Category: Archeology

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Titanic Stupidity

I leave the office for just a couple of days, and what happens? The guy who steered the silver-screen Titanic to its watery grave now takes his show onto land and digs up the mausoleum of the Christ Family. Or something like that.

Did he follow clues gleaned from between the lines of the Gospel of Judas? Or did the Louvre’s curator carve directional signs around his navel as he lay dying?

Can credulity be strained any more? Or is the elastic gone by now?

While I’m trying to catch up with the phone and email messages that piled up while I was away, please visit Mark Goodacre for good posts and links to even more good posts.

ALSO WHILE I WAS OUT: I got to spend a fleeting moment in Fort Wayne with my old blogging friend Michael Dubruiel. Mike too has posted on the aforementioned pseudo-archeology. You should own Mike’s books, by the way, especially this one: The How-To Book of the Mass: Everything You Need to Know but No One Ever Taught You.

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Mosaic in a Minefield

The Independent (UK) reports that a Byzantine mosaic has been found at the Jerusalem construction site that’s inspired riots and barely veiled nuclear threats over the last week or so. The Israel Antiquities Authority has installed a webcam on site and have started to broadcast during the workday.

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Baby Names of the Early Christians

Last week I mentioned a promising new book, The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions, co-authored by three members of the Pontifical Commission on Sacred Archeology. Over the weekend I was able to borrow a copy from Lea Ravotti, the great contemporary Christian artist and premiere interpreter of ancient Christian art. The book is the stuff of which obsessions are made. I could blog on it for a year and never want for good material. I hope, at some point, to do a more in-depth review for Touchstone magazine. In the meantime, I’ll post occasional bits from this lavishly illustrated coffee-table volume.

Certainly the book benefits from the, um, depth of the knowledge of its authors. They’re in situ, living, teaching, noting correspondences in the many miles of underground corridors. From their intimate knowledge of thousands of inscriptions, artifacts, bone fragments, and artworks, they’re able to give us brief and brilliant glimpses of the ordinary lives of the early Christians. What kind of work did they do? Were they poor? rich? middle-class? How old were they when they married? What did they value in their spouses? In their children? In their priests? How did they die? Answers to all these questions arise from the epitaphs in the Catacombs.

One fascinating section deals with the names bestowed and taken by the Christians of Rome. How many took biblical names? How many were named after early martyrs? How many Christian parents stuck with the old, traditional Roman names — the names of pagan deities?

One illuminating subsection covers “Humiliating names or nicknames.”

In Christian nomenclature, the so-called “humiliating names” or “shameful names” form a distinctive group. These names, when not defamatory, were sometimes used by some faithful as a life-long act of modesty, precisely because of their unpleasant significance…

This is the case of Proiectus and Proiecticus, which meant “exposed,” and the unpleasant Stercorius, with the Greek parallel Coprion, that can be understood as “abandoned in the garbage.” Further proof of the abandonment of minors comes from the large number of alumni or “adoptive children” recorded in the Christian epigraphy of Rome. At the Catacomb of Pretestato, one of them was in fact named Stercorinus.

The authors (or the translators) are being polite. Stercorius means, literally, crap. It’s most accurately translated by what kids call “the S-word.” Thus, Stercorinus (the diminutive) means “Little S***,” or “Dear S***.”

I have posted before on the Roman custom of abandoning “defective” or female infants on the dungheap. Apparently, some were rescued and adopted — but their neighbors and playmates would taunt them by reminding them of their lowly origins. The authors of this volume speculate that some of these children, on becoming Christian, chose to keep their foul nicknames as an act of humility — or perhaps an act of triumphant irony. The joke, after all, was on the pagan world, which would soon enough die out for the crime of murdering its young. The children who were dung in the eyes of Imperial Rome were precious in the sight of God.

Reading this book is a profoundly religious experience.

And to those of you who will join me in the Catacombs in May: Just wait and see!

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Catacomb Fever

Several people kindly sent me the link to The Archaeology Channel, where the current featured video is “The Witnesses of Silence: Discovering Rome’s Catacombs.” I haven’t seen the documentary yet; but here’s TAC’s description of the half-hour show:

This film retraces the rediscovery of the catacombs, subterranean burial places and hideouts beneath the streets of ancient Rome. It finds in the dark galleries the traces of early explorers and the signatures, graffiti and inscriptions they left. These early underground explorers include legendary figures such as Antonio Bosio and Giovanni Battista de Rossi, the scholar who laid the scientific basis of modern Italian archaeology. This film sheds new light on an underground world where silence dominates but images retell stories voiced many centuries ago.

I’ve been planning a post on Bosio for some time, so I can’t wait to see what the documentary does with him. I hope I have time to see it before it vanishes. The Roman catacombs are a particular fascination of mine. I’ve posted on them before (here and here). I’m counting the days till I get to “go down in history” again. If you can join me then, please do. There are just a few spaces open on our May pilgrimage to Rome.

In the meantime, here comes a brand new book on the catacombs that arrives with a high recommendation from Lea Marie Ravotti, the artist whose opinion I trust more than any other. The book is The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions, a collaborative effort by three of the world’s leading experts on the subject. All are members of the Pontifical Commission on Sacred Archeology. I’ve put the book on my list of titles to review in the coming months. So order your copy today, and read along with me — even if you can’t join Scott Hahn and me in Rome. (This time.)

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O Salutary Ostia

On the street where I live, it’s very cold. The great contemporary artist Lea Marie Ravotti tells me by email that the only sane thing to do in this weather is to read good books and visit virtual Christian antiquities. Here’s a site Lea likes, and so do I — a well-stocked online museum from the town of Rome’s ancient port, Ostia. Be careful, though. Hours spent on this site will pass like minutes.

Ostia is dear to the heart of every patristics nerd. It’s the place where Augustine bade his mother earthly farewell — a climactic scene in his Confessions. Late last year, Robert Louis Wilken treated of that scene in a short review of John Peter Kenney’s The Mysticism of Saint Augustine: Re-Reading the Confessions. Wilken sees Augustine’s narrative as apologetic in its intention. Augustine wants to distinguish Christian contemplation and mysticism from the phenomena touted by his former chums, the neoplatonists.

And the apology has to do not only with religious ideas but also with the practices of a concrete community. Kenney shows that the Confessions displays a self-conscious ecclesiology, that Christian contemplation is rooted in the Church’s Scriptures and life. Which leads him to the neglected final books of the Confessions, which seem to have little to do with the Platonism of the central books. By the time Kenney has finished his analysis, the ascension passages in the middle of the book seem less the fulcrum of the Confessions than one piece in a much fuller argument whose meaning is discovered only at the end. In the latter books, the “vocabulary of audition” anchors contemplation more explicitly in the Scriptures. “I listened, Lord, my God; I sucked a drop of sweetness from your truth.” The delights of contemplation can be achieved, says Augustine, by adhering to the “solid firmament of your Scripture,” for there God holds conversation with us.

In book thirteen, the final book, the Church, “your spiritual people,” is the vehicle and context for Christian contemplation. But it is Augustine’s treatment of Monica that seals the argument. She is, writes Kenney, “an unpromising candidate for high contemplation in the Plotinian style.” The famous vision at Ostia was not that of the solitary seeker-it was an experience shared by Augustine and Monica. And the reason Monica was capable of intense and total concentration was that she had made continual confession of her faults and of her Savior. Her contemplation, writes Kenney, “is an ecclesial moment” that “emerged in the schoolhouse of souls that is the Church.”

Wilken says that The Mysticism of Saint Augustine is a book worth reading; and I believe him.

Here’s the famous painting of Augustine and Monica’s Ecstasy at Ostia.

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Unearthing Jerusalem

Big sixth-century find in Jerusalem, says Israel National News:

The most extensive remains are those of a Roman-Byzantine colonnaded street — the Eastern Cardo. Included in that area is a covered stoa, a row of shops and several artifacts.

The street appears on a 6th century map known as the Medaba Map and is known as the Eastern Cardo or the Valley Cardo. The lavish colonnaded street began at the Damascus Gate in the north and led south, running the length of the channel in the Tyropoeon Valley. Sections of this street were revealed in the past in the northern part of the Old City, at a depth of about four meters (12 feet) below the pavement. The full eleven-meter (33 foot) width of the original road was exposed in the present excavation for the first time.

There’s more detail in The Jerusalem Post, too.

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Good Book, Great Exhibit

My colleague David Scott and I drove down to D.C. last Thursday and snuck into the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery just before the men in uniform shut the doors on the exhibit In the Beginning: Bibles before the Year 1000. I wish I had gone earlier, so that I could urge you, too, to go. There were far more items — and far more important items — than I had expected.

There were samples from most major finds and important collections — the Nag Hammadi library, the Dead Sea Scrolls, St. Catherine’s at Mount Sinai, Oxyrynchus, and the Cairo Geniza. These are the manuscripts you read about in the footnotes and the critical editions. Some of the earliest examples were just scrawled verses on papyrus that had been sifted from 2,000-year-old trash. My favorite display featured a chunk of wood on which someone had carved a seemingly random series of Bible verses in Coptic, perhaps as a handwriting exercise. There were manuscripts in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Armenian, and other languages, some of them lavishly illustrated with icons or decorative script.

What most impressed me was how the early Christians treated the sacred text. To them it was clearly a sacred object, often a liturgical object, so the Bible was richly decorated with gems and precious metals, and the inks themselves sometimes cost a small fortune. I could have camped in those rooms for days just soaking in the fine artistry.

The good news is that the Smithsonian has preserved a permanent record of the exhibit in a gorgeous (and relatively inexpensive) coffee-table volume with useful commentary by several scholars — and heaping helpings of the Church Fathers. (I must raise a complaint about the binding, however, as it came unstuck in delivery.) The book is worth having. After a few pages, you’ll see why this exhibit set new attendance records for the Smithsonian.

The exhibit was remarkably sensitive to the eucharistic milieu of the early Church. Some of the books on display were not Bibles per se, but lectionaries and sacramentaries. And here’s a line worth keeping from the catalog: “the Christian Bible as a whole was the cumulative result of the reading habits of Christian communities in their liturgical gatherings.” We find that idea in Justin and Irenaeus and ever afterward. Sacrament and Scriptures are mutually illuminating. That’s why the Mass has always comprised two liturgies: Word and Eucharist.

Thanks to the Smithsonian for showing us the beauty of the Word inspired, as rendered by the Church at prayer.

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How Can I Keep from Digging?

The International Herald Tribune captures just a bit of the coolness of Rome.

Of all the old sayings about the Eternal City at least one remains simply true — dig a deep hole almost anywhere here, and you’ll unearth an archaeological artifact, or two.

Yet a wave of public and private building projects is suddenly focusing unusual attention on Rome’s rich subterranean world as one treasure after another emerges at a steady clip.

“We’re walking on the world’s largest untapped underground museum,” said Maria Antonietta Tomei, a government official responsible for coordinating archaeological digs in Rome.

During the last week, reports surfaced that 800 coins from the fourth and fifth centuries B.C. had been unearthed during the reconstruction of a movie theater near the Trevi Fountain.

If you join us for our May 2007 pilgrimage, we’ll probably ask you not to carry on any covert digs by night — unless you’re digging into a plate of pasta.

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Yep, They Say, It’s Paul

An update on the discovery of the sarcophagus in St. Paul’s tomb. The archeologists seem to have learned many lessons from the stumbling and fumbling that took place with the discovery, in the mid-twentieth century, of St. Peter’s bones.

Archaeologists Confident They’ve Unearthed St. Paul
By Daniela Petroff, Associated Press

VATICAN CITY — A white marble sarcophagus believed to be the final resting place of St. Paul has been unearthed from beneath the altar of Rome’s second-largest basilica after centuries hidden from view, but those curious about its contents will have to wait still longer.

Vatican experts, announcing Monday that the coffin had been unearthed, said they hoped to be able to examine it more closely and maybe even look inside.

But Giorgio Filippi, a Vatican archaeologist, said researchers’ first concern was to free it from centuries of plaster and debris in the hope of finding other clues on the sarcophagus itself.

“Right now we can treat it as a symbol, regardless of its contents,” Filippi said.

According to tradition, St. Paul, also known as the apostle of the Gentiles, was beheaded in Rome in the 1st century during the persecution of early Christians by Roman emperors. Popular belief holds that bone fragments from his head are in another Rome basilica, St. John Lateran, with his other remains inside the sarcophagus.

The 8-foot-long coffin, which dates from at least A.D. 390 and was buried under the main altar of St.

Paul’s Outside the Walls Basilica, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and ended last month.

“These excavations give us the full certainty and knowledge that the sarcophagus is St. Paul’s tomb, whether it contains his remains or not,” said Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, head of the basilica.

The cardinal said X-rays were unlikely to penetrate the thick marble, making it necessary to open the tomb to find out what is inside. “It has never been opened or explored,” he said.

Filippi said the decision to unearth the sarcophagus was made after pilgrims who came to Rome during the Roman Catholic Church’s 2000 Jubilee year expressed disappointment at finding that the saint’s tomb — buried under layers of plaster and further hidden by an iron grate — could not be visited or touched.

The top of the coffin has small openings — subsequently covered with mortar — because in ancient times Christians would insert offerings or try to touch the remains.

Work in the small area under the altar, to clear the debris and insert a transparent glass floor for better viewing, unearthed new evidence of the authenticity of the sarcophagus, said Filippi, who headed the project.

“Our purpose was not to find out what was inside, but to confirm that it was the original sarcophagus,” Filippi said.

The basilica stands at the site of two 4th-century churches — including one destroyed by a fire in 1823 that had left the tomb visible, first above ground and later in a crypt. After the fire, the crypt was filled with earth and covered by a new altar. A slab of cracked marble with the words “Paul apostle martyr” in Latin was also found embedded in the floor above the tomb.

“We were always certain that the tomb had to be there, beneath the papal altar,” Filippi said.

Paul, along with Peter, are the two main figures known for spreading the Christian faith after the death of Christ.

St. Paul’s is the very site where our May 2007 pilgrimage begins. Please consider joining us!