True Colors

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On June 5, 2012, I (Steven Fine) found myself hanging somewhat precariously from a tall aluminum scaffolding high above the Via Sacra of ancient Rome, looking down at the Roman Forum on one side and the Colosseum on the other. I had climbed 13 or so feet above ground level, leaving an international team of scholars—Italians, Americans and Germans—and many tourists down below as I examined the famous menorah in the Arch of Titus. It was a transformative moment for me, the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. This was also a significant encounter for the Arch of Titus’s menorah.¹

Our research at the Arch of Titus was the result of a breakfast meeting in Richmond, Virginia. At a conference organized by Peter Schertz at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, we discussed the importance of color in understanding Roman art. Color—polychromy—was then a very new field in ancient art research. Until recent years, few had realized let alone imagined that ancient Rome was a virtual “carousel of color” and not the staid white stone of our modern imaginations.

Yet colorful Rome was. Scholars of our generation, reared on the transition from black-and-white to color television, have rediscovered the true colors of the 030ancient world, showcasing this brilliance in exhibitions across Europe and the United States.² This work has been transformative, giving us new ways to imagine sculptures and even buildings whose vibrant colors have long ago faded into shades of white. In Richmond, we discussed the colors that 2,000 years ago would have completed a white marble sculpture of the emperor Gaius, known as Caligula (ruled 37–41 C.E.).³ A small splotch of purple pigment had been discovered on his garments using ultraviolet spectrometry, a scanning technique that does not even touch the sculpture.^a

Over breakfast, I looked somewhat sheepishly at my colleagues and asked, “Do you think that we can do this at the Arch of Titus?”

Bernie Frischer, our senior scientist, nodded his head and said, “Why not?” Within months, Frischer had secured permits and staffing, and we were off to Rome.

The Arch of Titus is no simple monument. Constructed around 81 C.E., it celebrated the triumph of the general—later emperor—Titus in the Jewish War of 66–74 C.E. This military success helped Titus’s father, Vespasian, establish himself as emperor of Rome in 69 C.E. as the first of the three Flavian emperors. (The others were Titus and his brother Domitian.) The Jewish War had great propaganda value for the Flavian emperors, who announced in an inscription that the Colosseum was built using the spoils of that war.^b In addition to the Arch of Titus, a second, recently discovered arch stood near the Circus Maximus while the Flavian Temple of Peace permanently altered the center of Rome.^c

Located inside the passageway of the Arch of Titus on the south side, the menorah panel 031 shows the spoils of Jerusalem paraded through the streets of Rome in the summer of 71 C.E.: first the Biblical table of showbread and then the Temple menorah. Facing it, in a second panel on the north side of the passageway, Titus enters Rome on his chariot, crowned by Nike, the goddess of victory. It was a spectacular event, described in detail by the Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus and immortalized here in stone. Josephus’s narrative parallels the reliefs in most details:

The spoils in general were borne in promiscuous heaps; but conspicuous above all stood those captured in the temple at Jerusalem.

These consisted of a golden table, many talents in weight, and a lampstand, likewise made of gold, but constructed on a different pattern than those which we use in ordinary life. Affixed to a pedestal⁴ was a central shaft, from which there extended slender branches, arranged trident-fashion, a wrought lamp being attached to the extremity of each branch, of these there were seven, indicating the honor paid to that number among the Jews. After these, and last of all the spoils, was carried a 032copy of the Jewish Law.

They followed a large party carrying images of victory, all made of ivory and gold. Behind them drove Vespasian, followed by Titus; while Domitian rode beside them, in magnificent apparel and mounted on a steed that was in itself a sight.⁵

Above, at the high point of the arch, a relief shows the deceased and newly divinized Titus ascending to heaven on the back of an eagle.^d Titus died after serving as emperor for only two years (79–81 C.E.).

The arch never lost its meaning in Western culture and has been preserved for two thousand years. During the Middle Ages it was called the “Arch of the Seven-Branched Candlestick.” Pope Pius VII restored the arch in 1821 as a symbol of Roman—and, for Pius, of Catholic—triumph. It has long served as testimony to the destruction of Jerusalem and God’s 033rejection of Judaism. Jews, of course, saw the arch as a painful scourge, and many reclaimed it in the modern period. As Freud wrote on a postcard to a friend during a 1913 visit, “The Jews Survive It!”—as if he were pointing directly to the arch and reflecting out loud. Many have visited the arch to make similar proclamations, a typical one being, “Titus, you’re gone, but we’re still here. Am Yisrael Chai! The people of Israel lives!” Israelis celebrated their renewed national sovereignty by placing the arch’s menorah on the emblem of the State of Israel.⁶

Our team decided to begin with a trial study and succeeded beyond our expectations. We hired UNOCAL, a scanning firm from Milan, who created a full three-dimensional (3D) scan of the entire menorah panel. This scan shows every scratch in amazing detail: not just the horrible damage suffered by the panel, but also the astonishing level of preservation. We could see the entire procession at a level unseen by previous scholars, and the details—from berries in the wreaths of the Roman victors carrying the menorah and the Biblical table of showbread to mostly forgotten elements of the clothing, the dolphins atop one of the signs that narrate the parade, and the triumphal arch through which the holy vessels of Jerusalem entered Rome—came into focus.

Scanning the menorah panel for signs of color was carried out by Heinrich Piening, a conservator with the State of Bavaria, and his wife Rose—experts in the story of polychromy on ancient monuments. The Pienings marked out specific deep carvings in the surface of the menorah for scanning, in the hope that the numerous campaigns to clean the reliefs over the centuries had left drops of color. Having collected their data, they compared the wavelengths of their discoveries with a database of colors that they had discovered at other sites.

Soon the results were in. The Pienings had discovered signs of yellow ochre pigment on the base and some of the branches of the menorah! The little dabs of yellow were a sensation, making the international press immediately—including Bible History Daily.^e We now know that the menorah was not white but painted—and in exactly the color that we might expect!

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Since the lampstand was yellow, what colors might the rest of the panel be? We (Peter Schertz and Steven Fine) set out to answer that question. Happily, an experiment to determine that very question had been previously carried out at the Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace), one of the highlights of Augustan Rome and a monument that had 035deep influence upon Flavian architecture.⁷ There, too, small quantities of original pigment were discovered, and scholars imagined what might have been based upon archaeological and literary parallels, preparing tentative polychrome images of its now-white relief panels. Could we imagine such deep colors on the arch as well? We began tentatively, in the hope of creating a conjectural reconstruction of the original polychromy of the menorah panel. Whatever we came up with, we thought, would be better than its “white” coloring, which, we had just confirmed, was plain wrong.

We enlisted Donald H. Sanders of the Institute for the Visualization of History to help us with this technical side, and we began looking for archaeological parallels for the elements of the panel. The background, for example, we made sky blue because that is the most common color for such things in wall paintings from Pompeii and Herculaneum. Since military tunics could be wool or linen and are shown that way on the wall paintings, we decided on a shade of off-white—except for the overgarments, which we made a shade of reddish-purple worn by people of high status. The wreaths, symbols of victors, are green, the color of the laurel leaves that compose them, while the laurel berries are purple.

We left the skin and hair in Mediterranean shades, and the leather and wood in shades of brown. Pillows cushion the shoulders of the soldiers carrying the menorah and table. These can barely be seen with the naked eye in the white stone. We colored them a slightly darker shade to contrast with the linen. The signs are set in frames, which we colored bronze in contrast with the gold of the sacred vessels (the only color that we actually “have” for sure). Drawing from Josephus’s terminology, we added texts to the signs in Latin. The first reads “Sacra Iudaeorum” (“Holy Objects of the Jews”). The second reads “Candalabrum Iudaeorum” (“Lampstand of the Jews”) and the third “Leges Iudaeorum” (“Laws of the Jews”—meaning a scroll of the Pentateuch). The Torah scroll carried in the parade is not illustrated, but it is described by Josephus as coming next in the procession. All of these labels are conjectural, and the script is derived from the dedicatory inscription that appears on the façade of the arch. They give a sense of what might have been written on these impressive signs!

The trumpets with the table are silver, in keeping with Josephus’s description of two silver horns conceived by Moses for the desert tabernacle.⁸ Finally, the arch through which the victors march—to the far right—is colored according to the palette used on the nearby Temple of Apollo on the Palatine Hill, a significant Roman building whose remains have been studied for traces of color.⁹ All of this is quite tentative and intended to create no more than a sense of the original colors on the extant parts of the relief.

With time it became clear to us that our 3D scan of the panel revealed far more information than we had thought. We began reconstructing selected elements of the arch spoils relief. Once we brought in the 3D scan data of the panel, we could manipulate it, zoom in and see it from angles that you can’t see even when close up on the scaffolding. That allowed us to inspect the nuances of the carving very closely, so that when we attempted reconstructions we could be sure it all matched the extant evidence. We quickly realized that we could reconstruct the missing body parts—legs, arms and heads—by “borrowing” extant body parts from one figure to another. The one extant head in the round (just before the menorah) was the basis for all of the other head modeling. Most spectacularly, Sanders and his team found sufficient evidence of the showbread table to attempt a reconstruction. We provided them with no historical contexts, but only the scan itself. Happily, the table they created bears some resemblance to a showbread table illustrated on a rare coin of the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, nearly 70 years later! This square table, described by Josephus as being “many talents in weight,”¹⁰ is standard Roman furniture and resembles the table in a Roman fresco showing a scene of polytheistic sacrifice.¹¹ On the arch, the table even is shown with two cups atop it—only one of which is really visible to the naked eye. The excellent condition 060of the menorah required little reconstruction, except for the holders for oil lamps, which we modeled on a bronze lampstand from Pompeii.

As a result of a conversation in Richmond, then, we have not only created a highly detailed scan of the Arch of Titus’s menorah panel, but also revealed the yellow color of the menorah. More than that, we now have a reasonable sense of the original colors of the entire panel, and we have reconstructed the table of showbread to recapture something of its original glory.

Viewing the colored Arch of Titus menorah panel, one can imagine the vibrancy of the triumphal parade that had taken place a decade before the arch was built. This deeply carved, colorful surface must have shimmered with light and shadow as sunlight streaked across it. You can almost feel the soldiers marching forward, as the procession recedes into Imperial Rome. While for Romans, this was a moment of celebration of the renewed empire, it must have been almost unbearable for Jews. Through technology, we can imagine the original colors of the arch—and of the Jewish War itself—before they began to fade away into the grays and shadows of historical memory.

Our team looks forward to eventually returning to Rome to scan the entire panel for color and see if our reconstructions are correct!

Although many Greek and Roman statues and monuments now appear gleaming white (the result of years of weathering), they were originally brightly colored. Using technology, a team has digitally restored a panel from the Arch of Titus—which famously depicts captured treasures from Jerusalem’s Temple being paraded through Rome—to its original color.