The Forum

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Do Archaeologists Own the Past?

As a loyal subscriber to Archaeology Odyssey, I write to protest the catty, gratuitous remarks made about me by David Soren in “TV Archaeology” (September/October 2004).

Professor Soren impugns my right to discuss “Stone Age mother-goddesses … pyramid-builders, Greeks and Romans” because I am “hardly an expert in all these areas.” I had no idea that there was an Olympian professional elite who own these aspects of the history of humanity and who alone have the authority to speak about them to the general public.

The reason TV crews and journalists have asked to interview me about these and other matters is that I wrote about them in Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (Yale University Press, 1990). The material in that book was fully vetted by outside scholars, including the chairman of the classics department at Yale University.

The principal thesis of Sexual Personae is that the Western tradition is driven by dynamic principles rooted in Egypt (to which I trace “the birth of the Western eye”) and in Greece, whose Apollonian and Dionysian polarities play out again in Renaissance art, High and Late Romanticism, and modern popular culture (the pagan “Age of Hollywood”). My analysis of the Stone Age statuette of the Venus of Willendorf, which I contrast with the bust of Nefertiti, plays a central role in the book.

Furthermore, my devotion to archaeology (which has been under attack from politicized quarters of academe for 35 years) is a matter of public record. [Camille Paglia’s “The Right Kind of Multiculturalism” appeared in the May/June 2000 issue of Archaeology Odyssey—Ed.] I am just as concerned as Professor Soren about the scandalous lack of fact-checking in TV documentaries and have done everything in my power from a distance to guide and advise producers before, during and after their projects, whatever the subject.

As for Professor Soren’s snide jibe about my “love of the camera,” TV crews must travel to Philadelphia to interview me, except when my publisher sends me on a book tour. My teaching and writing take absolute priority. I am not one who accepts offers of junkets to fun foreign locales.

With the ongoing crisis of Latin classes being dropped from public schools and of departments of classics being downsized or eliminated entirely on U.S. college campuses, there is no room any longer for the kind of priggish snobbery that 011Professor Soren displays toward those who do not belong to his club.

David Soren responds:

If my remarks about Dr. Paglia seemed catty, they weren’t intentionally so, and I am sorry she took so personally what I intended to be a mild jibe. I guess it hit a nerve. She implies that I am part of an “Olympian professional elite,” that I accept “offers of junkets to fun foreign locales” and that I engage in “priggish snobbery.” With these insults, perhaps she will consider us even. I hope so. By the way, I liked the insult about the offers of junkets to fun-filled foreign places, and I am available for more of them.

Another Ouroboros

Robert Kaplan’s column on the origins of zero (“On Nothing,” Origins, January/February 2005) reminded me of another story about the Ouroboros, the great worm that swallows its own tail.

The chemist Friedrich August Kekulé (1829–1896) was having difficulty in understanding the structural formula of benzene. This chemical was known to consist of six carbon and six hydrogen atoms, which is a problem because carbon usually bonds with two or four other atoms, while hydrogen bonds with only one. After one fruitless evening trying to work out a rational structure, Kekulé fell asleep in front of his fireplace; then, in a dream-vision, he saw long chains of carbon atoms like snakes, twisting and curling. One of them “gripped its own tail,” he wrote, “and whirled mockingly before [his] eyes.”

Upon waking he realized that the vision of the Ouroboros solved the problem of the structure of benzene, which is a circle of carbon atoms bonded together in what scientists call “resonance.”

Sacred Prostitution

In “The First Days of Pompeii” (Field Notes, January/February 2005), you use the unfortunate term “sacred prostitution” to describe cultic rituals involving sex carried out in the ancient temple of Mephitis, near Mt. Vesuvius. Surely what was happening in the temple of Mephitis and what later went on at Pompeii’s harbor were different in intent and remuneration, especially since women from wealthy families participated in the temple rites. (You suggest that these young women were participating in initiation rituals, but they may in fact have been serving temporary stints as priestesses.) I doubt a wealthy father would have encouraged a marriageable daughter to turn tricks. Can’t we find a term other than “prostitution” to refer to a sexual activity that is part of a religious practice?

Lowering the Boom

You state that when a Roman vessel rammed an enemy ship, the corvus (a kind of gangplank) was lowered with such force that the ships were pinned together (Field Notes, January/February 2005, p. 14). What made the corvus such a brilliant invention, however, was its ability to be lowered from the sides of a ship’s bow in an arc. It was slammed onto the deck of an enemy ship not by ramming but by its own weight. This would have enabled Roman sailors to attack from either side.

The great weight of the corvus, however, also had a down side. According to some scholars, it went out of use after the First Punic War (264–241 B.C.) because it made Roman ships too top-heavy.

Counting Heads

I’ve often wondered how scholars estimate the population of ancient cities like Athens, Babylon or Jericho. That question also popped into my head as I read “The Last Days of Hattusa” (Trevor Bryce, January/February 2005). If there are multiple methods accepted 012by various archaeologists, is there one that has a wider acceptance?

Trevor Bryce replies:

In the case of the Hittite capital, Hattusa, the kind of information available to us includes a text indicating the number of cult personnel attached to the Great Temple of the Weather God (about 200), the storage capacity of the grain silos in the city (though these probably serviced a much larger area than the capital itself), and the remains of residences both on and outside the royal acropolis. We must also take into account the size of the workforce needed to build the city’s temples and other public buildings, as well as the massive redevelopment of the city as a whole in the kingdom’s final century. Also, Hittite tablets make it clear that there was an extensive administrative bureaucracy. To all this, we must add a military presence of considerable size, including the king’s own militia and bodyguards, plus a wide range of artisans, craftsmen and tradesmen whose services were essential to the maintenance of the city’s everyday life.

Estimates suggested by various scholars for Hattusa’s population vary from 10,000 to 40,000. Both figures may well be valid for particular periods of Hittite history: the lower one for an early stage in the city’s development, or for the years when the city ceased to be the royal capital; and the higher figure, or an even higher one, for the city’s final years. It seems likely that a significant percentage of the population lived outside the walls. The residences unearthed within the walls could have accommodated only a fraction of the total population. But traces of a peripheral settlement have yet to be found.

Errata

As always, I enjoyed reading the January/February issue of Archaeology Odyssey, but I was surprised to see the two objects shown on page 35 of Trevor Bryce’s “The Last Days of Hattusa” attributed to excavations at Hattusa. The gold figurine of a Hittite deity is in the Department of Oriental Antiquities of the Louvre. Annie Caubet, the department’s curator, has informed me that the statuette was collected by Ernest Chantre at Yozgat, a site not far from Boghazkoy, during his 1893–1894 expedition to Cappadocia. It was not, therefore, excavated at Boghazkoy. Close enough is not good enough.

The silver rhyton, on the other hand, is part of the Norbert Schimmel Collection in New York. It was catalogued by Oscar White Muscarella, and has no recorded provenance.

We thank Editorial Advisory Board member Robert Merrillees for pointing out these errors, which are the fault of the editors.

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The distinguished Israeli archaeologist Amihai Mazar has pointed out that the Archaeology Odyssey digs list, which appears annually in the January/February issue, includes excavations in Jordan but not Israel. We agree that this omission does a disservice to archaeology in Israel, which provides more volunteer opportunities than does any other country in the world. To learn about these opportunities, consult the January/February 2005 issue of Biblical Archaeology Review or check our Web site (www.archaeologyodyssey.org). In future dig issues, we will list all excavations in Jordan and Israel.

Do Archaeologists Own the Past?
As a loyal subscriber to Archaeology Odyssey, I write to protest the catty, gratuitous remarks made about me by David Soren in “TV Archaeology” (September/October 2004).