Books in Brief

008

Falls Short

Early Christian Art and Architecture

Robert Milburn

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 335 pp., 194 illustrations, $48.00

As readers of BAR know well, there are far too many superficial books on the art, archaeology and architecture of the Biblical periods. The problem is to find such books that have both a reliable and understandable text as well as a lavish and functional use of illustrations. Unfortunately, Early Christian Art and Architecture, one of the latest offerings covering the data of early Christianity—defined here as the period from the beginning of Christianity to the death of Justinian (565 A.D.)—fails to meet these requirements.

Early Christian art and architecture, because of its complex nature, is an especially difficult subject to discuss. Great diversity characterized Christianity during its first 400 years, so that there was not one church with a single theology and structure. Furthermore, Christianity was deeply embedded in the surrounding culture, which means that there was not yet a “Christian” culture that would show up in archaeology and art. Instead, the works that Christians produced were generally of a part with the rest of their culture. Thus data with a specific Christian identity is meager and not necessarily connected with other identifiable strands of Christianity. Once Christianity became the dominant religion in the empire, however, and particularly after Constantine made it the official religion in the early fourth century, Christian art and architecture began to flourish under the auspices of the government.

Consequently, the majority of the data usually included under the rubric of early Christian art and architecture is actually Constantinian and post-Constantinian. This does not mean that no other data is available. The recent work by Graydon F. Snyder, Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life Before Constantine (Mercer Univ. Press, 1985),^a provides extensive examples to the contrary. Author Robert Milburn, however, shows no familiarity with the work of Snyder and exhibits only minimal interest and competence in the pre-Constantinian data. Rather, his expertise is clearly in Christian basilican architecture of the fourth through sixth centuries, the subject on which he concentrates.

The first four chapters cover the earliest evidence. Chapters one and two, “Signs and Symbols,” and “House-Churches,” are probably the weakest in the book. They present woefully inadequate coverage of both the evidence and the scholarly debate connected with these subjects. On the other hand, chapters three and four, which concern the catacombs, provide a much more extensive and useful overview of the art of the catacombs.

For the fourth through sixth centuries, however, the book offers an extensive and impressive collection of material. Milburn devotes six chapters to architecture, which he divides into various sites, such as Asia, Egypt, Greece and the Balkans, and Ravenna, in addition to Rome and other sections of Europe. Other chapters include: “Fonts and Baptisteries,” “Stone Carving” (primarily sarcophagi), “Mosaic,” “Carved Ivories,” “Arts and Crafts,” “Coins and Gems,” “Textiles” and “Writing and Illustrated Books.”

Though the book appears to be lavishly illustrated, with 194 plates and illustrations, it actually has major deficiencies in this area. The written text generally fails to distinguish between items that are illustrated and those that are not. In addition, far too many of the descriptions lack accompanying illustrations, and in many cases they seem to be the most important ones to the argument. As a result, the reader experiences frustration in trying to imagine a structure or artifact on the basis of a printed description only.

The book’s perspective also presents problems. In terms of methodology, it relates more closely to traditional art history than to archaeology and related historical disciplines. Thus artifacts tend to be analyzed as examples of a type, such as basilicas, sarcophagi, ivories, baptisteries, and so on. What is missing is the context in which the artifact or structure was found or in which it is to be placed. While one is able to trace trends in the development of structural and artistic styles, the material data becomes strangely separated from any specific social context. Even more exasperating, Milburn provides minimal citations, so if one wishes to check further into the historical details connected with a particular artifact, all too often there will be no references to the original archaeological report or to the most important primary study. Instead, the reader will usually find only references to other general studies from which this data was extrapolated.

Early Christian Art and Architecture is a useful overview of the data it covers well, namely Christian art and architecture of the fourth through sixth centuries as seen from the perspective of art history. However, it cannot be relied on for an accurate perusal of the pre-Constantinian period, nor for adequate historical background to accompany the data. Consequently, the prudent reader should supplement Milburn’s work with more comprehensive and authoritative studies, such as Graydon Snyder’s book and Richard Krautheimer’s Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (New York: Penguin, 1979), before drawing any conclusions about early Christian art and architecture and its historical context.

Reading the Past

Cuneiform

C. B. F. Walker

Linear B

John Chadwick

Egyptian Hieroglyphics

W. V. Davies

Mathematics and Measurement

O. A. W. Dilke

(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988) 64 pp. each, $7.95 each, paper

As recently as 200 years ago, virtually everything known about the ancient Near East—its inhabitants, their history, beliefs and institutions—depended upon two sources, the Bible and classical authors. The 010ancient peoples of the Near East could have spoken for themselves, for they had left behind hundreds of hieroglyphic inscriptions in Egypt and thousands of inscribed clay tablets in Mesopotamia. But no one could read them.

That situation began to change in 1822 with the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and that change was rapidly accelerated by the decipherment of the Babylonian cuneiform (Latin for “wedge-shape”) script and language in 1846. Since then, many other important ancient scripts and languages have been deciphered, including Sumerian (originating in what is today called Iraq), Hittite (in ancient Turkey), and Minoan (the name for the Bronze Age culture of Crete). Today, scholars can, with confidence, read a number of ancient scripts and languages.

Or can they? Who deciphered those ancient scripts and languages, and when? How did linguists go about deciphering them? How accurate, really, is our reading of those ancient texts? Are all of the ancient languages deciphered, or are there still some scripts to be “cracked”? And, even if we know the names of various units of measurement in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia or the Greco-Roman world, do we truly know exactly what these names mean? These and other questions inevitably arise when one looks at hieroglyphic or cuneiform inscriptions in museums, books or magazines.

Realizing all this, British Museum Publications, in its Reading the Past series, has taken a giant step toward answering these and countless other questions of the layperson who has no specialized knowledge of ancient languages or their literature. By selecting first-rate scholars who are on the frontiers of research in their own specialties and who also have the gift of explaining complicated linguistic problems in a clear and interesting manner, the Museum has produced a series that is a delight to read. Measuring almost ten inches long by seven wide, each volume has at least 40 black-and-white photographs, line drawings and charts, all of which illuminate the written text.

An examination of each volume’s table of contents gives some sense of the book’s scope and focus. Walker’s Cuneiform, which surveys the Mesopotamian writing system from its pictographic signs before 3000 B.C. to astronomical tablets as late as 75 A.D., covers the following topics: origin and development, tablets and monuments, scribes and libraries, the geographical spread, decipherment, sample texts, fakes and where to see cuneiform inscriptions.

Chadwick’s Linear B tells the exciting story of how Michael Ventris and its author deciphered this early form of the Greek language (c. 1450 B.C. or earlier). It 011discusses the discovery, decipherment and use of Linear B; the tablets as historical documents; Linear A (a forerunner of Linear B, but as yet undeciphered); the Cypriot connection (another undeciphered script based on Linear A); the Phaistos disk (possibly a foreign import and “the world’s first typewritten document”); and the location of the inscriptions.

Davies’s Egyptian Hieroglyphs, in a very clear, accurate and interesting manner, focuses on the underlying principles of Egyptian grammar and its beautiful scripts. The author organizes his exposition according to the language, the scripts (hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic), the principles, a little basic grammar, decipherment and borrowings. Although the subject sounds difficult, the interested reader can learn much from this volume.

A Latinist, Dilke shows in his Mathematics and Measurement how the Greco-Roman, as well as the Near Eastern, world used mathematics and measurement for such activities as mapping; telling time; trading; and building temples, pyramids, roads and aqueducts. Dilke’s volume is the most wide-ranging of the four, traversing the background, numbering by letters, mathematical education in the Greek world, measurement, mathematics for the surveyor and architect, mapping and the concept of scale, telling time, calculations for trade and commerce, and mathematics in leisure pursuits and the occult. It concludes with a chapter on mathematics and measurement in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Each volume ends in a useful fashion with an index and a brief, but selective, bibliography of relevant books and articles.

BAR readers may order individual volumes of the “Reading the Past” series, reviewed above, for $7.95 each, or the whole series (including Runes by R. I. Page and Greek Inscriptions by B. F. Cook) for $42.95, from the Biblical Archaeology Society. Add $3.00 for postage and handling and send a check or VISA/Mastercard information to 3000 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20008.

Unconventional History

Tiberias

Helga Dudmam with Elisheva Ballhorn

Jerusalem: Carta, 1988) 240 pp., $24.25

With its abundance of maps, genealogical charts, engravings and photographs—many in full color—this chronicle of Tiberias will offer nonscholarly readers an enlightening and enjoyable introduction to the history of one of Israel’s most fascinating cities. The book’s many evocative illustrations, assembled from a wide range of historical sources and photo archives, provide an effective visual counterpoint to the engaging and often entertaining text, which traces the history of Tiberias from the first century A.D. to the present day.

Tiberias, the political and economic center of the region around the Sea of Galilee, has attracted the interest of scholars and archaeologists since the beginning of the era of modern exploration. In fact, in recent decades the city has been the scene of several important archaeological excavations. However, with the notable exception of the ancient synagogue of Hammath Tiberias, the finds and the historical conclusions from those projects have yet to be presented to the general English-reading public.

In this book, veteran Jerusalem Post reporter and longtime Tiberias resident Helga Dudman does her best to rectify this situation by presenting her readers with a colorful, often engrossing history of her cherished hometown. In addition, she places special emphasis not only on recent archaeological finds and well-known historic sites, but also on some of the lesser-known personalities—a Herodian princess, a gladiator-turned-rabbi, a Crusader knight, an exiled Portuguese heiress and a Scottish missionary doctor (to mention only a few)—who have contributed to the unique character of the city of Tiberias.

Dudman’s story, written in collaboration with Elisheva Ballhorn, former curator of the Tiberias Archaeological Museum, traces the city’s history from its foundation during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius (in whose honor it was named) in the first century A.D. to its transformation to a modern Israeli resort city in our own times. Dudman’s is not a conventional work of history or a dutiful chronology of kings, battles and dates. Rather, Dudman pieces together an impressionistic historical mosaic of men and women whose innovative response to unexpected changes and challenges affected the course of Tiberias’s development.

Few other cities in the country (with, perhaps, the notable exception of Jerusalem) have experienced more frequent or dramatic episodes of economic, religious and political change than has Tiberias. Dudman begins her story, for example, with an intriguing portrait of the Jewish princess 056Berenice, a leading member of the aristocracy of Tiberias in the first century A.D. Supplementing historical fact with dramatic passages from later historical fiction, Dudman recreates the atmosphere of crisis in Tiberias at the time of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome and recounts the legends of Berenice; a great-granddaughter of King Herod the Great and suspected lover of the Roman general Titus, Berenice sought in vain to use her influence with Titus to avert the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

Beginning in the second century A.D., Tiberias became a religious and intellectual center, scene of the theological disputes and discussions that led to the codification of a large body of Jewish law in the books of the Mishnah and the Palestinian Talmud. In addition to the outstanding religious leaders of the period—such as rabbis Yohanan Ben Zakkai (founder of the Academy of Yavneh and spiritual leader of early rabbinic Judaism), Akiva (codifier of Jewish oral law and staunch supporter of the ill-fated Bar Kokhba Revolt, 132–135 A.D.) and Simeon Bar Yohai (reputed author of the mystical religious text, the Zohar—Dudman also turns her attention to some of the lesser-known women and men of Tiberias in this period. For example, Rufin, a Roman noblewoman, converted to Judaism and married Rabbi Akiva; Beruria, a rabbi’s daughter, grew up to be a political revolutionary and a religious scholar; and Simeon ben Lakish, a successful gladiator and wild animal trainer, became a revered rabbi in later life.

Dudman describes the political and social background of rabbinic Judaism as well as Tiberias’s role in the Near Eastern “superpower” conflicts between Romans, Persians and various client kings throughout the late Byzantine period. One little-known episode from the Byzantine period recounts a daring but ultimately unsuccessful scheme: In the sixth century A.D., the leader of Tiberias’s Jewish community—the Persian-Jewish exile Mar Zutra III—sought to forge an alliance with Dhu Nuwas, the Jewish king of Yemen, and with Mondhir, the Arab king of the largely Christian kingdom of Hira in Mesopotamia, to declare their joint independence from the emperors in Constantinople.

While most archaeological works on the history of the Land of the Bible end with the Moslem conquest in the seventh century A.D., with perhaps a brief account of the Crusader conquest several centuries later, Dudman’s book provides a welcome examination of the history of Tiberias under Moslem rule. The flowering of the city during the reigns of the Umayyad, Abbasid and Fatimid dynasties is described in considerable detail, offering readers an idea of the continuity of the culture and life of the country (and dispelling the more conventional image of widespread decline and destruction) after the Moslem conquest. Archaeological evidence of this rich period abounds in the ruins of elaborate tombs and shrines and in excavated coins and hoards of jewelry.

Personalities and events in Tiberias during the Crusader period (1099–1187 A.D.) are given prominence, but perhaps the most interesting and revealing episodes in this book come from the Ottoman period (1516–1917). Foremost among them is the fascinating attempt of the Portuguese-Jewish merchant exiles Dona Gracia Nasi and her nephew Don Joseph Nasi to create an autonomous Jewish principality in Tiberias. Although they were granted the express permission of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent for this endeavor, economic reverses and a lack of interest by the Jews of Palestine doomed this experiment to failure. There are also accounts of the rise and fall of local leaders such as the Druze emir Fakhr ed-Din and the Galilean sheikh Dahir al-Umar and of their political alliances with the leaders of Tiberias’s Jewish community. The final chapters of the book deal with the modernization of Tiberias in the 19th and early 20th centuries, presenting accounts of the establishment of Tiberias’s first modern hospitals and medical services, its hotels and tourist facilities and its role in the early history of the state of Israel.

Although Duchrian’s narrative is for the most part well wrought, it sometimes becomes overly anecdotal, and the extensive use of passages from historical novels to illustrate various episodes in Tiberias’s history only partly succeeds. Too often these passages, based more on romantic imagination than historical data, cross the line from drama to melodrama and unfairly simplify the complex issues involved. Dudman nevertheless succeeds in this book in conveying the importance of historical areas that are usually consigned to the realm of generalization and folklore. She shows how the people of Tiberias have always been engaged in a process of change and adaptation, and how individual men and women helped to make their own history. This point becomes clear in every period of Tiberias’s history. By providing a wealth of archaeological, historical and human detail, this book should interest any reader seeking a fuller appreciation of Israel and its history.

Handy Reference

Jerusalem, the Holy City: A Bibliography

James D. Purvis

(Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1988) 505 pp; $42.50

Not for vacation reading, this impressive work provides a comprehensive bibliography of modern research (19th century to present) on the city of Jerusalem, with an emphasis on its role as a holy city. Compiled from generally accessible titles, its 5,800 entries are arranged in 40 chapters under seven major chronological divisions (covering Jerusalem from the Biblical period through modern times) and an eighth division for general studies. The 40 chapters treat such subjects as Solomon’s Temple, the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, both Jewish revolts against Rome, the water system, city walls and gates, Christian churches and communities, rival sites for Golgotha and the tomb of Jesus, and much more. You may order a copy by writing to Scarecrow Press, P.O. Box 4167, Metuchen, NJ 08840.

Falls Short

Early Christian Art and Architecture

Robert Milburn

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) 335 pp., 194 illustrations, $48.00