Several archeological sites of interest:

On Malta, where St. Paul was shipwrecked, there are tours of the remains of a first-century Hellenistic Jewish community: “ancient Jewish tombs … carry religious symbols and other engraved decorations, such as crosses, palm fronds, or doves with olive branches – or, in some cases, the Jewish seven-branched candlestick (menorah).”

In Egypt archeologists have found another underwater early Christian church: “Forty metres beneath the surface the divers discovered a complete portico of the temple of Khnum; two huge, unidentified columns; and four pollards from the Coptic era. Hawass said these pieces would remain on the river bed as they were too heavy to be lifted out the water. Early studies show that the pollards may be part of a Christian church that may have once been located in the area but for unknown reasons was demolished or destroyed.”

Jim Davila reports on digs related to the messianic claimant Shimon bar Kokhba. SBK was an anti-Roman Jewish rebel whose story is told by several of the Fathers. According to his contemporary Justin Martyr, Simon ordered Christians “to be led away to terrible punishment” unless they joined his cause and cursed Jesus of Nazareth (First Apology 31.6).

And how often did the pagan Romans beat their wives? New books dig into the literary and archeological evidence, which Rodney Stark also discussed in The Rise of Christianity.

Patristic-era finds at Philippi:

Excavations conducted at … Philippi since 1988 have unearthed new findings… Many Christian ruins, especially of the 5th-6th century AD, are spread over the site. St. Paul had preached the gospel to Christian converts there. Private residences and an agora in successive residential phases through the centuries have been discovered in the region of Philippi as new excavations brought to light up to three layers of settlements, one built on top of the other during different time periods. Among the findings of the new university-sponsored excavation, to be presented during the 21st meeting assessing the 2007 archaeological work, which was launched Thursday at the Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum, is a 4th century AD mosaic floor of impressive technique featuring geometrical design. The recently unearthed floor was discovered beneath findings that were built earlier, dated in the times of Emperor Justinian (527-565 AD).

Hat tip: Rogue Classicism.

Discovery News tells the fascinating story of Rome’s plans to colorize the Trajan Column with light beams.

The Trajan Column, one of Rome’s most famous monuments, will be shown next year under a totally new light. Italian researchers announced they plan to restore the column’s original bright colors by “painting” it with light beams.

Erected in 113 A.D. in honor of the Emperor Trajan (53-117 A.D.), the huge marble column stands almost 100 feet in height. It is decorated with a spiral relief sculpture, winding 23 times around and depicting the story of Trajan’s triumphant campaigns in Dacia, now part of Romania.

One of the best preserved of all Roman artworks, the monument has however lost what might have been it most distinctive feature — color.

“The column, like many other statues of antiquity, was a carnival of color. The knights, the shields, the horses, the rivers, the sky were all painted,” Maurizio Anastasi, head of the technical office of Rome Superintendency for Archaeology told Discovery News.

Anastasi plans to return the column to its full polychrome glory using an innovative, fully reversible technology… (Read More)

Trajan’s memorials are many and beautiful. I know of no greater tribute to them than the (imagined) dialogue between the emperor Constantine and a fourth-century avant-garde sculptor in Evelyn Waugh’s novel Helena. The two men are discussing the just-unveiled Arch of Constantine.

“So you are responsible for those monstrosities I saw yesterday. Perhaps you can explain what they are meant to represent?”

“I will try, sir. The arch, as conceived by my friend Professor Emolphus here, is, as you see, on traditional lines, modified to suit modern convention. It is, as you might say, a broad mass broken by apertures. Now this mass involves certain surfaces which Professor Emolphus conceived had about them a certain monotony. The eye was not held, if you understand me. Accordingly he suggested that I relieve them with the decorative features you mention. I thought the result rather happy myself. Did you find the shadows too pronounced? They detract from the static quality of the design? I have heard that criticism.”

Constantine’s patience had been strained by these words. Now he asked icily: “And have you heard this criticism? Your figures are lifeless and expressionless as dummies. Your horses look like children’s toys. There is no grace or movement in the whole thing. I’ve seen better work done by savages. Why, damn it, there’s something there that looks like a doll that’s supposed to be Me.”

“I was not aiming at exact portraiture, sir.”

“And why not, pray?”

“It was not the function of the feature.”

Constantine turned to his left, “You say this man is the best sculptor in Rome?”

“Everyone says so,” said Fausta.

“Are you the best sculptor in Rome?”

Carpicius gave a little shrug. There was a silence. Then Professor Emolphus rather bravely intervened. “Perhaps if your Majesty would give us some idea of what exactly you had in mind, the design might be adapted.”

“I’ll tell you what I had in mind. Do you know the arch of Trajan?”

“Of course.”

“What do you think of it?”

“Good of its period,” said the Professor, “quite good. Not perhaps the best. I prefer the arch at Benevento on many grounds. But the arch of Trajan is definitely attractive.”

“I have the arch of Trajan in mind,” said Constantine. “I have never seen the arch at Benevento. I’m not the least interested in the arch at Benevento.”

“Your Majesty should really give it your attention. The architrave…”

“I am interested in the arch of Trajan. I want an arch like that.”

“But that was—how long—more than two hundred years ago,” said Fausta. “You can’t expect one like that today.”

“Why not?” said Constantine. “Tell me, why not? The Empire’s bigger and more prosperous and more peaceful than it’s ever been. I’m always being told so in every public address I hear. But when I ask for a little thing like the arch of Trajan, you say it can’t be done. Why not? Could you,” he said, turning again on Carpicius, “make me sculpture like that?”

Carpicius looked at him without the least awe. Two forms of pride were here irreconcilably opposed; two prigs stood face to face. “One might, I suppose, contrive some sort of pastiche,” he said. “It would not be the least significant.”

“Damn significance,” said Constantine. “Can you do it or can’t you?”

“Precisely like that? It is a type of representational work which required a technical virtuosity which you may or may not find attractive—personally, I rather do—but the modern artist…”

“Can you do it?”

“No.”

Few books have made me laugh so hard as Waugh’s Helena. Once, while reading it in Rome with Rob Corzine, I feared the laughter was going to send me into the Italian medical system. The book is in print in an affordable edition from Loyola Press, publisher of my book The Grail Code: Quest for the Real Presence. It’s in the Loyola Classics series, which also includes Hilda Prescott’s brilliant romance Son of Dust, set in eleventh-century Normandy. Someone you know wrote the introduction to that book.

Thanks to my friend and great benefactor Jim Manney for bringing all these pleasant thoughts to my mind.

The London Independent reports: After 1,500 years as a ruin, gladiators’ stadium to be restored:

It still bears its thrilling ancient name, and the antique ruins on the Palatine Hill, the heart of ancient Rome and home of the Caesars, still gaze down upon it. But now it takes a feat of the imagination to see Circus Maximus as it must have been in its pomp.

Today it is little more than a long, narrow park, 340 metres in length, with a small archeological dig fitfully in progress at its south-eastern end. It can still hold a crowd: Genesis played a free concert here last year, and Bob Geldof persuaded Rome’s mayor, Walter Veltroni, to let him use it for the Italian leg of the Live-8 spectacular in 2005. The rest of the time it is the haunt of dog-walkers, joggers and the occasional conceptual artist.

But 2,000 years ago this was the most exciting spot in the city. Long before the building of the Colosseum, crowds in their hundreds of thousands packed the stands to watch 12 teams of charioteers scorch the earth. Gladiators and wild animals fought in mortal combat, and the central arena was often flooded so miniature triremes could battle it out for the Romans’ delight. If a particularly large number of people had to be crucified, Circus Maximus was the obvious place to do it.

The strip’s last big show was in AD549. Then the Barbarians arrived and laid it to waste, and for the next millenium and a half it was no more than a very large allotment with a fancy name.

But now, after the centuries of neglect and years of debate and campaigning, Circus Maximus is finally to get some attention. Beginning on 20 June, the city’s archeological authorities are to begin a careful and respectful restoration.

Eugenio La Rocca, Superintendent of Rome and lecturere in archeology at Rome’s Sapienza University, said: “We are trying to realise the old dreams that Rome has maintained from the 19th century up to the present. We will do our best to restore this site, which was of the utmost importance in our history.

“[Emperor] Tarquin drained the site 2,500 years ago, but it was Julius Caesar in 46 BC who erected the first buildings here, which were consumed by fire in AD64. With the Emperor Trajan, the performances began to assume the wondrous proportions that we only know today from films.”

Professor La Rocca stressed that he will not be attempting to restore the Circus to its former glory…. [There’s more.]

Meanwhile, this (not quite sympathetic) article gives a little background on the early Christians’ opinions about the Circus:

Not surprisingly, later Christian writers inveighed against the Circus, convinced that it was the devil’s playground, although, to be sure, it was criticized less than the gladiatorial games or the theater. In De Spectaculis, Tertullian writes (c.AD 200) with the fervor of the converted that the very attraction of the Circus is what makes it so damnable.

“Seeing then that madness is forbidden us, we keep ourselves from every public spectacle–including the circus, where madness of its own right rules. Look at the populace coming to the show–mad already! disorderly, blind, excited already about its bets!….Next taunts or mutual abuse without any warrant of hate, and applause, unsupported by affection….they are plunged in grief by another’s bad luck, high in delight at another’s success. What they long to see, what they dread to see,–neither has anything to do with them; their love is without reason, their hatred without justice” (XVI).

Three-hundred years later, Cassiodorus, in his Variae, is just as adamant.

“However, this I declare to be altogether remarkable: the fact that here, more than at other shows, dignity is forgotten, and men’s minds are carried away in frenzy. The Green chariot wins: a section of the people laments; the Blue leads, and, in their place, a part of the city is struck with grief. They hurl frantic insults, and achieve nothing; they suffer nothing, but are gravely wounded; and they engage in vain quarrels as if the state of their endangered country were in question. It is right to think that all this was dedicated to a mass superstition, when there is so clear a departure from decent behaviour (III.51.11-12).”

Ironically, in their condemnation of the Circus, the Christian apologists provide many details about it that otherwise would be unknown. Tertullian (VIII-IX) asserts that the eggs are symbolic of Castor and Pollux, twins born from Leda’s egg; the dolphins, considered by the Romans to be the fastest of creatures, in honor of Neptune, who was patron of the equestrian order and of horses and riders. The chariots are dedicated to the pagan gods: the biga to the Moon, the quadriga to the Sun, and the seiugis to Jupiter. The Whites and Reds represented winter and summer, and were dedicated to Zephyrs and Mars, as the Greens were to the earth (spring), and the Blues to the sky or sea (autumn).

Cassiodorus writes of stewards who ride out to announce the beginning of a race, the white break line, and the spina that divided the track. He also relates the origin of the mappa used to signal the start of the race: Once, when Nero had taken too long at lunch and the crowd grew restive, he threw out his napkin from the royal box to signify that he had finished and the games could begin. Cassiodorus is the last to speak of chariot racing in the west.

A century earlier, Rome had fallen to the barbarians, and increasing political instability led to more factional violence. After AD 541, no more consuls were appointed (they could no longer afford the honor in any event) and the burden of sponsoring the races fell to the emperor. But there were other demands on the imperial purse, and the last race in the Circus Maximus is recorded by Procopius to have occurred in AD 550 (Gothic Wars, III.37).

For a thousand years, horses had raced at Rome.

If you need to boost your hopes of archeological discoveries some day filling in early Christianity’s documentary gaps, just read the news from the last few days:

The Prague Post looks back on 50 Years of Czech Egyptology and ends with a hopeful look forward, based on new excavations in the Black desert, “a virgin area archaeologically,” “where Paleolithic tools lie alongside early Christian settlements.” Said one archeologist: “When faced with this ancient and glorious civilization and the possibilities that it still offers for research today, one can’t help but feel humble. All our achievements, however great they seem to us, will one day be surpassed.”

The Jerusalem Post announces “A 2,000-year old Roman city will rise again in Tiberias as part of a new archeological park.” The remains include a large Byzantine basilica. (Who knows what’s still undergound?)

Jim Davila brings us Turkish coverage of another ancient monastery still in business: Mor Jacob, built in A.D. 419. (Just wait till they clean the attic.)

The New York Times is worrying over the Appian Way, whose roadside properties were among the earliest Roman spaces to be Christianized. (It’s the Vandals again.)

Interesting digs in Serbia:

The latest discovery once against confirms that the archaeological location of Medijan has greater significance than it is usually credited, with its links to Constantine the Great (280-337 A.D.), and as a residence of the Roman emperors in the third and fourth century AD, archaeologists say.

The site is located near the road leading from Niš to Niška Banja…

From the early Christian period, archaeologists have uncovered what they believe to be Germanic graves.

What are the links to Constantine? He was born in Naissus (Niš). There are remains of a fourth-century Imperial villa nearby, as well as other pricey pieces of ancient real estate. Luxurious mosaics have been found there. It will be interesting to find out whether those “Germanic graves” from “the early Christian period” were Christian graves — and what was in the graves, besides bones.

A rock-hewn cave used by ancient schismatic Christians hiding from Byzantine authorities has been found by chance on the west Sinai coast. Egyptian archeologists stumbled upon what is believed to be a fourth-century grotto decorated with Christian murals.

A find of some importance….

ATHENS, Greece – Greek workers discovered around 1,000 graves, some filled with ancient treasures, while excavating for a subway system in the historic city of Thessaloniki, the state archaeological authority said Monday.

Some of the graves, which dated from the first century B.C. to the 5th century A.D., contained jewelry, coins and various pieces of art, the Greek archaeological service said in a statement.

News from “the birthpace of Christianity in Ethiopia”: a patristic-era Christian monument will be restored.

(ANSA) – Addis Ababa, March 6 – A holy monument returned to Ethiopia after years of foot-dragging is to be re-erected later this year after the final technical wrinkles are ironed out, the Italian ambassador to the East African country said Tuesday.

Raffaele de Lutio told ANSA that a concrete slipway leading up to the obelisk’s site has been completed and the base itself has been reinforced to prevent the monument causing damage to a recently discovered necropolis.

He voiced the hope that the official ceremony will take place ”within the first week of September, just before the Ethiopian New Year which falls on September 11”.

A delegation from the United Nations cultural heritage body UNESCO is expected to arrive ”by Easter” to give the go-ahead, the envoy said. The revered obelisk, looted by Benito Mussolini’s Fascist troops, was flown back and re-assembled amid fanfare at the holy city of Axum almost four years ago.

Ethiopians, who consider themselves descendants of the ancient civilisation, clamoured for it to be put up immediately…

As well as being a Coptic (Egyptian Christian) holy place, Axum is a popular tourist venue littered with some 120 stones like the obelisk, some half-standing but most lying on the ground.

Made of dark basalt, the Axum obelisk is actually a funeral stele – a stone tower that was used to mark graves.

Unlike most surviving steles, which are blank, it is decorated with carved designs of windows and doors and topped with a sort of stone crest.

Axum, which dominated the Horn of Africa from the first to the sixth century AD, was reputed one of the four great powers of the time along with Rome, China and Persia, pouring out ivory, animals, textiles, gold, jewels and spices to Roman, Arabian and Indian markets.

It declined as Arab invaders swept in from the north but retained its prestige as the birthpace of Christianity in Ethiopia.

It also enjoys a mythic aura thanks to a legend that Menelik I, son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, brought the Ark of the Covenant to Axum from Jerusalem, 1,000 years before Christ.

Some believe the Ark – symbol of God’s covenant with the Jews – is still hidden there in a small church built in 1965 by Haile Selassie, last Emperor of Ethiopia and a claimed descendant of Solomon.

Nubian Christian sites — from the age of the Church Fathers — are imperiled, says the Institute on Religion and Democracy: “In the wake of tragedies in Darfur and Southern Sudan, an ancient civilization in Nubia is about to be swept away by dammed rivers.” It’s part of the “Arabization” project of the Sudan’s National Islamic Front regime.