Antiquities Exhibits

While looking through my images of artifacts in the British Museum this morning, I came across this terracotta figurine from Boeotia dated to around 400 BCE.  It is identified as merely a youth crowned with a wreath holding a puppy while another dog stands beside him.  As I studied the image, though, I wondered about the identification of it as just a youth.  The broad hips and thighs are reflective of a female form although it is clearly male.  I wondered if it may be a type of Aphroditus statue.  The deity is thought to have arrived in Athens from Cyprus in the 4th century BCE although there have been some Aphroditus herms dated to the 5th century BCE.  Aphroditus was later renamed  Hermaphroditos to reflect its parentage from Aphrodite and Hermes. The deity makes an appearance in the work, On Moral Characters, penned by Theophrastus.  A native of the island of Lesbos, Theophrastus succeeded Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. His given name wa...

A kudurrus is an ancient Babylonian stone with an inscription that records a land grant, usually between the ruling monarch and a subject.  It's name is derived from kudurru, the Akkadian word for boundary.  The only kudurrus excavated in ancient Babylonian sites were found in temples where they would have served to record the transaction and to protect the rights of owner by legal as well as divine means. Inscriptions usually provided the location of the plot of land, the boundaries of its four sides, the name of the surveyor of the property and the names of witnesses to the transaction. To provide divine protection of the relationship, a kudurrus also often included many symbols of deities such as the crescent, symbol of the moon-god Sin, the solar disk of the sun god Shamash, and the eight-pointed star of the goddess Ishtar/Inanna. A Kassite example I photographed at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago was cast from an original in the British Museum.  T...

In the summer of 2021, the palace where Alexander the Great was born, will be open for visitors although the visitor's center will not be completed until 2023. Alexander the Great, otherwise referred to as the “King of Kings”, was born on July 20 or 21, 356 BCE. in Pella, Macedonia. He led a Pan-Hellenic military campaign against Persia and in the process spread Greek culture across the entire empire he created. The palace originally encompassed about 70 acres but was looted by the Romans when the Macedonians were defeated in 168 BCE. The structure harkens back to the style of Mycenean palace-complexes and doubled as a fortified stronghold with town inhabitants, while also having particular sectors built for royal burials. Added to this high-density usage pattern, the ancient complex occupied a rather strategic site defined by two rivers and the Pieria mountains. This military significance of the stronghold mirrored the desperate political situation originally faced by Philip II, A...

The distinction between servant, peasant, and slave described different roles in different contexts in ancient Egypt.  Forms of forced labor and servitude are seen throughout all of ancient Egypt.  There were three types of enslavement in ancient Egypt: chattel slavery, bonded labor, and forced labor. Chattel slaves were mostly captives of war and were brought over to different cities and countries to be sold as slaves. All captives, including civilians not a part of the military forces, become a royal resource. The pharaoh would then resettle the captives by moving them into colonies for labour, giving them to temples, giving them as rewards to deserving individuals, and giving them to his soldiers as loot. Some chattel slaves began as free people who were found guilty of committing illicit acts and were forced to give up their freedom. Other chattel slaves were born into the life from a slave mother. Ancient Egyptians were able to sell themselves and children into slavery in...

These gold plaques depicting a winged goddess flanked by lions were created on the island of Rhodes during the so-called "orientalizing period."  This reference in art history is used to describe a development in western art beginning in the latter part of the 8th century BCE when there was a heavy influence from the art of the eastern Mediterranean including Assyria, Phoenicia, and Egypt.  During this time Greek motifs began to shift from geometric designs to the depiction of deities, animals, and mythological creatures.  Two schools of thought exist regarding the question of whether or not Geometric art itself was indebted to eastern models. In Attic pottery, the distinctive Orientalizing style known as "proto-Attic" was marked by floral and animal motifs. It was the first time discernibly Greek religious and mythological themes were represented in vase painting. The bodies of men and animals were depicted in silhouette, though their heads were drawn in outline. W...

Although Sparta is renowned for its military prowess, there were Spartan poets, sculptors, magistrates, ambassadors, and governors as well as soldiers.  Originally, however, full citizen Spartiates were barred by law from trade or manufacture, which consequently rested in the hands of the Perioikoi, free peoples who did not enjoy full citizen-rights but were not subjected to the restrictions of helots.  Perioikoi served partly as a kind of military reserve, partly as skilled craftsmen and partly as agents of foreign trade - actually rather similar to the roles of freedmen in Roman society. Spartans were prohibited from possessing gold and silver coins, and according to legend Spartan currency consisted of iron bars to discourage hoarding. It was not until the 260s or 250s BCE that Sparta began to mint its own coins. Though the conspicuous display of wealth appears to have been discouraged, this did not preclude the production of very fine decorated bronze, ivory and wooden wor...

Statues of a human-headed bird were deposited in Meroitic tomb chapels to receive offerings.  A bird or human-headed bird that resided in the tomb and could fly out into the world had long represented the soul in Egyptian religious beliefs that Nubians adopted.  But only in Nubia did this spirit become the object of a cult and receive offerings.  The body of this statue is flattened at the front as though intended for an inscription.  People of the Meroitic period  developed their own form of writing, first utilizing Egyptian hieroglyphs, and later using a cursive alphabetic script with 23 signs known as Meroitic Cursive, which was written with a stylus and was used for general record-keeping.  Meroitic Cursive is written horizontally, and reads from right to left like all Semitic orthographies. The Meroitic language was spoken in Meroë and the Sudan during the Meroitic period but became extinct about 400 CE.   When the Romans assumed control of E...