Category: Archeology
Soldier Saint
BMCR reviews Nikos Litinas’ book Greek Ostraca from Abu Mina.
If you come here often, you know that the ancient shrine of Abu Mina is one of my odd interests. My post titled The Lourdes of the Ancient World attracted some notice. I followed it up with related posts here and here.
Those of you who share my interest, but also have a JSTOR account, can read more about the saint in a recent article published in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, An Officer and a Gentleman: Transformations in the Iconography of a Warrior Saint.
Patristic Digs
I’m behind in posting archeological news, and there’s plenty of it, from all corners of the world of the Fathers.
In Egypt, archeologists exploring under “the world’s oldest monastery” found “a cell for monks dating back to 400 AD with paintings in the ancient Coptic language.” Restoration is under way.
Israel has uncovered an ancient wine press as well as a Byzantine-era road.
Turkey is restoring a Roman-era church (dates are confusing in the story … lost in translation).
Syria has turned up a cave with evidence of Roman-era habitation. These were often hideaway worship spaces.
Christian Crafting
Josee speaks of using my book Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols for arts and crafts.
Consider giving it as a gift to the artsy crafters in your life.
Au Grotto
You can catch a few glimpses of the sites of ancient Christian Syria in two news stories that appeared today.
The New York Times served up a travel piece on Aleppo: Tourists Return to an Ancient Crossroads in Syria.
And Global Arab Network reports on the discovery of another Byzantine-era cave grotto.
The Golden Treasury
More old gold found in another patristic-era Egyptian monastery. From Al Ahram:
An archaeological mission from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of Warsaw University excavating in a monastic building at Deir Al-Malah Monastery at Naqlun in Fayoum recently unearthed a decorated clay cup of Aswan production full of coins. The hoard consists of 18 gold coins and 62 fragments of coins, all of them provisionally dated to the Abbasid period.
Under the charred remains of a collapsed wall, archaeologists also uncovered a chandelier and a well-preserved oil lamp, both made of bronze.
“The whole treasure was found inside a room that seems to have been hastily abandoned during a fire,” said Woldzimierz Godlewski, head of the Polish mission. He added that the monastic complex of Naqlun was built in the early sixth century AD, while the area excavated this season dated to the seventh century and was destroyed by a massive fire in the eighth or at the beginning of the ninth century AD.
Liturgical Laughs
On the Archdiocese of Washington’s blog, Msgr. Charles Pope takes a look at the Didascalia Apostolorum, and briefly discusses the house-church at Dura Europus: The Didascalia: A Sometimes Humorous Look at the Liturgy of the Early Church.
Wild Thing
In Catholic San Francisco we read about a Christian archeologist in Jordan — “the curator of the wilderness” — who invites believers to site of Jesus’ baptism. The story’s also posted here, but without the photos.
Symbol Syllabus?
One of our regulars, Steve, is wondering whether anyone has “study guides, DVDs, or a syllabus” he can use for a group book study of Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols. Anyone?
Ghost Towns of the Fathers
The Guardian just ran a cool feature on the Byzantine “ghost towns” of the Syrian desert. I talk a bit about these in my book The Resilient Church. I also discussed them in a blog post, some time back.
Here’s a snip from the Guardian …
We walked back down the hill and set off for the region’s most famous historical site, the shrine of St Simeon Stylites. The vast ruined church, the most ambitious structure on earth in the late fifth century, contains the stump of the pillar where St Simon supposedly spent the last 36 years of his life until his death in 459AD. He was said to eat once a week, frugally of course.
On Holy Ground
In the comments field of my Christmas post, one of our regulars, Warren, lamented his annual holiday tangles and wrangles over religion: “This year, like all others … I learned that all the holy sites in Jerusalem and around Israel are most likely bogus, and that they were all determined by Constantine’s mother. (The location of the Sepulchre, the church of the nativity, etc).”
My response to Warren follows. I’m posting it here in case the recommendations are useful for others.
There are very good reasons to believe the sites we venerate are at or near the places where the events occurred. We know — from pagan and Christian sources — that those first generations of Christians were willing to risk their lives for the memory of Christ. Can anyone seriously believe that those same people would be sloppy about keeping that memory? Remember, they lived in a culture that placed a premium on the accuracy of oral history. These particular memories would have been the most important, the most carefully passed on.
The literary sources are useful. The Gospels do concern themselves with details, topography, place names, and many of their geographic details are confirmed in non-Christian sources (Josephus, for example).
Archeologists, too, are willing to make the “positive” case for this or that site. Check out their testimony. Start with The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide, by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor. Also helpful is The Jerusalem Jesus Knew: An Archaeological Guide to the Gospels by John Wilkinson. I love the works of Bargil Pixner; and you might want to read Jesus and First-Century Christianity in Jerusalem, co-authored with Elizabeth McNamer — but all Pixner’s books are useful. Another reliable witness is William Dever, who is hardly a conventional believer, being an ex-Christian somewhat converted to an agnostic sort of Judaism; but he makes a good case for the accuracy of the biblical record. See his Recent Archaeological Discoveries and Biblical Research. If you want to extend your archeological-historical studies further back, see On the Reliability of the Old Testament, by K. A. Kitchen.
These men are respected archeologists, published by reputable houses. They’re hardly credulous, but they’re willing to grant credence to the biblical authors and the religious traditions that hallow certain ruins and parcels of land. I think only a true bigot could dismiss the traditions out of hand after considering the witness of these scholars (and many more of their colleagues).
This is not to say there’s unanimity on the veracity of every identification of every site. Of course there’s not. But we should not be so eager to cast our ancestors as idiots.
Nevertheless, site identification is not a hill I’m willing to die on as a Christian apologist. For Muslims — as for Jews in antiquity — pilgrimage is something akin to our sacraments: something essential, a divine mandate. But it’s never been that way for Christians. Here we have no lasting city (Hebrews 13:14). For an excellent study of the Fathers’ ambivalence toward the holy sites, see Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Antiquity: Seeing the Gods.
St. Menas the Martyr and Healer
Some time ago, I wrote about the fourth-century martyr St. Menas — and about his shrine, which some folks have called “The Lourdes of the Ancient World.” Al Ahram has a big feature on archeology at Abu Mina:
THE MARBLE TOWN OF MAR MINA: Discovered by Kaufmann in 1905, the town of Mar Mina is located nearly 50km south of Alexandria, halfway to Wadi Al-Natrun. It sits right on the old caravan road linking Alexandria to Siwa. The town covers an area of 40,000 square metres or more. Aside from the markets, the houses, the monasteries, and assorted chapels, the town’s main church has attracted ample praise from ancient historians. One chronicler called it “the greatest Egyptian church”. Another described it the “Acropolis of Christendom”.
The church began with a small tomb for St Menas in 309. Most probably, a small chapel was created over the tomb in the early fourth century. The first church built on the site perhaps dates to the mid- fourth century. Inside the church, there is a marble staircase leading to the crypt that contains the saint’s relics and icon. The crypt is connected to a small gallery with a dome that may have once been ornamented with golden mosaic.
When the church became too small for the congregation, a larger church was built on its eastern side. This happened in the early years of the fifth century by orders of Emperor Arcadius (395-408). The emperor had the church decorated with expensive marble, mosaics, and carvings. The church had three aisles separated by 56 columns; the aisles were 60 metres in length and 16 in width. The sockets of the columns can still be seen in the church, and some of the capitals and shafts are still scattered around the site. Parts of the columns are currently on display in Frankfurt and the Alexandria Graeco-Roman Museum.
The fame of the site is attributed to the healing miracles associated with the nearby springs. In Egypt, St Menas is often referred to as the agaybi or miracle-worker. Archaeologists working on the site have found thousands of flasks stamped with the saint’s liking. Pilgrims to the site used to carry the flasks of what they considered holy water back home for their sick relatives. The town had a water network that took water from the holy spring to various basins, cisterns, baths, and hostels around the site.
The monastery situated north of the church is perhaps the largest in early Christianity. Close to the town, farmers grew wine, fruit, and other crops to supply the vibrant town. But the town may not have survived past the ninth century.
According to Anba Saweris Ibn Al-Moqaffa, who was bishop of Ashmunin in the second half of the 10th century, the Abbasid Caliph Al-Motawakkel (846-861) sent an emissary to Egypt to bring marble columns and slabs for Baghdad buildings. The emissary, it is said, confiscated much of the church’s wealth of marble columns and tiles.
Abu Al-Makarem, a 13th-century chronicler, says that the Mar Mina Church in Mariout was still standing in his time. The last mention of the church, however, was in the Middle Ages…
There’s lots more — a survey of the hagiography, illustration … Check it out.
In Today’s Mail …
… came Christianity in the Greco-Roman World: A Narrative Introduction by Moyer V. Hubbard. I’ve been skipping around in it between periods of futile snow-shoveling, and it seems to be great fun. He’s exploring work, education, family, and other social realities of the world of early Christianity. He begins each section with a fictional vignette, then unpacks the details by taking us through the archeological and documentary record. There are plenty of great illustrative quotes, and really good bad quotes. I love this sort of book. I’m sure I’ll post more from it as I read more.
Unless I die shoveling, of course. Didn’t someone complain somewhere about being too old to dig?
Hubbard teaches NT language and literature at Talbot School of Theology. The book is from Hendrickson, which has published some mighty patristic titles in recent years. The format and price make it a good choice for an undergrad textbook. Young readers will, I think, enjoy his vignettes, which provide good imaginative entries into an alien world. Even students most resistant to learning are likely to stay awake for Hubbard’s description of the activity at the baths.
Gold in them thar monasteries!
Out of Egypt comes word of a very exciting discovery. The office of Zahi Hawass blogs it with great photos.
A mission from the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology of Warsaw University unearthed a decorated clay vessel from a room in a monastic building at the Deir Malak Gubrail monastery in Naqlun, a site in the Fayum.
The vessel is of Aswan production and contained a hoard of coins, Farouk Hosni, Egypt’s Minister of Culture, announced today.
Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said that the hoard consists of 18 gold coins and 62 fragments of coins, all of them provisionally dated to the Abbasid period (AD 750-1258). Under the charred remains of a collapsed wall, archaeologists also uncovered a chandelier and a well-preserved oil lamp, both made of bronze.
Wlodzimierz Godlewski, the head of the Polish mission, said that the monastic complex of Naqlun was built in the early 6th century AD. The area excavated this season dated to the 7th century AD, and was destroyed by a massive fire around the end of the 8th or the beginning of the 9th century AD.
Lybia, O Lybia, Say Have You Met Lybia
Sicilian archeologists, diving for shipwrecks off the coasts of Lybia, found something more: a sunken Roman-era city.
They found walls, roads, buildings and tombs at a depth of between one and three metres. It is a portion which extends over a hectare of a large city which some of the scholars had intuited the presence of due to the remains of wall structures hidden among the sandy dunes hit by strong winds. It is believed that a large part of the city sunk due to a large bradyseism. Initial morphological analysis showed that changes to the area were macroscopic even in recent times, and the ruins found at the bottom of the sea are part of a city existing in the Imperial Roman era during the second century AD.