It’s fabulously expensive, but looks fascinating: Fasti Sacerdotum: A Prosopography of Pagan, Jewish, and Christian Religious Officials in the City of Rome, 300 BC to AD 499. You’ll find it reviewed in BMCR.

Scholars of ancient Rome will be delighted that Rüpke’s monumental work, Fasti Sacerdotum, has been translated into English and thus become accessible to a wider readership … For those unfamiliar with the German edition, its aim was to construct annual lists for the city of Rome of attested priests, cult officials and followers from 300 BCE to 499 CE, lists that included not just pagan priests but also the officials from Jewish and Christian groups. The work falls into two main parts: a compilation of annual lists of priests and religious functionaries and a set of alphabetically arranged individual biographies. Understandably, the whole work was 14 years in the making and required a team of assistants.

The idea of the compiling the biographies is to personalize the religious history of the city of Rome through a biographical approach. Rüpke intends the work to be an instrument for researchers in the field of religious and cultural history. At all times he is aware of the limited nature of the source material at our disposal, which is derived largely from inscriptions.

Archeological treasures including a Greek amphitheatre have been unearthed in the ancient city of Laodicea (see Revelation 3:14-16), which is being excavated in western Turkey.

National Geographic has posted photos of the ancient crosses found underground in Israel. Check it out.

Scott and Kimberly Hahn and I closed out the Year of St. Paul with a special two-day event at spacious St. Thomas More Church in Bethel Park, Pa. There were three talks and a weekend-long book fair. The parishioners were lovely.

Father Z provides reports and commentary on the breaking St. Paul news — namely, what was found in his tomb, and the discover of the oldest icon of St. Paul (fourth century).

Happy feast day, everybody. Celebrate!

Adrian Murdoch tells of a just-discovered “underground quarry, decorated with Christian and legionary symbols as well as crosses that date to the fourth century. It seems to have been in use from the beginning of the first century.” Check it out.

While I was in Israel, Reuters reported on the happy resolution of a nasty situation I blogged on some time back.

Christian monastery in Turkey wins back land

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – One of the world’s oldest functioning Christian monasteries has won a legal battle to have land it had owned for centuries restored to it, after a Turkish court ruled on Friday it could not be claimed by the state.

The dispute over the boundaries of Mor Gabriel, a fifth-century Syriac Orthodox monastery in eastern Turkey, had raised concerns over freedom of religion and human rights for non-Muslim minorities in Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country and European Union aspirant.

In a statement, the Syriac Universal Alliance (SUA), a leading Syriac group based in Sweden, said a Turkish court in Midyat had reversed an initial decision by the land registry court to grant villages some 110 hectares (272 acres) of monastery land.

Al Ahram posted a nice feature on the old lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The Pharos occupies a chapter in my book Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols, as it appears often in ancient Christian art and literature. Basil compared Athanasius to the towering wonder that cast brilliant light to guide wayfarers to safety. Athanasius, of course, was bishop of Alexandria.

There seems to be talk about assembling the lighthouse from the rubble.

The New York Times, of all places, regales us with early-Christian archeological finds in Naples, Italy. Tolle, lege: Deep in the Heart of Historic Naples.

Another day, we took an English-language tour at the catacombs of San Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples, which began behind the Church of Madre del Buon Consiglio and just past a courtyard overlooking clotheslines, lemon trees and scooters. Down below we walked, first seeing small chapels, which held the bodies of wealthy families; in one “cubico,” a haunting fresco from the sixth-century A.D. memorialized a family with a young child. The bodies of humbler citizens were placed in wall niches that are now empty. We walked through ancient arches amid a silent mustiness, and learned that this catacomb’s earliest use was in the second century A.D. Here, too, is the site of three early churches, the oldest dating to the fourth century; two of them were built underground. We saw a painting of Adam and Eve from the third century A.D. and symbols of Greek goddesses. Near the exit was a fresco of a bishop from the ninth or 10th century, found about a year ago.

Later, in the Sanità district, we toured the Catacombs of San Gaudioso — named for an African bishop who arrived in Naples in 439 — and saw skulls set into wall niches with frescoes below them depicting the dress of their owners’ professions: a judge’s robes, a knight with a sword. In the women’s area, the frescoes showed only long dresses: “The women had no professions, of course,” our guide explained.

You’ll find more up-to-the-minute Neapolitan archeological news here.