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Was Homer a Historian After All? A Look at The Trojan War: A New History

Was Homer a Historian After All? A Look at The Trojan War: A New History

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The Trojan War A New HistoryImagine if the Trojan War happened pretty much as Homer described it? How would modern archaeology, scholarship, and our understanding of war help us understand the events of the Illiad?

Yes, on the face of it, Barry Strauss’s The Trojan War – A New History is an odd book. It’s a bit like John Morriss’s Age of Arthur, which took Nennius and Geoffrey of Monmouth more or less at their word, much to the derision of other Dark Age historians.

However, this isn’t a Dark Osprey flight of fantasy; Strauss is well aware that he’s doing a “just suppose” kind of history and he does make a good argument as to why we should at least consider Homer as more journalist than fabulist.

For a start, Homer was (probably) based on the coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey was the home to many Greek colonies), and may have had access to local historical sources, including traditions reflecting the Trojan point of view.

The interventions of the gods mirror the rhetoric of numerous Middle Eastern inscriptions in which kings and Pharaohs do mighty deeds while the gods hold their hands in person. The Trojans and their allies also feel authentic to “Asia,” and the rhetoric and political landscape matches what we now know of the milieu.

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