La Historienne

a millennial unlearns history

[lahistorienne]

Herodias, Salomé, and John the Baptist’s Beheading: A Case Study of the Topos of the Heretical Woman

Very excited to announce my second publication in the International Social Science Review is now live! If anyone likes exploring the history behind the femme fatale complex, you might find this interesting ;)

[lahistorienne]

Pompeii’s House of the Faun

Reminiscing about my trip last summer... Here’s a little research piece I wrote about one of my favorite archaeological sites we visited:

In Pompeii’s early stages of excavation, archaeologists were shocked to discover a miraculous amount of well-preserved art from several of the city’s buildings. From bathhouses to brothels to private residences, Pompeii has provided academia with an artistic glimpse into the lives of the ancient inhabitants of Roman Italy. The most common forms of decorative art unearthed from Pompeii are frescoes, mosaics, and sculptures. Artists would often use art for architectural enhancement of a room. This could range from simple pragmatism (such as basic floor mosaic patterns), to elaborate ornamentation (often characterized by highly specialized techniques, especially regarding wall frescoes). For personal dwelling spaces, the degree of detail in this art depended heavily on the wealth and status of whoever owned the private residence.

After further investigation of the excavated pieces of art, it was revealed that some of the elite houses of Pompeii deliver insight beyond the imperial era, when the city was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. In fact, there exists a plethora of artistic styles from older periods of civilization. The House of the Faun on the Via di Nola is a prime example of Pompeii’s most lavish and wealthy residences, particularly during the height of the town’s Hellenistic Oscan influence during the second century B.C.E. This period in Pompeii’s history is characterized by the great private wealth that was amassed from an increase in agricultural production and exports. The upper class also exhibited a devotion to Hellenistic culture, which was left over from the influence of their prior conquerors, the Samnites.[1]

Here is a plan of the house (Source: Ling, Roger. Pompeii: History, Life, & Afterlife. Stroud: Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2009, 47):

Rather than showing off their wealth in the civic realm (as was common in Rome), prominent Oscan-Pompeian families during this time tended to express their status through sheer opulence in their own private homes.[2] Professor Paul Zanker, expert on Roman archaeology and art, elaborates:

…Samnite landed proprietors and exporters adopted the luxury of the Hellenistic world with the same excesses as the Roman aristocrats in their roughly contemporary villas on the Bay of Naples. But unlike the Roman senators, who forced one another to show some restraint in the face of Greek luxuria in Rome itself, the richest citizens of Pompeii apparently knew no limits – on the contrary, they proudly exhibited their newly acquired Greek cultivation.[3]

The fine decoration in the House of the Faun and evidence of careful restoration by its owners indicates that the building possessed values of old money, another characteristic of Oscan Pompeii. Some scholars interpret this as verification that the inhabitants of house had been an established, respectable family even before Roman rule, and were accustomed to holding civic positions of power.[4]

Additionally, the House of the Faun has the most extensive and complete first-style wall paintings of any other excavation at Pompeii. This structural painting style is of Greek origin and was used frequently throughout the second century B.C.E.[5] First-style domestic interiors were meant to imitate public marble architecture through the use of painted polychrome stucco panels, as well as create the illusion of tying a room together continuously and uninterruptedly.[6] Because wealthy families tended to replace first-style domestic décor with the updated second (architectural), third (ornamental), and fourth (fantastic) styles, this is further indication that the owners of the House of the Faun put a higher premium on older styles of decoration, and could afford to preserve them as such.[7] In other words, they could have kept up with the trends of the elite, but they chose to spend their money on protecting their beloved heritage.

The nineteenth century art historian August Mau, who created the classification of Pompeian mural styles, describes the process by which the House of the Faun’s owners preserved their first-style walls.

In order to protect the painted surfaces against moisture, the walls in the beginning were carefully covered with sheets of lead before they were plastered. Later two doorways were walled up, and the plastering over the apertures, which was applied directly to the wall surface without the use of lead sheathing, forms with its decoration an inseparable part of that found on either side.[8]

The house’s first-style walls were found most prominently on those of the fauces, the entrance hallway from the atrium. Homeowners tended to use the atrium and fauces to exhibit their status as visitors first entered the home. It is worth noting that the House of the Faun (along with the House of the Labyrinth) had two other atria set alongside the main one. This was intended to provide separate access to the two areas of the home without any obstacles, a luxury only the super rich could afford.[9] There were instances of other painting styles found in the house, as Mau notes, “a few unimportant rooms are painted in the second and fourth styles.”[10] Nevertheless, it is clear that the most important rooms were decorated in the first-style, especially the atrium area.

Along with the house’s wall paintings, its floors were even more elaborately designed. During the latest phase of the first-style (c. 100-80 B.C.E.), these floor illustrations were often coupled with the relatively flat wall decorations, creating a visually stimulating experience for the viewer.[11] Of Pompeii’s most valuable mosaics, many of them came from the floors and panels of the House of the Faun. The most famous of these is the mosaic of Alexander the Great, which decorated a colonnaded exedra on a side of the house’s central peristyle.[12] 

The peristyle was a columned portico that surrounded an outdoor garden area, where many rooms of the house overlooked. The addition of a peristyle to the traditional Greek influenced layout of the “atrium house” provided a new area for family members and visitors to meet.[13] Clearly, the homeowners chose a significant spot for their personal Alexander mosaic.[14]

Aside from this large and extravagant piece, however, the residence was once adorned with other extremely detailed mosaics. In front of the main entrance is the word “HAVE,” which is a variation of the Latin word for “Welcome.” This friendly mosaic serves as a sort of ancient “welcome mat,” adorned with green, yellow, white, and red marble pieces.[15] While this particular mosaic served a simple purpose, the owners of the House of the Faun used mosaic art far beyond the restraints of pragmatism.

Most of the house’s mosaics are on display in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, which continue to amaze visitors from all over the world. According to the museum’s guidebook, “These mosaics are without doubt the most precious objects in the Naples Collection, both in terms of the quality and richness of their subjects, and due to the fame that followed their discovery and excavation.”[16] One particularly lively mosaic depicts a cat snatching a bird, while the register below it has a scene of ducks swimming in a pond with seashells, fish, and other birds. The texture of the cat’s fur and birds’ feathers is remarkable, demonstrating the highly specialized technique of the mosaicist. Mau notes that this mosaic was “characterized by delicacy of execution and harmonious coloring.”[17] This piece once decorated a room next to the house’s atrium.[18]

Along with decorative floors, there were several mosaic friezes and panels found at the House of the Faun as well. Exhibiting Hellenistic influence yet again, many pieces illustrate the theme of Greek theater and Dionysian mysteries, such as the mosaic with the tragic masks. The two tragic female masks include long, curly wigs, their faces turned upwards and set in a mirror image along the design.[19] Colorfully patterned garlands and cornucopias of grapes, pomegranates, pinecones, and various types of leaves and floral vegetation surround the masks, creating a visually stimulating frieze. This theatrical scene adorned area of the threshold separating the entrance vestibule from the atrium.[20]

Nilotic scenes were also very popular subjects depicted in Roman art. The House of the Faun’s Nile landscape frieze includes a variety of river creatures, such as ducks, cranes, a cobra, a hippopotamus, a crocodile, and a river rodent of some kind. This piece came from the house’s threshold of the Alexander mosaic’s exedra, introducing the decorative theme of the hall.[21] The Nile River was commonly portrayed in celebration of the Egyptian goddess Isis, as well as a general celebration and tribute to Egyptian culture. There are still remains of Pompeii’s Temple of Isis on the Via del Tempio di Iside, indicating the presence of that particular cult in the city.

The House of the Faun had two large dining rooms, one square and one oblong, both with large windows on the side of the peristyle.[22] On the floors of these rooms were mosaics of fish, octopus, and other Mediterranean seafood delicacies that were staples in the Pompeian diet. Once located in the middle of the emblem (floor), these vibrant illustrations fit in nicely with the purpose of the space.

The dining areas were not the only place where the homeowners stuck with the theme of the room. In a cubiculum (small bedroom) of the house was an erotic tile mosaic scene of a nymph pleasuring a satyr.[23] (Sorry guys, I couldn’t find a photo of this one in my unorganized stash)

While the mosaics from the House of the Faun are significant for their subject matter and thematic illustrations, the process and technique are also important to consider when analyzing these pieces. The mosaics were created in workshops on portable marble or terracotta trays before being transferred to the property and installed into the floors. These portable insets were called emblemata, which could be later rearranged by the homeowner even after installation. Mosaics were composed of extremely small tesserae in a variety of colors, each one specially shaped and arranged into rows. This created the illusion of brushstrokes as one would find in a painting, and the degree of this detailed likeness depended on the particular mosaicist’s level of specialization. The name of this technique, opus vermiculatum, means “worm-like,” referring to the small, winding rows of tesserae.[24] Clearly, the production of these mosaics required artisanship that would have been very expensive, emphasizing the degree of wealth this family must have possessed.[25]

Mau asserts that the mosaics from the House of the Faun are “the most beautiful that have survived to modern times.”[26] Aside from these intricate floor designs, the wealthy homes of Pompeii have left behind nothing short of priceless treasures, both historically and artistically. The House of the Faun is an especially valuable example of aristocratic life in Oscan Pompeii, and has permanently changed the modern perception of ancient Roman Italian culture.

Finally, here is a photo of the real faun statue (housed in the Naples Museum):

Notes:

[1] John R. Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.C.-A.D. 250: Ritual, Space, and Decoration (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991), 79.

[2] Paul Zanker, Pompeii: Public and Private Life, trans. Deborah Lucas Scheider (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 32-33.

[3] Ibid., 35-37.

[4] Alex Butterworth and Ray Laurence, Pompeii: The Living City (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 14.

[5] Roger Ling, Pompeii: History, Life, and Afterlife (Stroud: Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2009), 47.

[6] Clarke, 33; 40.

[7] Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 162.

[8] August Mau, Pompeii: Its Life and Art, trans. Francis W. Kelsey (London: MacMillan & Co., Ltd., 1904), 288-289.

[9] Marisa Ranieri Panetta, Pompeii: The History, Life, and Art of the Buried City (Vercelli, Italy: White Star Publishers, 2004), 246.

[10] Mau, 289.

[11] Clarke, 40.

[12] It was later revealed that a second peristyle was added toward the end of the second century B.C.E., further evidence of the luxury this family enjoyed. See Eugene Dwyer, “The Unified Plan of the House of the Faun,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 60, no. 3 (September 2001): 336.

[13] Panetta, 246.

[14] Dwyer, 336.

[15] Mau, 289.

[16] The National Archaeological Museum of Naples Guide (Mondadori Electa S.p.A., 2010), 58.

[17] Mau, 292.

[18] Museum of Naples, 58.

[19] Panetta, 354. 

[20] Mau, 290.

[21] Museum of Naples, 58.

[22] Mau, 292.

[23] Panetta, 185.

[24] Clarke, 40.

[25] Ling, 48.

[26] Mau, 288.

[lahistorienne]

Hierarchy of the Kitchen: From Iron Age Israel to Iron Chef America

This post is long overdue. Here are a few excerpts from my last big paper I wrote for a course on Women and the Bible (see previous post for context)!

Disclaimer: Iron Age Israel is not representative of all ancient civilizations, and kitchen hierarchy in the West is not representative of all modern cultures. I chose to use these examples because I think they are relevant to the discussion of biblically-based patriarchal values in America and the corresponding perspectives of gender functionality.

Feminist biblical scholar Carol Meyers is known for her theoretical approach of ethnoarchaeology to her research of Iron Age Israel. Akin to the literary interpretations, Meyers agrees that studying these ancient households through the lens of patriarchy results in the temptation to apply unproductive contemporary assessments.[1] She proposes “heterarchy” as an alternative terminological framework that is more constructive to understanding Iron Age Israelite society and, in theory, gender functionality in early biblical texts. By overcoming “the stereotypes of presentism and the distortions of patriarchy,” one may very well have acquired the tools necessary to understand gender functionality of food preparation by using both the archaeological and textual evidence.[2]

[1] Meyers, Rediscovering Eve: Ancient Israelite Women in Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), Kindle edition.

[2] Meyers 2012, 198.

Although the distribution of labor in ancient societies like Iron Age Israel sometimes involved the designation of gender roles, a heterarchical approach reveals that the domestic sphere of women was the essential perpetuating force of economic prosperity. Bread production involved technologies that men usually depended on women to understand. Meyers elaborates on the process:

Only the seeds of cereals, but not the outer husks, are edible; and the nutritional starch in the seeds cannot be digested in raw form. Therefore, a complex series of processing activities—parching or soaking, milling or grinding, heating and/or leavening—is required in order to transform grain into edible form…The preparation, distribution, and consumption of bread undoubtedly consumed a considerable portion of household activity in terms of time and space…Even in urban or elite settings…individual households were the sites of the transformation of the grain into gruel or bread.[1]

Men were still expected to have technological expertise in laborious tasks such as grain planting, but those were more often annual rather than daily responsibilities.[2] In other words, while men knew how to plant the seeds, women knew how to turn it into bread. There are brief textual instances in the Hebrew Bible that substantiate this ethnoarchaeological theory, such as the Egyptian slave women in Exodus working the millstones, and Isaiah’s personification of Babylon as a peasant woman who uses a hand-mill to make flour.[3]

In regards to cooking, men typically had the responsibility of presiding over religious rituals and handling sacrificial meat—a crucial symbol in the biblical corpus[4]—which usually consisted of basic open-flame cooking.[5] Women, on the contrary, spent time developing complex recipes and cooking methods by using a much wider variety of food, utensils, and temperature control. Not everyone was restricted to their duties; there were certainly times when these gendered functions overlapped (such as during harvests), as efficiency involved cooperation within the family.[6] The evidence for gender egalitarianism and economic reciprocity of the sexes in Iron Age Israel helps conduct a revision of social patterns of organization in tribal societies as a whole.[7]

[1] Meyers 2002, 21.

[2] Meyers 2012, 184.

[3] See Exodus 11:5 and Isaiah 47:2; Meyers 2002, 25.

[4] Peter Altmann, Festive Meals in Ancient Israel: Deuteronomy’s Identity Politics in their Ancient Near Eastern Context (Boston: De Gruyter, 2011), 74-78.

[5] Meyers 2012, 184.

[6] Meyers 2002, 18.

[7] Leo G. Perdue, Reconstructing Old Testament Theology: After the Collapse of History (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1994), 131.

The gender responsibilities of food preparation in Iron Age Israel are still visible in modern households today. While Jim prepares the meat over an open flame, his wife handles technological complexities of cooking and baking. But, the personal and social power ancient Israelite women were able to achieve through their control over and expertise in domestic technologies has since been compromised.[1] While women are still generally designated the function of feeding and nurturing their families, men take over the praise of that function when there are people to impress, and, more significantly, monetary rewards at stake. Jim’s fifteen minutes of fame in front of the grill may not have earned him any money, but it gave him an opportunity to showcase his ability to take initiative and produce some really good meat, i.e. his manhood. This inclination is magnified when looking at the framework of the fine dining kitchen.

The modern construct and media sensation of the “Iron Chef” is predominately masculine.[2] To be an Iron Chef, one must have the skills and expertise of food preparation, while also demonstrating resilience, strength, creativity, and fierce ambition in the setting of a high-stress competition. The traits of an Iron Chef are theoretically androgynous, yet women are generally excluded from this field of work. Cat Cora, the first and one of the only female Iron Chefs, describes her struggle in a recent interview. Cora once drove two hours to attend a book reading with the renowned Julia Child, hoping to get some advice early in her career as a restaurant chef. “She told me it was a man’s world and that I had to be strong, stubborn and persistent. She was very genuine and helped a lot of young chefs kick off their careers, and I was lucky to be one of them.”[3] Cora’s experience reflects the sexism of the elite restaurant industry. Due to the competition associated with this new approach to food preparation, the environment of the fine dining kitchen has been cultivated for men.

The culinary legend Auguste Escoffier is largely responsible for the recent history of men dominating the restaurant kitchen. After his experience as an army chef in the Franco-Prussian war, he developed the brigade de cuisine, a system of hierarchy within the kitchen. Escoffier reorganized the kitchen in a fundamental pyramid structure, reminiscent of military hierarchies. With an executive chef in supreme control, a sous-chef just under that command, and a crew of line-cooks to execute the mission of cooking, seasoning, and plating the food for public consumption, Escoffier’s brigade de cuisine proved to be the most effective method of managing a restaurant kitchen and is still prevalent to this day.[4] The militancy and distribution of power in this system has inevitably remained as well, which has produced a working climate tailored for the abilities of men, rather than women.

This dramatic societal evolution is perplexing when referencing back to the original gender dynamics that provided the historical foundation for the earliest biblical texts. Thinking about ancient Israelite society in terms of heterarchy does achieve a reconsideration of gender functionality. Certainly, the ethnographic evidence contradicts the ingrained views of gender hierarchy.[5] But, understanding how patriarchy eventually prevailed to such an extraordinary degree requires additional steps that involve “unlearning” the androcentric history of interpretation.

Masculine domination began to emerge when heterarchical values were compromised with the adoption of new ideologies and the region’s subsequent societal transition from tribal to state. This was largely the result of the penetration of Graeco-Roman culture throughout the East, which facilitated the oppression of women and undermined the significance of their roles. Specifically, Meyers argues that the Greek philosophical concept of mind-body dualism “became a more general perception of binary categories of opposites.”[6] Hellenistic and Roman influences also promoted the development of urban centers, which led to a rise in wage labor for men. This, Meyers argues, led to “the erosion of self-sufficient households.”[7] New technologies of bread and textile production also left women with fewer opportunities to contribute economically. Furthermore, the intrusion of governing powers into household life and simultaneous increased priestly importance in religious life eventually positioned the functions of women under the functions of men, as men had always occupied the public sphere.[8] The emergence of Israelite monarchy led to sociopolitical structures that undermined farming villages and agrarian lifestyles.[9]

The general evolution of ideologies presents obstacles to an historical and sociological understanding of the time before these changes. Social, political, religious, and economic factors all contributed to the changes in the perception of gender between biblical and rabbinic times, especially after the Romans conquered Jerusalem and Jewish religious life became more heavily dependent on scripture. According to Jewish historian Leila Leah Bronner, “the societal and religious structure placed women outside the corridors of influence and power and gave them only the limited instruction they would need to function as homemakers.”[10]

[1] Meyers 2012, 184.

[2] Iron Chef America is a television series produced by the Food Network. It is an American adaptation of a Japanese series produced by Fuji Television.

[3] Matt McCue, “The first female Iron Chef: How I Overcame sexism in the kitchen,” Fortune. http://fortune.com/2015/10/05/the-first-female-iron-chef-how-i-overcame-sexism-in-the-kitchen/, Retrieved December 16, 2015.

[4] Cailein Gillespie and John A. Cousins, European Gastronomy into the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 2001), 174–175.

[5] Meyers 2012, 186.

[6] Ibid., 209.

[7] Ibid., 206.

[8] Ibid., 206.

[9] Perdue, 139.

[10] Leila Leah Bronner, From Eve to Esther: Rabbinic Reconstructions of Biblical Women (Louiseville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 15-16.

In recent contemporary history, there has been evidence to suggest improvement with issues like the sexism of kitchen hierarchy. In a recent HuffPost Parents article, “3 Reasons Men and Women Both Belong in the Kitchen (So There, Kirk Cameron),” blogger Anne Radcliffe describes how the kitchen can be a gender-neutralizing atmosphere.

The stereotyping of gender roles does more than insult women. It also insults men who might decide that maybe they would like to be these things. It prevents fair division of domestic labor when both parents are working jobs, and it devalues vital life skills and the people who have them. Just as parts of the body get fetishized, like hands and feet, the kitchen gets fetishized as some sort of Sexist Mecca of Domestic Do-Gooderness [sic]. And that's crap. The kitchen is a place of power without gender.[1]

Radcliffe’s views are comforting and accurately reflect the positive direction of modern efforts of gender equality. Yet, while women are not explicitly excluded from career opportunities in the fine dining industry, they still must adopt and maintain a masculine temperament in order to succeed as an executive chef. After all, present-day food preparers are rarely both nurturing (as mothers) and aggressive (as executive chefs). The story of Jim and his wife’s barbeque may no longer be representative of the contemporary progressive family, but for many it continues to exist as a vintage cultural gem for those who still yearn for the “Golden Age” or the American Dream, when men could regularly come home to a delicious homemade meal and still have their fifteen minutes of fame in front of the grill on the weekends. Indeed, there is much more work to be done in the kitchen.

[1] Anne Radcliffe, “3 Reasons Men and Women Both Belong in the Kitchen (So There, Kirk Cameron),” Huffington Post, “HuffPost Parents: The Blog,” November 26, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anne-radcliffe/3-reasons-men-and-women-both-belong-in-the-kitchen-so-there-kirk-cameron_b_6214388.html, retrieved December 17, 2015.

[lahistorienne]

Let a Man do the Grilling

“Step aside, honey. Let a man do the grilling,” Jim said to his wife. She surrendered and returned to tend to her potato salad, French onion soup, and cherry pie. One by one, Jim took each slab of ribeye and carefully laid them on the charcoal grill. “Your steaks are always the best! What’s your secret, Jim?” his friends asked. “Well fellas, I’ll tell you. Just salt, pepper, and garlic powder is all you need for a great piece of meat!” His friends nodded in agreement and admiration. While Jim finished the grilling, his wife and her friends set the table, replenished the beer and wine, and brought out the rest of the food she had prepared for their annual summer barbeque. Everyone feasted and had a great time, and like every year, Jim’s steaks were a hit.

Obviously, there are a few social issues with this all-too-familiar story of the white middle-class “All-American” barbeque. The first problem one may notice is that Jim’s wife remains unnamed. The second would be the conventional assignment of gender roles (i.e.: ‘Let a man do the grilling’). The third problem would be that Jim’s contribution to the barbeque receives more praise than his wife’s, even though she seems to have worked much harder to cultivate a good experience for their guests.

Looking more closely, a fourth problem is revealed. In addition to the unequal efforts in contribution, the steaks Jim prepares require little effort or skill. Despite this, he proudly steps in front of the grill, boasts about the simplicity of his method, and basks in the glory of his friends. On the other hand, his wife’s potato salad, French onion soup, and cherry pie involve far more skill and attention. Her setting the table and refilling the drinks are also significant components to the barbecue’s success. Why is Jim so proud of contributing so little, and why does he receive such credit for his lack of effort?

The modern issues of gender inequality have become such an inherent aspect of society that the subconscious acceptance of it has accordingly become an inherent aspect of culture. This has a lot to do with the study of civilization, particularly in regards to religious history.

More on this to come...

[lahistorienne]

The Actual Origins of “Christian Family Values”

I wrote this bit for a take-home midterm exam this semester. What you are about to read is not a criticism of the Christian religion, it is simply an historical and textual analysis. Please read with an open mind.

There is nothing wrong with getting married or having children in the Hebrew Bible. In fact, the Jews were divinely encouraged to “be fruitful and multiply” in the first commandment. Even though Jewish biblical law viewed it as simply a human civil arrangement, matrimony appeared constantly in the Hebrew Scriptures. For the ancient Palestinian Jewish community during the first century, this fundamental aspect of their religious lifestyle was a primary reason for their confusion towards Jesus and his ministry. While their tradition of maintaining a bloodline was highly valued, Jesus’s “family values” were, in fact, anti-family! The Gospel of Matthew contains one of the most militant positions of Jesus in this regard:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.[1]

According to the gospels, Jesus condemned divorce, another particularly confusing component of his ministry for the Jews. When the Pharisees asked him if it is unlawful in God’s eyes for a man to divorce his wife, Jesus responded,

Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female…For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.[2]

Jesus then went as far to say, “whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery.”[3] In other words, remarrying after a divorce is equivalent to cheating on one’s spouse! Jesus does, however, make an exception for divorce if it is the result of unchaste behavior.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, textual evidence implies that some of Jesus’s family and neighbors were among the first people who were opposed to elements of his ministry. According to Geza Vermes, “As an exceptional and controversial religious teacher, it was inevitable that Jesus should encounter criticism and hostility as well as respect and love, but strangely enough, the first opposition came from those closest to him, his family and fellow citizens in Nazareth.”[4] Vermes cites the author of Mark, who writes that Jesus’s relatives responded with “He is out of his mind.”[5] As Jesus shunned his own family and preached familial abandonment, one may understand these elements of ostracization.

As Jesus can be understood as a charismatic leader in an apocalyptic movement, one could argue his anti-family values were largely based on the assumption that the end of the world was imminent and there was no point to engaging in familial affairs. Ross Shephard Kraemer sees “the specifics of Christian asceticism as a logical extension of earliest Christian belief in the imminent end of the universe as they knew it, which rendered normal social relationships, particularly marriage and childbearing, more or less irrelevant.”[6] It was essential that Jesus’s followers remove themselves from worldly restraints, and this meant breaking away from their earthly, biological family and joining an enlightened spiritual family.

Geza Vermes uses Jesus’s own parables and sayings from the Gospels to describe how his movement was “animated by pressing urgency” and “did not include a vision of a lasting future,” elements that are characteristic of apocalyptic movements:

For Jesus, citizenship of the Kingdom depended on total devotion to the cause. To use the imagery of his parables, whoever wished to acquire a precious pearl or a treasure hidden in a field had to be ready to pay the price and sacrifice everything he had (Mt. 13:44-6)…Filial trust and readiness to sacrifice the entirety of what one possessed had to be followed up, in Jesus’s thinking, by immediate and wholehearted action. ‘Repent and believe’ (Mk 1:15; Mt. 4:17) was a command which had to be implemented at once. Attention had to be fixed on the present time, on today: ‘Do not be anxious about tomorrow…Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day’ (Mt. 6:34; Lk. 12:22-31).[7]

In other words, if the Kingdom of God is imminent, who needs family anymore?

Notes:

[1] Matthew 10:34-39.

[2] Matthew 19:4-6.

[3] Matthew 19:9.

[4] Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1973), 33.

[5] Mark 3:21.

[6] Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 139.

[7] Vermes, Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 57-58.

[lahistorienne]

Is it fair to criticize the past for not having the values of the present?

I’m nearing the end of my coursework for my MA (which means all the coffee, all the time), and my research right now is largely based on how we view female functionality and influence during antiquity. More and more, I’ve come to find that I am guilty of applying my contemporary feminist worldview to understanding ancient cultures. This method just does not work. Patriarchy, while still present in the ancient world, may not be as inherent as we think. Here’s a little preview of a paper I’m working on:

A masculine framework prevails in the composition of biblical and postbiblical texts, silencing and often fabricating the female voices that will never truly be heard. Many of these texts were devised with the intention of undermining feminine influence in a variety of ways. For instance, the usage of women as literary devices to communicate androcentric agendas appears to have been (and often still is) a common trend. The “ideal woman,” one of purity and obedience, and the “heretical woman,” one of seduction and temptation, are the polar opposite ends of this metaphorical female spectrum that is frequently present in religious literature. The role of Christian orthodoxy in this example poses a particular problem for the historical study of women in the context of ancient heretical movements. As Virginia Burrus explains,

The heresiological sources are not only written from the point of view of a self-identified orthodoxy, but are also written by men who utilize the figure of the heretical female as a vehicle for the negative expression of their own orthodox male self-identity.[1]

While the heretical woman was meant to serve as an example of an undesirable persona, it was not restricted to the female gender. Men often used this same symbol in slanderous rhetoric to undermine the reputations of other men; the effeminate male is the product of compromised masculinity, and is therefore on par with the heretical female. Kate Cooper connects this concept to Roman rhetoric and the male obsession with reputation.

The public man had continuously to project his trustworthiness before a public eye well trained in discerning signs of weakness in body, mind, or will…His claim to honour needed constantly to be justified, both within the brotherhood of aristocratic men and in the larger arena of a society in which these were by definition a minority. His standing was subject to the flux of ascendency between his supporters and detractors, and to a corresponding fluctuation in deployment of narrative.[2]

Considering the likelihood that many of these men in positions of power were projecting their own self-consciousness onto their feminine counterparts, one can see why the portraits of ancient women in religious, political, and social contexts were subject to such categorical levels of scrutiny.

The androcentric nature of postbiblical texts, such as rabbinic literature, contributes further to the issues with studying these women. Wives, daughters, sisters, and nieces were secondary components in the legal dialogue of familial affairs, typically presented in ways that bolstered male authority over the household. This almost always left women out of the realm of decision-making, undermining their independence even more. Needless to say, this trend was not unique to Jewish societies. According to Michael Satlow,

Rabbis, like Greek and Roman aristocrats throughout antiquity, did not attempt to persuade women to marry because it would hardly have crossed their minds that women would need to marry.[3]

The female opinion in these ancient societies has consequently been designated as generally unimportant and without substantial value.

The complex problems with these portrayals have led to a variety of expository theories and social movements. Of the modern scholarship of ancient women in the context of religion, Judith Romney Wagner alludes to its position in the realm of contemporary political agendas.

Religious feminists of a more radical stamp, convinced that patriarchal religion was utterly beyond repair, pursued the quest for evidence of pre-patriarchal societal structures in which women called the shots — or at least enjoyed a more favorable position…Some radical feminists have concluded that modern women have no choice but to develop new forms of religion (either gynocentric or gender-neutral) and to create new liturgies, if not new Scriptures, to express these new forms.[4]

Along with rejecting entire religious foundations outright, there have also been contrary efforts to “own” the negative imagery of women in the Bible as a way to celebrate femininity. Ironically, glorifying the heretical woman has resulted in the even deeper issue of accepting the very marginalization that men had designated for women in the first place.[5]

It is easy to become blinded by the desperation to live with and justify these texts, but finding solutions to the overwhelming presence of androcentrism in the Bible begins with understanding the framework of its earliest texts. One must avoid the common oversight of accepting a patriarchal foundation of the Bible and placing it in the same compositional domain as postbiblical texts. As Pierre Bourdieu assesses,

Being included, as man or woman, in the object that we are trying to comprehend, we have embodied the historical structures of the masculine order in the form of unconscious schemes of perception and appreciation. When we try to understand masculine domination we are therefore likely to resort to modes of thought that are the product of domination.[6]

[1] Virginia Burrus, “The Heretical Woman as Symbol in Alexander, Athanasius, Epiphanius, and Jerome,” in Harvard Theological Review 84, no. 3 (1991): 230.

[2] Kate Cooper, “Insinuations of Womanly Influence: An Aspect of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy,” in The Journal of Roman Studies 82 (1992): 152.

[3] Michael L. Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 38.

[4] Judith Romney Wegner, “Philo’s Portrayal of Women—Hebraic or Hellenic?” in Amy-Jill Levine (ed.),“Women Like This”: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World, Society of Biblical Literature, No. 1 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2001): 41-42.

[5] Burrus elaborates, “in the process of glorifying the heretical woman, those of us who attempt to reconstruct the history of women in ancient Christianity have ironically embraced women’s marginalization in so far as we have failed to break free from the inherently androcentric dichotomy of ‘right-thinking male’ and ‘heretical female’” (Burrus, 231).

[6] Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 5. 

[lahistorienne]

Human Memory: Transcending the Bridge Between Historical Fiction and Primary Source Material

           Have you ever told a story or shared a personal experience and changed certain details of what actually happened, whether subconsciously or intentionally? Every human is guilty of this. The communication of personal anecdotes often, if not almost always, suffers from the constraints of language and expectations of outcomes. Other psychological phenomenon such as hindsight bias and the transience of memory play significant roles in the circulation of our experiences (i.e.: history).

Considering this inherent aspect of human nature, how should we use autobiographies, memoirs, and testimonies in our historical research? In my experience with ancient history, the intentional bias of primary source material is so overwhelmingly evident that its historical accuracy has been generally accepted as fragmentary among scholars in our day and age. But, what about these types of sources from more recent history?

In my article “A Defective Covenant,” for example, I used a lot of Holocaust survivor testimonial material in my research. While these survivors are extremely valuable to our understanding of that time, it is a challenge to bear in mind that human memory is a fickle thing. That is not to say our respect for these survivors’ accounts should decrease in any way.

We as humans have admitted to being imperfect, therefore every autobiography or memoir we read and every story or personal experience we hear should be understood as such. In other words, while our memory is an invaluable tool at our disposal to understand history, it can never be a perfectly reliable historical reference. Our own agendas are always at play, whether we realize it or not!

[lahistorienne]

Married life: Evidence for Matriarchy in the Bible

      I married my counterpart two weeks ago, and I’m happy to call him my husband. Although we’ve taken this big step together, I don’t think either of us feel any differently. We have been together for six and a half years and have lived together for most of that time. After our wedding, we simply returned to the same life we had been living before!

Photo courtesy of Daniel López Pérez

So, naturally, I can’t help but compare my modern, progressive marriage experience with those of ancient Israelite women. One of my courses this semester, Women and the Bible (led by Dr. Curtis Hutt), has given me a renewed perspective of the Judeo-Christian portrait of women, as well as a glimpse into the mysterious history that the Bible has tailored for us. The general consensus is that the Bible, including both the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Testament, is based on patriarchal values. Some argue that this is not misogynistic, but is rather simply the nature of human familial relationships that has been ingrained in our understanding of gender responsibilities throughout history.

There is a reason for this general consensus.

Based on the dating of the books of the Hebrew Bible (or ‘Old Testament’), the number of female characters dwindles as time progresses. In other words, the majority of female figures are found in the oldest books of the Bible, such as Genesis, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Has anyone ever heard of Deborah, the female prophet, spiritual judge, and warrior (Judges 4 & 5)? Or Huldah, the literate prophetess who authenticated sacred scrolls (2 Kings 22)? As the time of composition progresses (specifically referring to the Hebrew Bible), the female presence becomes less and less significant.

I could get into a whole thing, but what I really want to discuss is the brief instance in Genesis that suggests matriarchal values in ancient Israelite culture. I’m not talking about the Biblical “matriarchs” (Abraham’s wife Sarah, Isaac’s wife Rebecca, and Jacob’s wives Leah and Rachel). While these women are referred to as matriarchs, that does not indicate that they held familial power over their husbands. The passage in Genesis I’m referring to indicates a cultural custom that preceded patrilocal marriage.

Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. (Genesis 2:24)

A man leaving his family to “cling to his wife” is certainly an oddity when compared to the rest of the predominantly patriarchal instances of marriage in the Bible. Since this passage immediately follows the whole “woman was created from man’s rib” thing (the translation of which is problematic in and of itself, but I’ll save that for another post), it is easy to overlook the significance of what this line is actually referencing. But...THIS IS IMPORTANT SHIT! This passage implies that there was a time when women enjoyed at least a degree of familial authority over their husbands, and that matrilocal marriage the norm in ancient Israelite societies. There is another brief mention of this type of practice in Exodus, when Moses marries Zipporah:

Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah in marriage. She bore a son, and he named him Gershom; for he said, “I have been an alien residing in a foreign land.” (Exodus 2:21-22)

So, while Zipporah’s father is in control of the situation here, it is HER family that takes Moses in. This is further evidence for early matrilocal marriage customs, which disappear upon the emergence and regulation of Jewish law in the scriptures.

And so, aside from its oldest texts, a masculine framework prevails in the rest of the Bible’s composition, silencing and often fabricating the female voices we will never truly hear. Sad.

Luckily, it’s 2015. For those of us with common sense, we can adapt to a (still developing) egalitarian society. My husband and I are currently in a matrilocal marraige situation with my family here in Omaha, but I have also left my family to be with him in Washington earlier on in our relationship. I suppose I prefer the patrilocal option...mostly because his family lives near Seattle (and, let’s be honest, Omaha’s weather is gross). But we balance it out, and we are just two independent people who make our own decisions and share a common goal.

Life is sweet without patriarchy (but it is hard work to unlearn it).

[lahistorienne]

The Portico of the Harmonious Gods (a.k.a. The Weirdest Structure in the Roman Forum)

        The Forum Romanum was a paramount aspect of daily life in ancient Rome. Containing a plethora of structures and buildings, the space was used for civic, religious, commercial, and social purposes. When the city’s population reached a point to where one forum was no longer sustainable, more supplementary public squares were built, especially during the imperial period. The original Forum, however, retained a degree of prominence in the city and remains one of the most important archaeological sites in Rome. This is primarily due to the age, size, and significance of its structures, as well as its location below the Palatine and the sheer size of the space itself.

As a tourist, and even as a well-versed scholar of Roman history, it is difficult to visualize the Forum as a bustling area of constant activity. Architectural historian David Watkin channels the accounts of Suetonius as an aid to the imagination.

We need to recall such vivid images as that of Suetonius when de describes how the Emperor Claudius, despite his attempts to ensure the corn supply for the citizens of Rome, was ‘once stopped in the middle of the Forum by a mob and so pelted with abuse and at the same time with pieces of bread that he was hardly able to escape to the Palace by a back door.’ Suetonius also records of Nero that ‘right in the Roman Forum he gouged out the eye of a Roman knight for being too outspoken in chiding him.’ Julia, the sexually driven daughter of dignified Augustus, was accused of having taken part in orgies in the Forum, soliciting passers-by like a prostitute, while her husband, Emperor Tiberius, was absent in Rhodes.[1]

Even with these descriptive (albeit likely exaggerated) accounts of activity, as well as a powerful imagination, Watkins adds that “we can hardly envisage the city-scape of the once-busy Forum, criss-crossed by roads of which little more than confusing sections and their names now survive…”[2]

Regardless of the ability to envision this place during antiquity, the Forum has provided the field of history with valuable archaeological evidence that allows for a sophisticated level of academic inference. While excavations have revealed a lot regarding Rome’s political practices, the Forum has also bestowed several examples of the city’s religious life. This demonstrates how Rome did not adhere to “separation of church and state,” which proves difficult for the modern Western observer to comprehend. It is important to bear in mind that the distinction between political and religious practices is a modern concept, and religion in the ancient world had a completely different impact on daily life.

One of the Forum’s most unique (and peculiar) religious structures is the Portico of the Harmonious Gods (Portico Dii Consentes). Located at the west end of the Forum, it was excavated in 1834 under Pope Gregory XVI.[3] While the ruins that currently stand are largely from nineteenth and twentieth century re-erections, archaeological analysis of the ancient remnants suggests that the original building dates as to early as the first century B.C.E. and was repurposed several times following its initial construction.[4] The most ancient part of the portico’s ruins that are still visible today is that of a late first century C.E. reconstruction. Having been last rebuilt in 367 C.E., the Portico of the Harmonious Gods is the latest dated pagan monument in the Forum.[5]

The “Harmonious Gods” were the twelve deities who protected Rome, the equivalents to the twelve major Greek Olympian gods. There were once statues of these gods displayed between the portico’s twelve Corinthian columns in rooms behind it. The gods were arranged in couples: Jupiter and Juno; Mercury and Ceres; Apollo and Diana; Volcanus and Vesta; Neptune and Minerva; and Mars and Venus. The colonnade was set below the Tabularium (a Republican era state archival office) on a trapezoidal platform, forming a portico on two sides of an obtuse angle. Originally, the structure contained eight rooms constructed of brick material with an additional seven in the lower platform.[6]

The Portico of the Harmonious Gods is unique for several reasons. It has an odd architectural style and has an unusual placement in the Forum. Watkin states,

This area of the Forum must always have been a total muddle, for jammed together at different levels on a cramped sloping site were the Portico of the Harmonious Gods, the Temples of Concord, Vespasian and Saturn, and the important continuation between them of the Via Sacra, known here as the Clivus Capitolinus (Capitoline slope).[7]

While the original structure in the space has been dated to Republican era pagan Rome, it was only until later, when the empire had begun to adopt Christian principles during the 4th century, that the building was rebuilt as a pagan temple. In the recent years before the portico’s dedication to the twelve gods, Rome had been under the reign of the empire’s first Christian dynasty, the Constantinians.

Constantine the Great had legalized Christianity in his Edict of Milan about 54 years earlier, putting an end to a long period of Christian persecution that had reached its peak under the reign of Diocletian. While Christians finally achieved legal protection and the ability to advance in Roman society –- so much so that the empire adopted it as its official and only authorized religion in the year 380 –- Rome’s roots would always be pagan. One could argue that Portico of the Harmonious Gods was a sort of pagan memorialization, but it is important to consider the political motives and circumstances behind its establishment.

The emperor Julian, known to Christians as “Julian the Apostate,” was the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire and the last emperor of the Constantinian Dynasty. Julian’s role in Rome during the 4th century is fascinating for many reasons, primarily because was not a Christian, nor a traditional pagan. Before becoming emperor, Julian had spent a significant amount of time in Athens, where he found a deep understanding of his spiritual perspective.[8] With adoration and devotion to Hellenistic culture, he adopted the philosophy of Neoplatonism. Following his initiation into Neoplatonism, he joined the cult of the sun god Mithras. This amalgamation of “Neoplatonic paganism” became a fundamental part of Julian’s identity and indicates the possible naissance of his plans to undermine the rapidly growing influence of Christianity.

Julian became emperor of Rome upon the death of his cousin, Constantius II. While Constantius had named Julian as his successor prior to his illness and death, the last year of their relationship became strained when Julian impetuously gave himself the honorific title of Augustus. Constantius, interpreting Julian as a usurper, intended to take military force against him. Upon acquiring his devastating illness, however, Constantius accepted the inevitable and confirmed that Julian would be his successor.[9] In a letter to his uncle, Maximus, Julian responded to his cousin’s death:

We are alive by the will of the gods, freed from the necessity of suffering or inflicting the irreparable. I witness Helios – whom all of the gods I besought most earnestly to assist me – and King Zeus: I have never wished to kill Constantius; rather I have wished the contrary. Then why have I come? Because the gods expressly ordered me, promising safety if I obeyed, while, if I stayed, what I pray no god may do to me.[10]

 This letter demonstrates Julian’s difference in religious views from his Constantinian predecessors.

Throughout his reign, Julian continued to consult the gods and live by their inspiration. Since his being crowned emperor occurred under strained familial relations, it is evident that Julian attempted to ameliorate his dynasty’s reputation. In Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden’s monograph of Julian, she states that he “emphasized his divine right by asserting his link with the Constantinian dynasty in symbolic fashion.”[11] Julian tried several angles of bringing pagan values back into Rome and pushing aggressive anti-Christian policy reforms, while simultaneously attempting to divinely rebrand his family’s dynasty and use the name to his advantage. Julian’s reign was short-lived (he died at the Battle of Samarra in 363, just two years after having been crowned the sole emperor), but it caused significant unrest in the religious establishment of the empire and created difficult obstacles for his successors.[12]

The Valentinian Dynasty that followed brought back a degree of order in the empire, but there were still those who were in support of Julian’s ideas for reform. Prior to his untimely death, Julian had circulated letters that contained his vision for an ideal clergy and social functions of the pagan priesthood, hoping to change the attitude of his contemporaries. As the growing dominance of Christian bishops supplanted the influence of cultic high priests, the priesthood was undermined even more as they became negatively associated with darkness and evil. Athanassiadi-Fowden notes, “the rapid debasement of the social status of the priesthood in late antiquity was not unconnected with the degradation of the old religion.”[13] One of Julian’s letters contained a statement regarding this issue from when he served as pontifex maxiumus: “we are ministers of prayers’, not curses.”[14]

While it is unclear as to whether or not there was truly a significant attempt at a “pagan revival” in Rome during this time under Valentinan rule, it is worth considering that the Portico of the Harmonious Gods was constructed in an environment of renewed unrest between pagans and Christians. According to the information at the site, a 4th century inscription on the ruins of the portico indicates that it was Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, the prefect of Rome under Valentinian II, who ordered the building’s renewal into a dedication to the Twelve gods. Praetextatus intended to emphasize and preserve senatorial tradition through his attempts at keeping paganism physically visible in the city. Some examples of Praetextatus’s efforts include removing additions that had been made to pagan structures, such as private houses, balconies, colonnades, and second stories.[15] In a hostile, undated letter titled “Against the Pagans,” Praetextatus was (supposedly) the primary target of the attack.[16] Perhaps this letter was partially in response to his devotion to protecting pagan structures during this prefecture in 367, the year of the portico’s reconstruction.

While the Portico of the Harmonious Gods is a unique and important part of later pagan history, it also has a role in Rome’s Christian history. It received recent attention during Italy’s short-lived Republic following Europe’s revolution in 1848. In an attempt to promote national and civic ideals, democrats intended to physically unearth authentic Republican values in the Roman Forum through a significant excavation project. In response, the papacy continued to promote the contrasting notion of the continuity between Classical and Christian Rome, which may have inspired Pius IX’s rebuilding of the portico in 1858.[17] Thus, the Portico of the Harmonious Gods appears to be a strange bridge between Rome’s two dominating religions. It is as if the structure has been in the middle of a tug-of-war between Christians and pagans, which makes the naming of the portico quite ironic.

Notes:

[1] David Watkin, The Roman Forum (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 29.

[2] Watkin, 29.

[3] Ibid., 81.

[4] According to the information at the site, the nineteenth century reconstruction used ancient materials recovered from the excavations.

[5] Michael Grant, The Roman Forum (New York: Michael Grant Publications Ltd., 1970), 90.

[6] Watkin, 81.

[7] Ibid., 81-82.

[8] Polymnia Athanassiadi-Fowden, Julian and Hellenism: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 50.

[9] R. Malcolm Errington, Roman Imperial Policy: from Julian to Theodosius (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 17.

[10] Epistles 28, as cited from Athanassiadi-Fowden, 88.

[11] Athanassiadi-Fowden, 89.

 [12] Errington, 171.

[13] Athanassiadi-Fowden, 183.

 [14] Epistles 88.451, as cited from Athanassiadi-Fowden, 184.

 [15] Maijastina Kahlos, “The Restoration Policy of Vettius Agorius Praetextatus,” Arctos: Acta Philologica Fennica 29, (1995): 39-47.

[16] Errington, 253.

[17] Watkin, 196.

[lahistorienne]

Ostia’s Synagogue: One of the Oldest in the World

        The overgrown archaeological site of Ostia Antica was once Rome’s bustling maritime city that contributed greatly to international trade during the height of the Imperial era. Ostia had replaced the inner harbor of the Tiber River that once functioned as Rome’s center of shipping and maritime traffic. The Tiber’s harbor thrived for three centuries during the Late Republic until it could no longer accommodate the influx of grains, oils, animals, slaves, and other goods.[1] In 42 C.E., Claudius resolved this issue by ordering further development of Ostia, including a new portus with advanced facilities to counter the problem of silting from which the town had previously suffered.[2] Trajan later added an even more advanced hexagonal port to supplement Claudius’s in 113 C.E., as well as the Fossa Traiana that connected the massive harbor complex to the Tiber. Thus, the second century C.E. marked Ostia’s peak as the commercial headquarters of Rome.[3]

While the urban landscape of Ostia was centered on trade, it was a Roman city like any other, complete with bathhouses, temples, and civic spaces. The mosaics at the Piazza of the Corporations, a colonnaded square built under the reign of Augustus, provide an idea of what types of overseas goods passed through Ostia: grains; leather products; rope; and even wild animals like elephants, which were probably traded for their valuable ivory tusks. Near the Piazza of the Corporations once stood a small temple dedicated to Ceres, the goddess of grain, suggesting that Ostia’s vibrant community was dependent on and grateful for their significant economic role.[4]

Ostia’s religious life during its heyday was predominantly pagan, but there is strong evidence of a Jewish population as well. This is primarily due to the existence of a synagogue on the outskirts of the city. It is difficult to date the arrival of Ostia’s Jewish community, but it is clear that they eventually established a significant presence in the city. Along with the excavation of Ostia’s synagogue during the 1960s, there were several other archaeological finds to support the notion of a substantial Jewish community in the town. Aside from an architectural fragment with a menorah relief, there were also a series of ceramic lamps with Jewish religious symbols discovered.[5]

The ancient synagogue at Ostia stands as one of the oldest in the world and the earliest dated Jewish structure in Europe. Although parts of the ruins that can be visited today date to the 4th century, some archaeologists have argued that the site contains traces of an older synagogue upon which the current ruins still stand. While commonly associated with the time of Claudius’s reign, the exact dating of the alleged first synagogue is debatable. Some scholars have placed it during the first century C.E., but not necessarily during the reign of Claudius. Others have argued for more recent dating in the second century. Still, the claim that the earlier fragmentary traces on the site were those of a synagogue is still a topic of debate among experts in the field. As ancient historian Douglas Boin states, the existence of an earlier synagogue is “entirely conjectural.”[6]

Italian archaeologist Maria Floriani Squarciapino was the superintendent of the Ostia Excavations during the time of the synagogue’s discovery. The site was unearthed under her direction in 1962, and her preliminary reports were published in the Rendiconti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia (Proceedings of the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology) and the Congresso internazionale di archeologia cristiana (International Congress of Christian Archaeology).[7] In these reports, she puts forth an archaeological chronology that begins with the first century, when the opus reticulatum structure was built de novo as a synagogue.[8] Upon more recent archaeological investigation at the site, scholars have challenged Floriani Squarciapino’s assessments.

L. Michael White, Biblical scholar and current director of the Ostia Synagogue Area Excavations, has argued that the original structure at the site was actually a private two-story insula with street-front shops attached to it. He states that smaller religious minority groups in the Roman world “tended to adapt existing buildings, especially homes and other nonpublic architecture, for religious use.”[9] White argues that it was not until the time of Trajan or Hadrian that the building was renovated into a Jewish synagogue. If this were the case, the Jews who moved to Ostia may very well have repurposed an old structure into a new place of worship, thus refuting Floriani Squarciapino’s de novo theory.

Scholars like L. Michael White continue to challenge Floriani Squarciapino’s reports, asserting that there is not sufficient evidence to argue the case for the original site having been built for the purposes of a Jewish synagogue. For example, Floriani Squarciapino allegedly cites that a “low bench” with older-dated masonry attached to an area of the structure is evidence for an earlier Torah shrine.[10] White challenges this notion, arguing that the bench construction “may be the remnant of a stairway from the first stage of the edifice, later removed owing to the design of subsequent renovations.”[11] He continues, describing how the opus reticulatum masonry in that area of the building “still shows the presence of two doorways, one to the south and one to the west” that may have been part of the stairway.[12]

Towards the end of the second century, there was an extensive transformation along Ostia’s seashore. White’s excavation team has proposed that the ceramics discovered in this area indicate that the ground was raised significantly across the synagogue’s entire site in order to pave the Via Severiana, which once ran near Ostia’s ancient beach.[13] This, White argues, allows for a new interpretation of the site’s architecture as a whole. White compares the opus reticulatum masonry at the synagogue to the urban development patterns of the other insulae at Ostia, especially along the Via Severiana, demonstrating that the alleged first synagogue shares more in common with these structures than that of a Jewish house of worship.

The earliest phases of the mostly commercial buildings directly across the Via Severiana use the same masonry and come from this period, suggesting that all of this construction (including the synagogue edifice itself) occurred as part of a larger pattern of urban development along the Via Severiana.[14]

While White has provided the most extensive archaeological discussion of Ostia’s synagogue since Floriani Squarciapino’s reports from the 1960s, there are counterpoints to his arguments as well.

Religious Studies Professor Anders Runfsson challenges White’s staircase theory, arguing that the heights, materials, and dating of the columns in this particular area of the building are inconsistent with the possibility of a staircase.[15] Runfsson also criticizes White’s claim that the stairwell had a parallel entrance, stating that his interpretation of the building’s foundational plan is incorrect.[16] Regarding White’s comparison of the synagogue to other buildings along the town’s Via Severiana, Runfsson points out that this street “did not exist when the buildings were erected,” and that “no evidence supports the existence of an earlier road beneath it, nor does evidence support another road, with a different orientation, by the beach.”[17] Therefore, according to Runfsson, “No evidence supports White’s theory regarding the staircase; no remains of such a construction exist and, furthermore, no staircase could have existed where White located it.”[18]

Runfsson also suggests that White’s interpretation of Floriani Squarciapino’s “low bench” construction on the site is incorrect, possibly confused with different benches in a different area. Since Floriani Squarciapino’s measurements of these benches are recorded as 1.83 meters wide, “White’s measure of the ‘bench’ construction (1.93 m) cannot, therefore, have come from [Floriani Squarciapino’s] article,” demonstrating the possibility that White “misunderstood the archaeological remains in this regard.”[19] Additionally, Runfsson is confused as to why White has attributed Floriani Squarciapino’s assessment of the benches as an earlier Torah shrine in the first place, since “The excavator has said nothing about archaeological remains of such as supposed shrine in any of her writings on the synagogue.”[20]

Disagreement among scholars will probably always be present in conversations regarding the existence of an earlier synagogue on the site.[21] There is, however, a general consensus that since the initial exciting excavations in the 1960s, productive attention has not been given to the Ostia synagogue until recent decades. As Runfsson explains,

Several factors have hindered the study of this fascinating building and its history. First, the majority of articles written about the synagogue are marred by errors and misunderstandings. As early as her preliminary reports from the excavations, Floriani Squarciapino noted misinformation spread both within and outside the scholarly world. The second obstacle, which perhaps partially explains the lack of recent scholarship, is that the excavator herself has not published a final report. She has published several shorter studies, but none is complete. Thus, excavation results are scattered among different articles, and several key findings have yet to be published.[22]

More often than not, archaeologists are restrained in what they are able to conclude about their excavations. Indeed, defense of interpretations and analyses remains an integral part to ongoing checks and balances among scholars in the field. Now that there are important conversations between modern scholars like L. Michael White and Anders Runfsson regarding the foundational and developmental nature of Ostia’s synagogue, academia is able to move forward in its understanding of the site and the Jewish community of the ancient town as a whole. Nonetheless, the dating of the site will likely remain in an undetermined state, and Floriani Squarciapino’s preliminary reports from the 1960s have contributed to even more grey area and unease. Regardless of the exact age of the ruins, however, Ostia’s synagogue is a valuable archaeological site to explore, as it serves as an outlet to compare and contrast community life of Diaspora Jews in the Greco-Roman world.

Notes:

[1] Douglas Boin, Ostia in Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 51.

[2] Suetonius writes that Claudius achieved this feat by “building up curved breakwaters on the left and right and in front of the entrance a mole in deep water” (Claudius 20.3).

[3] Guy de la Bédoyère, Cities of Roman Italy: Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ostia (London: Bristol Classical Press, 2010), 12.

[4] De la Bédoyère, 42.

[5] Boin, 119.

[6] Ibid., 120.

[7] For a condensed English translation of these reports, see M. Floriani Squarciapino, “The Synagogue at Ostia,” Archaeology 16 (1963): 194-203.

[8] Opus reticulatum is an architectural term that refers to diagonal masonry work often used in ancient Roman construction. De novo is the Latin phrase for “from the beginning” or “from the new.”

[9] L. Michael White, “Synagogue and Society in Imperial Ostia: Archaeological and Epigraphic Evidence” The Harvard Theological Review 90, no. 1 (January 1997): 26.

[10] White, 33 f. 28. This citation of White’s remains unconfirmed.

[11] Ibid., 33.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Boin, 119.

[14] White, 33.

[15]Anders Runfsson, “A Monumental Synagogue From the First Century: The Case of Ostia,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 33, no. 2 (2002):, 414.

[16] For details regarding the possible issues with White’s restoration plan, see Runfsson, 416.

[17] Ibid., 416-418.

[18] Ibid., 419.

[19] Ibid., 418.

[20] Ibid., 419.

[21] For further reading on White’s response to Runesson’s criticisms, see White, “Reading the Ostia Synagogue: A Reply to A. Runfsson,” The Harvard Theological Review 92, no. 4 (October 1999): 435-464.

[22] Runfsson, 412.

[lahistorienne]

Discovery in Israel pushes back dawn of agriculture to 23,000 years ago

Humans living in wood huts were growing grain with pesky proto-weeds 11,000 years earlier than thought, international team of scientists finds.

Read the article here:

http://www.haaretz.com/life/archaeology/1.667258

[lahistorienne]

Ohio university grapples with case of missing mosaic | Al Jazeera America

Bowling Green University knows it has mosaics stolen from Turkey. Turkey knows, too. Why are they still in Ohio?

Bowling Green University knows it has parts of a stolen Turkish mosaic. Turkey knows too. So why are they still in Ohio?

[lahistorienne]

A Concubine from Bethlehem, Hacked to Pieces

        In Phyllis Trible’s “Texts of Terror” (1984), she provides four stories of victimized women from the Bible: Hagar, Tamar, the concubine of a Levite man, and the daughter of Jephthah. Alongside these narratives, Trible offers textual analyses in order to uncover the mystery behind their fates, perhaps so that we may be able to apply it to our modern understanding of violence against women as justified by religion.

One particularly infuriating story stood out to me: that of the unnamed concubine. The story of the Levite man and his concubine can be found in Judges 19:1-30. The setting of the story takes place in the land of Israel before there was a king to enforce law and order. The man and his concubine are left unnamed throughout the story, travelling from Bethlehem towards Jerusalem with an attendant and a pair of donkeys. When the group decides to stop in the town of Gibeah to spend the night, the horror begins.

Before I continue with the story, I should explain a key concept to those who aren’t familiar with the Jewish tradition (not that I’m claiming to be an expert). One ancient Jewish virtue (dating back before the Jews were even Jews) is hospitality. If someone knocks on your door, you take them in. You feed them, protect them, and let them rest in your care. That is…if you are a male. This attitude towards the concept of hospitality is illustrated in this story, demonstrating that men are clearly more valuable than women.

So, a local old man and his daughter took the weary travellers in for the night. The old man didn’t want them to spend the night in the town square, which was dangerous and full of thugs. Remember – there was a lack of law and order at this time. Later that evening at the old man’s house, a “depraved lot” of the town’s men barged in and encircled the group, saying to the old man “Bring out the man who has come into your house, so that we can be intimate with him.” (Sexy, right?) The old man pleaded with them, saying:

“Please, my friends, do not commit such a wrong. Since this man has entered my house, do not perpetuate this outrage. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. Let me bring them out to you. Have your pleasure of them, do what you like with them; but don’t do that outrageous thing to this man.”

I’ve heard of “bros before hoes,” but certainly not “bros before daughters,” or better yet “complete fucking stranger before child.” Not only did the old man completely dispose of his guest (that is, the concubine), he offered his own daughter, his very blood, to be gangbanged in order to protect a man he barely knew. The story, however, does not clarify whether the rapists took the old man’s daughter, but since “the man seized his concubine and pushed her out to them,” we know that the Levite man, (also referred to as her husband in some versions) did not seem hesitant to give up his concubine. He and the rest of the men were left safely behind.

What follows is even more disturbing. After being raped mercilessly all night, the concubine returned to the old man’s house, collapsing at the entrance. The Levite man had planned to leave that morning, and upon opening the door, he saw her, mutilated and exhausted, with her hands on the threshold. He told her to get up, but she did not respond. It is unclear as to whether or not she was alive. The Hebrew Scriptures do not specify this, but the Greek Bible added the line “for she was dead.” Either way, the man appears to give zero shits, and places her onto one of the donkeys so they can continue with their journey.

Don’t worry, the violence isn’t over quite yet. When the Levite man made it home, “he picked up a knife, and took hold of his concubine and cut her up limb by limb into twelve parts. He sent them throughout the territory of Israel.” This sounds like what the mafia does to their enemies. Not what a man (or husband) does to his concubine.

When the Israelites asked him what the fuck happened, and why there were body parts floating around the Holy Land, the Levite man explains that the crazy men of Gibeah meant to rape and kill him, and they raped his concubine, and that is why she is dead (and why he decided to cut her up into pieces, apparently). Again, depending on what version you read, it is unclear as to whether the concubine died from the rape itself or from her master/husband when he hacked her to bits. One version reads “and she is dead,” implying that the man is reluctant to admit that he himself killed her, and another reads “until she died,” which places the blame on the rapists. In either translation, the Levite man does not mention that he pushed her out to the crowd of rapists to save his own skin.

Does the Levite man face any kind of punishment whatsoever? Of course not. Instead, the Israelites demand justice by putting to death the rapists, leading to the Battle of Gibeah. As Trible puts it, “Outrage erupts at the harm done to a man through his property but ignores the violence done against the woman herself” (p. 82).

This expansion of violence, by the way, leads to the torture, rape, and dismemberment of hundreds of other innocent women. How does this make sense?

God works in mysterious ways.

[lahistorienne]

Cleopatra’s Failed Attempt to Ruin the Bromance of Herod and Marc Antony

        Sometimes my thesis research fills the Kardashian/Real Housewives dramatic void in my life. Herod the Great lived during one of the most exciting and juicy periods of ancient history. Contemporaries like Julius Caesar, Pompey the Great, Cleopatra, and Marc Antony make for great entertainment alongside the research. One of the most intriguing relationships I’ve noticed is that of Herod and Cleopatra’s. In a sense, they were rivals. Yet, there is the fantastic notion that they were lovers. These (probably untrue) rumors owe largely to Josephus’s account of Cleopatra’s attempts to seduce Herod. There is also the issue of the mysterious “Cleopatra of Jerusalem,” one of Herod’s wives who bore him two sons (one being Philip the Tetrarch, who became a great builder just like his father). Since the Egyptian queen also had a son Philip, it has left room for speculation. While it’s fun to imagine a lovechild between Herod and Cleopatra, it’s highly unlikely.

Cleopatra may have tried to seduce Herod, but if she did, it was for her own political agenda. Although Marc Antony had given her middle eastern territories (such as Chalcis, Cypus, and massive coastal territories in Phoenicia and Palestine), she had a constant desire to restore her kingdom’s borders those of the Egyptian Empire’s heyday. In other words, she wanted Herod’s entire kingdom. Although Antony did force Herod to cede Itruraea to Cleopatra, he drew the line at his main territories (such as Judaea and Galilee) out of respect, or perhaps a sort of diplomatic “bros before hoes” maneuver. So, Cleopatra had to turn to meddling in order to weaken Herod and Antony’s comradeship.

Herod knew better than to fall prey to Cleopatra’s (alleged) seduction. It was obvious that she intended to turn Antony against him so she could have more leverage to take control over his kingdom. Cleopatra had to be more creative with her plan to eliminate Herod. In 31 BCE, shortly before the Battle of Actium against Octavian, she convinced Antony to dispatch Herod and his army against the Nabataeans. While Herod had planned to back Antony in the conflict with Octavian, his being away at war prevented him from doing this. Furthermore, Herod fell into a trap laid by one of Cleopatra’s generals in Qanawat, which nearly destroyed him.* He came out on top with a crushing victory at Amman, however, and overcame Cleopatra’s devious plan in several ways.

Not only did Herod establish dominance over Nabataea and end the strained foreign relations he had been dealing with all along, he also dodged the bullet of being on the losing side at Actium. Antony was done for, and Cleopatra may as well have been too. It was the perfect situation for Herod to switch allegiance to Octavian. As Geza Vermes puts it, “Herod was not irreparably compromised in the eyes of the victorious Caesar Octavian.”** Cleopatra had inadvertently saved Herod’s skin, and even secured his future relationship with Rome! Facepalm.

Carefully but dramatically, Herod declared his allegiance to Octavian after the defeat of Antony. According to Josephus, Herod said:

“I am come to rest my safety on my integrity…I am not ashamed to declare my loyalty to Antony. But if you would disregard the individual concerned, and examine how I requite my benefactors, and how staunch a friend I prove, then you may know me by the test of my past actions. I hope that the subject of inquiry will be not whose friend, but how loyal a friend, I have been” (Ant. 15.193; War 1.390).

Octavian responded:

“So staunch a champion of the claims of friendship deserves to be ruler over many subjects…Antony did well in obeying Cleopatra’s behests rather than yours; for through his folly we have gained you” (War 1.391).

A new bromance was born. Octavian even gave Herod Cleopatra’s territories that surrounded his kingdom, expanding his control even more than before. Herod the Great, or Herod the Lucky Bastard?

* Richardson 1996, p. 67.

** Vermes 2014, p. 57.

Map: Rocca 2009, p. 7.

[lahistorienne]

Highlights from Pompeii

      Needless to say, my trip to Pompeii was incredible. I can’t imagine where academia would be without the valuable archaeology preserved from the city’s tragic end in 79 C.E. Here I am, standing miles away from the very source of that disaster: Mount Vesuvius, which is still an active volcano.

Forum Baths:

The “terme del foro” was bathhouse of Pompeii’s city forum. These photos were taken from the men’s section of the baths (the women’s section had a separate street entrance and was much smaller in comparison to the men’s - go figure). The baths are adorned with frescoes and floral stucco ornamentation that still survives. There is a central skylight in the frigidarium (cold room) that provided the only natural lighting in the building. In the tepidarium (warm room) of the baths, there are small terracotta reliefs of male figures along the niches that were intended to provide storage “cubbies” for clothing.

There was also an apodyterium (changing room) in the men’s section that opened up to the frigidarium, tepidarium, and caldarium (hot room). The tepidarium relied on charcoal brazier, the only form of heating available there up to the destruction of the city in 79. The caldarium in the men’s section contained a large marble labrum (wash basin).

Thermopolium:

The word “thermopolium” comes from the Greek θερμοπώλιον, which signifies a place where hot and cold dishes are served. Of all the ancient cook shop-restaurants at Pompeii, the thermopolium with the lararium was the largest one I saw during our visit. The well-preserved painting of the household protective deities is on the far wall behind the three sales counters. The painting depicts Bacchus (the Roman equivalent to the Greek Dionysus) in the center, with the genius (spirit of the pater familias) and the Lares making sacrifices on either side. Below the scene at the bottom of the piece, the agathodaemon serpents are shown “tasting” the offerings.

The small theater:

This building has been identified as an “odeion” (a Greek-style musical concert hall) and is the smaller of the two theaters at Pompeii. Both of the theaters were built in the Greek fashion, incorporating the slope of the natural terrain in their designs. Roman-style theaters, by contrast, were standalone structures that were fully enclosed. Pompeii’s “odeion,” built in the first century B.C.E., could house around 1,000 spectators, whereas the larger theater, built in the second century B.C.E., had a capacity of around 5,000. It had a wooden roof and was probably used for musical and poetry performances due to its superior acoustic potential. The larger theater, on the other hand, did not include a permanent roof (although it could also be covered) and was used for popular plays and pantomimes that appealed to the masses. Some scholars disagree that the small theater was used for entertainment. Paul Zanker argues that it could have been used as an assembly chamber for veterans and colonists (Zanker 66). Roger Ling notes further, “The fact that this roofed auditorium was situated next to the large theater does not necessarily imply that it, too, was intended for public entertainments” (Ling 54).

The Pompeii “Colosseum”:

The Amphitheater at Pompeii was established around 80 B.C.E. and is one of the oldest extant Roman amphitheaters, and thought of as the model for other Roman amphitheaters such as the Colosseum in Rome (built a century later). With a maximum occupancy of 12,000 to 20,000 spectators, it is massive in comparison to Pompeii’s other theaters. Like the other theaters at Pompeii, the amphitheater also incorporates the natural terrain in its design. This is where the Pompeiians enjoyed gladiatorial games and circuses. In contrast to other Roman amphitheaters, this one did not include an underground component. Rather than concrete substructures with a network of passages and stairways, Pompeii’s colosseum rested on solid banks of earth (Ling 138). It did, however, include a type of awning called a velarium. The arena can be accessed via the exterior steps and through the western doors.

Although the amphitheater was closed to the public during our trip, a few of us snuck around up the hill to get a closer look. This is one of the entrances from the top of the theater leading down to the arena:

Lupanar (brothel):

The Lupanar, meaning “wolf den” in Latin, is Pompeii’s most famous brothel. The line to get into this small building was VERY long, and it takes about 20 seconds to walk through. This site contains the famous erotica scenes painted on the walls, which is the source of much of what we know about ancient Roman sexuality.

The Lupanar also has small rooms with built-in beds where the magic would take place. These were once covered with mattresses of straw or composite materials (which still does not sound very comfortable).

Here I am, pretending to be a seductive lupa (Latin slang for prostitute):

Even more fun were the penis arrows we saw carved into the streets nearby. The penis would point to the nearest brothel, guiding visitors in the right direction for their sexual needs. It’s a little difficult to see in this picture because the sun was very bright that day:

Plaster body casts:

During Pompeii’s earlier excavations, archaeologists kept finding mysterious cavities in the solidified ash under which the city was buried. After a while, they realized that these cavities could contain important evidence and decided to fill them with plaster before chipping away around it. They discovered that these cavities once held the bodies of Pompeii’s victims. Although most of the human remains had disintegrated, the shape was held under the ash. These plaster casts reveal the exact position of the person when they died, which continue to haunt us to this day. Some of these casts have been moved to glass display containers, others have been left at the site where they were discovered.

One of the most famous casts from Pompeii is that of a domesticated dog:

There was even the cavity of an infant discovered, who was lying in a cradle at the time of the disaster:

There is so much more to write about Pompeii, but I’ll have to save other highlights for later. Stay tuned for my experience at the recently restored Villa of the Mysteries!

[lahistorienne]

The Fountain of Anna Perenna

Saw this exhibit at the Museo Nazionale Romano during my recent trip to Rome! Anaa Perenna is the Roman goddess of the circular year, and she had a cult following well into the early Christianization of Imperial Rome.

This exhibit features ancient “magical finds” found in the cistern of an old fountain. These items include a large copper pot used for witches' magical potions, and several new large lamps made of purified clay probably for spells, as described in the Hellenistic-period manual of magic, the "Greek Magical Papyri." Six of the lamps have curses (defixiones) inscribed inside of them. In total, 23 defixiones have been found inside the cistern, a significant discovery in a single context. Rare still are the 24 lead containers stacked one inside the other, within them seven figurines made of some organic material. These must have been used to make spells and perform magical rituals against enemies or lovers. The amount of magical material concentrated in such a small place suggests that the fountain was a place well-known for finding magical practitioners. Among the many eastern deities invoked in the curses is Christ, who was considered a great healer and magician.

Magic nail - On this bronze nail there is an invocation in Greek to "Iao Sabaoth" and a series of symbols and animals depicted in a pattern that is intended to work against the evil eye; stars, snake, toad, tortoise, insect, hoopoe, falcon, deer, dog, lizard, scorpion, hare (4th-5th century C.E.)

The caccabus - This cylindrical receptacle, made of copper sheet with an iron handle, shows signs of burning. The shape of the cauldron suggests kitchen use, but it could also have been used for the preparation of infusions, teas, and magic potions, which are widely discussed by the ancient sources in relation to the activities of witches.

Mano pantea ('Hand of the All-Goddess') - This bronze votive hand embodies the virtues of all the gods and is connected to the cult of Sabazius, an Eastern deity with a benevolent role. It represents a gesture of divine benediction and is covered with animals and symbols; snake, tortoise, lizard, toad, vase, and pine branch (2nd-3rd century C.E.)

The amphora - This dates to the mid-5th century C.E. and contained wine. In the inscription painted in red, the writer declares that he wants to cut the amphora's throat, wishing a bad festival of Anna Perenna to those who do not drink free from care. The inscription shows that the Ides of March festival continued into the Christian period.

Curses, from the container with figurine of Petronius Cornigus - Two tablets were inserted between the cylindrical boxes of the container. On one of them a man is depicted bound with rope between two snakes. Beneath this is the lower part of a second body. The inscription gives the object of the curse as 'he whom I love with all my thoughts' (quem pereo fantasia). Evidently this is a love curse, designed to bind the beloved to oneself forever. The other tablet is covered with magical symbols, among them a biblical tetragram and a sequence of four Hebrew letters forming the name of God (4th century C.E.)

Amulets - The small faience, bone, bronze, and amber objects were worn for protection and good fortune. Their shapes and materials relate to the sphere of sexuality and fertility. The phallus, also known as a "fascinum" or magic spell, was called the "medicus invidiae" by Pliny. A hand and a phallus are represented in stylized form at the two ends of the bone amulet. The "manus obscaena," a fist with straight thumb between the fingers, refers to the sexual act. (1st-2nd century C.E.)

[lahistorienne]

Handling the Dead in Deadwood: from Boot Hills to Mount Moriah

Just turned in a monster 27-page paper for my American West Seminar. This semester, I spent time researching the famous Black Hills gold rush community of Deadwood, and how it transitioned from a lawless mining camp to a civilized town. This transition was heavily dependent on the institutionalization of Christianity. One interesting aspect of my research was the relationship between religion and burial practices, so I’ve decided to share an excerpt from that part of my paper.

Deadwood’s cemetery is another example of how religion directly contributed to the necessary transition from an uncivilized community to a working town. As churches bring a sense of community, they also bring ideas for guidelines and protocol. Disposal and organization of the deceased was a serious issue in the earlier years of the gold rush. Without the influence of churches, the execution of funerals and organization of burials were not a priority. Clergyman Joseph Anderson described how cemeteries are an important aspect of Christian tradition within a town and its history.

The Christian cemetery is a memorial and a record. It is not a mere field in which the dead are stowed away unknown; it is a touching and beautiful history, written in family burial plots, in mounded graves, in sculptured and inscribed monuments. It tells the story of the past, not of its institutions, or its wars, or its ideas, but of its individual lives,--of its men and women and children, and of its household. It is silent, but eloquent; it is common, but it is unique. We find no such history elsewhere; there are no records in all the wide world in which we can discover so much that is suggestive, so much that is pathetic and impressive (Rezatto, 4).

Handling the dead during the pioneer days of the American West, especially in mining camp communities like Deadwood, began as a fairly unorganized process. Obituary records were unsubstantial and there was no public record made of the deaths in the early years of the mining camps. “While the headboards in the cemeteries identified many of the departed, hundreds of others were buried in unmarked, shallow graves near where they met their fate from Indians, highwaymen or disease” (Lee, 69).

Early cemeteries were nicknamed “boot hills,” referring to the mythic heroes and gunfighters who died “with their boots on.” Whitewood Gulch, later known as Ingleside, was Deadwood’s first boot hill (Rezatto, 11). Preacher Smith and Wild Bill Hickok, along with many other men, women, and children, were buried at Ingleside. The uneven land in the gulch did not serve very well as a cemetery, and it quickly became overcrowded. The town’s growing population demanded expansion alongside this issue, and so the inhabitants of Deadwood were forced to reconsider the way in which they handled their deceased friends, family members, and neighbors (Rezatto, 12). Although religion was blossoming in Deadwood, it would take a little time for the community to move beyond unemotional pragmatism towards a more spiritually enlightened understanding about the disposal of the dead.

The moral issue of a corpse as a representation of former selfhood has strong connections to aspects of Christian tradition, primarily the Protestant doctrine of redemption and resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul. “Such understandings of the body and its place in the universe mandated attention even when life had fled; it required what always seemed to be called ‘descent’ burial, as well as rituals fitting for the dead” (Faust, 62). The bodies at Ingleside underwent a process of organization and reinterrment in a different, more practical area of the town known as Potter’s Field (Rezatto, 29). The graveyard was given the Christian name Mount Moriah, named after “the land of Moriah” from the Book of Genesis (Rezatto, 12). Deadwood’s subsequent funerals began to exhibit a regulated religious process.

Every death involved ‘the great change’ captured in the language and discourse of nineteenth-century Christianity, the shirt from this life to whatever might come next. A subject of age-old concern for believer and nonbelievers alike, the existence and nature of an afterlife took on new urgency...And even if spirits and souls proved indeed immortal, there will remained the vexing question of bodies (Faust, xvi).

When the Deadwood Cemetery Association was later organized in 1892, it allowed for even more regulation of record keeping (Rezatto, 35). As famous icons of the Black Hills like Wild Bill, Calamity Jane, and Preacher Smith were interred at Mount Moriah, pioneers flocked to visit the famous graves.* The prospects of cemetery tourism sparked a new need for the death care industry in Deadwood. Based on the trends of the newspaper ads in Deadwood, Wisconsin Furniture and Coffin Company (based out of Lincoln, Nebraska) took the forefront of the funeral industry in the region. Nonetheless, the “business of death” became a very real enterprise in Deadwood as well.

Although there is a lack of information regarding Deadwood’s independent funeral businesses, there is evidence to suggest that the town produced caskets for people outside of the Northern Hills. According to an 1893 issue of the Deadwood Weekly Pioneer, the town received a large order from Colorado in January of that year. The city of Como needed “twenty-four coffins for the burial of men killed in the coal mine explosion at King...the scenes about the mine are simply heart rending” (Deadwood Weekly Pioneer, January 12, 1893). Thus, Deadwood profited from the death care industry beyond services for its own community.

*Cemeteries and the general notion of death have fascinated humans throughout history. Many people to this day flock to famous cemeteries like Mount Moriah as tourist sites. Taphophiles, or “graveyard enthusiasts,” participate in cemetery tourism for mysterious reasons beyond simply visiting famous graves. For further reading about the psychology behind this eerie fascination, see Rachael Raine, “A dark tourist spectrum” in International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research 7, no. 3 (2013): 242-256.