Field Notes

010

Dear Father…

New Exhibition Features Letters from a Roman Soldier in Egypt

The young Roman soldier Claudius Terentianus, who was stationed in Alexandria, Egypt, never dreamed that his letters home would still be read 2,000 years later.

In the 1920s University of Michigan archaeologists found dozens of Claudius’s letters—addressed to his father, Claudius Tiberianus—while excavating an ancient house in the town of Karanis, 50 miles southwest of modern Cairo. The letters, written in Latin on sheets of papyrus, were preserved by Egypt’s arid climate.

For the first time since the papyri were discovered, the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Archaeology has mounted an exhibition, to run through May 2, 2005, that reunites these letters with artifacts recovered from the Tiberianus’s family home. The objects found in the home include fragments of a shallow glass bowl and a footed cup, comb and lamp. The archaeologists also found beautiful glass beads, made to resemble emeralds, and an imported faience bowl, suggesting that the family was wealthy.

But it is the words of the son, probably away from home for the first time, that bring these ancient Roman Egyptians to life. On the papyrus shown, Claudius Terentianus writes to his father:

“Before else, I pray for your health, which is my special wish. Know, father, that I have received the things that you sent me … and I thank you because you considered me worthy and have made me free from care.

“I have sent you, father, by Martialis a bag well sewn, in which you have two mantles, two capes, two linen towels, two sacks and a linen covering. I had bought the last together with a mattress and a pillow, and while I was lying ill on the ship they were stolen from me. You have also in the bag a cape of single thickness; my mother sent this to you. Receive also a chicken coop, in which you have sets of glassware, two bowls of quinarius size, a dozen goblets, two papyrus rolls for school use, ink for use on the papyrus, five pens, and twenty Alexandrian loaves. I beg you father, to be content with that.

“If only I had not been ill, I was hoping to send you more, and again I hope so if I live. I beg you, father, if it meets with your approval, to send me from there low leathern boots and a pair of felt socks. Boots with buttons are worthless; I provide myself with footgear twice a month. And I beg you to send me a pickaxe. The adjutant took from me the one that you sent me …

“Moreover, I ask and beg you, father, to reply to me immediately about your health, that you have recovered your good health. I am worried about trouble at home if you do not write back. And if god should be willing, I hope to live frugally and to be transferred to a cohort; but here nothing will be accomplished without money, and letters of recommendation have no value unless a man helps himself. I beg you, father, to send me a reply promptly.”

011

Pharaoh’s Resting Place

Experts Reassemble 3,000-Year-Old Sarcophagus

This past March Egyptian officials unveiled a restored sarcophagus that once contained the remains of Pharaoh Ramesses VI (1156–1145 B.C.). The mummy-shaped sarcophagus—carved from a single block of green stone—is on permanent display in Ramesses VI’s burial chamber, one of the largest tombs in the Valley of the Kings, 420 miles south of Cairo.

It took the American-Canadian-Egyptian team more than two years to piece together the sarcophagus, which had shattered into hundreds of fragments when ancient tomb robbers broke into Ramesses’s tomb. The sarcophagus’s restored lid shows the pharaoh’s wide-set eyes and full lips, and his crossed hands clutch royal scepters.

Ramesses’s face on the sarcophagus, however, is only a replica. The original carved likeness was removed to the British Museum in 1823. Nor do Ramesses’s bones rest peacefully in his sarcophagus. In ancient times the pharaoh’s mummy was moved to another burial site; today it resides in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum.

011

Recent Finds

Head of Marcus Aurelius

Petra, Jordan
2nd century A.D.
marble
20 inches high

French archaeologists found a well-preserved likeness of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180 A.D.) last April in the ancient Nabatean city of Petra, Jordan. The head was found face down in the rubble of the temenos (sacred precinct) of the Qasr al-Bint—one of Petra’s main temples. The excavators, who also unearthed a marble thumb and a foot, believe an earthquake dislodged the head from the statue’s body in the fourth century.

011

OddiFacts

Cicadamania

There was much ado about the appearance of cicadas this spring in the eastern U.S. But they’ve been around as long as death and taxes. Perhaps the earliest reference is in Homer, who constructs an elaborate simile comparing the chatter of a gathering of Trojan elders to the hum of our perennial companions: “Now through old age these fought no longer, yet were they excellent speakers still, and clear, as cicadas who through the forest settle on trees, to issue their delicate voice of singing” (Iliad 3.150-152).

012

Curator’s Choice

Egyptian Relief

Detroit Institute of Arts
2465–2323 B.C.
Limestone
1.5 by 5.8 feet

When the Detroit Institute of Arts was building its Egyptian collection in the late 1920s, museum officials decided to hire an expert agent to find important pieces. By good fortune the person chosen was Howard Carter, the British Egyptologist who had discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. Carter purchased this mid-third-millennium B.C. tomb relief of peasants fishing and driving cattle, now a centerpiece of our Egyptian collection.

Much of what we now know about the daily life of the Egyptians has been learned from detailed representations such as the one shown. On the right fishermen haul in a net of fish, while on the left two herdsmen drive cattle across a canal. In the center, one of the herdsmen carries a calf through deep water—the simplest way to lead the herd, since the mother cow will follow her calf and the other cows will then follow her. The same kind of attention to realistic detail can be seen in the way the fishermen’s net is made—with twisted rope, wooden floats at the top, and stone weights at the bottom. The four fish in the net can even be specifically identified (from left to right) as Gnathonemus Cyprinoides, Petrocephalus/Marcusenius, Tilapia Nilotica and Mormyrus Kannume.

Today a considerable amount of paint remains on the figures in the relief, but only a little of the water’s blue pigment survives. Very faint traces of darker zigzag lines—a standard method for representing water in the artistic vocabulary of the Egyptian artist—can be seen in the canal.

The ancient Egyptians are often accused of being preoccupied with the idea of death, as suggested by their elaborate tomb preparations and involved mummification procedures. But in reality they were concerned with the continuity of life. They believed that representations of their life on earth had the magical ability to insure the quality of their existence in the afterlife. Tomb paintings and carvings such as this one were intended to ensure an eternal supply of food.—William Peck, Former Department Curator and Curator of Ancient Art, Detroit Institute of Arts

013

Repatriated!

Looted Artworks to Be Returned to Cyprus

After seven years of legal wrangling between Aydin Dikman, a Turkish art dealer living in Germany, and representatives of Cyprus, a Munich court ruled last July that a collection of rare Byzantine antiquities be returned to the island republic.

The icons, fresco fragments, mosaics, prayer books and other artifacts—worth an estimated $52.4 million—were looted from Greek Orthodox, Maronite and Armenian churches in northern Cyprus following the 1974 Turkish invasion of the island (see Gabrielle DeFord, “Plundering the Sacred,” Archaeology Odyssey, Summer 1998).

In 1997 German police received a tip that led them to raid three Munich apartments belonging to Dikman. They found suitcases crammed with the Cypriot antiquities, as well as ancient artifacts from other locations around the world. Dikman, who had previously been implicated in several well-publicized cases involving stolen Cypriot antiquities, was arrested and remained in German police custody for one year while an investigation was conducted. When the statute of limitations had expired, Dikman was released and launched his ultimately unsuccessful legal battle to regain possession of the collection.

The looted artifacts are to be sent back to Cyprus by the end of this year. Many of the items were damaged by the looters, making the task of determining each object’s provenance very difficult. Artifacts with uncertain provenance will be stored in the Archbishop Makarios Museum in Nicosia. A German police spokesman, however, reports that experts have already been able to match “beyond the shadow of a doubt” many of the looted artworks with specific Cypriot churches and monasteries.

013

Isis Uncovered

Archaeologists Investigate Luxurious Roman Villa in Britain

This past summer British archaeologists discovered an ancient figurine in a second-century A.D. villa first uncovered in 1996.

The 6-inch-high statue is thought to depict Isis, the Egyptian-Roman goddess of fertility and marriage. It was found in a Roman villa at Groundwell Ridge, Wiltshire, in the vicinity of a well-tiled, cold-water bath.

Archaeologists believe the Roman villa was equipped with running water, a gymnasium, glass window panes and central-heating (well-preserved hypocausts, flues used to heat floors and walls, were uncovered in the ruins). The villa was occupied over a period of 250 to 300 years.

English Heritage, a conservation trust, and the Swindon Borough Council purchased the 12-acre site from developers. Members of the public were invited to tour the Groundwell Ridge site over a two-day period last summer; then the site was backfilled to protect it from the elements. Archaeologists are hoping to find funding for a third excavation of the site in the near future.

Dear Father…
New Exhibition Features Letters from a Roman Soldier in Egypt

The young Roman soldier Claudius Terentianus, who was stationed in Alexandria, Egypt, never dreamed that his letters home would still be read 2,000 years later.