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After the great fire of Rome in July, A.D. 64, the suspected arsonist, Emperor Nero himself, set the Imperial propaganda machinery into high gear to get the word out among the surviving populace that the conflagration had been the work of the tiny Christian community in the city. To strengthen his story, he cited the “weird” rituals of the “fanatical cultists,”  their sacrilege by worshiping not the pagan deities of the Roman pantheon but an ”absurd” man-god instead, and their disloyalty to the state. As a clincher, Nero charged the followers of Christ with many other heinous crimes, including cannibalism. To support this last allegation, he quoted from Chrisitan writings: “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you shall not have life in you.”

Moreover, he had the Senate enact legislation outlawing Christianity as a subversive organization, issuing a warrant for the arrest of the leaders of the “organization” (i.e. Peter and Paul) and launching the first persecution of the Christians. Eventually, the first Supreme Pontiff (i.e. the Bishop of Rome or Pope), Peter the Apostle, was arrested and forcibly taken to the unspeakable horror of the Mamertine Prison, adjacent to the Forum.

For nine months Peter suffered the brutalities of the jail guards and was then informed that Nero had given the word for his execution. Peter, along with some of his flock, was crucified before an enormous crowd jammed into the stadium known as the Circus of Nero, on the southern slope of Vatican Hill.  Behind this race course was a public cemetery of streets lined with the mausolea of affluent pagan Romans. Adjoining these streets was a sort of potter’s field where the grieving friends of the apostle interred his remains

A Sacred Tomb

For the next quarter of a century or so, the location of the grave was marked   –  as a safeguard against desecration  – only in the memories of these Christians.  During this period too, an unofficial Christian necropolis developed around the grave of Peter since many  –  facing martyrdom  –  made it known that they wished to lie forever near their beloved bishop.

Pope Anacletus, as depicted on the wall of the Sistine Chapel. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

When in A.D. 90 the first pogrom against the Christians had abated somewhat, Anacletus, the second successor to St. Peter as Bishop of Rome, built a simple shrine directly over the grave of Peter. To this site would come, daily, groups of Christians in pious pilgrimage. These pilgrimages would, in the early centuries of the Church, cease each time a new wave of anti-Christian atrocities would be instigated by the state. Yet, as much as the government wished to suppress the infant religion, it would not go so far as to desecrate or destroy the grave of Peter, in compliance with its own statute, Violatio Sepulchri, which declared all burial grounds  – Pagan, Jewish, Christian alike   –  to be inviolable.

A persistent tradition tells us, however, that the persecution by the Emperor Valerian in 257-258 was so savage that the Christians feared for the security of the apostle’s mortal remains and thus secretly exhumed them for transferral to the catacomb of St. Sebastian on the Appian Way. Graffiti and inscriptions in this subterranean necropolis (one reads:  Domus Petri, Home of Peter) seem to corroborate the claim by some scholars that Peter was indeed for a short period entombed therein. Valerian did confiscate all Christian cemeteries during his reign of terror but when, under his successor Gallienus, these grounds were restored to the Christian community, the apostle’s relics were re-interred in their original grave, still indicated by a memorial.

A letter from about the year 200 by a certain Roman presbyter (priest) named Gaius perhaps refers to this shrine. From the letter and later archeological evidence we learn that the Christian community in time built a brick wall around their potter’s field to prevent further encroachment by pagan mausolea. Since the wall crossed directly over the apostle’s tomb, it incorporated into its fabric, at that point, a “trophy” as Gaius calls it.  (Trophy in the ancient idiom meant monument.)  This was either the memorial erected by Pope Anacletus or one by a later  pontiff. From a manufacturer’s stamp in the tile of a drain in this plot it can be plausibly inferred that the wall project dates to about A.D. 150.

With the victory of Constantine over Maxentius in the famous battle of the Milvian Bridge, there opened a new chapter in the history of Rome and of Christianity. Crediting the Christians’ God for his victory, the new emperor, Constantine, in gratitude, gave two state properties (the Lateran and the Vatican) to the beleaguered community, ordered a temple to be built over the site of Christ’s tomb on Golgotha in the Roman province of Judea, and in 326 began the building of an immense, splendid five-aisle basilica to honor the apostle, with the main altar placed directly over the modest oratory of Anacletus.

Tradition informs us that Constantine was most reverential in caring for the holy remains. The Liber Pontificalis, a book of biographies of popes from St. Peter until the 15th century, describes how the tomb of the apostle was opened in the presence of Pope St. Sylvestor and the Emperor, the bones collected and placed in a small but precious chest of gilt bronze surmounted by a solid gold cross weighing 160 pounds, and entombed beneath the main altar of the massive church.

In 594, due to the troubled times, Pope Gregory the Great ordered the raising of the basilica’s floor so that the apostolic tomb, now a veritable repository of gold and silver and jewels, might be more secure out of sight. It could now be viewed only by going through a passage in the crypt beneath the church.  Subsequent floor elevations and new altars by later popes, Clement VIII for one, relocated the tomb of Peter even deeper underground.

In 846, the hapless Eternal City was plundered by the non-Christian Saracens, who destroyed everything in their violent path and even plundered the temple and the tomb of Peter. From this point on there was to be no trace of  Constantine’s gold cross and precious stones.

After the departure of the merciless Saracens, the damages to the great basilica were repaired by Pope Leo IV (who also raised the lofty fortifications that we still see today encircling the Vatican, which accounts for the enclave’s other name, “The Leonine City”). Nearly all of Leo’s successors continued to embellish the ancient church with rare and costly productions of old and contemporary Christian art. The European nations which had by now been illuminated by the glow of Christianity also sent marvelous gifts of art to enrich St. Peter’s.

The 1300’s marked the beginning of another significant chapter in the basilica’s history. Upon the election of the French Pope, CLement V, the papal residence was transferred, for political reasons, from Rome to the sleepy town of Avignon in southern France.  Here the papacy stayed for 70 years. During that time St. Peter’s fell dark and abandoned.  From sheer neglect the basilica began to deteriorate. Its south wall bulged outward more than six feet out of true and the roof started to collapse. In 1378, Pope Gregory XI brought the papal throne back to Rome, but too late to save the crumbling basilica.

Finally, in 1450, the decay of St. Peter’s had reached such alarming dimensions that the architects of Pope Nicholas VI exhorted him to raze the sacred edifice lest it someday fall down upon the Holy Father and his flock gathered there for a pontifical Mass. But Nicholas died before he could carry out his intention to level the old structure and replace it with a far more splendid one. It wasn’t until eight popes and more than a half century later that the Constantinian basilica was pulled down to make way for the magnificent St. Peter’s we know and love today.

Testing the Tradition

The passage of so many centuries notwithstanding, Catholic tradition continued to hold that St. Peter’s Church  –  both the old and the new   –  stood expressly as a monument over the grave of the apostolic prince, Peter. In 1939, the newly elected Pope Pius XII had the faith and the fortitude to put this tradition to the test. As preparations were being made in the grottoes under the basilica for the tomb of his predecessor Pius XI, the digging had accidentally led to the discovery of an ancient pagan burial ground. Pius XII then authorized further excavations far below the nave of the church and gave orders for a specific search for the tomb of St. Peter.

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St. Peter’s Basilica. bmarxdueren, Pixabay.

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Previous pontiffs had shied away from such a quest. One deterrent was the frightening warning by Pope Gregory the Great back in 594 that anyone who would commit such a sacrilege as to disturb the bones of the apostle would suffer awful consequences. Another was the well-documented calamity, coincidental or not, that accompanied the last disturbance of the holy earth around Peter’s grave. When the architect Bernini in the early 1600’s informed Clement VIII that the massive columns supporting his proposed bronze baldacchino would need strong and deep foundations that required extensive digging near the apostolic tomb, the Holy Father, acutely aware of Gregory’s curse, was most reluctant to grant permission. Bernini ultimately prevailed. Work was initiated, auspiciously, on the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, June 29.

Within a week, the foreman in charge of the work died. Hours following his death, his assistant passed away. Hysteria swept over Rome and intensified when a few days later another official involved in the project died. When the pontiff himself took seriously ill, a short time later, all the laborers walked off the job, terrified by the omens. Eventually the panic eased, Rome regained its composure, and Bernini, via a promise of pay raises, was able to get the diggers back to the task.

Through their work, Pius XII’s excavators found a cemeterial street lined with house-like sepulchers whose interiors contained niches with urns of ashes or bones of Romans from the Imperial Age. At the very least, this supported the long-standing belief that Constantine had built the original St. Peter’s over a cemetery.

The excitement in the Vatican became palpable when, early in the digging, deep and directly under the papal altar, a small, ruined, immured monument was uncovered, fitting the description of Gaius’ “trophy.” More exciting still, however, was the slab, undoubtedly a gravestone, found at the foot of this wall shrine.  When upon raising the stone the excavators unfortunately found an empty grave — the long trail seemed to have come to a hopeless dead end.

Lost and Found

But a humble, learned professor from the University of Rome, Margherita Guarducci, was granted permission by Pius XII to continue the search. An expert in ancient graffiti, she spent the next six years scrutinizing the crude etchings on the wall above and near the vacant grave. In her customary scholarly thoroughness, Professor Guarducci wandered through the catacombs of Rome, comparing the etchings with the graffiti of the subterranean galleries to further authenticate the former.

One day she deciphered a Greek inscription near a recess in a side wall.  It revealed this simple message:  “Peter is within.”  Now the professor examined the recess itself and was persuaded that it was indeed a burial niche for human bones. And though Constantine’s marble enclosure of this original shrine was gone, it would have doubtlessly incorporated this side wall, too.

Another dead-end? Not to the dedicated academic detective. Interrogating workmen who had helped in the digging from the start, she learned that a monsignor assigned to the excavation work had some 10 years earlier come upon some bones in the niche in question, gathered them in a box, and moved them to a nearby storage room. By this time, Pius XII and his successor John XXIII had entered the ages, and it was Pope Paul VI who authorized the professor to attempt to identify the relics. With the aid of fellow scholars from the university, she determined the bones to be those of a man of 60 or 70 in age. Some handfuls of soil and shreds of purple and gold fabric were also found in the box along with the bones. All of this, plus the inscriptions, in addition to what ancient writings and tradition had to say on the matter, added up to one irrefutable fact as far as Professor Guarducci was concerned: Here indeed were the mortal remains of Peter the apostle! 

Tradition relates that he would have been about 70 years of age at his death and that he was buried in the earth. Constantine, in encasing the remains, would appropriately have wrapped them in precious cloth. As for the remains being found in a place other than that marked by Pope Anacletus, that was simple to explain: In an age where grave robbing and desecration were virtual national pastimes, Constantine, or someone in charge of the basilica soon after him, would likely have taken the precaution of transferring the holy relics to a safe, clandestine place nearby.

The evidence was persuasive enough to Pope Paul VI. On June 26, 1968, at a splendid ceremony in the Basilica, he settled the issue for the Catholic world.  From the papal altar, sunlit by golden beams streaming through the little windows of Michelangelo’s dome, beneath the towering letters at the base of the cupola declaring:  “TU ES PETRUS…” the Holy Father, 262nd successor to the apostle, announced that the remains of St. Peter, the Fisherman from Galilee, had been found.

Cover Photo Image, Top Left: View of St. Peter’s Basilica at sunset. Anna Klein, Pixabay

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Alexander the Great is perhaps best known in popular literature as arguably the most accomplished military conqueror in world history. But he was far more than a conqueror.

He had his roots in the land of ancient Macedonia………..

The Early Setting 

Geographically speaking, ancient Macedonia was mountainous with lowlands,  highlands and thick forests. It spanned parts of what is today Northern Greece and the Balkan Peninsula. The ancient Macedonians were substantially influenced by Greeks to the south as well as the massive Persian Empire to the east, which had nearly conquered Greece. The Macedonians prayed to the same gods as other Greeks and sent a contingent to the Olympics. Their language was a dialect of Greek. Unlike the rest of Greece, the Macedonian nobility practiced polygamy. Greeks tended to prefer wine mixed with water (see the example of Plato’s dialogue on love, Symposium), whereas Macedonians drank undiluted wine. Many Greeks thought of Macedon as rough and barbarian – the proverbial country mouse compared to the more sophisticated city-states, such as Athens, Corinth, and Thebes to the south. 

Yet for all their Homeric impulses, the Macedonians did not have an early history of success: sometimes in battle or regicide their kings died before their time. But a revolution in warfare, a new paradigm, emerged in the persons of Philip and his son, Alexander. 

In ancient times, princes of one kingdom might live in another kingdom as hostages in order to maintain the collective peace. As a youth, Philip was sent to Thebes and was treated very well by the ruling family. It was his great luck and pluck to immerse himself in the revolutionary changes of King Epaminondas, who had accomplished the near-miraculous by defeating Sparta at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC (all dates herein are BC). Epaminondas was a genius at military innovations, such as increasing the rows of the phalanx to fifty and using an oblique attack, which broke the Spartan army – a shock and game-changer in military strategy. 

In 359, Philip’s older brother, King Perdiccas III, was killed in battle against the Illyrians. Philip served as regent to Perdiccas’s infant child, but he assumed the kingship (basileus) for himself. As usual, this change of kingship was accompanied by mayhem and murder. It was a fit start for Philip, a foreshadowing of his eventual demise. He was ruthless – he had to be. He increased the size of the Macedonian phalanx and the length of the sarissa (pike) to 18-20 feet, added more regular and elite units, such as the Foot Companions and Companion Cavalry. Not a tall or large person, what Philip lacked in physical stature he more than made up with brilliance, diplomacy, and fighting spirit. He was known as a philanderer with many wives and relationships. His body featured battle wounds and was blind in one eye, possibly from an Athenian arrow. Olympias became Philip’s fourth wife. She was from Epirus, a mountainous land now shared by Greece and Albania. She and Philip were possibly initiates of the cult of the Great Gods and, in addition, Olympias was a follower of the Dionysian Mysteries (the Bacchae of Euripides hints at the wildness of this religion). It was said that Philip was afraid of her because she slept with snakes and behaved ‘witchy’. But Olympias may have contended with bad press. Professor Kara Cooney, Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA and author of When Women Ruled the World, shared this applicable reflection: “Powerful women did not receive fair treatment from historians, not at all.”   

Alexander was born on 20 July 356 in Pella, the capital of Macedon. One tale relates that the goddess Artemis was so attentive at Alexander’s birth that she was not aware of a madman torching her temple at Ephesus. About Alexander there is much myth-making, a common practice among luminaries of world history. Olympias apparently instilled in Alexander the notion that Zeus visited her one night, which brought Alexander closer to divinity, conferring on him dual descent from Philip and Zeus. Alexander’s parents believed they were related to Dionysus (god of wine) and Herakles (divine hero). Alexander was thrilled by the exploits of Achilles. (He is said to have kept a copy of Homer’s Iliad annotated by Aristotle, and a dagger under his pillow at night.)

Alexander’s Youth and Aristotle as Teacher

When Alexander was twelve, Philip bought a Thessalian stallion, Bucephalus (oxhead), black with a white patch on its forehead. The horse proved unmanageable, but Alexander bragged that he could handle him. Legend says that father and son made a bet. Alexander realized Bucephalus was afraid of his shadow, so Alexander turned the horse’s head toward the sun. Alexander was able to gallop on the horse. “Find yourself another kingdom,” said King Philip. “Macedonia is not large enough.” This gift later carried Alexander across swaths of Europe and the Middle East, before dying in India. (In those times, horses did not have stirrups or much of a saddle.) 

Alexander had a circle of friends who later became important military and political luminaries: Hephaestion, Ptolemy, Nearchus, Harpalus, to name a few. Alexander was known as an excellent runner and hunter and very precocious. Being a successful hunter was one way a young Macedonian received special privileges. Alexander had two teachers, Lysimachus and the austere Leonidas (a relative), who early on trained him in war and physical education 

In 334, when Alexander was thirteen, Aristotle began teaching Alexander. There were political and educational reasons for this. Plutarch writes that they met in “the precinct of the nymphs near Mieza, where to this day visitors are shown the stone seats and shady walks of Aristotle. It would appear, moreover, that Alexander not only received from his master his ethical and political doctrines, but also participated in those secret and more profound teachings.” For three years Aristotle taught Alexander and his circle philosophy, politics, science, literature, geography, medicine (later Alexander sometimes helped the wounded after battle), and more. (In years to come, with both personal interest and financial support, Alexander often showed a love of the arts, music, and drama, especially the plays of Euripides. Apelles was Alexander’s favorite painter and court portraitist.) 

The emphasis on science, thinking, and logic surely had a hand in Alexander’s success. Aristotle’s Organon shows some of what concerned Aristotle and Alexander.  Alexander would bring scientists, historians, and philosophers on his conquests – just like Napoleon in Egypt two thousand years later. During his conquests, Alexander also sent back flora and fauna to Aristotle. 

Alexander was able to see larger than his brilliant teacher Aristotle, who wrote on every subject possible, but whose geographical knowledge was limited. The earth was much larger than Aristotle believed. Aristotle also believed in the kingship of the man with outstanding excellence who is like a god, and in the inferiority of non-Greeks:   Alexander believed in the first but not in the second, as we’ll see later with his politics and his marriages to three foreign princesses. Unlike most Greeks, Alexander rejected the notion that foreigners were to be treated as inferiors — like “plants and animals” (Aristotle). Over the coming years, Alexander developed a plan, a vision, larger than the independent polis and Greece itself; it would include foreigners at the highest levels. 

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Map of the Kingdom of Macedon at the death of Philip II in 336 BC. Marsyas (French original); Kordas (Spanish translation), CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons

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Philip’s Triumphs, 7 Wives and Assassination

Many Greeks, especially those such as the Athenian orator Demosthenes (384-322), were justly apprehensive about Philip’s ambitions. Demosthenes (like Churchill in the 1930s) warned Athens against the growing danger of the Macedonians, but there was a delay in others realizing this. Through war and diplomacy, the sly king was looming closer. At last, a coalition of city-states led by Athens and Thebes combined forces to stop Philip. 

The Battle of Chaeronea, a game-changer, broke out in Boeotia in August 338. Philip seems to have feigned a retreat to draw out the inexperienced Athenians. Alexander (eighteen years of age) led the Companion Cavalry. “This in itself speaks worlds both for Alexander’s prowess and for Philip’s faith in his command abilities,” Paul Cartledge, Emeritus A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture, Cambridge University, writes in Alexander the Great (86). Alexander ruptured the wall-like phalanx that dispersed the opposition. Plutarch writes that Alexander was the “first to break the ranks of the Sacred Band of Thebans.” Even when the battle was lost, the perfect courage of the Sacred Band led to their annihilation. (Two hundred and fifty-four skeletons of the Sacred Band have been found in a mass grave in Chaeronea.)

In winning the battle, Philip ended the independent polis in Greece and upended the balance of powers. Now leader over most of Greece, he punished Thebes but spared Athens. Philip didn’t want to destroy his allies, since he needed them to fight Persia. Athens had a great navy – so why weaken Athens? Philip set up the Hellenic League (aka League of Corinth) whose purpose was to unify the Greeks and fight the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Philip conquered powerful neighbors, wisely used diplomacy, created buffer states, filled his coffers, and was in a powerful position. He now turned his eyes to the East, sending an expeditionary force across the Hellespont into Asia Minor.   

Philip, who had six wives, married Eurydice, the seventh. He was 46 and she was a full-blooded Macedonian teenager. This put Alexander and his mother Olympias at some risk. At the wedding feast, Eurydice’s intoxicated uncle, Attalus, spoke of the need for a legitimate heir to the throne. Alexander jumped up, saying, “Villain, you take me for a bastard?” Philip drew his sword but was so drunk that he fell to the floor. 

Alexander and Olympias mistrusted Philip, especially because Philip and Eurydice had a son, a full-blooded Macedonian prince. Alexander was half Macedonian. Alexander and Olympias ended up going into exile for six months. Still, Philip didn’t want to be on the bad side of his own family; he planned on having his daughter, Cleopatra, marry her uncle, Olympias’ brother, the King of Epirus. It was a wise strategy in this power equation. Everyone seemed reconciled, or so it seemed. 

It is easy to understand Olympias and Alexander’s mistrust and fear. In those times, it would be dangerous to be out of favor in any royal family. Over the years, Philip had often been away campaigning; perhaps Alexander was not very close to him and, in fact, had Oedipal leanings toward Philip. Did Olympias and Alexander want Philip dead? If true, the timing was exquisite, and fate seemed to join ambition. Historians suggest that Philip had humiliated Pausanias (one of the royal bodyguards), with whom he had a sexual relationship. In Alexander the Great, Robin Lane Fox points how that Pausanias was from Epirus, which was also Olympias’ homeland, “and she might not have found it hard to work on a nobleman whom Philip had recruited away from his local friendships” (22) 

At the wedding, in a white robe, alongside his daughter Cleopatra, Philip walked without his bodyguards. This was in a theater in Aegae (modern Vergina). Pausanias ran up and stabbed Philip between the ribs. Pausanias fled toward his horses stationed near the walls. But he tripped on a vine and was dispatched by guards, including Alexander’s friends. Diodorus writes: “Such was the end of Philip, who had made himself the greatest of the kings in Europe in his time, and because of the extent of his kingdom had made himself a throned companion of the twelve gods.” This has been an intriguing “who done it?” Just as in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a looming question is, was anyone else involved? 

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Philip II of Macedon, Roman copy after a Greek original of the 4th century BC. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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The Beginning of Kingship     

In late summer 336: Alexander, at the age of twenty, assumed the kingship. “The army signed off on this quickly, suggesting he had prepared the ground before the murder of Philip,” Prof. Jean Alvares, Classics Professor at Montclair State University, suggested to me. As usual, there was a purge of real and imagined rivals. Alexander also made sure that allies stayed faithful. He advanced into Thrace to secure his borders and to crush revolts, as well as the Danube region to defeat the Getae.  

Some Greek city-states (poleis) rebelled against the Macedonians. There was also a rumor of Alexander’s death. Thebes, suffering from the presence of a Macedonian garrison since the Battle of Chaeronea, revolted. Thebes needed allies and much assistance, but not much of anything arrived. Alexander and the Macedonians raced to Thebes before anyone joined the proud, beleaguered city. The Macedonian force was much larger, but the Thebans fought bravely. The Macedonians fought their way into the city. Thebans not killed were enslaved and the city was razed. The house of the great poet, Pindar, was spared. 

Diogenes the Cynic and the Oracle of Delphi

On a visit to Corinth, Alexander visited Diogenes the Cynic (Cynicism is a school of philosophy meaning “dog-like” in Greek). It is said that Diogenes lived in a barrel. While he was sunbathing, Alexander stopped by and asked if he needed anything. Diogenes requested that Alexander “could get out of the sun.” Alexander remarked that if he were not Alexander, he would like to be Diogenes. More likely and important was Alexander’s visit to the Oracle of Delphi. The Pythia (the visionary priestess-prophet on her tripod chair) was not meeting anyone that day, but Alexander forced her to do so. The Pythia uttered, “You are invincible, my son.” 

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Remains at the Oracle of Delphi, Greece. Walkerssk, Public Domain, Pixabay

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In the spring of 334, Alexander and his army, cavalry and ships crossed the Hellespont, the narrow straight that separates Greece from Asia Minor and the Persian Empire. He jumped off the ship and threw his spear into the soil, declaring Asia “spear won.” Alexander and his best friend Hephaestion ran around the walls of Troy and left offerings at the Tombs of Achilles and Patroclus. Homer’s heroes always loomed large in Alexander’s mind from childhood to kingship. Alexander’s plan was to defeat the Persian Empire — an incredible ambition. He claimed that it was retribution for when the Persians destroyed Athens. He wanted to free the Greek cities under Persian rule and replace the Persian king. Clearly, there were a few motivations of a political and personal nature. He wanted to see and conquer more than anyone, to be the Goat (Greatest of All Time), and to live on the lips of people.

The Persian Empire and Battle of the River Granicus 

The Persian Empire, a multicultural superpower, was the largest of its day, stretching across the Balkans and Middle East to the Indus Valley. Its origins go back further, but it was around 550 when Cyrus the Great founded the empire, larger than any other empire of his time or before. Cyrus had a positive reputation for respecting the customs and religions of others and for restoring the Israelites back to their homeland. He is revered in the books of Isaiah and Ezra in the Old Testament. Xenophon wrote that Cyrus was “most generous of heart, most devoted to learning.” 

The imagery on the Apadana walls at Persepolis show that the concept of many people (vispadana) was significant to a multicultural empire. The official religion of the Persians was Zoroastrianism, which had a god of wisdom and light (Ahura Mazda) and a god of darkness (Ahriman), featuring fire altars under the open sky. Zoroastrianism influenced Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. 

During Alexander’s time, the Great King, the King of Kings, was Darius III (reigned from 336-330). Like the empire itself, the military consisted of many peoples, including Greek mercenaries such as Memnon of Rhodes. Memnon was a crafty leader and was married to Barsine, daughter of a satrap. Unfortunately, Darius did not follow Memnon’s advice. Memnon had recommended an attack on Greece and also a scorched earth policy – to wear down Alexander’s Hellenic League and avoid them for the time being. It can be effective against a powerful invader. Starve it, tire it out, look for a better position, wait for luck to turn. “He will win when he knows when to fight and when not to fight,” writes the Chinese military genius Sun Tzu.   

Darius objected to Memnon’s strategy. In fact, Darius had other worries and was not present at the battle. He did not know Alexander yet. In May 334 Alexander, in a white-plumed helmet and medusa-adorned breastplate, atop Bucephalus, led the Hellenic League against the Persians at the Battle of the Granicus, the first of three earth-shattering battles.

Parmenion (aka Parmenio) commanded the forces on the left, while Alexander commanded the Companion Cavalry on the right. Memnon commanded the Greek mercenaries fighting for Darius. Memnon was one of the many Greeks who hated and feared Alexander. (More Greeks fought against than with Alexander.) With the blare of trumpets, Alexander led his forces across the river and encountered the Persians. There were many parts to both armies including allies, infantry, cavalry, slingers, archers, and others. 

At one point, a Persian commander, Rhosaces, struck Alexander on his helmet and was killed by Alexander. Spithridates, another Persian commander, attacked Alexander from behind. Spithridates was about to dispatch Alexander when Cleitus the Black cut off his arm, saving Alexander and the whole campaign. 

As the Persians retreated, Alexander attacked the Greek mercenaries who were not used to best effect in the battle, as they were kept back. They were surrounded by Alexander’s men; thousands were killed and enslaved, to be sent to work in the mines in Greece. Alexander’s cruelty was a warning to others – this was not the first nor would it be the last time. 

The Persian army retreated without massive losses, but the situation was precarious. They realized their foe was something very dangerous. Alexander took over Sardis, Ephesus, and Miletus. (Miletus was the center of the Ionian philosophers/scientists like Thales.) Alexander retained Persians and other natives as satraps or governors and generally respected the Persian structure of governance. 

Memnon went on the offensive. He planned to reconquer the Aegean islands and join forces with the Spartan king to liberate Greece from Alexander. However, by a stroke of good luck for Alexander and the Hellenic League, Memnon suddenly died at the siege of Mytilene. He seemed to be one of the last great hopes for Darius. 

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Battle of the Granicus. Painting, 1665. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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The Battle of Issus, November 333

For the Battle of Issus, King Darius III was present and led his enormous war machine. Modern historians estimate the number of the Hellenic League at 40,000 and the Persian forces at 50,000 – 60,000, though ancient sources record that there were over 250,000 Persians (ancient sources can be unreliable). Darius was so eager to destroy this young interloper that he gave up a superior defensive position. 

The set-piece battle unfolded on a narrow plane with mountains in the distance. Alexander led the Companion Cavalry on the right, with Parmenio leading the forces on the left. Alexander’s youth, zeal and unclouded confidence were balanced by Parmenio’s maturity and general caution. At one point, Alexander and the Companion Cavalry crashed through the Persian line and headed right for Darius on his chariot.

The battleground was red with blood and cluttered with the wounded and dead. Darius had made a huge miscalculation and fled in order to fight another day. Alexander was a lightning bolt into the body of the Persian Empire. Alexander was proving something that others suspected: the Persian Empire had fault lines, weaknesses. The Persian Wars (in 490 and 480) won by Greece, as well as the Ten Thousand Greek mercenaries in 401 (recounted by Xenophon) who returned home safely, were solid indications. The gods and luck seemed to be on Alexander’s side. it all added up to morale, though soldiers do not always feel so confident before battle. In BBC Radio’s In Our Time (hosted by Melvyn Bragg), Prof. Paul Cartledge said that Napoleon viewed the morale factor as decisive in battle.

I asked Professor Cartledge to share more about Alexander’s mindset:  

A combination of luck, bravery, charisma and inspired leadership – and that’s only Alexander. Behind him he had, to start with, his dad’s army, the best in Greece then, mainly because of its combo of superb cavalry with infantry and different grades of infantry fused into a harmonious interlocking whole. The luck came in when Alexander was NOT killed as he might well have been at the first major set piece battle, The Granicus River of 334. 

Darius III left behind his family, including Queen Stateira and the Queen-Mother Sisygambis. Darius expected the opportunity to ransom them. He may have been the Great King, but he was losing the kingdom. Alexander was kind and befriended the family. Many historians note that there is much evidence that Alexander was kind to women — perhaps a reflection of his closeness to his Olympias, his mother. Alexander referred to Sisygambis as “mother.” Both sides were wise to play this game. Darius made an offer: Alexander would get the western half of the empire, his daughter in marriage, and a huge ransom for his family members if Alexander would stop his juggernaut. Parmenio said that if he were Alexander, he would accept the offer. Alexander replied, “If I were Parmenio, that is what I would do. But I am Alexander and so will answer it another way.”

The long sarissa made the enlarged phalanx especially effective, and the cavalry was a major shock. Alexander was flexible and creative even under the strains of battle and could predict his foes well. He read a battlefield better than anyone. This would bode poorly for his next foe, the island-fortress of Tyre. 

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Reconstruction of a mosaic depiction of the Battle of Issus after a painting supposed to be by Apelles or Philoxenus of Eretria found in the House of the Faun at Pompeii. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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The Siege of Tyre

In January of 332, Alexander reached Tyre (coast of today’s Lebanon), the largest Phoenician city and the stronghold of the Persian fleet. He could not bypass it and have the fleet threatening his advance. So, Alexander sent envoys, but they were tossed from the walls into the sea. Surrounded by blue seas and high walls, the city was imposing, possibly impregnable. Alexander decided to build a half-mile causeway 200 feet wide, along with siege engines 150 feet high (fireproofed with battering rams), with catapults on top. This machinery was a leap forward in military ingenuity. There were also ballistae to hurl rocks from below. At one point, the Tyrians sent a burning ship into the causeway to destroy the siege towers – it worked, but it would not be enough to save Tyre. Alexander, who before had disbanded his own navy, now got hold of many ships from Phoenician city-states he had conquered. He used these ships to blockade the island city. 

After a siege of seven painful months, during which the Hellenic League was attacked with rocks and fire, the city fell. It was reported that Alexander enslaved thousands of Tyrians; even worse, he ordered 2,000 of them to be crucified along the shore.

After Tyre, Alexander lay siege to Gaza in the autumn of 332, which also had a horrible ending for the inhabitants. In emulation of Achilles dragging Hector’s corpse behind his chariot, Persian General Batis was dragged behind a chariot whilst still alive.

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Map of the Siege of Tyre. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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Egypt Welcomes Alexander and the Famous Visit to Siwah

Egypt was a rich civilization with a long history going back thousands of years before Persian control. The fourth century was a burgeoning period for Egypt under native rule. Egypt’s power and prestige had been declining for centuries and included foreign rule by Libyans, Kushites, Assyrians, and Persians. Many Greeks including Herodotus (who wrote that “Egypt was the gift of the Nile”) and Plato had visited Egypt. 

The Persians were harsh overlords and disrespectful of Egyptian religion. The Egyptians were eager to toss out the former. “Here,” writes Prof. Paul Cartledge, “Alexander found himself gifted with an advantage only rarely on offer in other parts of the Persian Empire: a friendly native upper class” (Alexander the Great 150). Alexander was welcomed by the Persian governor Mazaces (with 800 talents and the royal furniture). In Memphis, Alexander was pronounced “son of Ammon” and given the double-crown of Egypt. It is highly likely that Alexander was in awe of the gleaming pyramids, rich land, life-giving Nile, and temples.

In the winter of 332, Alexander was “seized with a longing to visit” an important, far-off oracle 300 miles into the hot desert. “His intention was to consult the god, as the oracle of Ammon was reputed to be truthful,” wrote the historian Arrian. 

With some companions, Alexander headed into the desert to find the Oracle of Ammon at the Siwah oasis. Arrian, Plutarch and Rufus offer differing accounts. Alexander got lost and nearly perished from thirst. Arrian writes that “travellers lose their bearings like sailors at sea.” Either two crows or snakes (Ptolemy’s lost account apparently introduced the snakes) led them to the oasis oracle with its abundant water and date palms. Alexander went into the sanctum sanctorum and perhaps asked the oracle priest about his origins and destiny. There are differing accounts of this and what he learned will never be known. Prof. Paul Cartledge argues that after Siwah, Alexander “claimed a close relationship, possibly even physical filiation, with non-Greek Ammon” (244).

In the spring of 331, Alexander founded what would become one of the greatest cities of the ancient world: Alexandria. Plutarch writes that “since there was no chalk available, they used barley-meal to describe a rounded area on the dark soil…” Alexander wanted harbors for trade, greater control over his growing empire, and a Greek city on the coast that bore his name. Alexander left the area after a few months. His friend and a leader in his army, Ptolemy (and his family), would in the coming years transform Alexander’s vision and plans into an incredible city. 

The Battle of Gaugamela

The third great clash with the Persians, the Battle of Gaugamela (literally the Camel’s House; near today’s Arbil, Iraq) happened days after an eclipse of the moon: 1 October 331. The Persian force may have been as much as twice Alexander’s 47,000 soldiers. Darius’s force included cavalry, scythed chariots, elephants, the Immortals (his bodyguard), Greek mercenaries, and others. Mazaeus (satrap of Babylon) commanded the right flank of Persia’s infantry and cavalry, including Parthians, Syrians, Cappadocians, Armenians, Mesopotamians, and Indians. Bessus, the satrap of Bactria and a relative of Darius, commanded the left flank. The night before the battle, Darius and Alexander were of course very nervous. Darius, aware of the danger of a night attack, had his soldiers armed and ready, which had to be exhausting. Alexander met with Aristander, his seer. Plutarch writes that Alexander’s army saw the Persian camp “agleam with the watch-fires of the barbarians.” Alexander disagreed with Parmenio’s suggestion of a night attack, saying, “I will not steal my victory.” As usual, Alexander led from the right with the Companion Cavalry; on the left Parmenio commanded infantry and cavalry. Alexander was aware of the danger of envelopment by the much larger Persian force. There is much to say about geography, plans, the battle itself and the aftermath, but in short Alexander created and took advantage of a gap in the Persian side, allowing the Companion Cavalry to pour in like killer T-cells.

It was reported that when Darius saw that his military was being defeated, that his bodyguard got beat back, and that his chariots wheels were clogged with dead bodies, he fled. Darius, escaping by horseback with a small force, lived to fight another day. But it was a disaster for the Great King who, in a short time, lost it all and (soon) his life. Alexander continued onto Babylon (and Susa and Persepolis). 

According to Quintus Curtius Rufus, Alexander was welcomed to Babylon by Mazaeus and his children, as well as chanting Magians, Chaldeans, Babylonian priests, and musicians. The storied city was surrounded by an enormous wall, and the Euphrates River passed through the city, over which bridges connected the two halves of the city. Rufus wrote that two chariots could pass each other atop the walls and described the loveliness of the Hanging Gardens, known today historically as one of the Wonders of the Ancient World. 

Susa, located in the lower Zagros Mountains, was the capital of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. (It has been extensively examined and excavated beginning in the 1800s with Henry Rawlinson, A. H. Layard, and others recently). Alexander found an enormous amount of gold and silver and sat on Darius’ throne. He was too short for the throne, so one of the attendants provided a footstool. 

Next, the city of Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of the empire, with its ornate and lofty temples and palaces, was torched. Why? Were the young Macedonians just drunk and goaded by the Athenian prostitute Thais (Ptolemy’s mistress), or had this been a planned revenge? There is no way to know. It was unusual for Alexander to destroy temples. Taking after his mother, he was religious and, as a military man, superstitious. 

Meanwhile, Darius refused to surrender the throne: his courtiers, led by Bessus, arrested Darius and fled. Alexander and his men followed in hot pursuit. Arrian tells us that with Alexander “close upon them,” two satraps stabbed Darius and fled, leaving him to die. The new king of Persia, Bessus, did not have much success in that position. Most of the satraps declared their allegiance to Alexander. 

Alexander gave orders for Darius to be buried with full honors at Persepolis “like the kings before him” (Arrian). Darius’ death signaled the end of the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

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Darius’ flight at the Battle of Gaugamela. Relief inspired by Charles Le Brun’s painting Battle of Arbela (1669). Photograph: Luis García (Zaqarbal), 3 December 2008. GNU Free Documentation License, version 1.2. Wikimedia Commons

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Alexander’s New Clothes and The Philotas Affair

Alexander inherited a huge harem and plenty of eunuch servants, as well.  He often wore a purple and white chiton, a royal diadem, sometimes a Macedonian cavalry hat, which had a swagger to it. Sometimes he wore pants, a Persian mode of dress at that time. Many Macedonians did not like his new habits and beliefs. 

In the fall of 330, whilst in Bactria, there was an assassination attempt against Alexander known as the Philotas Affair. Some young Macedonian guards decided to kill Alexander. Philotas — Parmenio’s son and a commander of the Companion Cavalry — was accused of knowing about the murder plot but not informing Alexander. Philotas and the guards were tortured and executed. It is not known if the charges against Philotas were true. Philotas was arrogant and found himself in trouble with Alexander before. More executions were to follow, including Philotas’ father, the old and very successful general Parmenio. This was tragic for this family, and realpolitik for Alexander. The way was clear for Cleitus and Hephaestion to be co-commanders; such power could not be concentrated in one person. 

In the coming months, Alexander founded Alexandria-by-the-Caucasus. The Hellenic League crossed the Hindu Kush. Older men and some volunteers were sent back to Greece. The Hellenic League crossed the Oxus River. Bessus, satrap of Bactria and pretender to the Persian throne, was captured by Ptolemy and tortured and executed. Alexander and his military had to contend with revolts and fierce guerilla warfare.   

Dionysus’ Gifts and Headaches and the Murder of Cleitus 

In Alexander the Great: The Invisible Enemy, John Maxwell O’Brien focuses – through the symbol of Dionysus — on Alexander’s emotional decline, megalomania, and drunkenness. Wine drinking was common; parties and celebrations commemorated a festival or victory, announced a new campaign, honored someone, and so on. Participants told stories, bragged, drank wine. This eased the strains of war and served as a safety valve. But these events could erupt into violence. 

In November of 328, at the palace in Maracanda (Samarkand), Alexander organized a banquet during a feast dedicated to Dionysus. Cleitus, one of two commanders of the Companion Cavalry (and the brother of Lanike, Alexander’s nurse), was unhappy about his new orders and possibly about Alexander’s turn toward Persian customs. Alexander was drunk. They got into an argument: Cleitus saying Alexander’s conquests were possible because of his father Philip and reminding Alexander who saved him at the Battle of the Granicus – it was Cleitus. 

Alexander threw an apple at Cleitus’ head. The officers ushered Cleitus out of the room. When Cleitus returned, Alexander ran him through with a spear. Alexander immediately felt revulsion and grieved in his tent for days. The officers put together evidence of Cleitus’ treason, which helped Alexander move beyond the murder.

The Sogdian Rock

In the spring of 327, Alexander and his army encountered the Sogdian Rock, a fortress high atop the mountains (near Samarkand), ruled by Ariamazes. Another local ruler, Oxyartes, placed his wife and children, including Roxana, in what was believed to be an impregnable fortress. The Sogdians refused to surrender, telling the invaders that they needed wings to conquer the Rock. That only encouraged Alexander. During the night, Alexander sent up 300 climbers using tent pegs and rope; and “about thirty lost their lives during the ascent – falling in various places in the snow,” Arrian recounts. The following morning, the Sogdians looked up in shock, and surrendered.  

At the peace celebration, Alexander saw Roxana (little star) dancing. Roxana was said to be a very beautiful woman, second only to Darius’ wife. Alexander was smitten. Were there political motivations to add territory and unity to his empire? Was Alexander in love? Perhaps yes for all of those reasons. (See the fascinating and colorful wedding dramatization of Alexander and Roxana in Michael Wood’s BBC series, In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great.) 

The Page Boys Conspiracy

In the spring of 327, during a hunt with the king, there was a breach of protocol. One of the page boys, Hermolaus, shot a wild boar before Alexander had the chance. Alexander had him whipped. Hermolaus and a few of the other pages planned on killing Alexander, but their plot came to light. Callisthenes, the nephew of Aristotle, was implicated because he was the teacher of the page boys. Alexander was enraged: Callisthenes encouraged their independent thinking, and he didn’t believe in prostrating (proskynesis) himself before the king. It is unclear if Callisthenes had anything to do with the plot, though at the time he had fallen out of favor. Hermolaus, a few page boys, and Callisthenes were executed.

India: Rock of Aornus, the Naked Philosophers, and Battling King Porus

In the winter of 326, on the way to India, Alexander encountered a mountaintop stronghold called the Rock of Aornus (possibly Pir Sarai in Pakistan). It was a formidable place with a water supply and land for growing food – the defenders could not be starved out. Alexander accomplished the win by storming a nearby mountain and threatening the Rock with catapults. The path was now open to enter India. 

In spring 326, Alexander and his forces advanced into Taxila (Punjab), a city renowned for culture, education, and trade at the juncture of very important trade routes. (In the mid-19^th century, Sir Alexander Cunningham identified Aornus, Taxila, and other places based, in part, on his reading of ancient chroniclers; Taxila is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.) 

In a fascinating episode, Alexander made acquaintance with the naked philosophers (gymnosophists), who were possibly yogis, fakirs, or Brahmins; some scholars say Jains or Buddhists. (I think they were likely yogis or fakirs). A few criticized Alexander. One of them said he should stop his wanderings and settle in the center. Alexander rounded up ten of them and threatened to kill them if they got any of his questions wrong. Plutarch writes that Alexander asked the last philosopher how long a person should live. The reply was: “Until he does not regard death as better than life.” 

They all survived. Like so much of the Alexander story, the truth of this episode is open to speculation. But these gymnosophists are tantalizing. In fact, Alexander befriended one of them named Calanus, who was about seventy years old. Did Calanus and the others have a more compassionate and spiritual path that the invaders simply could not understand? Many from the Hellenic League were intrigued. As Professor Cartledge points out: the Greeks viewed foreign spiritual traditions through the lens or vocabulary of their own culture.

King Ambhi of Taxila supported Alexander against his rival, the larger-than-life King Porus. Porus led 30,000 soldiers, 2,000 cavalry, and many elephants. By now, Alexander’s army was completely battle hardened from dealing with all manner of foes. In May 326, Alexander’s last major battle was the Battle of the Hydaspes River (Punjab region of today’s Pakistan). 

It was monsoon season with fast swollen rivers. Porus’ elephants each had a mahout and about a dozen infantry – the ancient world’s version of a tank. The horses of the Hellenic League were afraid of elephants. Porus had many chariots, but the muddy conditions erased most of their menace. Alexander used feints and deceptions, some of which must have exhausted the Indians. They didn’t know when Alexander would attack across the river. Finally, Alexander’s forces crossed the river but ended up on a nearby island. Porus’ son attacked, but he was killed during the battle. 

Alexander had his men cross the river at night, a dangerous feat. Porus placed his war elephants in front of his vast infantry, with cavalry on both sides. Alexander’s infantry was smaller than Porus’ infantry, but his cavalry was larger than Porus’ cavalry. As many historians have noted: Alexander knew how to read a battlefield. The solution was to orient the battle toward his cavalry. 

Alexander ordered Coenus to bring extra cavalry to the left; this force galloped around Porus’ right side. Alexander’s Companion Cavalry attacked Porus’ frontline. The Indians soon found themselves being pushed into a smaller area with less room to maneuver. The soft ground didn’t help the Indian archers plant their bows (perhaps similar to the bow used by Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita). The Indians fought bravely, but in the end the Hellenic League prevailed. Porus, preferring to die in battle, rebuffed the peace offerings. Alexander rode out to meet him. 

“How would you like to be treated?” Alexander asked.

“Like a king.” 

“Anything else?”

“All is contained in the first request,” replied Porus.

Alexander allowed Porus to retain his kingdom and he enlarged it. An intriguing story has come down to us from ancient accounts: Alexander was visited by a young noble, Chandragupta Maurya. He enticed Alexander with news of more kingdoms ahead. He was an ambitious young man and Alexander must have been intrigued. Later, Maurya founded the Mauryan Empire and defeated the Macedonian satrapies around twenty years after Alexander’s death. His grandson became the incredible King Ashoka who, after a terrible battle, became nonviolent and promoted Buddhism. 

Monsoons, Mutiny and Alexander Suffers an Arrow

Alexander’s soldiers became apprehensive over monsoons, giant snakes, and homesickness. Their armor rusted, they heard accounts of more immense armies ahead. Alexander’s men pondered: what’s the point of wealth and renown if you die so far from home? Like the Romans, the Greeks preferred to be in comfortable climates where olives flourished. Diodorus Siculus wrote that “his soldiers were exhausted with their constant campaigns.” The consensus: they wished to return home and see their families. Coenus, one of Alexander’s commanders, spoke for the army. 

The Hyphasis Mutiny made Alexander fume. He went into his tent and wouldn’t emerge for three days. Finally, he consulted Aristander: the answer was that the Hellenic League should return home. This gave Alexander cover, helped him save face. He would have been in a bad situation without these veterans and must have felt that he owed them. The fighting and hardship, however, were far from over.

November 326: the Mallians (Punjab)

The Mallians lived in a city with mud walls; there was some misunderstanding, as they did not pay obeisance to Alexander, who led his army to their city. Dissatisfied with the pace of the battle, Alexander climbed onto a wall, where he was open to all sorts of weapons thrown at him. His soldiers were frightened for him and they climbed up ladders, but their combined weight broke the ladders and they fell to the ground. Alexander fought furiously and one of his bodyguards was killed. Arrian tells us that “the arrow penetrated the corselet and entering his body above the breast.”

Michael Wood vividly reenacts this event — with the luck of an ambulance passing by — in his BBC series In Search of Alexander the Great. Alexander fainted. He owed his survival to Peucestas, Abreas and Leonnatus who placed over Alexander the Sacred Shield from Troy. Many feared that that the king was dead. His army, seized by panic, crashed through the walls and went on a killing spree. This was an example of the war crimes of which his army was capable. 

Alexander somehow survived. As soon as he recovered some of his health, he sailed down river so his troops could see him. When he disembarked, they were overcome with emotion and tears, crowding and touching him, tossing flowers.   

Tragedy in the Desert

In the fall of 325, Alexander’s army headed into the Gedrosian Desert (the Makran in Pakistan and Iran). Why? Perhaps Alexander was trying to prove his courage and ability. Perhaps he wanted to explore and map the region. Perhaps he was punishing his men for refusing to conquer more of India. We will never know for certain why he brought a huge army through the burning desert. It was a choice that ended in much suffering and death.  

It took about two months to cross. A third or more of his army and thousands of camp followers perished from thirst and starvation. As Arrian wrote: “Many died as if they had fallen overboard in a ship.” Not only did the desert swallow so many, for a flash flood drowned numerous soldiers and camp followers who had spent the night in what had been a dry riverbed. 

While Alexander and the army made their way through the desert, Admiral Nearchus (long-time friend), along with Onesicritus (a philosopher and helmsman of the fleet), sailed from the Indus River to the Persian Gulf. The admiral mapped the region and founded a city, reuniting with Alexander in Carmania (southern Iran) in December 325. About two months later, Alexander reached the old religious capital, Pasargadae, where he had Cyrus the Great’s Tomb repaired.  

Alexander Marries (Again), Susa Weddings and The Successors

In spring 324, there was a holiday spirit and much feasting; Alexander met officials, gave out awards like purple tunics and money, and paid off the debts of his army. Drinking contests heated up to the point where many participants died. 

And there were the famous weddings: Alexander married Stateira, the late Darius’ eldest daughter, and another Persian princess, Parysatis; and Hephaestion married Drypetis, another princess and daughter of Darius. And more was to come: Alexander encouraged 100 companions and 1,000 regular soldiers to marry Persian women. The marriage ceremonies were according to Persian custom and lasted five days, and performers even arrived from Greece. The marriages were part of Alexander’s unifying, big picture plan. (After his death, it seems that few of the marriages lasted.) Clearly, there was resistance to Alexander’s plans and overall vision. 

At Susa, the Epigoni or inheritors, who were some 30,000 Bactrians trained in Macedonian warfare, arrived; foreigners also joined the Companion Cavalry. Alexander’s orientalism caused much consternation among his troops – it was a massive change from what they were accustomed. (The Mutiny at Opis was only months away.) After this, Alexander explored the region by ship, while Hephaestion with part of the army headed to the Persian Gulf.   

Time is Always Against Us

In Susa, Alexander’s close friend and advisor, Calanus (one of the naked philosophers from Taxila), knowing that he was very sick, gave away his possession, including a horse to one of his Greek students. He climbed atop a funeral pyre which was then lit. The onlookers, especially Alexander, were horrified. Calanus proved that he was beyond pain — as tough or tougher than anyone could be. He is an invitation to wonder: how can this be possible? (We know of this kind of self-immolation by some Buddhist monks during the war in Vietnam.) 

Worse was to come. In Ecbatana (October 324), Hephaestion (Alexander’s closest friend and a Commander of the Companion Cavalry), recovering from sickness, drank much wine, relapsed, died. This devastated Alexander, who put the doctor to death. Plutarch says that Alexander’s “grief was uncontrollable.” Alexander petitioned the Oracle at Siwah, which granted him the status of divine hero. Hephaestion was given an expensive funeral and his ashes were brought to Babylon. (Alexander’s grief might remind us of Gilgamesh’s utter despair when his adventure-companion Enkidu died.) 

Babylon

Adding it all up — the risks and battles, injuries and assassination attempts, desert journeys and so on – makes one wonder how Alexander lived as long as he did. Amidst the splendor of the palaces and hanging gardens, the end for Alexander arrived in Babylon months later. The historian, Arrian, following eyewitness accounts, relates it:. Alexander came down with a fever and lost his voice. He couldn’t move. He had to be carried in a litter. The men insisted on seeing him and broke down the doors. Perhaps it was malaria or typhus, the various injuries, along with alcoholism. It is possible that Alexander, before reaching Babylon’s famous gates, contracted some disease in the swamps. 

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Remains of the ancient city of Babylon, Iraq. Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons

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Alexander died on 10 June 323, just before reaching 33. He was king for twelve years and eight months. Some authors suspect that Alexander was poisoned: perhaps by the Mallian arrow that had lodged in his lung, or by a devious Macedonian. Suspects include Antipater, his sons Cassander and Iollas (a cupbearer for Alexander); this family quite reasonably feared Alexander’s return. (A few years later, Cassander killed Alexander’s mother Olympias, Roxana, and Alexander IV.) Another suspect, Medius, had invited Alexander to the party just before Alexander got feverish. 

Dying Alexander, marble copy of the 2nd century BC work by unknown Greek sculptor. National Art Museum of Azerbaijan. Urek Meniashvili. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

In Joseph Campbell’s formulation of the hero’s journey, heroes separate from their homeland, initiate (transform and journey), and return home. Alexander never achieved the homecoming – another missing part of his life. Alexander was not too young to die (for that era), but it was far too soon before he could accomplish all that he desired.

Alexander was a figure of epic proportions, who helped determine history. He was one of only a few military leaders never defeated. Through conquest and creating cities, Alexander spread Greek culture and unified an immense area, which lasted centuries after his birth, paving the way for Roman and Islamic expansion, and much else; he encouraged intermarriage and unity; founded dozens of cities including Alexandria, Egypt; encouraged trade between East and West; held women in higher regard than his contemporaries; spread Greek culture (Hellenization). In the final chapters of Alexander the Great, Robin Lane Fox covers many of the details of the East/West cross-fertilization. 

There was a unique vastness and panache to Alexander’s accomplishments and dreams. If Alexander were in competition with his real father Philip or Homer’s Achilles, there was no competition. Alexander wins. Had he lived longer, the course of history would be different, for he had plans to conquer far and wide. Perhaps Alexander would have stopped Rome before it became so mighty. About Alexander there are utopian or romantic views. Historian William Tarn believed that Alexander would have unified the world and brought peace. Historian Arnold Toynbee believed that the world would be a better place had Alexander lived twice as long. 

From my vantage point I ask, at what price? A vast number of soldiers and civilians, and many horses and elephants, died during the dozen years of conquest. Cities were flattened. But there exists no alternate history in which there’s no Alexander. He existed in a big way and had a big afterlife; to varying degrees, we live in the world that Alexander helped determine. We benefit from the changes and evolution that Alexander put into motion. Many people live in cities he founded. It is a paradox because his plans required much conquest. His life brings us into the realm of imagination with its own light and dark qualities. 

Prof. Paul Cartledge offered this assessment:

Astonishing military commander – right up there in the all-time first division with Genghis Khan, Napoleon and very very few others. Partly but not only because he was a simply superb leader of men in the field and against the odds, but also because he effected quite extraordinary sieges in seemingly impossible circumstances – Tyre, the Rock of Aornos…

However, on the debit side of the ledger, what exactly was he aiming to achieve – beyond unique personal renown? And was it really necessary to massacre quite so many non-Greek persons?  (I’m thinking esp. of the Malloi here) or to treat defeated enemies quite so brutally (the Phoenicians of Tyre – crucified; the eunuch Arab governor of Gaza – killed by being dragged behind a chariot – at least Hector was already dead when Alexander’s epic role model Achilles dragged his corpse behind his chariot!)

Professor Michael Scott, author and Professor of Classics and Ancient History at University of Warwick, stated: 

I believe he would have gone as far as he could, but he would have not been able to conquer China (at this time in the final stages of developing into a Unified nation during their Warring States period). And yes, I think if he had lived, he would then have turned west as well…

As Michael Wood says at the end of his program, In the Footsteps of Alexander, the gods gave Alexander multiple signs. Alexander felt that the gods were on his side. 

Alexander was a man of his time — not ours. His time had continuous warfare, slavery on a massive scale, infanticide, much starvation and disease and early death, limited medicine, animal sacrifice, routine torture, plague, god-kings, and more. 

Kings and Philosophers, Biology and Opportunity

It is said that Prince Siddhartha could have been either Buddha or world conqueror. Could Alexander have been a philosopher rather than a king? His parents had worldly ambitions in mind for Alexander and he did, too. It was natural for him to accept the challenge and ride that wind. The Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was also a philosopher, but philosophy did not take up the better part of his time, and could not. The emperor fought to keep Rome’s enemies away from the empire, whereas Alexander fought to create an empire (mostly an overlay of the Persian Empire), with plans for enlargement.      

Alexander had incredible parents, opportunity, and boundless ambitions. Whatever luck he had at birth, he always endeavored to add to it. Anyone who reaches for the stars must make their own luck. Opportunity knocked; Alexander stepped through the doors, or actually kicked them open, one could say. He was a blend of biology and opportunity: the will to power across the continents. Yet Alexander paid a high price for his desires. He died young, and he foolishly did not choose a successor, hence the exhaustive Wars of the Successors leading to his family’s demise. The aftermath helped leave Greece vulnerable to Rome’s relentless military might. With empires, the center cannot hold, entropy settles in, no matter how solid the dreams of myth-drenched leaders.  

Would it have been better if Alexander stayed home? That was Siduri’s advice for Gilgamesh in the world’s first book. The Roman Senate wanted Julius Caesar to cut short his conquests and return to Rome. Gilgamesh failed two tests and returned to Uruk, finally pleased to be a good king. It was not in the nature of Alexander or Caesar or Napoleon, for that matter, to return home and have a peaceful life. They were crazy for conquest. 

One tradition continues to imagine Alexander long after his death: The Alexander Romance. Alexander goes to the bottom of the sea, flies through the air, and so on. The great Persian poet, Ferdowsi (born 940 ACE), applauded Alexander’s unification of East and West and for being King Darius III’s half-brother.

Moreover, Alexander, at times associated with or depicted with horns (on coins, for example), and may have ended up in the Koran:

1) The Egyptian god Amun had curled horns. Alexander was crowned pharaoh.  2) The two horns represent the two horizons – Alexander’s immense accomplishments and ambitions. 3) In the Koran, Alexander is quite possibly “the horned one.”   

The Alexander Romance, in some sense, continues; there are many Alexanders in literature, media, and art, including Andy Warhol’s “Alexander the Great” images and Oliver Stone’s Alexander. Many people explore the story of Alexander. The word “essay” means to try – which is what I’ve done here. All we can do is try to understand Alexander from the perspective of his contemporaries and from the perspective of ourselves. There is much that is missing, contradictory, or imaginative in the ancient histories. Alexander and his army journeyed and fought across land and sea to the limits of the known world.  

Body Snatcher and the Next Pharaoh: Ptolemy and the Afterlives of Alexander  

Of the circle of friends still standing when Alexander died, Ptolemy may be the most astonishing and fortunate. He also had studied with Aristotle, rose in the ranks and partook of the military venture across the world, journeyed to Siwah, and was there in Babylon at the end. As Alexander lay dying, the royal ring was handed to Perdiccas: the empire would go “to the strongest,” uttered the dying king. It doesn’t seem like a good idea. Perdiccas was disliked, and who could replace Alexander? What Alexander created was destroyed when he died: a cohesive empire. Power for Macedonians was, to a large degree, of a personal nature. By accomplishing so much, Alexander made it impossible to replace him.   

Without Alexander, the leaders jockeyed for control. Would Alexander’s unborn child eventually be allowed to rule? Would someone else grab the empire? War was the reply. Didn’t Alexander the Great foresee these troubles? 

[I asked Professor Ikram, author of The Mummy in Ancient Egypt and Distinguished University Professor of Egyptology at the American University of Cairo, if it’s possible that Alexander’s body was preserved in honey.

“It was thus reported, and it make sense,” she replied.] 

Alexander was honored in the most magnificent way with much finery – a prolific amount of gold and purple. The cortege headed to Aegae (the location of Philip’s tomb) in Macedon where Alexander would be buried. It never arrived. Diodorus, the Sicilian historian, writes that Ptolemy “doing honour to Alexander, went to meet it with an army as far as Syria, and, receiving the body, deemed it worthy of the greatest consideration.” 

Claudius Ptolemäus: Picture of 16th century book frontispiece. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

Ptolemy stole the body and brought it to Memphis. Ptolemy declared himself pharaoh in 305, beginning his family’s dynasty. (The last of the Ptolemies was Cleopatra VII who, with Mark Antony, lost to Octavian.) When the tomb was completed, Alexander’s body was interred in Alexandria. Under the Ptolemies, Alexandria would become one of the great cities of the world. Alexandria had a grid pattern, lighthouse (pharos), a multicultural population, and an incredible library and museum — a prototype of the modern university.

Many well-wishers, including Emperor Augustus Caesar, visited Alexander’s tomb. Emperor Septimius Severus closed the tomb to the public to preserve it. Prof. Frank Korn (Classics Department, Seton Hall University) related this to me about Julius Caesar’s admiration for Alexander: “The exploits of Alexander were well known by the military and political stars of Republican and Imperial Rome.” 

By 400 ACE, the trail goes cold, the tomb’s location a mystery. Polytheism was now persecuted. When John Chrysostom, an early Christian father, visited Alexandria and inquired about the tomb, he saw that “his tomb even his own people know not.” 

Might earthquakes and sea have destroyed Alexander’s tomb? Is Alexander the Great’s tomb somewhere below, like King Tut’s tomb before Howard Carter’s discovery? With well over one hundred attempts over the last century, archaeologists have been searching for Alexander. 

According to Arrian, Alexander could be buried at Siwah. Professor Ikram suggested that Alexander might be in Alexandria “possibly under the Elite Café or under the Baskin Robbins based on ancient geography.” 

Another researcher believes Alexander is buried in St. Mark’s in Venice. So, St. Mark is executed and buried in Alexandria. In the 800s AD, St. Mark’s corpse gets mistaken for Alexander and is brought by sea captains to Venice. Perhaps Alexander still creates myths. Wherever the tomb lies, its discovery would be an archaeological Holy Grail.  

Alexander and the Hellenic League constituted one of the wildest rides in history — to be debated in many ways and perhaps forever. We can know him as we know ourselves, at a distance. It seems that people with colossal ambitions and achievements have multiple masks and paradoxical personalities — and sometimes a huge shadow. Alexander wanted to see and conquer more than anyone, to be the Goat (Greatest of All Time), and to live on the lips of others. Toward the end of The Campaigns of Alexander, Arrian writes:

He had great personal beauty, invincible power of endurance, and a keen intellect; he was brave and adventurous, strict in the observation of his religious duties, and hungry for fame.

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Partial bust of Alexander. Sushuti, Pixabay

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About Me

Teaching myth inspired me to write this essay. I wanted to show students that myth was a big part of Alexander’s life and, in different ways, also makes us who we are. Alexander is both real and mythic – and sometimes the two aspects are seamlessly blended. Once I dived into the material, I realized that one needs facts and history and myth (and much more) to understand Alexander. Myth leads to the real, and the real leads to myth.  

I wish to thank Professors Jean Alvares, Paul Cartledge, Kara Cooney, Salima Ikram, Frank Korn and Michael Scott for their brilliant reflections on Alexander the Great and related material; and thanks to Prof. Jean Alvares and Tracey Paradiso (the latter is a fellow writer in Cranford Writers Group) for their excellent, much-appreciated editing. Any mistakes of language or thought are clearly my own, of course. I wrote this essay during three weeks in March 2022, one week of which was spent (with Renah and our child Inanna) visiting Gettysburg, PA. For me, it was a meditation on war, courage and human folly and got me thinking about Pickett’s Charge as well as Alexander’s cavalry charges. The shock of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine also unfolded over this period and tragically continues.       

As a child, I saw programs and read about Alexander in National Geographic and in picture books. The dream of travel into far-off lands was powerful, and I was too young to consider the dark side. Years later, I had a terrific semester with New York University in Greece sponsored by the late Prof. Mitchell Leaska. During a break, I went off to Egypt. 

In 2021, I was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for my short story in Coneflower Café; and my collection of interviews, stories, images – Speaking of the Dead – was accepted for publication by Blydyn Square Books in New Jersey. In 2022 I was accepted for the NEH summer seminar, Ritual Arts in Hinduism and Buddhism at College of the Holy Cross. Renah, Inanna and I (with our editor Alice Almiron, PCCC graduate and Rutgers film student) made a film, “Covid, a Child’s View,” which received honorable mention from the London Short Film Festival. It will be shown in late April at the Cranford Film Festival in New Jersey. I have been a writer and teacher for a long while, the latter culminating in a Fulbright to teach at LMU Munich. This past year, I published stories, essays, interviews, and poetry in Popular Archaeology, Parabola Magazine, The Raven’s Perch, Dash Literary Journal, Paterson Literary Review, and Minerva Magazine. 

Cover Image, Top Left: Alexander Mosaic (detail), House of the Faun, Pompeii. Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons

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“Only joint efforts will make decipherment possible.”

— Ester Salgarella

No one knows their names. Lost personalities of an ancient civilization, their most famous king is known to us only through Greek mythology—King Minos—if in fact he ever existed as described in the mythical narrative. But archaeological remains tell us that, whether or not King Minos was real as depicted in the mythology, there must have been kings in this land. Today the land is known as the island of Crete, a part of modern-day Greece, but as long ago as at least 3000 BCE it was the center of what has been penned in the historical literature as the ‘Minoan’ civilization—so named by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans after the mythical king. It was Evans who first excavated the palatial remains at Knossos in 1900. In short, he ‘discovered’ the Minoans. Evans’ efforts were followed in succeeding years by a string of excavations and research that have revealed a remarkable ancient civilization that has left behind a wondrous legacy of monumental palaces, building complexes, tools, incredible artwork, writing systems, religion, and evidence of an expansive trade network across the Mediterranean. Remnants of their monumental past can be seen beyond Crete on multiple islands in the Aegean. They have been arguably described as representing Europe’s first great urbanized society. 

Yet even so, we do not really know their story. We do not know the chronology of their kings, the major events of their history, or the affairs and issues of their elites. That is because, outside of Greek myth and unlike what scholars have been able to determine from the decipherment of ancient inscriptions that have testified and recorded the often detailed story of civilizations like ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the ancient Maya, there are to-date no successfully deciphered written records for the Minoans. Evidence of ancient writing systems, however, was discovered during excavations at Knossos and other Minoan sites. Scholars, beginning with Evans, were able to distinguish three writing systems manifested mostly on clay tablets and seals that survived the ages due to baking from accidental fires, and on other artifacts. Known as Cretan Hieroglyphic (the earliest, a pictographic script), Linear A and Linear B, with Linear A determined to be the predecessor of linear B, the decipherment of these scripts eluded scholars for decades after their first discovery. 

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Above and below: The ancient remains of Knossos, the largest known center of the Minoans on Crete. Above: Pat_Scrap, Pixabay  Below: Bigfoot, Pixabay

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Cracking the Scripts

Scholars began to open windows on this mystery when, between 1951 and 1953, Michael Ventris and John Chadwick successfully deciphered the ancient Linear B script. Linear B was found mostly within palace archives at the excavated sites of Knossos, Cydonia, Pylos, Thebes and Mycenae.  Excepting Knossos and Cydonia, these sites are best known as Mycenaean centers, and Linear B is thus largely associated with the Mycenaeans. The archaeological finds indicate this script was used to record and communicate economic transactions related to palatial center administration from approximately 1600–1100 BC. Although the Mycenaeans arose after the Minoans, with their most significant centers located in present-day mainland Greece, many scholars have suggested that the Mycenaeans were significantly influenced by the Minoans, with archaeological finds evidencing a strong trade and exchange relationship. Both Linear A and Linear B scripts share many common signs, and it is generally thought that Linear B is a derivative of the yet undeciphered Linear A. However, despite decades of study, scholars have yet to decipher Cretan Hieroglyphic and Linear A. But new strides have been made in recent years.

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The ancient remains of Mycenae, on mainland Greece. This image depicts the famous Lion Gate. Zde, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International, Wikimedia Commons

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Clay tablet inscribed in Linear B from the Mycenaean palace of Pylos, on present-day mainland Greece. This inscription provides information on the distribution of bovine, pig and deer hides to shoe and saddle-makers. This tablet was preserved because it was baked in fire that destroyed the palace around 1200 BC. Sharon Mollerus, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic, Wikimedia Commons

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A partial tablet inscribed in Linear A, found at the Palace of Zakros, located on the island of Crete. Olauf Tausch, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported, Wikimedia Commons

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What follows is an interview with Dr. Ester Salgarella, who is a Junior Research Fellow at St. John’s College, University of Cambridge. She is most recently known for the creation of the open access SigLA database of Linear A inscriptions, a remarkable and possible game-changing tool developed in collaboration with computer scientist Dr Simon Castellan at INRIA, University of Rennes (France). Although this new tool is under ongoing development, it now features more than 3,000 individual inscription signs that are searchable. Her work, along with others, may prove to be a key to the eventual decipherment of this mysterious script, opening a long-awaited window for understanding the ancient Minoans………….

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Working Toward a Comprehension of the Minoan Script

Q: What is your background experience as it relates to the study and decipherment of Linear A? What inspired you to focus on research related to this?

ES (Ester Salgarella): My background is in Classics and Archaeology. Before coming to Cambridge, I received both my BA and MA from the University of Padova (Italy), where I started studying Aegean Prehistory and Mycenaean Greek out of passion and as optional classes (when available). I came to Cambridge for graduate study (MPhil and PhD) as I knew Cambridge is a leading institution in this field and the very place where the archive of LB decipherment is preserved. It was the most sensible place to go to follow my passion and further my knowledge. And, in hindsight, I was not mistaken!

However, my passion for the ancient world and ancient scripts is rooted in my childhood: I still remember a time when I was 6 years old. My parents took me to Venice to visit an exhibition featuring the Ancient Egyptian queen Nefertari (http://www.fondazionememmo.it/nefertari-regina-degitto/) . Needless to say, I fell in love with Egyptian Hieroglyphs more than anything else and at the exhibition shop I acquired a little booklet (for children) on how to draw hieroglyphs. Once back home, I started to cover the house with sticky labels displaying names of objects in hieroglyphic (to the extent a child would do, of course). This is my earliest memory of my passion for ancient scripts. As a teenager, at school I studied very fondly both Greek and Latin and I was mesmerized when the Aegean Bronze Age world was disclosed to me: I had a sudden and strong feeling of belonging… it was like a call. This is what I wanted to study, what I wanted to do. I wanted to work on the earliest evidence of writing on European soil, to know more about the people who invented and made use of writing there, to understand more of their history through the lens of writing. Moreover, it was a reasonably new field of study (beginning with Heinrich Schliemann’s excavations at Troy and Mycenae, and Sir Arthur Evans’ unearthing of the palace of Knossos), and this added to the excitement.

However, it was not until my PhD that I could focus on Linear A (LA). There are no classes on LA at the University, so only at the graduate level could I work freely on what I liked most. I had always been intrigued by the partial knowledge we had of the LA to Linear B (LB) transmission process, and it puzzled me. When I proposed this topic for my PhD to my supervisor, I must say I was expecting a rejection. When the ‘yes’ came, I was beyond delighted! This meant I had to acquire knowledge of LA by myself, and full days, weeks and months were dedicated to that single purpose, thanks to the magnificent holdings of the Cambridge University Libraries and the ‘Mycenaean Epigraphy Room’ private collection in the Faculty of Classics.

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Q: What is the current status of efforts to unlock the language behind Linear A and the implications or significance of this endeavor?

ES:

a). The state of the art: ‘readability’ of LA texts, within a hoped-for ‘decipherment’ framework

Despite the language difference between LB, which writes the earliest form of the Greek language known to date, and LA, which writes a language we dub ‘Minoan’, it is still possible – to some extent and with an approximation – to ‘read’ LA inscriptions. This is because of the script relationship between LA and LB. It has long been known that these scripts are related, and that the LB script (not language) is derivative from the LA script. The (to date) known context of use (primarily administrative purposes) also suggests the same. In my work (more on this below) I set off to examine the peculiarities of the transmission process to assess the degree of relatedness. 

Given that the LB script used the LA script as a template, it is assumed that those LA signs that maintained approximately the same shape in LB may also be ‘read’ with the phonetic reading (approximate, if not the same) we have reconstructed in LB. This allows us to at least ‘read’ LA texts in phonetic transcription. Such transcriptions have now been made open-access by Prof. John Younger in his website: http://people.ku.edu/~jyounger/LinearA/  Regrettably, the printed edition of LA inscriptions does not have any phonetic transcription. Although this method may well be subject to criticisms, as we do not have a way of uncontrovertibly proving all sound values remained approximately the same upon script transmission, there are a number of legitimate reasons in favor of applying this method, as it has been recently argued by two colleagues of mine, Dr. Torsten Meissner and Dr. Philippa Steele, based here at the University of Cambridge.

However, even if we could fully ‘read’ LA texts, we cannot yet understand the underlying language. To ‘decipher’ means to get to know the language encoded in a script. Hence, we are currently faced with what I call ‘readability’ of LA texts, within a hoped-for ‘decipherment’ framework. It has been demonstrated by Prof. Yves Duhoux from the University of Louvain that LA makes use of a good many prefixes and suffixes (i.e., in our case, syllabic signs that are attached to the beginning or end of a word-stem to create a new word). This makes it unlikely for it to belong to the Indo-European linguistic family, which does not show this feature to such an extent. More recently, Dr. Brent Davis from the University of Melbourne has investigated LA texts at a deeper level by using statistical and phonotactic methods (more on this below) and he has attempted to determine which linguistic family (e.g. Indo-European, Semitic, Afro-Asiatic etc.) may best fit the LA pattern. For now, none of the existing families shows a close correspondence with the features we see in LA.

In order to arrive at a decipherment, we need to carry out interdisciplinary research in a collaborative international environment. This is necessary until we eventually find a bilingual inscription (a ‘Rosetta Stone’ for LA), of which there is none to date. In light of this, in the following discussion I would rather leave aside the issue of ‘deciphering’ LA, though ultimately critical, and focus on the stepping stones that may help to pave the way to a future decipherment.

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Linear A tablets on display at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete. Dr Ester Salgarella

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A Minoan clay tablet inscribed with Linear A, on display in Crete’s Archaeological Museum of Heraklion. Dr Ester Salgarella

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b). Significance of a long-awaited decipherment

On a local scale, knowing the language behind the LA texts shall allow us to carry out an assessment of the extent of literacy in the Bronze Age Aegean, developing insights into the workings of the palatial administrations during the Minoan period (ca. 1800-1450 BCE), and achieving a more nuanced reconstruction of ‘Minoan’ society, economy and religion. Moreover, further linguistic analysis shall allow us to assess linguistic/dialectal variation over time and space in the different parts of Crete (and the Aegean islands that have so far produced LA evidence).

On a global scale, linguistic data shall enable us to situate the language in its diachronic position, in case it can be successfully linked to one of the already known linguistic families; if not, this will nevertheless give us an astonishing example of an ‘isolated’ language (such as, e.g., Sumerian and Etruscan). Knowledge of the underlying language may also allow us to reconstruct (although with due caution) prehistoric population movements, giving us a hint as to the place of origin of the pristine nucleus of the so-called ‘Minoans’.

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Q: A recent press release article about your work stated the following: “Taking an interdisciplinary approach using evidence from linguistics, inscriptions, archaeology and palaeography (the study of the handwriting of ancient scripts), Dr Salgarella examined the two scripts in socio-historical context.”* Could you explain this in such a way that a reader from the general public would understand, perhaps giving some examples to illustrate?

ES: Let us start with the terms that may sound more familiar: archaeology and linguistics.

Archaeological analysis: in our case, this primarily concerns chronology. It is essential to know where tablets come from and the dating archaeologists have assigned to a given tablet deposit. This gives us a relative chronology of the finds being studied, and consequently allows us to situate the attestations of the script in its diachronic development.

Linguistic analysis: this involves an assessment of current approaches to the linguistic analysis of the Linear scripts. Of particular importance is the discussion about how legitimate it is to read LA signs with the phonetic values we have reconstructed for LB (see my discussion above). Moreover, we also need to take into consideration those signs that are attested in one script only: within LB, to try to understand the reasons why some signs were created anew and some others were discarded during the transmission process; within LA, to try to understand why some signs (esp. not continued into LB) are at times site-restricted, i.e. found at a given site only.

Let us now discuss two fields of study that may not be familiar: epigraphy and palaeography.

Epigraphic analysis (inscriptions): this has to do with the study of how inscriptions are made, with respect to both the implement and the support (in the case of LA and LB, the support is the clay tablet and the implement is a stylus). An examination of tablet layout and disposition of information on the writing surface also plays a key role. If we take for example the LB tablet I have annotated with a phonetic transcription and a translation in the before-mentioned St. John’s press release article, in that type of layout we can see that each spot occupied by a word is significant for administrative purposes: e.g. the first word (bigger size) is always a man-name (that of a shepherd), the slot on top is occupied by another man-name (that of the person responsible for overlooking the shepherd and its flock), finally the slot on the bottom is filled with a place-name (in this case ‘Ku-ta-to’). Epigraphy is also concerned with features like word division (e.g. in LB this could be achieved by changing the size of close-by words or by adding a word-divider in the shape of a little comma); erasures (cases in which a previously written sign or word was erased and a new one was written on top: at times we are still able to work out what had been written in the first instance and to make sense of the change); presence or absence of ruled lines to guide writing; and intentional blanks and spaces between words and/or lines. All these data give us information about how tablets were redacted and edited, and which kind of information the palace administrators (aka ‘scribes’) deemed ‘essential’ for future record.

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Linear B clay tablet with the text explained. Dr Ester Salgarella

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Palaeographical analysis: this is the study of sign forms, how a sign was designed in the first instance, the number of variant ways in which a sign can be drawn, the variation in handwriting that we witness between different ‘scribes’, the modifications signs undergo over time and place. By way of example, in Linear B palaeographic analysis has been used to detect ‘scribes’ (referred to with the more neutral term ‘scribal hand’ in the scholarship): i.e., the individuals who were responsible for writing the clay documents. Such a task has not been fully undertaken for LA, and we hope that the palaeographical analysis carried out in my book (Aegean Linear Script(s): Rethinking the Relationship between Linear A and Linear B), alongside SigLA (SigLA – The Signs of Linear A: a paleographic database), will help with the detection of individuality on Linear A tablets. This would have significant implications for our reconstruction of administrative connections in the palatial centers and it would be key to assessing the level of literacy at that time (e.g. how many people are likely to have mastered writing in the form of the LA syllabary?).

By examining the available evidence using and integrating these approaches, I was able to disentangle some of the intricacies that surround the LA to LB transmission process.

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Q: What have you specifically discovered about the relationship between Linear A and Linear B that opens up a significantly better window on understanding and deciphering Linear A, as opposed to what scholarship already knows about the two scripts?

ES: We already knew these scripts are derivative from one another, however, the precise way in which the latter was derived from the former was not straightforward, esp. in relation to the amount of change/rupture with the previous system: how much different is the LB script/system if compared to its template? In order to throw light on this, I set out to examine the structure and palaeographical features of both LA and LB.

By structure I mean the examination of the arrangement of their respective syllabaries, the function performed by a sign in context (e.g. syllabic, logographic, ideographic), the kind of sign combinations that were used in LA and which ones were continued in LB (and why so). This allows us to assess the level of ‘rupture’ with the previous system on a systemic level to get to an understanding of the degree of change (or lack thereof) upon the script transmission process from LA to LB.

As to palaeography, I produced detailed palaeographical charts of all signs attested on the LA tablets and the oldest LB tablets from Knossos (from the deposit called ‘The Room of the Chariot Tablets’) unearthed at any given site on Crete that has so far yielded written evidence. This allowed me to get a global view of all signs and their variants in each script and to assess the extent to which sign forms were modified when transmitted from LA to LB. These charts clearly showed that most of the graphic variants that we see in LA are also present in LB: this implies that the degree of change was kept to a minimum and there was no strong or drastic sign selection process (nor strong sign standardization) when LB was ‘created’.

The joint result of the combined structural and palaeographic analysis reveals that the two scripts (as well as systems) appear closer than previously assumed on both structural and graphic grounds: comparable categories of signs were transmitted from LA to LB, and also when LB innovates it appears to follow principles already operating in LA; also the graphic shapes of signs we see in LB were continued from LA antecedents most of the time, and not created completely anew. If change is likely to have been kept to a minimum during the script transmission process, this means that there may be scope for making even further comparisons between these two scripts as well as systems: in other words, we may want to test whether other features we see and know from the LB system may also be applied to the LA system to shed light on its characteristics. By way of example, LB tablets, in that they are records of economic transactions, contain a good number of words with administrative significance (e.g. ‘total’, ‘grand total’, ‘deficit in payment’, ‘allocation’, ‘contribution’, etc.): by studying contextual positions of words and their associations, we may be able to make inferences as to the plausible meaning of some LA words (and there are scholars already attempting to do so).

Moreover, by implication, these results may make us rethink our very interpretation of the so-called ‘Mycenaean takeover of Crete’ still found in the literature. From a script perspective, it is unlikely that there was an abrupt change: the script is continued in its graphic form with only slight modifications; the system itself was continued. The very purpose of clay documents was also the same as in the LA administration: documents used for the bookkeeping of palatial administrations. Moreover, this interpretation is consistent with the archaeological record: there is no evidence of a war-like context on Crete, at least on present evidence. These considerations may make us want to reconsider slightly our interpretation of the two communities dubbed ‘Minoans’ and ‘Mycenaeans’ by modernity. There was indeed language change in the transition between LA and LB, and their respective administrative systems, but this is not enough to claim a ‘takeover’ of the island.

I shall finish with a modern example: there are countries, like Switzerland for example, in which more than one language is spoken, though still they consider themselves as one nation. Language, therefore, shall not be taken a priori as a necessary condition to distinguish between different population groups. Moreover, it also needs stressing that we have to exercise due caution when projecting our modern views onto the past. We need to always question our interpretations and envisage more than one possible scenario.

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Q: What archaeological discoveries and sites have indicated the best potential for contributing to our understanding of Linear A?

ES: LA evidence does not amount to much, so we need to take into account all sites that have yielded written evidence in order to obtain as comprehensive a picture as possible. Only three sites on Crete have produced a sizeable amount of LA evidence allowing for site-internal comparison. These are: Haghia Triada in Central-South Crete (with some 1250 inscriptions: 147 tablets and 1103 sealed documents), Zakros on the North-East coast (with some 591 inscriptions: 31 tablets and 560 sealed documents) and Khania on the North-West coast (with some 309 inscriptions: 99 tablets and 210 sealed documents). The best preserved (and not only fragmentary) tablets come from these three sites, where there is potential to investigate the LA writing system at a deeper level given the higher amount of information we can retrieve from better preserved texts. However, scholars are now embarking on statistical and phonotactic analysis of the inscriptions with the aim at understanding some of the linguistic features (most importantly, Dr. Brent Davis from the University of Melbourne). Decipherment will only be made when we can say which language the tablets are written in, but in order to do so we first need to ‘tidy up’ our dataset: the structural and palaeographical analyses conducted in my work will be a stepping stone, complemented by progress in statistical and phonotactic analysis.

Thus, we need the whole LA dataset for statistical and cross-comparison analysis.

However, when it comes to examining the transmission process from LA to LB – esp. with respect to the much debated ‘place of origin’ of LB – then we can argue for some Cretan sites to have played a role in shaping up LB as we see it. My palaeographical analysis suggests that LB was ‘created’ under the graphic influences of LA writing practices in use at North and North-East coastal sites: these are primarily Khania, Arkhanes (and the area around Knossos) and Zakros. This scenario raises the issue of ‘connectivity’ and network analysis: in fact, when sailing from Mainland Greece, coastal sites are obviously more easily reached and connections between the two population groups (so-called Mainlander ‘Mycenaeans’ and Cretan ‘Minoans’) are more likely to have been more intense in such contexts. Adding to this, on Crete LB is only attested at Knossos, situated in a strategic position in the Centre-North area of the island. Only later on, we find some scattered evidence of LB at Khania (and one tablet fragment at Sissi, located near Mallia), but only at a time when LB at Knossos appears not to have been used any longer. This would be further evidence suggesting that LB is likely to have originated within a North coastal milieu.

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Q: When, for example, an inscribed tablet is discovered in archaeological context, how can you determine at first whether it is inscribed in Linear A or Linear B?

ES:  In order to distinguish between a LB tablet (or other kind of inscribed document) from a LA one, we need to look at three sets of features (and the combination thereof): pinacological features, epigraphical features, palaeographical features.

Pinacology is the study of the shape and format of a clay document (πίναξ ‘pínax’ is the Greek term for ‘tablet’): LA tablets are only page-shaped (rectangular shape, they usually fit quite nicely into the palm of a hand), while LB tablets can be either elongated (called palmleaf-shaped tablets) or page-shaped tablets (however, esp. at Knossos, the palmleaf-shaped type is more frequent than the page-shaped one, and this is a new tablet format introduced in the LB administration). Hence, tablet format already gives us a hint for the correct identification as well as classification of an inscribed clay tablet.

Epigraphy studies the disposition of information and writing on the tablet surface and the way in which the inscription was made. This also helps us in the identification process. A few examples: (i) LB inscriptions appear neater and tidier than LA ones, hence gaining in clarity (a number of LB tablet layouts show a well-thought-out disposition of information on the writing surface, with specific spaces/slots destined to a given – and recurrent – type of information, which is significant from an administrative standpoint). (ii) Often LB tablets show ruling lines to guide writing (the LB tablet with my notes shows a middle line, but bigger size page-shaped LB tablets may show much more). This is also a new feature introduced in LB. (iii) Most LB tablets also tend to clearly separate different entries occurring on the same record (e.g. one per line) and to distinguish more clearly between text and logograms by placing logograms at the far end of each entry (this does not happen in LA, where entries are often broken across lines). The examination of epigraphical features clearly shows that in the move away from the LA administration, LB both improved and systematized tablet format and layout.

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Above: Linear B clay tablet showing ruling line. Dr Ester Salgarella  Below: Linear B clay tablet KN Fp 13, showing ruling lines. It is dated to 1450-1375 BC. It records quantities of oil offered to deities. vintagedept  Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic  Wikimedia Commons

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Palaeographical features also help in this undertaking. Although very many sign shapes and variants were transmitted straight from LA to LB, some degree of change/modification did occur in LB. This, of course, did not compromise the overall shape of a given sign. LB signs appear to have been graphically systematized in order to ‘resonate’ with each other, so to say: e.g. similar traits got more marked in order to make signs more alike (See the image below from my book, where I discuss this systematization process, and where you can see in different colors those traits of LB signs that became more enhanced). Moreover, most LA composite signs were not continued into LB. Hence, if we see a composite sign, the inscription is more likely to be LA than LB.

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From Fig 31, p 289, Aegean Linear Script(s): Rethinking the Relationship between Linear A and Linear B, by Ester Salgarella. Image courtesy Dr Ester Salgarella

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By combining together these approaches and examining specific features, we are able to distinguish a LB document from a LA one. However, it is also worth mentioning that chronology may help us as well (in case a new find is unearthed from a clearly datable stratigraphic deposit). As mentioned already, LA spans ca. 1800/1700 to 1450 BCE, while LB is slightly later (ca. 1400/70-1200/1190). The earliest attestations of LA are dated to either 1800 or 1700 by scholars, and this fluctuation is due to the fact that there exist (at Knossos and Mallia) a number of inscribed clay documents called ‘dubitanda’ (= doubtful), as it is not clear whether we ought to classify them as Cretan Hieroglyphic or Linear A.

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Q: What additional or new archaeological discoveries or research/analysis could help provide the key to ‘unlocking the code’ of the Minoan language behind Linear A?

ES: What we all wish we could find is a bilingual text! A real ‘Rosetta Stone’. This does not need to be an inscription on hard support (like a clay tablet or a stone inscription). What we would need from any context (even beyond Crete) would be a bilingual text that could give us some clues as to the exact meaning and interpretation of the words of LA and ultimately the reconstruction (and possible) identification of the Minoan language. This lacking, we need to use ‘every tool we have’ in order to get as much as we can from the short and laconic texts.

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Q: Regarding the new online resource of individual signs and inscriptions you created, has this resource already been used by scholars/researchers? Why has such a resource or technique/instrument not been developed and used before?

ES: The SigLA database is a new resource and shall allow in-depth and comprehensive palaeographic and epigraphic comparison both within a given site that produced LA evidence and across different sites. Searches are customizable according to users’ needs. They will be able to create their own datasets in ways unfeasible before.

Why has it not been created before? My field of research is a relatively new one: excavations and discoveries of Bronze Age ‘Mycenaean’ citadels started with Heinrich Schliemann towards the end of the 19th century, and the ‘Minoan’ civilization was brought to light with the discovery of the palace of Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans at the very beginning of the 20th century. Much progress has been made ever since, however most works and editions of inscriptions have been published in old-fashioned print form only (for obvious reasons). The ‘digital era’ had yet to touch our field until recently. Most digital resources have been developed over the last decade, with digital education as well as skills on the rise. We are eventually moving toward a ‘digital landscape’ and away from unmovable print editions.

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Homepage of SigLA database. Salgarella and Castellan 2020

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The development of this research tool is also timely, as now – after a century of study of our material – we are asking ourselves more sophisticated palaeographical, epigraphical and linguistic questions (among others) that could not be answered without the help of digital resources. I am aware of a number of colleagues who are already using SigLA, and I am sending them regular updates on its implementation. In fact, it needs stressing the database is still under construction (it was started only one year ago) and it will take long before it comes to completion. In order to track changes and updates, we have added a specific page for users to see the amount of evidence they are searching. But this database has also been created with a view to making it accessible to the wider audience: that is the reason why we opted for an interactive interface that allows users to engage with the evidence displayed and to get information about signs and words by simply hovering with the mouse over a given sign or word (with the aid of color-code). In this way the world of LA is disclosed to everyone, for research, for self-study, or just for fun. As it is, it can also be taken as an open-access ‘didactic tool’ for everyone to use and enjoy.

Last but not the least, needless to say this project is interdisciplinary, but even more: it is also collaborative. SigLA is a joint effort, developed in collaboration with Dr. Simon Castellan, computer scientist at INRIA, University of Rennes (France), who has produced the software (Sigil) from scratch to tailor it to the needs and peculiarities of the LA evidence. I am beyond delighted to say this is a clear example of how far we can go by joining forces toward a common goal.

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Close-up of Linear A tablet HT 7 (from Haghia Triada), on display at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion, Crete. Dr Ester Salgarella

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Screenshot of the same Linear A tablet, HT 7, from SigLA database. Salgarella and Castellan 2020

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Q: What are your next steps or projects in your quest to deciphering the script, and where do you see research going on this in the future?

ES: I need to stress again that my work is not necessarily concerned with decipherment itself (see reasons stated above), but it helps to ‘tidy up’ our dataset to eventually come to a better understanding and appreciation of the LA writing system. Only joint efforts will make decipherment possible.

For now, my project is to get SigLA to completion: it will take long until all known LA inscriptions are replicated (my drawings based on the edited corpus), their data and metadata parsed and coded and finally uploaded onto the database. In fact, only when complete will SigLA show its full potential. In the long-term, I would not mind creating a comparable database for LB inscriptions, given that no such tool has yet been developed. I must say, this may be the only area where LA studies are doing better than LB ones!

Finally, my wish for the future is that the much-awaited decipherment of the Minoan language encoded in the Linear A script be the result of a collective effort and undertaking. We are one global, interconnected research community helping each other with our respective expertise: what best to foster further interdisciplinary research approaches and avenues? I hope the age of ‘individualism’ in scholarship has come to an end.

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The archaeological site of Haghia Triada in southern Crete, where the largest known collection of artifacts featuring Linear A was found. Olaf Tausch, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, Wikimedia Commons

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Readers may learn much more about the latest results of Dr. Ester Salgarella’s research in her new book, Aegean Linear Script(s): Rethinking the Relationship between Linear A and Linear B , published by Cambridge University Press.

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About the Interviewer

Dan McLerran is a writer, journalist, and the founder and editor of Popular Archaeology Magazine, an online venue specializing in disseminating stories related to archaeological and anthropological discoveries worldwide to a global public readership. He previously created and published Archaeological Digs, a weblog highlighting archaeological excavation opportunities across the world. He is the author of numerous articles on a variety of archaeological developments and discoveries. As a writer, artist, and publisher, he has a passion for all things archaeological. Pictured left, he walks near the graves of members of the ancient Qumran community, adjacent to the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. 

If you liked this article, you may like The Minoan Connection, a major feature article published by Popular Archaeology in 2011, and Stela 14: Unlocking the Maya Script.

Cover Image, Top Left: Detail of the partial tablet inscribed in Linear A, found at the Palace of Zakros. Olauf Tausch, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported, Wikimedia Commons

Above, 7th image from top, oriented left:Portrait Image of Dr Ester Salgarella: Dr Ester Salgarella began studying Linear A and B during her PhD. Her findings are revealed in her book, Aegean Linear Script(s) (Cambridge University Press) Dr Ester Salgarella.

*https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/rosetta-stone-internet-could-help-researchers-finally-solve-puzzle-ancient-minoan-language

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Jerusalem, 1884 — Rosette Shapira must have felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding when  three men, including the British consul to Jerusalem, arrived at the door of her home. After they entered, they sat opposite her and uttered those devastating words — her husband, Wilhelm Moses Shapira, was dead. He had killed himself with a gun in a rented guesthouse room near the Maas River wharf in Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2,000 miles away. Her life, and the lives of her daughters Augusta and Maria, would never be the same again.

Only days earlier, the office staff for the guesthouse began to wonder when they saw no sign of Moses leaving his room more than two days ago. A knock and shout from outside the locked door of his room yielded no sound. Soon, the police were at the door. Experiencing the same result, they broke into the room. What they found was everyone’s worst case scenario — Shapira was dead. He had apparently shot himself with a gun, leaving in the room his possessions, including a case that contained brochures, manuscripts, and letters. His body was taken and buried in an unmarked Rotterdam grave, far from his family home in Jerusalem. To this day, no one knows for certain where his body lies. It was a tragic and ignoble end to a life that mattered dearly to family and friends. 

A Forgery

Moses (pictured left) Shapira’s journey to this tragic end actually began almost six years earlier, when he owned and managed what was considered to be “the best tourist shop in Jerusalem’s Old City” on Christian Street, not far from the historic Jaffa Gate. There, he sold books and a variety of other souvenir items popular to tourists. But his most passionate occupation was that of antiquities dealer, servicing, among other things, as a correspondent to the British Museum. Ancient manuscripts were his specialty, and over the years he had developed a body of knowledge and contacts that positioned him to be ‘in the right place at the right time’ when ancient artifacts and historic and ancient documents found their way into his sphere. His travels in the desert and elsewhere afforded him the opportunity to amass a significant collection of Arabic and Hebrew manuscripts, some of which he sold to the Royal Museum at Berlin, as well as to the British Museum. But none of his collections could possibly shine a light to what came his way in 1878, when Bedouins had discovered, in a cave high above the Wadi Mujib east of the Dead Sea, a bundle wrapped in linen. The bundle contained sixteen blackened leather strips, ranging from 3 to 4 inches in width, with varying lengths. The backside of the strips was coated with an asphalt/bitumin resin. But on the front side of the darkened strips, to Shapira’s astonishment, were barely legible written characters. Shapira knew enough to recognize it as a form of paleo-Hebrew. Knowing the relative antiquity of paleo-Hebrew script, could these be authentic documents, written by one or more unknown scribes, perhaps even well before Herodian times?

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The Wadi Mujib, in Jordan. F.Higer, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Wikimedia Commons

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In his excitement he began to examine the strips on his own, preparing a transcription from whatever he could distinguish from leather surfaces that appeared to reflect the ravages of perhaps thousands of years. The strips appeared to document three incomplete manuscripts of a version of Deuteronomy, specifically the last speech of Moses to the Hebrews as they sojourned in the land of Moab, before his death. It contained a travelogue of the journey of the Hebrews in the wilderness, a somewhat different version of the Ten Commandments, and a series of blessings and cursings based on the commandments. One document was almost complete, another less complete, and a third represented only by a fragment. But he knew his initial transcription attempts would not be enough. The effort was a struggle. This was a job for an expert. In September, 1878, he sent his transcription to Konstantine Schlottman, a German scholar and friend, who in turn recruited the efforts of Franz Delitzsch, another German scholar. After examination, both strongly rejected the transcription as indicating the ancient documents had to be a forgery — the transcription, they maintained, deviated too radically from the traditional text of the Bible and what scholarship generally agreed was consistent with authentic scripture. Disappointed in Schlottmann and Delitzch’s determination, Shapira, still personally hopeful that the ancient strips were authentic, secured them away for a time in a vault at the Bergheim and Company Bank in Jerusalem and turned his attention back to other matters of his business.

………That is, until he got his hands on a book entitled Introduction to the Old Testament by another German scholar, Friedrich Bleek. The contents of the book convinced Shapira that the arguments that Schlottmann and Delitzsch used to refute his transcription could not be inarguably supported, and he decided to remove the strips from the vault and resurrect his efforts to seek scholarly examination and hopeful confirmation of the authenticity of the discovery. His strategy — to secure the services of other scholars in Germany and England, this time by bringing the actual documents, the strips, with him for their examination and study. If authenticated, his plan was to sell them to the British Museum for a handsome sum of, according to some newspaper accounts, as much as one million pounds, a value he felt well matched the value of the documents, which he hoped would bring financial independence to him and his family. 

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Lithograph of one of the Shapira Scroll fragments, Frederick Dangerfield for Christian David Ginsburg. Christian David Ginsburg, Public Domain

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Two photographs of Shapira scroll ‘Fragment E’, columns 1–2, and one other fragment. In the top image, Fragment E is folded in half, with column 4 (verso) partially visible behind column 1 (recto). The image of the other fragment is cropped at the bottom. Idan Dershowitz, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, Wikimedia Commons

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Shapira Strips, 1883, Scientific American. Scientific American, October 27, 1883, Public Domain

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Examination resumed first with two German scholars, Hermann Guthe and Eduard Meyer, who carefully studied the strips and produced a transcript and evaluation. They leaned at first toward a determination of authenticity, but while they were finishing their work for publication, Karl Lepsius, head of the Royal Library at Berlin, convened another group of prominent scholars, consisting of professors Dillmann, Sachau, Schrader, Erman, and Steinschneider. Although these experts spent only a limited amount of time with the manuscripts, they quickly concluded that they were forgeries. They were impressed with them, however. They offered to purchase them, albeit at a lower price than Shapira was prepared to accept. These manuscripts, they maintained, were so cleverly forged they would be worth owning as an example of such outstanding effort.

Undaunted, Shapira went on to England, where, facilitated by Sir Walter Besant, secretary of the Palestine Exploration Fund, he secured the efforts of Christian David Ginsburg, one of the world’s leading authorities on Hebrew manuscripts. Ginsburg would spend weeks studying the manuscripts, including transcribing what he could successfully discern and decipher from the alleged ancient manuscript characters. Given the condition of the strips, the task was not easy. While he worked, regular updates of his progress were published in the Athenæum, a popular  British literary magazine published in London at the time. While Ginsburg continued his examination, he expressed no clear opinion. That would wait for completion of his work. Some scholars, however, based mostly upon their reading of the continuing news and the reports in the Athenæum, expressed skepticism. Nonetheless, the excitement and news of Shapira’s manuscripts splashed across British newspaper venues. In addition, two fragments of the manuscripts were placed on display for the general public in the British Museum, drawing crowds. Even Prime Minister William Gladstone, who took a special interest in things biblical and the scholarly work of Ginsburg, visited the display and engaged in personal conversation with Ginsburg and Shapira about the manuscripts. It seemed, finally, Shapira’s manuscripts were gaining the positive traction he so longingly desired — at least from the public.

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Facsimile of some of the Shapira scroll, as published in The Athenaeum, September 8, 1883, after Ginsburg. Ginsburg, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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The Crash

But the new high Shapira was experiencing would not last long. Charles Clermont-Ganneau, a world-renowned French orientalist and archaeologist, heard news of the leather strips coming out of England. He was known for his skill in detecting forgeries, and was in fact instrumental in debunking ancient Moabite pottery artifacts years before, an affair in which Shapira himself was deeply involved as a dealer. Clermont-Ganneau, even from afar, already harbored suspicions about the authenticity of Shapira’s leather strips, and wanted to see them for himself. With a mandate from the French minister of public instruction, he was sent on his way to England to examine for himself what the British hype was all about. On arrival, he was given access to view and study fragments of the strips, but under very limited access and time constraints, while Ginsburg continued with his more in-depth examination.

Even with the limitations, however, it did not take long for Clermont-Ganneau to come to his conclusions. Though he was expressly permitted to publicize his finding only after Ginsburg had a chance to publish his report, Clermont-Ganneau forged ahead prematurely and announced his thoughts to the press: The manuscripts were forgeries.

Although he noted various reasons supporting his conclusion, his most cited argument was that someone, perhaps Shapira himself, had cut off the bottom blank margin of an old Torah scroll, perhaps several centuries old, creating strips upon which he (or someone) inscribed characters very much like those found on the Moabite stone and Siloam Inscription. Moreover, shortly following Clermont-Ganneau’s pronouncement, Ginsburg published his report. He agreed with Clermont-Ganneau. The manuscripts were forgeries. The scholarly consensus fell in favor of the forgery assessment.

For Shapira, it was like his world had come crashing down. With this news out to the world, he must have thought he was ruined, branded perhaps forever as a forger. Even so, still clinging to his conviction that the inscribed leather strips were authentic, he left the manuscripts behind at the British Museum and traveled on to other points in Europe. He continued with some business dealings, but ended up ultimately in Rotterdam in early March, 1884, where he presumably took his own life in a guesthouse room near the Maas River.

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Illustration used by Clermont-Ganneau to demonstrate the cutting of the Torah scroll to create the Shapira strips. Clermont-Ganneau, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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A Forgery? The Case for Re-examination

Scrolls in the Desert

New discoveries can often shift the ground upon which prevailing scholarship stands. One could argue that this is what happened when, between November 1946 and February 1947, Bedouin shepherds discovered seven ancient scrolls/fragments contained in ceramic jars in caves near the ancient site of Khirbet Qumran, 1.5 miles from the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea. Known today in the popular literature as the Dead Sea Scrolls, they were the first of subsequent ancient scroll and fragment discoveries in the Dead Sea area, attesting to the continuing ancient Hebrew practice of documenting sacred texts containing beliefs and histories on leather parchment and papyrus — and, given the dating of the finds, that such material could actually survive at least 2,000 years in the Dead Sea area.

This is important for these purposes because one of the salient early arguments among the 19th century scholars against the authenticity of Shapira’s manuscripts was that leather documents were unlikely to survive for 2,000 or more years in the environment in which they were allegedly found — in this case, caves above the Wadi Mujib, not far east from the Dead Sea.

What is more, the Shapira manuscript strips were alleged to have been found wrapped in cloth and treated on the exterior with a pitch/asphalt/wax/bitumin resin coating, not unlike the state and treatment of at least some of the Dead Sea Scrolls found, here again, by Bedouin shepherds in a high desert cave not far from the Dead Sea. Could it be that, as a clever forger, Shapira simply possessed an uncanny, almost “prophetic” sense for fabricating circumstances so serendipitously similar to those characterizing the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, a series of events that occurred more than 65 years later? Some noted scholars have suggested that this would not have been probable.

Menahem Mansoor, Professor Emeritus of Hebrew and Semitic Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote about the circumstances, and much more, related to the Shapira manuscripts: “Neither the internal nor the external evidence, so far as yet published, supports the idea of a forgery.”* His assessment was published in 1958, after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Add to this the comments made by John Allegro, one member of the initial select team of scholars assigned to work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, wherein he stated that the Shapira manuscripts “may have been one of the most important archaeological findings of all time”.** Though Allegro’s scholarship and reputation were certainly not without controversy, it goes without saying that the Dead Sea Scrolls clearly had an impact on how he viewed the Shapira scrolls in 1965, when his book, The Shapira Affair, was published.

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View of the caves location near Qumran, where many of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.

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Two scrolls from the Dead Sea Scrolls lie at their location in the Qumran Caves before being removed for scholarly examination by archaeologists. Abraham Meir Habermann, 1901–1980, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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One of the original Dead Sea Scrolls before being unraveled by scholars. Abraham Meir Habermann, 1901-1980, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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Add to this another prominent charge levied by scholars, led first and foremost by Clermont-Ganneau himself upon completing his initial cursory examination of the Shapira strips — in short, that Shapira’s leather strips were actually cut from the bottom blank margin of a Torah scroll and then used as the support medium upon which the paleo-Hebrew characters were written, or forged. The subject scroll may have eventually ended up in the Sutro Library in San Francisco, where today rests a Torah scroll that has been clearly intentionally cut off at its bottom margin. This, says investigative journalist Chanan Tigay in his recent book, The Lost Book of Moses, could be a candidate for the scroll. However, Idan Dershowitz, who is currently Chair of Hebrew Bible and Its Exegesis at the University of Potsdam and Faculty Member at Harvard University, has now suggested in a recent paper, The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments, that the Torah scroll could as likely have been cut along the top edge of the bottom margin to remove clearly evident extensive water damage that effected the bottom of the scroll. Nonetheless, the cut Torah scroll argument has remained one of the pillars upon which scholars have rested their verdict for more than a century.

Enter here also the Dead Sea Leviticus scroll 11QpaleoLev, a leather parchment scroll which, like the Shapira scroll, was inscribed in paleo-Hebrew. It was discovered in “Qumran Cave 11,” about one mile north of Khirbet Qumran in January of 1956 by local Bedouin of the Taʿamireh clan. This scroll spreads lengthwise in an arc-like fashion. In like manner, the Shapira leather strips, also allegedly found by local Bedouins in a cave not far from the Dead Sea, spread lengthwise in an arc — not a characteristic that would likely be attributed to leather strips that were fraudulently cut from the bottom margin of a Torah scroll, which exhibits no such curvature.***

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Fragment E, prepared by Dangerfield Lithography (London, 1883), in consultation with Ginsburg. From Dershowitz, Idan (2021). The Valediction of Moses: A Proto-Biblical Book. Forschungen zum Alten Testament. Idan Dershowitz, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, Wikimedia Commons

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The paleo-Hebrew Leviticus scroll (11QpaleoLev), discovered in Cave 11 near Qumran. [Like the Paleo-Hebrew Shapira scroll, also made of leather and in an arc-like shape.]  Shai Halevi on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, Wikimedia Commons

Script and Content

A major line of reasoning for characterizing the Shapira manuscripts as forgeries revolves around the script and subject matter content. To this day, there are prominent scholars of the field who continue to maintain rejection based on these grounds. One notable example is André Lemaire, a well-known and highly regarded French epigrapher, historian and philologist, who has voiced his support for the results of, among other things, Ginsburg’s examination regarding the external and internal (language, paleography and grammar) criteria cited to justify rejection of Shapira’s strips. Lemaire’s argument, however, is based on his examination of Ginsburg’s facsimile of the original manuscripts, not the original strips themselves. Idan Dershowitz has now suggested in his recent paper (noted above) that Lemair’s argument falls flat on the basis of “a fundamental methodological problem with the entire enterprise of epigraphic analysis in this particular case: The fragments are no longer extant.” In his paper, Dershowitz argues in detail why Lemaire’s analysis is faulty in that it relies on 19th century drawings, not the original manuscripts, that are “demonstrably unreliable” for accurately depicting the paleography of the manuscripts.****

Another chief argument among scholars against the authenticity of the Shapira manuscripts revolved around how radically the content of the account departed from the Masoretic text and the generally accepted canon of Deuteronomy. Scholarly tradition holds that the original ‘writings of Moses’ that constituted the core of Deuteronomy were later supplemented/changed in antiquity (for example, the Deuteronomic law codes) to create what is today the accepted canon of Deuteronomy. Others, like Jonathan Klawans, Professor of Religion at Boston University most recently, have argued that the manuscript content reflects Shapira’s Jewish-Christian beliefs and thus a ‘Christianizing tendency’ in its fabrication. Dershowitz, however, presents a starkly different view based on his extensive study and analysis as related in his recent monograph, The Valediction of Moses. In this study, Dershowitz concludes that “the text contained in Shapira’s fragments is either a direct ancestor of the biblical book of Deuteronomy or a close relative of such an ancestor…….[it] preserves an earlier and dramatically different literary structure for the entire work — one that lacked the Deuteronomic law code altogether.”**** In short, according to Dershowitz and others who hold a similar view, Shapira’s scrolls reflect what scholars have suggested the original ‘writing of Moses’ would have looked like based on source-critical analysis — an analysis that was not available during the time of Shapira. Both Dershowitz’s article and book were featured through lavishly illustrated coverage by the New York Times on March 10, 2021—causing academic waves around the world with calls both for and against reassessing the Shapira case.***** 

Finally, one puzzling conundrum lies in the question as to why Shapira, a Hebrew scholar in his own right, though not a credentialed expert, spent time and energy attempting to understand and decipher the text on the strips. Among his papers were some ruled sheets and notes of his early attempts at transcription, indicating his struggle to understand and decipher what he was looking at. If he was the forger, why would he do this? Dershowitz makes this same observation in his paper. 

Is the Scroll Extant?

All of the arguments for and against the Shapira scrolls notwithstanding, none of them can be ultimately convincing unless the original leather strips can be re-examined, using the latest scientific techniques and procedures, including dating, scanning and digital imaging, as well as application of any advancements in the knowledge of paleography and epigraphy. Certainly, with the strips finally back in hand, the side-by-side comparison with relevant Dead Sea Scrolls using current knowledge and a multi-disciplinary international team of experts would go a long way toward placing a final lid on the case.

But where are the original manuscripts today?

After the fateful announcements of forgery in London and elsewhere, Shapira departed from London to points in Europe, but left his now discredited strips behind with the British Museum. In any case, they were not among the things he left behind in the Rotterdam guesthouse room where he died. For many years it was thought the scrolls were likely destroyed in a fire near London at the home of Sir Charles Nicholson. But the latest attestation is that they were acquired by a one Dr. Philip Brookes Mason of Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, in 1889. He died in 1903. Were the strips among the holdings of his estate upon his death? Or did they move on yet again before that date?

“We have a good chance of recovering the scrolls, or portions thereof,” says Dr. James Tabor, a well-known Biblical scholar and Professor of Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “There is a small private group of very initiated “Shapira researchers” who are in close touch and sharing information and ideas……..there are leads not only in the U.K. but also on the Continent, involving wills, estates, libraries, and other archives. I don’t think they were discarded and it is likely whoever has them is not aware of their value.”

The unwritten stories of priceless artifacts and art lost to the world, still languishing in oblivion in private attics or basements, would fill a book.

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The best account of the entire Shapira story, from start to finish, was published by author and researcher Ross K. Nichols, just two weeks before Dershowitz published his own academic analysis. Nichols also includes a transcription and translation, as well as the arguments for revisiting the issue of their authenticity. He presents a meticulously researched, in-depth account of their discovery, as well as their examination by 19th century scholars, including a presentation of the arguments both for and against their authenticity. Entitled The Moses Scroll, the book is highly readable and engaging for scholars and non-scholars alike.  Nichols has also begun a regular blog on all the latest Shapira discussions and issues.

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*“The Case of Shapira’s Dead Sea (Deuteronomy) Scrolls of 1883.” Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters (1958), p. 225 

** Allegro, John Marco. The Shapira Affair. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1965

*** Shlomo Guil (2017) The Shapira Scroll was an Authentic Dead Sea Scroll, Palestine Exploration Quarterly, 149:1, 6-27, DOI: 10.1080/00310328.2016.1185895

****Idan Dershowitz, The Valediction of Moses: New Evidence on the Shapira Deuteronomy Fragments, Zeitschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1515/zaw-2021-0001

*****see https://jamestabor.com/a-shapira-bombshell-has-just-exploded-idan-dershowitzs-research-and-the-case-for-authenticity/

Cover Image, Top Left: The Wadi Mujib, in Jordan. F.Higer, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Wikimedia Commons

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In this second installment of the Popular Archaeology Anniversary Issue, author and teacher Richard Marranca interviews Dr. Kara Cooney, the popular American Egyptologist perhaps best known for hosting television shows and authoring popular-press books on ancient Egypt. Among her books are When Women Ruled the World, The Woman Who Would Be King and, to be released in November, 2021, The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World. Most significant, however, is her role as a professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture and Chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. Her current research focuses on ancient coffin reuse, most specifically that of Egypt’s 21st Dynasty. Generally, her research addresses the socioeconomic and political turmoil of this period, and how this was reflected in ancient Egyptian funerary and burial practices.

RM: Can we begin with your origin story? What are some things that led to your being an Egyptologist?

KC:  If I had been a first-generation immigrant, I don’t think I would have had that opportunity because their parents focused on getting a trade and contributing to the family. None of this silly philosophical stuff, right? So, I might be encouraged to do something else. If I were born a man, I think I would also have been encouraged by my family or society to do something else. My brother has very academic interests and yet he went to law school. He felt he needed to go to law school. And so my being a woman allows me to — allows myself to be — less practical than some of the men in my socioeconomic class. I mean it when I say I am an upper middle class white chick. That’s important, the female part is important because that allows me to follow my heart and continue on with this study.

The second part is the more personal one. Why Egypt? I have no answer for you. And it is the question that I am asked in every interview. It is the question I am asked at every talk. How did you get involved in Egyptology? What is it about ancient Egypt? And I say, this is the one question that an Egyptologist would never ask another. It would be a kind of heresy to ask another Egyptologist this because we know there is no answer. We don’t ask it because we don’t, we’re confused about it ourselves. I am confused about my own interest. Why am I am drawn to learn about these ancient people of so many thousands of years ago and why do they never bore me (laughter) and why do I continue to be interested in these people? I don’t know the answer! It’s a mystery to me as well as it is to everybody else. I know people look at me and they’re like “What the hell is going on here? Why is this woman from Texas interested in ancient Egypt and so passionate, so interested?” There must be some weird thing or connection, but about that I have no answer. When I was seven years old, I remember my mother brought back from the British Museum books about Vikings, Romans, Egyptians and medieval Europe—and Egypt was my favorite. I don’t know why. I’ve always loved everything about it. I’ve always loved this idea of time travel. I don’t know why. And my interest is, as you can tell, quite passionate and I don’t know why. So that’s just a weird little thing and again, all Egyptologists share this. There aren’t many people crazy enough or socially entitled enough to be able to follow their interests to the level that we have in order to end up teaching, forming young minds, doing research, etc. I realize every day how lucky I am to be able to do this. It is quite a blessing. It’s amazing.

RM:  Do you have any favorite archaeologists from long ago or closer to the present who were sort of dashing and romantic figures?

KC: Some people are drawn to Egyptology because of Margaret Murray or Flinders Petrie and they delve into the biographies of them. That wasn’t my gateway drug (laughter). I was more interested in the ancient Egyptians as I could find them in the ancient texts and in daily life, the way people behaved. I am happiest watching people try to spin their wool and people dressed up and speaking with their accents, trying to make mead or something. And with my graduate students, we do the same thing. We’ve done a lot of experiments on how Egyptian glue actually flows onto a piece of wood and how you apply it and what varnish is like and how you apply that. The practical aspects of life in the ancient world are more interesting to me than anything else. What it was like in the past draws me. But I’m not a dirt archaeologist, so I don’t romanticize about that part of life necessarily. I kind of treat it as a time machine of the mind where I fantasize about what it could have potentially been like to be in the ancient world.

RM: I recently showed an episode of your program, Out of Egypt, to my classes. It’s a fascinating broad approach, a true adventure that the viewer partakes. One of the things you show is how cities and civilization breed armies and large-scale violence.

KC: Essentially, complexity begets complexity; you don’t get complex violence until you have complex human systems. A bunch of roving hunter-gatherer bands, while quite violent, can’t compete in terms of the scale of that violence or the complexity of that violence. So, real war begins with agriculture. Agriculture demands settling down to form complex systems of government, with taxation, bureaucracy, stored wealth, redistributed wealth. Some people have much, some people very little, but it takes an army to protect it. If we asked anybody on the street, would you rather go back to live a hunter-gatherer existence or stay in the city?  I think there would be many people who see the hunter-gatherer existence as a peaceful time, but the opposite is true. Hunter-gatherers killed more of their men, percentage wise, than any complex society. To get out of those cycles of violence, we gave up many freedoms with our move to settled society; women especially gave up many freedoms to be a part of this complex system that demanded warfare, taxation, etc. But I think human beings repeatedly left the hunter-gatherer existence around the planet, settling down, because they wanted to avoid the constant and brutal violence that could kill 30% of your male population in a given season.

RM: What were some of the high points for you in creating Out of Egypt?

KC: My favorite part was allowing myself not to be an expert, to be an intelligent questioner, to puzzle through larger questions. It’s a rare thing that an academic cannot be the expert and instead be the one who’s learning. So in a sense, I got to be a student again. And for most of the sites visited, we brought in an expert who knew all about the site and then I could just pepper that person with questions and learn as much as I wanted; it was such a privilege to be able to learn from such extraordinary people in such extraordinary places. The place that pops out the most, that I really remember and would love to visit again, was Sri Lanka—the island that time forgot. Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists all mixed up into one place. The majority are Buddhists. The Hindu temples are pretty extraordinary in their own way. To see the way these people have been through a civil war, through bombings and revolutionary attacks and how they’ve come to a peaceful place to live with each other, is extraordinary. To see all of these different rituals and rites coexisting is something to see. I remember a Christian couple in the Buddhist temple dedicated to the tooth of the Buddha, and I said, “Well you’re not Buddhist.” They said, “It doesn’t matter. We’re here to ask for blessings from the Buddha.” So, there was a lot of crossover as well. There was also a lot of old religion, magical shamanist religion, that had nothing to do with Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu.

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Pagoda temple in Sri Lanka. Kalyanayahaluwo, Pixabay

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I remember visiting the Temple of Cursing. You could curse somebody with hot chili peppers and grind it up and curse your enemies and that was a shamanist kind of practice. And there was a practice with a devil—also a very old shamanist practice, of inviting him (who is giving you sickness or giving you poor circumstances in your life) into your space through this Dance of Devils and then feeding them and appeasing them. It was a beautiful thing; having grown up with the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions, it was completely strange to invite a devil in and give him an offering in order to leave you in peace, but it makes perfect sense. And this is something that everybody participates in as well. Whether you’re Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu, it seems the lines are very blurred, so I love that. 

RM: In many places that you present in that documentary, there are archetypal shapes, such as pyramids and circles. What does it mean? I’m also reminded of something Carl G. Jung might ask: how does the pyramid live in us?

KC: That’s the great thing about Out or Egypt—that I was able to ask these big questions and get scientific answers. It’s something that Erich von Däniken and John Anthony West often apply a more supernatural reasoning to. So, I can take aliens out of the equation, but I can bring the aliens back in, which was great. I mean in a sense, you stand in front of those pyramids and you think, my god, look at that. You can’t believe that it’s human hands, that human effort built this mountain of stone. It seems impossible and that’s exactly what the ancient Egyptians would have wanted you to believe. Every time we assign supernatural responsibility to the pyramids, whether it be aliens or something else, we are falling into an authoritarian trap, the propaganda trap. Their purpose in Mesoamerica or Egypt or Dubai was to show power, to show the ability to construct something that seems impossible, like the tallest building on the planet. It is also a way of proving to the people in material form that that community is at the pinnacle of a pyramidal society. And it works again and again and again—that we believe that the leader has some sort of spiritual otherworldly non-human power—and that to me is the key to nature. The fact that they are all pyramidal is obvious. You don’t have wheels to construct it, so to build a tall structure, you build it wide at the base, narrow at the top. And I am not the first to say something like that. Many engineers have said that. The pyramidal structure just happened because that’s how you build large buildings in pre-modern times. But the mountains of stone—independent of one another in Mesoamerica, in South America, in Europe, in Egypt, in China, in Indonesia, all over the planet—were there to create a political-supernatural link that cannot be denied. It creates unassailable leaders to whom you cannot say no, whom you must follow. And it worked again and again and again. And amazingly, even when the leaders are dead and gone and the pyramids are either covered with vegetation or sand and fallen into disrepair, people still look at them and say that they were built by other-worldly supernatural beings, and this still continues to work upon us today.

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Pyramids of Egypt. The Digital Artist, Pixabay

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Temple of Kukulcan at Chichen Itza, Mexico. Wallerssk, Pixabay

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In Out of Egypt, I like taking the political tack. And I think I should have gone further with it. I think I have solidified my ideas over the years, and I was only just forming those ideas when I did that show. Today, I think I would have gone further in the political realm of things.

RM: We visited some of the places presented in your program, which added so much to my understanding, plus it continued the adventure. You presented the vast creativity of civilization as well as its dark side.

CK: The city offers civilization, but at a price – perhaps more for women than men. But there were exceptions, which is what my book, When Women Ruled the World,  focuses on.

Ancient Women & Power

RM:  Your books and courses have a lot to do with powerful women in ancient times. In Athens or Rome, there would be a problem with a woman looking to gain political power. In the case of Rome, it was also the fear of a distant, foreign power who seduced Caesar and Antony. Didn’t the Romans say the most horrible things about Cleopatra?

KC:  Yes, for sure. I teach a class at UCLA called Women in Power in the Ancient World, and this is one of the reasons I can write this book so quickly. I have been thinking about it for the last four or five years. I’ve taught this class four times; we spend half of the class on Egypt because half the ancient female rulers were Egyptian—which is stunning in and of itself, but then we spend a week on Greece, a week on Rome, a week on China, a week on the Levant and Mesopotamia—and compare systems of power and female rule within those systems of power. It becomes ever so useful to see these patterns and it becomes a class on ancient power systems as big history, if you like.

Every class I start with a map of the Levant, a map of Mesopotamia, a map of Egypt, a map of Greece, a map of Rome, whatever. And I say, okay, will this place allow easy unification and easy communication like Egypt, which is the first regional state in the ancient world, or will this place, with its geography, lend itself more to constant competition, constant warfare? And if it’s the latter, and most places are the latter, then you see female power in a more limited way. Or in the case of ancient Greece – holy god! Can this place ever unify? Everyone was like, No! (laughter). How could they communicate with each other? Well, by sea. How are they going to get money? Well, by trade and shipping, mostly, and farming and animal husbandry sometimes.

And you know, Greece has an extraordinarily competitive decentralized type of system, which in Athens takes the primal form of a democratic peace effort, with only male citizens allowed in the game; if one man falls, another will take his place. And women are kept shut up in the home. There is no power for women in ancient Greece. I spend only half a week on women in Greece in my class because once we’ve discussed the system and I’ve given them two examples, we’re done. There is no power for women in this system. Rome is a little bit different because the woman is a representative of her family and can act as such, so you do see powerful women coming to the fore as representatives of a patriarchal system in times of great crisis.

But once you get this imperial hereditary monarchy in Rome, with the principate, a noblewoman can take power in the way that a woman took power in Egypt. You see Roman women taking power as the mother of the next emperor, or as a sister or wife of the emperor. The emperor system in Rome is so fraught and these emperors are killed more often than dying naturally. You can look it all up on Google. It’s great fun (laughter)—reasons for the deaths of the Roman emperors. You can spend a whole day going down that rabbit hole. But if you understand how contentious and uncertain the imperial Roman system of monarchy was, then it’s clear why women had so little chance for leadership there in any systematic way. But in the Eastern Roman Empire, as we move into the Byzantine system, we see that in Constantinople female rule was strong because it was supporting a stronger hereditary dynasty. And then I come to this conclusion again that the more unequal the social situation, the more a woman can step into power. Fittingly, the more pyramidal the social structure is, the more women can step into power.

And I ask myself if this is something that humans understand on a gut level: women who step into power like Indira Gandhi act as a representative of the patriarchy in a highly unequal situation in a time of crisis, often after there’s been an assassination. Given that, do we instinctively perceive female power as reflective of inequality, authoritarianism, unequal social systems? These women are allowed to work on behalf of their families and don’t fit the larger group of humanity. Is this one of the reasons we’re hostile towards female power? This is a puzzle I’m still trying to figure out. Our hostility towards female power, the biological sources, the social sources—these are areas of importance.

RM: I can see how getting into one specific area leads to others. Can you talk about Hatshepsut and the various positions she had in life? God’s Wife, queen, pharaoh herself? What did she achieve? What was she like as a real person?

KC:  Ancient Egypt is extraordinarily frustrating to try to pin down what someone was really like. In the same way that I presented you with those maps of ancient Greece and Rome or ancient Egypt on the other side, the more decentralized and competitive a place is, the more we can potentially learn about an individual person from the political competition, because one either has to expose their personality to people to get their vote and their support or because there were political takedowns where tidbits of their life or personality were revealed to us in the historical record, letters and more. We know about the personality of Julius Cesar or Cleopatra because the Romans wrote about them, or about Solon as an example of a Greek leader. But in an authoritarian regime, this is buttoned down. You do not have people talking about the personality of their leader. The means of communication that are left to archaeologists are sacred temple spaces where everything is idealized.

For Hatshepsut’s reign, most of my evidence, if not all of it, comes from an ideological context – temples and tombs. I don’t have diaries. I don’t have letters. Now in temples or tombs, would I expect to find personal information – people revealing their innermost thoughts about what Hatshepsut was really like? No. So I can’t, unfortunately, tell you what her personality was like, or how she was perceived or accepted or not accepted. I have no idea, which is really frustrating, but if we then take a step back we can say, okay, what can we talk about? I can tell you that from a very young age, probably from the reign of her father, Thutmose I, she inhabited the most sacred priestess position, God’s Wife of Amun.

The details of her duties were shielded from us as well because this was a highly exclusive religion. We are not meant to know what mysteries were happening inside of these sacred enclosed spaces. This is something that is meant to be shielded from our eyes. So even here, where the temple might produce something, we’re almost at a loss of what’s actually going on. But using all we can from the Gods Wives of Amun, from the titles, even if they don’t explicitly tell us what mysteries were performed, the God’s Wife of Amun was meant to be a wife to the gods and it was meant to have a sexual component. It was meant to awaken the god through sexuality, to give him a rebirth through sexuality. One of the other titles of the God’s Wife of Amun was the God’s Hand; this was meant to masturbate so that he could recreate himself into existence every day. You just got back from India, so I don’t need to tell you about the lingam stone and how it represents creation. It’s there as well and sexual intercourse is there on the temple walls.

In Egypt, it’s less overt, but the notion that the god must sexually recreate himself in the depth of the temple every night to be recreated every morning is something the Egyptians clung to and their temples were built to facilitate this daily or seasonal rebirth. And so, the God’s Wife of Amun was very powerful. Hatshepsut knew mysteries that we will never know. She was initiated into unwritten mysteries about the rebirth of the gods, the creative god incarnate that we will never be able to do more than just touch. And she would have been there with eyes closed touching those most sacred mysteries to make sure that the world continued going as it should, that the sun rises and sets and the Nile floods its banks as it should. And whether or not she saw herself as an integral cog in this, she took her position very seriously and that title – the God’s Wife of Amun – was the one she used most when she took over the regency, ruling on behalf of her young nephew Thutmose III. This was after the death of her husband Thutmose II. She knew her power had a foundation in ideology too.

Now, I skipped over her queenship; she was daughter of the king and God’s Wife of Amun in the reign of her father. And when her father died, she was married to her half-brother Thutmose II, who by all accounts and from the mummy that we have preserved, was a sickly youth who died after three years of reign. And for him Hatshepsut acted as chief queen. This would have been a woman walking through the palace and temples with eyes raised looking at everybody in the eyes expecting servility. She would have an authority to her – an authority that maybe the new king Thutmose II didn’t even have because he didn’t expect to be king. He had older brothers who died before him. This kingship was probably a surprise to him as much as anybody else. When he died after such a short reign, she was left holding the bag of a family dynasty that was only nascent, begun by her father Thutmose I.

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Thutmose III and Hatshepsut from the Red Chapel at Karnak. Markh, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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The Temple of Hatshepsut. Dezalb, Pixabay

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Before Thutmose I, there was Amenhotep I, a childless king. If they had allowed the kingship to go to a different family with the death of Thutmose II, then Thutmose’s line would have been two kings and done. Hatshepsut, with the help of her courtiers and priests and elites, stepped into this breach, this vacuum of power, and made sure that the kingship continued to another Thutmose. So, Hatshepsut had an extended regency for seven years, ruling on behalf of her young nephew, before she just took the whole thing and became king in her own right. Why and how she did that is probably the most frustrating part of the story because we don’t have the details preserved. She only reveals that she is doing what her father, Amun, asked her to do by becoming king. But something must have happened to demand that she grab power and formalize it by becoming king herself.

RM:  An amazing story and history. It makes me think that Pres. Donald Trump was sort of like Thutmose III. Trump tried to erase Pres. Barack Obama’s legacy the way that Hatshepsut’s nephew tried to erase her when he becomes king. 

KC:  I don’t think that’s unusual. Let me put it this way. You either follow a good leader or a bad leader. If you follow a bad leader, then all you do is say, look what he’s done. It’s bad. Look what he’s done. If you follow a good leader, then you take credit for it. Trump was in an interesting position where he followed a very good leader when the economy rebounded and rule of law was returned in banking, etc.

But the propaganda was that he was a very bad leader. So Trump can take credit for things that are happening; he can say he did it, even though it was a legacy of Obama’s rule. Trump can claim, “Thank god I’m here and look at the bad things Obama did.” So there was a strange revision of history to Trump’s presidency. And while demonizing Obama, using a fictional account of his presidency, Trump took credit for the good things very cleverly. And it seems that most of his base goes along with this propaganda. So, Trump vilifies the black president that went before him. But this is a different discussion (laughter).

RM: The discussion of power takes us deep into the mind, in that labyrinth, into so many layers of society. Success is another loaded term too.

Success is a tricky thing and I’ve thought about this a lot and I write about this and I talked about this in the One Day University lecture that you attended. Success is abstract. It’s a very bland sort of thing. Success is not very sexy. There’s no salacious story. There is no fodder for the journalists, no big story. I spoke about this with my husband recently, who said, “Jerry Brown sure is under-appreciated.” People don’t talk about success the way they talk about failure. Anyway, in the ancient world, success is something that easily can be transferred from one ruler to another without people really noticing. It’s what they expect. It’s what they want; it’s what is assumed a ruler is going to strive for. So, Thutmose III and Amenhotep II can take credit for Hatshepsut’s achievements, saying, more or less: “We did this.” It’s easy for the people then to say, “Okay, thanks! Of course.”

On the other hand, failure is very idiosyncratic, very specific to one circumstance, one person, one time. It’s harder to transgress, nor would you want to. Cautionary tales are born; there is Cleopatra and the asp and the pearl earring dissolved in the vinegar. Stories like that recur which are more useful to transmit.

RM: It’s interesting to talk about how power operates. I bet most people don’t know that Jerry Brown actually did a great job as governor with little fanfare. Or the quality of life in Scandinavia and elsewhere, again with little fanfare and propaganda involved.

KC:  Where’s the interest and scandal? Well, success is an interesting thing to think about. But success is not all it’s cracked up to be. Obama’s most idiosyncratic—the most identifiable part of his administration—was his African American background. And that’s the part that I think people cling to, whether they want to talk about it openly or not. He put himself out there in terms of racial politics. Also, he played it all without scandal, as he himself would proudly say.

RM: Was there any scandal with Senenmut? He exemplified the ancient Egyptian system with bureaucratic patronage. Does your gut instinct plus the evidence and that sexual cartoon prove anything about a relationship with Hatshepsut? Or was her private life really just totally invisible and we’ll never know anything?

KC:  I think unfortunately the latter. I think her private life is totally invisible and we’ll never know anything. As frustrating as that is, I think it’s the truth. She certainly would have had lovers. Why not? But why would we know about them? There is absolutely no reason why we would have access to that kind of information. And so Senenmut is misread as her lover, and it’s kind of ridiculous – like he’s the only candidate. The reason I think Senenmut and Hatshepsut are so close is that he needed her and she needed him politically. I don’t think that there is any evidence – at all – that suggests a sexual relationship there. There is ample evidence for a power relationship. And that one graffito that you’re mentioning says more about Egyptologists than it does about Hatshepsut. There is nothing in that graffito that links it to Senenmut and Hatshepsut. Nothing. Not a name, not a title, not the way it’s drawn, no markers of kingship. Absolutely nothing links it to Hatshepsut and Senenmut. And yet, Egyptologists have gone crazy saying that this is evidence of their affair and what the Egyptians thought about it. But there’s nothing there but a scribe’s interest in and ability to draw a sexual scene. I don’t think we’ll ever really know. I am sure that Hatshepsut had an interesting sexual identity. What it was, I don’t think we’ll ever be able to get to it. Frustrating, yes, but I think that’s how it is with an authoritarian regime.

RM: What about the powers of the goddess and her influences. Isis, for example, is an amazing goddess, and everyone is fascinated by the Isis and Osiris story, as it says so much about Egyptian beliefs. Going all the way back to Paleolithic culture and after, there are amazing fertility figures, cave art, energetic symbols on goddesses. So, what’s the goddess code or imagery in ancient Egypt?

KC: There is typical stuff and indeed the Egyptian goddesses are quite interchangeable, almost like they’re one being, which is strange and interesting. Students who can’t read hieroglyphs will look at images of Hathor or Isis and say, “Well which is it?” And I point out that you can’t tell from what she is wearing. They both wear more or less the same thing and show themselves with the cow’s horns, with the sign in between. You have to read the text to know. And they also act very similar. So, they’re all magicians. They’re soft and kind, and they are tough and vicious sometimes. 

The Egyptians celebrated feminine power with all of its hormonal craziness. When a woman becomes incensed and angry on behalf of her son, father or family and she goes out on a rampage to destroy, the Egyptians saw that as one of the most important things to protect the king or the sun god himself. They didn’t shy away from it. In fact, they thought of it as something to honor, to celebrate and learn to appease, to control.

I’m reading a book called Moody Bitches by Julie Holland, which is essentially telling women that your hormones and your sensitivity is your greatest asset. Don’t let anybody tell you that you’re just PMS-ing and you’re imagining things. Holland says you’re seeing more clearly during those times potentially than at any other. And the Egyptians understood that as well. They understood that sensitive female power and that they have more than men – the ability to see if someone’s going to screw you over, that female intuition, that sensitivity to facial features and mannerism. Their anger and emotionality is one of the most important protective features of the family and the child. And the Egyptians had a very important festival of drunkenness which involved sexuality, drinking and temple activity in the wee hours of the night where everyone could see the goddess and connect with her through this ritual. And so again, that female, mercurial nature was something that was celebrated, honored, included.

RM: Does goddess culture and women in power work elsewhere to better the position of women? Just because Victoria was Queen of England doesn’t mean the position of regular women was better.

KC:  I agree with that, yes.

Life, Death, Mummies

RM: I know you have a fascination for mummies and have studied hundreds of them, including coffins and coffin reuse. Is there a message in that?

KC: Much. Yes, we can worry about dying, but you know, I see my son—he’s going to live forever! He’s going to live for a hundred years. Maybe global warming will get him. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll get to live for a hundred years. And I worry about my health and it’s a constant thing that I think about, but I’m not in pain constantly. I don’t have parasites coursing through my body enough to count my mitochondria (laughter). It’s a very clean existence that we live and I think we forget what real humanity is and was. You know that in the First World where we can shield ourselves so carefully and so cleanly, we forget what a struggle most people deal with.

What about the people that get strung out on opioids? What the hell else are they to do? The poor of this country with no safety net. I think it’s easy to forget what that’s like. And in a way, I’ll make a political statement here, too, because it’s more in our view than ever before. I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but in Los Angeles, homelessness is an epidemic and it is a very visible thing. And in a sense, I don’t have to close my eyes in my time machine and imagine what it was like to be an ancient person. I can go out to the streets in Los Angeles and look at somebody who has been homeless for ten years and there I have antiquity in front of me, in a sense. I have a person who is living a very hard-scrabble existence trying to survive day-to-day, living in a very uncomfortable set of circumstances, ignoring his health and looking very old before he should. This is something that I can go out and see in my own very wealthy Los Angeles cityscape quite easily; there in a way I have that humanity presented before me and that’s something I think we divorce ourselves from way too easily.

RM: Yes, for sure about patterns of wealth and poverty and total depredation continuing. C. G. Jung said that modern humans are ancient, medieval and modern at the same time. Speaking of the ancient-modern nexus, at One Day University you mentioned something most of us never realized – people are mummified today.

KC: We don’t even know why we do it, but we want that body preserved. We want it to be something we look at and we’re not facing death as overtly as if the body were decomposing in front of us. So we pump these bodies full of plastic, but there’s no real difference. Right? If people in the future look at our remains, they’ll say, “Oh look! You know Americans of the 21^st Century were still mummifying the dead.”

Also, more people are cremated now than ever before. But we’re still mummifying and that is because of display. When you mummify a body, generally, it’s because you’re going to have the casket displayed in the funeral home. And so the display is essential and mummification is part of the display. And it’s no different from the ancient Egyptians. They needed to show that body to an audience. So when you see original activity, most Egyptologists and I dare say most archaeologists have been inclined to look at this ritual in a religious lens, thinking people did this because they believed that this would happen and they believed that that would happen.

And they forget that people did rituals because they wanted to compete with other families. They wanted to have a certain socioeconomic status. They wanted to show off. And they wanted to have a display in front of a large audience that gave their family a tremendous amount of power. I always hold to the old adage: the dead do not bury themselves.

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Detail of the Papyrus of Hunefer, from the Book of the Dead of Hunefer. The centerpiece of the upper scene is the mummy of Hunefer, shown supported by the god Anubis (or a priest wearing a jackal mask). Hunefer’s wife and daughter mourn, and three priests perform rituals. The two priests with white sashes are carrying out the Opening of the Mouth ritual. The white building at the right is a representation of the tomb, complete with portal doorway and small pyramid. Both these features can be seen in real tombs of this date from Thebes. To the left of the tomb is a picture of the stela which would have stood to one side of the tomb entrance. Following the normal conventions of Egyptian art, it is shown much larger than normal size, in order that its content (the deceased worshipping Osiris, together with a standard offering formula) is absolutely legible. At the right of the lower scene is a table bearing the various implements needed for the Opening of the Mouth ritual. At the left is shown a ritual, where the foreleg of a calf, cut off while the animal is alive, is offered. The animal was then sacrificed. The calf is shown together with its mother, who might be interpreted as showing signs of distress. Date: 1275 BC. Text and image from Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain

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This is a reflection of the families who are doing the burials rather than the dead. And I’m working on that in my next book, with chapter 1 including a queen who benefitted from sacrificial burials. People killed to accompany her in burial. And I could just talk about that or I could talk about the fact that she buried her dead husband with the same sacrificial victims, but she was there when her son was too young to rule on his own, ordering who would die and who would live and standing there watching as the courtiers that she grew up with are dispatched before her very eyes.

RM: She’s an Egyptian Queen from when?

KC:  The first dynasty.

RM: Was that around the time of those sacrificial burials at Ur in Mesopotamia?

KC: It is. It’s an interesting thing that the beginnings of kingship often are accompanied, not just in Egypt or Mesopotamia, with sacrificial burial. And when kingship is established the sacrificial burials often end. Only in highly competitive societies do you see the sacrificial burials continuing. It’s a very cruel practice. It’s also a very socially expensive practice and something that your courtiers are going to rebel against eventually and find ways around it.

RM: How were they dispatched?

KC: With great trauma. They used a kind of bludgeon to the back of the head and the people were probably drugged or drunk and then they just slugged them in the back of the head with a blunt object; they probably dropped where they stood. In ancient Egypt, there is no evidence of any trauma. And Flinders Petrie discovered most of these bodies at the end of the 19^th century and didn’t do what would be a modern scientific forensic analysis, it’s true. And only the skulls remain. They didn’t keep the entire body.

But new sacrificial victims have been found around the enclosure of Abydos by Laurel Bestock, among others. I don’t know of any evidence of trauma, like blunt force or if you could see strangulation on the body. It’s quite possible that these people were strangled or poisoned and that it didn’t leave any evidence on the body itself. There could have been a quieter form of death as opposed to what the Egyptians would have done to an enemy, which was blunt force trauma that was used in war. You hold the enemy by the hair and you dispatch them with a blow to the head.

RM: This reminds me of the bog bodies in Northern Europe. The sacrifices got a knock on the head and more.

KC: They still have the strangulation ties around the neck as well.

RM:  And the Peruvian mummy bundles. I think some of them died of the cold and/or poison.

KC: Yes, I think you’re right. I would have to check on the Peruvian mummy bundles, but I think there was poison involved, particularly of the children. Finding cause of death in a mummy is not as easy as one would expect. And with skeletal material, which is what you have preserved for Dynasty I, of course, it’s even harder. We have Tutankhamen’s body, but do we know how he died? By no means. And people will continue to argue about that for some time. In my opinion, it’s the wrong thing to ask for Tutankhamen.

For the sacrificial burials I would like to know because you get a better understanding of how the ritual would have worked. But I have to assume in rituals of the first dynasty that courtiers would have all stood in a funeral enclosure or out on the necropolis grounds, watching their brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers killed before their eyes. And the mourning would have been heightened because of it. So, the king would have gone into burial with all of the power of that mourning, of that loss. The greater the lament, the more powerful the transformation in the next world. Stature added impetus to kill them. Also, it kept society controlled when you’re establishing kingship for the first time.

RM: As usual, a ritual works on many levels.

KC: Yes, for sure.

RM: I know you have to get going. If you have a few minutes, I wanted to ask you a few scattered questions. I recently watched one of John Romer’s older programs that focused on the dangers to archaeological sights. Is this a worry? Can you comment on the overall picture?

KC: Of course, I worry about Egyptian archaeology. I think archaeology is under threat everywhere right now. I think that whatever country you look at, whether in the west or in the east or in the Middle East, there is the threat of anti-intellectualism and there is a push against academics. And there is the possibility of seeing archaeology as frivolous, unnecessary and a waste of resources rather than seeing it as the best means of understanding human patterns, cycles of crisis and prosperity and human reaction to those cycles of crisis and prosperity.

RM: What is the message and wisdom that archaeology and related studies have for people today?

KC: We can learn so much from what we have already done, using them as cautionary tales. Using it as building blocks, using it to help us do better. And archaeology is one of the best tools that we have moving towards potential apocalypse of global climate change. People have gone through it before. I’ve studied the Bronze Age collapse, and the massive crisis that occurred because of climate change, maybe not human induced climate change, but because of climate change around 1200 BCE and what happened. How did government fail? What states collapsed? What did people do? What were the reactions? These are useful things to know going forward because we will go through this again. In many parts of this globe, people are already going though this. There are many places that are dealing with apocalypse in the here and now and archaeology can help us to understand these patterns.

Egyptology has one of the most colonial archaeological histories on the planet. 

For pure archaeological work there is not a lot of money. There’s not a lot of return on your investment. And so what you end up having is a colonial science where a lot of non-Egyptians come into Egypt to do work; that creates tensions and problems. The more sensitive we can be to Egyptian ways of doing things, the better we can be. For example, I applied for and got the grant from the American Research Center in Egypt for US AID funds and in that $70,000 grant, I asked for $25,000 to go directly to the Egyptian Museum to help with the registrar and other costs that they may have. And the next grant I do, I will do the same thing. And if we can move money towards Egyptian institutions that have so very little, then the institutions will be better for it.

Every photo that I take of objects in the Cairo museum, I gladly give with no copyright restrictions to the Egyptian Museum. They can do whatever they want with those images and I am happy to do so because I know that their embarrassment of riches is a blessing, but it is also a responsibility and a weight that is difficult to deal with and I try to make my contribution as best I can. I see other archaeologists and historians doing the same. So, the more we can cooperate and help, the better, but with the understanding that we’re working in their country and we should abide by their rules and their cultural ways.

RM: Yes, for sure. You brought up the environmental qualities of studying archaeology; it makes me think we need a required class on archaeology, history and climate change.

KC: I’m reading about the ‘70s. Just the ‘70s is incredibly useful. All of the revolutionary thinking, all of the bombs, the schism between society on the left and right, the idea of these dirty hippies on one side and intellectuals and on the other side, the rise of the republican right. You know, it’s a useful thing to look back to see how we as a country cycled through that; now, the next schism between right and left is so much more destructive. History is our best tool for understanding the future.

RM: I know you have head out. That means time for the mummy movie question: do you have a favorite movie that depicts ancient Egypt?

KC: I showed my son Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time—and wow did he love it! I hadn’t seen it in ten years. And all the Egyptian stuff is wrong but cool; it’s such a good movie and if I have to pick any movie about Egypt, it has to be Raiders of the Lost Ark. Is it authentic? No, but it doesn’t need to be. Julian can’t wait to see the second one. I keep trying to tell him it’s not as good.

RM: Great to relive these programs with your son. Thanks so much for your time, expertise and for keeping the adventure alive.

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For the first installment of this interview, see Tutankhamun, Nefertiti, and Akhenaten, published in the Anniversary Issue of Popular Archaeology.

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Kara Cooney’s latest book, The Good Kings: Absolute Power in Ancient Egypt and the Modern World, will be released November 2, 2021. Interested readers may purchase the book by pre-order at this site.

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About the interviewer

As a child, Richard Marranca was given books on history, myth and religion that ignited his interests. When he was seven, he went with his mom, grandmother and aunt to Italy and Switzerland – a trip that lasted a lifetime. During his doctoral studies at New York University, he spent a semester in Greece with a side project in Egypt. Around the midpoint of his career, he also was awarded a Fulbright to teach at LMU Munich (and for two years was president of NJ Fulbright chapter), as well as six NEH summer seminars, including Andean Worlds in Peru/Bolivia; Concord MA; and High Plains Indians of Nebraska.

For Richard, teaching and writing go together; he teaches a variety of humanities and English courses. His most recent publications include stories in Coneflower Café, The Raven’s Perch and Months to Years Magazine; interviews in Popular Archaeology and Minerva; and poetry in the Paterson Literary Review. His manuscript, Speaking of the Dead, has been accepted for publication by Blydyn Square Books in NJ.

The latest project: His wife Renah, daughter Hera and Richard create videos, the latest being Childe Hera’s World on YouTube; so far it’s mostly travel videos, but this year the highlight was Coronavirus, A Child’s View.

Richard wishes to thank his wife Renah and Bridget Briant for their help with this interview.

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Cover Image, Top Left: By Jaredgrafik, Pixabay

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Much of Ethiopia’s rich cultural-social heritage lies within the history of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC). After the decline of the Aksumite Empire (650CE/AD), the Zagwe dynasty (Circa 1000 – 1270 CE/AD) arose, establishing its capital in Lalibela-Lasta. This capital, founded as a monastic kingdom, served as a historical bridge between the ancient and modern era. As a platform for understanding Ethiopia’s historicity, Lalibela encompasses and builds upon religious and cultural adaptations and identity-formation yet to be fully researched.  One must not approach Lalibela or surrounding churches from the standpoint of an archaeologist or architect. Lalibela must be seen through pilgrim eyes.

As the nexus of human origins, Ethiopia constitutes a Holy Land in its own right, a sacred landscape rooted in humanity’s very creation. Ethiopia’s unbroken chain of history, reaching back to the foundations of civilizations and beyond, reflects one of humanity’s most significant chronicles of identity.  It is this brilliant, yet underrepresented narrative, which continues to inform Ethiopia’s unique ethos and self identity, steeped in its own majestic, millennia-old mythos.

Multiple indigenous cultures and societies have shaped this land, weaving a vibrant tapestry of histories, cultures, languages, and religious identities that continue to breathe life into all humankind.  Ethiopia also contains some of the most cherished cultural, historical, and archaeological sites in Africa, each serving as an integral cornerstone, undergirding age-old civilizations. At the core of much of this rich cultural, spiritual, and social-heritage mosaic is the history of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC) whose Aksumite religious antecedents extend to the early Judaic-Christian and Hebraic periods, to which it owes many of its religious and historical foundations.

Historical Background

Historical references to the regions of Ethiopia and the Horn are found in some of the earliest Egyptian records and images. Additionally, biblical and Greek literature present Ethiopia as a land of Eden, and the summer abode of the gods, respectively. Both Sargon II and Sennacherib mention Ethiopia (Meluhha) as the destination of those fleeing the destruction of the Assyrian invasions of Samaria, Jerusalem, and the Eastern Levant, in the 6^th and 5^th centuries CE/BC (Prichard, 1958, Orlinsky, 1956).  Accounts also mention the military might of the Ethiopians, having an army “beyond counting.”

Archaeological evidence, written accounts, and local inscriptions indicate the rise of an Ethio-Sabaean culture in Ethiopia around the end of the 10th or early part of the 9th centuries BC.  The indigenization of these various communities eventually developed into the kingdom of D’mt, with its capital and main temple at Yeha (Sergew, 1972). Current archaeological excavations reveal an administrative structure of great architectural and societal complexity associated with this site. The D’mt Kingdom began its decline around the end of the 4^th into the 3^rd century BC/BCE, and was succeeded by the emergence of Aksum as the dominant city-state.

During the first seven centuries AD/CE, Aksum, the ancient Ethiopian capital of the future Christian Aksumite Empire, thrived upon trade with the Mediterranean cities of Rome, Constantinople, and Alexandria. Situated within the highlands of the northern region of what is now Tigrai, the powerful center of the Aksumite Kingdom grew to dominate both sides of the southern Red Sea, regions in Sudan, including the northern capital of Meroe, and traded with ports across the Indian Ocean and down along the Swahili coast, functioning as an important commercial and military partner with the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empires (Sergew, 1972).   

As one of the largest and longest-lived African Empires, Aksum holds a unique place in the history of world civilizations. The introduction of Christianity in the mid-fourth century AD/CE by Ethiopia’s first Bishop, Frumentius, and King Ezana proved to be a pivotal historical juncture (Sergew, 1972).  To this day, Aksum serves as the focal-point for Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Christianity and stands as a symbol of Ethiopia’s vibrant cultural continuity into modern history.

The development of Ge`ez as a language, with first unvocalized and then vocalized or Ethiopic, script, has left a unique written chronicle, both pre-Christian and Christian, retaining traditions and a liturgy of world importance and significance. Additionally, early manuscripts mention Aksum hosting the first Muslim communities fleeing persecution in Mecca. Many Islamic architectural and cultural elements remain across Ethiopia as witness to these broader regional influences in the 7th -11th centuries. These constitute a rich selection of heritage sites and cultures in their own right (Girma, 1997; Dagnachew, 2003).

It is not only these churches, monasteries, mosques, and holy sites, however, which constitute truly unique heritage assets. Their contents, including artifacts as old as the structures themselves: manuscripts, varieties of liturgical objects, such as icons and crosses, Qur’ans, crowns, liturgical fans, vestments, drums, lyres, sistra, etc., must also be considered. Ethiopia thus contains important historical, cultural, religious, and heritage-based sites, and a multitude of archaeological remains illustrative of the development and blossoming of major albeit underrepresented African civilizations.

Of special note are the Aksumite and Post-Aksumite rock-hewn churches located across the landscapes of Gheralta, Tembian, and regions in North Wollo. With the decline of Aksumite hegemony, population movements led settled communities to migrate progressively south, progressively inland, where they became increasingly more isolated. In the early Ethiopia medieval periods, the Zagwe dynasty (Circa 1000 – 1270 CE/AD) established its capital in Lalibela-Lasta, initiating this progressive movement of capitals southwards. The dynasty and structures of Lalibela, however, represent a particular uniqueness, serving as a historical bridge between the ancient and the modern. As a platform for understanding Ethiopia’s historicity and the uninterrupted continuity of Ethiopianness, Lalibela encompasses and builds upon religious and cultural adaptations, innovations, and the transmission of knowledge in ways yet to be fully appreciated, researched, or understood. 

Construction out of Chaos 

In 1520, one of the first outsiders to visit and record the church complexes of Lalibela, Chaplain Fransico Alverez of the Portuguese Embassy, viewed them two and a half centuries after they had been abandoned (Alvarez, 1881).  Even in that state, however, these surreal edifices inspired him to wax eloquent on the grandeur and uniqueness of churches and other structures hewn completely out of living rock. But then he hesitated, concerned that if he continued in his descriptions, his readers might begin to disbelieve him. Such reticence, or perhaps a lack of  context with which to accurately expound the wonders of the Lalibela complex and surrounding churches, continues to this day.

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Fig. 1 – Beta Giorgyis – The Church of St. George in Lalibela. (Photo SCW)

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Prior to my first visit to Lalibela, I read various accounts: Alverez, 18th and 19th century visitors, and contemporary travelers and scholars. But it wasn’t until I stood atop the unworked bedrock peering into the carved out cavity and beheld the standing structures for myself that I apprehended what constrained previous writers. Incongruous was the first word that came to mind. That early medieval churches, literally chiseled free from stone, both inside and out, would be situated on a remote hillside in the central highlands of Ethiopia, made little sense.

Monumental hewn structures are not unique to Lalibela. Abu Simbal, the Valley of the Kings, among many other carved sites across Egypt, plus Cappadocia in Turkey, Petra in Jordan, and structures in India, are tied to trade networks, or located at crossroads or borders, and were specifically designed and situated to impress. Lalibela, however, fits none of these parameters. Something genuinely different was at play here. Its structures, and therefore its history, transcend the physical. These remain living, vibrant, churches, functioning within a pilgrim ethos still founded in the early medieval worldview. Something much deeper, more visceral, requires the story to be told in a radically different way.

For a thousand years, Lalibela has stood sentinel, overlooking an expansive valley to nowhere. Why? A mystery.  As an archaeologist visiting a site for the first time, I examine the overall environment, the geology, the topography, the vegetation. Like reading an ancient crime scene, I look for the small clues, indications of humanity’s mark upon his or her landscape.

Like a sleuth, I tracked the slopes and bedrock overlooking the churches, the hewn river valleys, the two breast-shaped hills, Mount Tabor and the Mount of Olives, sites named after biblical locations thousands of kilometers to the north.  Having traipsed the hills of Jerusalem and Israel for close to a decade, I was at first surprised at Lalibela’s smallness, its compactness.

Soon, however, clues emerged. Remnants of tombs carved atop the bedrock, foundation trenches of free-standing, stone-built structures, notches cut in the sides of the deep cut trenches, even a smoothed surface along a cliff-face that may have held a painted icon or an inscription, required a good deal more soil atop the bedrock back in antiquity. The Lalibela of today is not the Lalibela of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Scoured through centuries, the original vibrancy had long ago eroded away. Today’s remnants comprise the revitalized relics of a long-past dynasty.

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Fig. 2 – Eroded surface above the Dual Chapels of Sinai and Golgotha, showing evidence of tombs and foundation trenches from the earliest phases of occupation in Lalibela. (Photo SCW)

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A Second Look

Since the collapse of the Aksumite Empire circa CE/AD 650, nearly four hundred silent years had limped by before the rise of the Zagwe dynasty. During this interval, no central capital, no nexus for defining “Ethiopianness” emerged. The hidden rock-hewn churches that dot the landscape of Tigrai and south into Gheralta and Tembien, retain impressive masterpieces of early ecclesiastical art and architecture, but a large, central, settled community has yet to be discovered. Previous research attributed this to the pressures of Islam, the newly dominant religion of Arabia and the Red Sea trade routes. Was Lalibela therefore all about security? The Lalibela-Lasta context failed to fit so simple or pedestrian an answer.

Contextual Framing 

For my dissertation in Jordan, I researched the late Roman/early Byzantine rural structures, monasteries, and remote military outposts of the Jordanian desert from the reign of Diocletian (AD 296-304) to the eventual dominance of Constantine the Great (AD 308-330) as a newly-Christian Emperor (Walker, 2004). Such a major shift in the Eastern Mediterranean ushered in the emergence of a politically, newly powerful, Christianity.

With the evolution of a new ecclesiastical architecture came a new triumphalism. Adorning the highest cupulas of the grandest churches of the Byzantine Empire, icons flaunted Christ as Pantocrator – The Divine, undisputed champion, ruler of the universe. As an added measure of subjugation, the Hebraic terms, Yahweh Sabaoth – Lord of Hosts, and El Shaddai – Lord God Almighty, were pirated and ascribed to this Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, as evidence that this new God of gods, had become the ultimate conqueror.

From Christianity’s humble origins as a peasant fellowship of fishermen along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, through three hundred years as a persecuted sect, Christendom burst forth as the state religion of one of the most powerful empires of its day. Many saw this as evidence that such a feat was ordained by God.

Christendom’s newly acquired dominance along with the subsequent, often politically motivated church councils, starting with that of Nicea (325 AD), ignited the counter-measure: the monastic movement in the deserts of Judea, Jordan, Syria, the Negev, the Sinai, and Egypt.  Additionally, the Ethiopian church had maintained a presence in Jerusalem from the beginning, attending the church councils, through to the Council of Chalcedon (AD 451), where it disavowed the monophysite heresy, but maintained the miaphysite doctrine (Tewahedo), “One nature of God the Word incarnate” (Melaju, 2008).

The continuity of this history is illustrated not only by the intimate knowledge the Ethiopian Orthodox Church had of church history, but because it was integral in helping to write it.  Mosaics in various 5^th and 6^th century Byzantine churches across Jordan, including Mt. Nebo and Petra, depict Ethiopians, evidence that communication between the two branches of Christianity were commonplace.

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Fig. 3- Mosaic in Mt. Nebo, Jordan, depicting Ethiopian person with an ostrich, zebra, and giraffe, shown as a “camel-leopard” as it was known. (Photo SCW)

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The word ‘monk’ comes from the Greek root mono, for “one who lives alone.”  Monasticism remains the ultimate test of faithfulness to the call of discipleship. Allaying physical distractions tempered through the mortification of the flesh, prepared one for the daunting demands of spiritual discipline. What better way to be tested and proven faithful than to emulate Christ who withdrew to a deserted place for fasting and praying?

There is a deeply incarnational dimension to communing one-on-one with the Divine. Regardless of one’s faith-walk, isolation and reflection produce their own measure of spiritual reward. As opposed to the blatant political and economic messages broadcast by the architecture of the Byzantine Empire, or the earlier structures of Abu Simbal and Petra, it became increasingly clear that Lalibela-Lasta had been founded, inspired by an overarching need to dwell as a remote, monastic kingdom.

Lead me to the Rock . . . 

Returning, I poured over the maps. And then, there it was. The massif of Mt. Lasta upon which the Lalibela complex is built, is situated just south of Mt. Abuna Yusef. At 4190 meters above sea level, it is the highest mountain in the region and only 430 meters lower than Ethiopia’s highest peak, Ras Dashen. A series of watersheds cuts the highlands of Ethiopia into four quadrants. Lalibela is situated just north-west of the convergence of the main mountain ridges that divides this rugged land. The Priest-Kings of the Zagwe Dynasty chose this isolation, purposely, as an island situated within an ocean of basaltic mountains. As near the center of that convergence as geographically possible, as far away from the corruption of the world, upon the farthest edge of Christendom, at the headwaters of the Tecazze River, the first Priest-Kings of the Zagwe Dynasty founded their monastic capital.

One must not, therefore, approach the Lalibela complex or surrounding churches from the standpoint simply of an archaeologist, historian, architect, or tourist. Lalibela must be seen through pilgrims’ eyes. These stone-hewn structures now retain the skeletal framework of their truer, more spiritual story. I have revisited Lalibela multiple times, seeking the greater contexts of Ethiopia’s previous identity formation in relation to the Aksumite Empire, and the direct connection this “Ethiopian Jerusalem” holds with the Jerusalem of Gold. Especially today, one must sit at the feet of ages past in order to grasp the broader medieval pilgrimage ethos surrounding the collapse of the corrupt, despotic Crusader Kingdoms in the Eastern Levant. 

Seeing through pilgrims’ eyes unlocks this most extraordinary of sites to new avenues of comprehension. It creates a means of embracing the essence of the Lalibela-Lasta complex, that of greater Ethiopia, and ultimately, the whole of Africa. It illustrates just how significant and splendid these structures are, not simply as artifacts of devotion, but even more, as icons of faith, edifices of an eternal, yet grounded hope, amidst the darkness of Western Christendom’s early-medieval decay. It is within this light that the earlier churches and those of Lalibela need to be experienced.

From this elevated standpoint, the Lalibela-Lasta churches brilliantly epitomize the initial resurrection of a post-Crusader, Ethiopian kingdom of faith, that shone beyond the shadows of defeat in the Eastern Mediterranean and across North Africa. This sacred space specifically was designed to be a beacon for the many Christian-African kingdoms of the interior, even at times, casting its light upon the dim shores of Europe, stumbling in the pre-Renaissance era. Lalibela’s essence hearkens back to our origins. It remains a message across the centuries, calling all of us home to rest in the embrace of our common mother, Africa.

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Fig. 4 – Relief Map of Ethiopia and Eretria – Note the division of Ethiopia’s highlands into distinct quadrants and watersheds, with Lalibela situated centrally.

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Geology, Jewels, and a Miracle

The structures of Lalibela are constructed within a finger of tuff, a soft volcanic stone, which juts out into the valley. Tuff, as a softer stone made more of compacted volcanic ashes, absorbs water. When it is first exposed, one can easily carve and shape the stone with basic iron tools.  I have seen masons and quarrymen dig out huge boulders of tuff and, with hammer and chisel, knock out building blocks, level, square, uniform, in minutes. And then a miracle happens. Once the stone is doused with water and exposed to air, it hardens to near concrete.

Tradition holds that after his 14-year sojourn in Jerusalem and the Holy Lands, King Lalibela received a vision. He was to build a new Jerusalem for a new priesthood serving a new chosen people of God. Visualizing Lalibela within its broader geological location, one grasps the perception of the miraculous. Consider that the site upon which the churches of Lalibela are built is less than two square kilometers of tuff in a region where, for literally hundreds of thousands of square kilometers to the north, and in an east-westerly direction, there is none (Morton, 1978, Williams, 2016). For those spiritually inclined, it is as if when God was crafting the world from time immemorial, he secreted away an infinitesimal nugget of constructional tuff in this land of ever-present, uplifted, hard basalt, for just such a time as this.

From this reddish-gray stone, King Lalibela hews a precious jewel, one of the truly magnificent world masterpieces of religious art. But it is not simply the structures themselves which speak of this brilliance. The churches, as wonderful as each are, are more than simply ecclesiastical edifices. The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. Like all true art, Lalibela contains an astounding, hidden magic.

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Fig. 5 – An original stone from the initial carving out of the structures, kept in a pile beside the church of Beta Giyorgis. Note the chisel marks indicating the types of tools and force used to excavate. The fact such stones were retained on site indicates they were likely considered part of the sacredness of the “work is prayer” adage. (Photo SCW)

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. . . To the Rock that is Higher Than I

In order to gain a deeper understanding of why the Lalibela complex is such a sacred space, one must grasp the ascetic world view within a monastic mental landscape. The most ancient traditions related to the birth of Jesus place it in a cave dwelling adjacent to the house of Joseph’s family in Bethlehem (Murphey-O’Conner, 1992). The fanciful stories of a wooden manger in a wooden stable behind an inn are fabrications of Renaissance artists. Given Christ’s nativity occurs in a cave, this holds special emphasis within ancient monasticism. And then there is the burial after the crucifixion, also within a cave, that completes the incarnational circle to the monastic narrative. Living one’s life in a cave is as close as one can get to living as Christ. And thus, a monastic church in a cave or a church carved out of rock is the epitome of the dwelling of God with man, or the Beta Emmanuel (Hirscfeld, 1999).

The dominant focus on the Lalibela churches and complexes continues to be architectural and art history-based. Subsequently, a critical factor for adequately and accurately expounding the wonders of the Lalibela complex and surrounding churches remains unexplored. By continually ignoring the broader political, social, and cultural formations of the Zagwe Dynasty, scholars have limited the lexicon for creating the richer narrative of Lalibela-Lasta’s far deeper significance.

The era of the Zagwe Dynasty is one of the most impressive periods of Ethiopia’s history (Pankhurst, 1990, Phillipson, 2009, 2012). It is incumbent upon us to endeavor to rediscover, through research of the significant data-sets, the sociological and broader cultural frameworks preceding and leading up to, the rise of the Zagwe dynasty. Further research is required to capture the message within the Lalibela heritage sites beyond merely its architectural significance.

Lasta-Lalibela heritage stands as a uniting historical monument to Ethiopia’s shared historical experience. As contemporary Ethiopia undergoes shifts of cultural and societal identity across ethno-national and linguistic lines, these heritages retain prominent historical value to enable the building of comprehensive, mutual understanding. Lalibela-Lasta represents the continual adaptation of ascribed identities across generations and landscapes. The cumulative transference of societal knowledge, variable skill-sets, practices, cultural material, along with the geographical location of these structures and associated sites, build upon, and enhance community well-being, religious expression, and societal identifiers for each new generation.

Historical Framework of Lalibela-Lasta 

Years before ascending the throne, two years after the defeat of the Crusaders in Jerusalem in 1187 by the Ayyubid dynasty, King Lalibela visited Egypt and the Holy Land. While there, he was invited for an audience with the conqueror, Salah ad-Din (Saladin). Because the Coptic Church in Alexandria was responsible for providing the Mutran (Metropolitan) for the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Salah ad-Din viewed King Lalibela as under his protection and neutral in the previous Crusader conflicts. Thus, Ethiopian and Coptic Christians were again given access to, and in some instances control of, the holy sites, a privilege denied them under the Crusaders. A Metropolitan (Mutran), as overseer of an ecclesiastical community or See, serves as the primary representative of a patriarch. Under agreement, the Coptic Alexandrian Church sent a Mutran from Egypt and the Ethiopian church would not select its own bishops or Patriarch. It is conjectured that under the Zagwe dynasty, the Priest-Kings broke with this tradition.

A brilliant example of the confluence of these two worlds, Crusader and Ethiopian, is depicted as graffiti in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. As one enters the sanctuary, on one of the limestone pillars, off to the far left, are the sketched images of crusader helmets and coats of arms. Two beautiful, regal African faces, in profile, grace this pillar. Staring into that face, one can easily imagine one to be King Lalibela on his sojourn. Of course, King Lalibela was no Crusader, but it is within this frame of reference, this seeking a common good for humanity and living within the core of the Christian and monastic mandate to love one’s enemies and pray for those who persecute, that we must understand his majesty. Upon this mountain, called Roha in antiquity, translated from the Ge’ez as “pure or clean,” a new focal point emerges of a new dynasty of these priest-kings, or in the local parlance, Presbyter Jan-hoy.

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Fig. 6 – Graffiti in the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, depicting an African face in profile, atop a Crusader helmet. (Photo SCW)

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Finding Our Way 

Pilgrimage is designed to set us right, to level the playing field. And Lalibela is one of the most profound places wherein one can be set right. But it takes work. It requires a different set of eyes, spiritual eyes, to see the beauty and wonder of not simply the stone churches, but hopefully, to apprehend the hidden, beating heart of devotion of the ancient, dynamic, living Ethiopic church that forged this icon of faith out of living rock.

In the hectic pantomime of modern Christianity, most have forsaken the practice of pilgrimage. Yet, pilgrimage or sojourning as a spiritual exercise, is a searching for the fingerprint of God. The essential element of pilgrimage is, as the word implies, leaving the security of home and seeking for that which is other. It is an intention of a destination, not simply to a sacred place, but more importantly, to dwell securely within a sacred space (Hirschfeld, 1992, Tsafrir, 1988). For the wearied wayfarer among Ethiopia’s and Africa’s early medieval Christian populace, the churches of Lalibela served and still serve as just such a space.

One major aspect of pilgrimage relates to manual labor as a form of prayer. Indeed, one finds the statement, “work is prayer” among many of the guiding principles of monastic orders. Is it any wonder then we see varying influences within the architecture and decoration in the various structures, especially in windows and cross forms? The retention of Aksumite ecclesiastical architecture, however, remains obvious throughout the Lalibela complex and earlier churches. It can be conjectured that many of these stone churches represent actual, contemporary structures which were subsequently destroyed in the religious wars of 1528-1543. Of these stone-hewn churches, architectural form supersedes function, even within many representational constructed elements. Wooden frames of windows and doors, currently found in the built churches such as Debre Damo and Yimerhane Kirstos, are exquisitely retained in stone in the Lalibela churches

Transcendence 

Being religious, however, is not a requisite to appreciating or even experiencing things spiritual. The path an early-medieval pilgrim followed through the various churches illustrates how perfectly King Lalibela incorporated spiritual geography and embodied the deepest elements of the ancient pilgrimage ethos. In Zorzi’s accounts of travelers to Ethiopia in the mid-1440s, he records, “From Asquaga (modern Woldia) to Urvuar (often associated with Lalibela), and there is a king in the said great city, where are 12 churches of canons and a bishop, and the tomb of a holy king that works miracles, and has the name of Lalivela (sic); whither go very many pilgrims from all the lands.” (Crawford, 1956). But new research indicates the actual site of Urvuar to be ruins south of Istayish, serving as the administrative site to Lalibela 25 kms to the north.

The Beta Giyorgis complex, the lowest point geographically, was probably the last of the churches to be hewn. It is situated on a knoll of tuff that descends south of the main hillsides housing the other two, larger complexes. Three carved ravines designed to funnel off water, create an “island” or “mountain peak” amidst a broader ocean of stone. The eastern channel, named Gadet, meaning ‘the boundary marker between two lands’, is linked by a channel to the western gorge, referred to as the River Jordan.

In medieval times, pilgrims would initiate their pilgrimage via one of two paths at this lowest point, at the outflow of the Gadet as it runs into the south-western ravine. Via this deep cut in the bedrock, one enters Beta Giyorgis or St. George’s church within its original design.  Up slope and to the west from the Gadet is a holy water site named after the dragon-slaying, mega-martyr, St. George or Beta Giyorgis, where pilgrims in need of physical, mental, or spiritual healing, or those seeking absolution for sins past, could be cleansed and begin anew – a regenesis of sorts, toward a renewed identity.

The Churches 

Though dedicated to St. George, local traditions also state its architectural elements tie Beta Giyorgis to Noah’s Ark. Noah is often painted as a portrait of faith, because, as we find in Hebrews 11, Noah heeds God’s warning, believing something that had never before been seen. And thus, he and his family represent earth’s sole human survivors and heirs of righteousness.

Further, in the Epistles of Peter, Noah is held as an example of one whose faith saved not only his family, but also the whole of humanity. The spiritual geography of Beta Giyorgis serves as a rock-hewn ark secured to its own Mt. Ararat, with the priest-kings of the Zagwe Dynasty representing the faithful Noah, saving the broader Ethiopian communities, and consequently, humanity, from a deluge of sinfulness drowning the world as subsequent Crusades and other religious wars raged on further north.

Within the enclosure, to the northeast, as the craftsmen carved down, they hit the base rock of basalt. Too hard to hew, it was left and aptly named, Mt. Ararat, after the resting place of the original ark.  And just as Noah’s ark had three levels and a roof, so does Beta Giyorgis, with open windows only on the upper-most level. To enter, one must ascend the seven hewn steps leading into the closed confines, the sacred security of this ark of stone. Each ascending step is higher and narrower than its predecessor, symbolizing the seven heavens, illustrating how each stride in the walk of faith requires more effort, less self-assurance, in obtaining salvation and the righteousness which comes by grace alone. Viewed from above, the series of three foundation steps which encircle the entire building give it the illusion that the last waves of the flood still lap at the now-grounded ark.

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Fig. 7 – The narrowing, ascending steps to Beta Giyorgis. (Photo SCW)

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The Church structure is said to also represent the Arc of the Covenant, containing the Decalogue or ten commandments. In the Chapel of Beta Gabriel, a wooden arc, in the exact style of Beta Giyorgis, beautifully retains that tradition in miniature.

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Fig. 8 – Miniature wooden Arc of the Covenant showing similarities to Beta Giyorgis Church. (Photo SCW)

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The floral motif atop each window could be taken as the olive branch brought back by the dove, or more likely, the vine that Noah planted post-flood and from which he made the first wine. Wine, of course, becomes the essential element of the holy sacrament representing the blood of Christ. Twelve windows, three on each branch of its cruciform shape, can be any of a number of elements, but are most likely for the twelve apostles, sent to spread the good news to the four corners of the world. The roof is carved with a cross within a cross within a cross, creating a Trinitarian unity of the central symbol of Christianity.

Saved from the condemnation of the flood, one exits the ark, and ascends, up across the hand-hewn trough linking Gadet and the Jordan. It is unknown what features, in medieval times, existed upon what is now the walkway and parking lot. Further research may illuminate a passageway demarcating a causeway into the new promised land upslope. Remnants of large hewn ashlar stones demarcate a path that may represent the way through one’s own wilderness wanderings from the realm of the Old Testament into the world of the New.

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Fig. 9 – Built pathway from Beta Giyorgis leading to the narrow alley to the Tomb of Adam – (Photo SCW)

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Orthodox icons of the crucifixion usually depict the cross, planted atop Calvary or Golgotha, the place of the skull. Traditionally, the place where the cross of Christ was fixed to the Earth has been interpreted as the original burial spot of Adam, as represented by a skull and long bones.  The ascent, leading to the Tomb of Adam, takes one further up to a narrow, deeply carved alley with the closed-in feel of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Steep steps lead up through the doorway into an enclosure, creating the impression of being enclosed within one’s tomb. Like the confined chapels within Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher, these spaces allowed a pilgrim to individually own that she or he is, like the original sinner, Adam, dead in sin ( I Cor 15:21 – “For since by (one) man came death, by (one) man came also the resurrection of the dead”). 

From a low door, petitioning humility, one emerges from that tomb, to arrive at the twin chapels of Sinai, also referred to in the literature as Beta Mika’el, representing the giving of the Mosaic law, and Golgotha, where grace and forgiveness were bestowed upon humanity.

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Fig. 10 – Site of the Tomb of Adam looking down, with the dual chapels of Sinai (Beta Mika’el) on the far end, and Beta Golgotha, closer.  Note the original door to Sinai (indicated by the top arrow) is rarely utilized today.  It should be noted that entrance into Golgotha is only accessible through the Sinai chapel, possibly indicating that salvation comes only by passing through the law into grace. (Jn. 1:17- “Since though the law was given to Moses, grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ.” Jerusalem Bible, 1966).  (Photo SCW)

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These dual churches, representing the old and new covenants, tie the Hebraic or Judaic heritage of the earliest representations of the living church to this modern living Ethiopic heritage and traditions. One of the verses often quoted in regard to this long historicity and connectivity to the promises of God through King David, is Psalm 68:31: “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God” (KJV). This entire complex reverberates with the sense that these structures are designed to boldly claim that promise fulfilled. In a sense, these structures illustrate that the Gospel has indeed been preached to the ends of the earth.

The first structure, known as Beta Mika’el, or alternatively, as Mt. Sinai, represents the giving of the law. Mt. Sinai, where Moses received the law, proves our need of salvation. Access to the sanctuaries of Mt. Sinai and then Golgotha, originally required one to nearly circumambulate the building, to the far end, and then negotiate narrow steps to traverse the slender path along the exterior wall. Just as the Children of Israel wandered for forty years, and Jesus fasted for forty days in the wilderness, this path requires of a pilgrim time to prepare for entrance into these two sanctuaries. The eastern door, now rarely used, would have ushered a penitent into the closed confines of Sinai, which contains solid pillars and an aura of heaviness.  With high, small windows, condemnation is palpable. Highly-stylized “angels’ eyes” stare, unblinkingly from every corner of each capital.

The second chapel, Golgotha, represents the giving of grace which now covers the debt of humanity’s sin. Beta Golgotha, off-limits to women, hides secrets. It is the only church with life-size relief statuary incorporated in the walls. There is argument as to whether the statuary are original, or later additions. Evidence for the argument that they are original, are similar pillar capitals, as well as a similar feature of a standing cleric, found in Kankanet Mika’el, far up slope from the main Lalibela complexes, on the way to the Hudad Plateau.

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Fig. 11- Relief statue in the chapel of Beta Golgotha – The sheen upon the stone comes from  centuries of pilgrims venerating the image in prayers and petitions.

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The back part of the nave houses what is known as the Sellassie Chapel (Phillipson, 2009, Merceier, 2012). Normally a thick curtain covers the entrance to this chamber, protecting, as far as it is known, the only chapel in Christendom with three separate altars, one for each member of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Typical Ethiopic icons of the Trinity represent three sagacious, identical depictions of the one nature of the triune God. All equally share that single nature of Godhead from before creation, all eternally, self-existing. This triunity strongly exemplifies the miaphysite concept of God being of a single nature, rather than the dual nature doctrine – diaphysite – of other Orthodox, Catholic, and Reformed/Protestant traditions (Melaku, 2008). 

The long Ethiopic presence in Jerusalem, especially as it relates to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, has forged a deep link to the Holy Land and its spiritual history. Immediately after the Ayyubid re-conquest of Jerusalem in 1187, the Ethiopic church served as primary custodian of these holy sites. It is not unlikely that King Lalibela would have been intimately engaged in that administration. By recreating a tomb of Christ in Ethiopia, King Lalibela may have selected this back chapel as his final resting place, complete with a depiction of a resting or prone Christ, perhaps illustrating in stone, the incarnational aspects of the unified salvific work of both a human and divine nature, central to the belief of the Tewahedo or the miaphysite doctrine.

Having immersed oneself within the covenants of law and grace in Sinai and Golgotha, one then ascends a series of steps and navigates winding carved corridors, further upslope, to the large open area containing Beta Maryiam, the Church of Mary. Flanking this sanctuary are two smaller chapels, the chapel of the finding of the true cross (Beta Masqal) to the north, and the chapel of the 40 virgin martyrs (Beta Danagel) to the south.

Beta Maryiam is the only church that boasts an interior of colorful decorations and painted fresco icons. In the same way that St. Mary served as the vessel for incarnationally carrying Christ, so we as pilgrims, by entering this sacred space, partake in that incarnation and, as the true church, become the physical representation of Christ to the world. The open courtyard proffers the first place that pilgrims might celebrate communally. It is here the festival of incarnation at nativity, Ethiopian Genna, takes place each year. Multiple narratives coalesce within this complex. In a spiritual sense, the whole of the gospel abides herein: The Magnificat of Mary, the nativity, the incarnational ministry of Christ, the crucifixion, the faithfulness of martyrs.

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Fig. 12 – Interior of Beta Mariyam – The carved and painted designs retain the physical representations of the wood-carved, painted interiors of churches such as Yimerhane Kirstos, which predate the Lalibela churches. (Photo SCW)

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To the north lies a carved pool containing holy water where tradition states that barren women might be submerged and obtain fertility. The secret, hidden hope of barren women, also finds a place among the grandeur of this story. Just as God, through Mary, bestowed a physical child to Mary, and thus to the world, so He did for Sarai-Sarah, Revkah-Rebekah, Hanna, and the multiple nameless women who, through tears and social pain, found favor in a God who holds women in the highest esteem.

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Fig. 13 – The submersion pool with Beta Mariyam in the background.  The baptistery steps are to the left.  In the Early medieval periods, the reverse swastika motif was commonly associated with the tree of life, and can be seen represented in cultural material from Phoenician, Assyrian, and Indian cultural contexts. (Photo SCW)

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One final step, however, is required to usher the pilgrim into eternal, spiritual life. Through a constricting corridor within the imposing cliff face, like a passage through death into heavenly life, pilgrims lastly enter the large open space that houses Bete Medhane Alem, or Savior of the World Church. As the largest church, this would have served as the culmination, the high point of pilgrimage. The open area provided ample space for pilgrims to communally celebrate their renewed salvation. Inside, no imposing icon of Christ as Pantocrator looks down upon a sinful humanity. Here, it is the child-Christ, held by Mariyam, who reigns. From an Ethiopic (EOTC) perspective, this is the deity the world needs today, not the crusade-bent, angry god of so much of western Christendom. 

Having completed our pilgrimage, the steps to the north allow one to ascend further, where, with an added hope, pilgrims look uphill, to the symbolic Mount of Olives, from which Christ ascended, and upon which he will return as Savior of the World.

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Fig. 14 – The Mt. of Olives viewed from the Medhane Alem church, finalizing the pilgrimage experience. (Photo SCW)

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Much more can, and should be said about this masterpiece of ecclesiastical architecture, part of this broader narrative within Ethiopian Christianity. The administrative complex further southeast, along with Mt. Tabor commemorating Christ’s transfiguration, contain multiple mysteries in their own right, yet have not been part of the broader discussion of this paper.

Here, it is Ethiopia’s narrative that must prevail. The living church of the EOTC community constitutes the primary custodian of the centuries-old heritage, and it is, therefore, their story to tell. Often, the parochial, colloquial imposition of outside academic, disengaged, world views have dominated the retelling of what is Africa. That must change. In much of the literature about Lalibela and the larger Ethiopic Tewahedo church traditions as a whole, a subtle, or occasionally overt sentiment persists that these traditions are somehow failed attempts at emulating “our more enlightened, more scholarly and sophisticated” western churches, or post-Christian world. 

Often academia or scholars seek for minutia, or the mere stones and bones of an ancient tradition. Care is required lest we assume, because Western sacred sanctuaries have been reduced to museums or pubs, that Lalibela could be similarly defined. Continuing research sings a dynamically different story, however.

For now, our goal and honor remains to work with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church to train local clergy and heritage management experts and equip them to discover and discern even more of Lalibela’s enchantment. Thus might these sanctuaries and adjacent settlements reverberate with further sacredness within their deeper, intended spirituality.  Through continual co-research, it is hoped that more of the hidden messages are revealed as these Lalibela-Lasta complexes and communities still whisper secrets left nearly a thousand years ago.

Qidus, Sanctus, Holy

Like the first outsiders, however, I too must admit to only touching the surface of this mystical Holy Land. One final discovery, however, came to light while researching Ethiopic crosses. When one views the greater whole of the entire ecclesiastical complex of Lalibela, it becomes clear that the actual layout is designed to serve as more than a simple pathway for pilgrimage. The churches, chapels, and tunnels of Lalibela are themselves actually a magnificent, carved, monumental icon of the crucifixion.

Like the Ethiopian hand cross that every priest and monk carries, the bottom of the cross represents the square arc of the covenant. Other traditions relate that it represents the four corners of the world. Connecting the arc and the cross is the handle, representing the passageway to the foot of the cross, planted upon the tomb of Adam. In rare examples, the handle depicts Adam, rooted in his grave, with a shoot from the Tree of Paradise becoming the timber for the crossbeam for the crucifix. This apocryphal story is found in many older traditions, including a thread about King Solomon’s building of the Temple. The four branches of the cross emanating from the center, like the Jerusalem cross, comprise the core of the standard hand cross (Korabiewics, Waclaw, et al 1973).

As part of my research, I have come to the conclusion that every church or chapel in this complex represents an element of Christ’s sacrifice. The dual sanctuaries of Mt. Sinai (Beta Mika’el) and Golgotha comprise the two wounds of Christ’s feet. The Chapels of the Finding of the True Cross and the 40 Martyrs represent the nail-wounds in his hands. Beta Maryiam, the central place for incarnation, fully and beautifully represents the spear to his heart. For some, this similarly represents that Mary, Queen of Heaven and Co-Redemptrix, had her heart pierced as well. In the Middle Ages in Europe, the concept that St. Mary participated as an agent of redemption or salvation for humanity was promoted by the early Franciscans as a doctrine. It is not known to what extent this idea was present within the Zagwe dynasty, if at all. The Bete Medhane Alem, as the culminating sanctuary, honors the Savior of the World, and brilliantly represents his crown of thorns.

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Fig. 15 – Ethiopian hand-cross depicting Adam holding up the cross. The bottom is the Arc of the Covenant and each branch of the cross illustrates a wound, with Mary and Christ in the center (Photo SCW). A map of the Ecclesiastical structures illustrating the natural layout of the various sanctuaries (after Phillipson – 2009).

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As a sacred space, therefore, Lalibela-Lasta continues sharing the dividends of its spiritual economy, bestowing hope and identity to a nation so rich in heritage, but for so long hidden from the outside world.

Cover Image, Top Left: Bete Giyorgis (Church of St. George), Lalibela, Ethiopia.  Bernard Gagnon, GNU Free Documentation License, Wikimedia Commons

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Author details: swalkercisuog@gmail.com -ET:  +251-966262008  US 425-772-9123

Keywords  – Ethiopia; Lalibela; King Lalibela; Lasta; Ethiopianhistory; Zagwe ethiopianorthodoxtewahedochurch; EOTC; stonechurch; pilgrim; urvuar

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Classical disciplines have made use of theoretical insights from anthropology, archaeology, history, literature, politics, geography, and sociology for many years (ECW 2013: 97-99). Each of these areas of endeavor contain or constitute a ‘body of theory’. Bodies of theory are groupings of explanatory ideas formulated by humans who critically reflect upon — or systemically interrogate — phenomena, events, and facts or data. For example, in dealing with ancient cultures, the dynamics of sociocultural interaction are locked in past processes, whilst the residual of those processes are visible to us in the present day in the form of data (e.g. artifacts, records, ruins, etc.). Through interpretive hypotheses, the intention of bridging a gap between historical ‘data’ and past social ‘dynamics’ is the focus of certain anthropological and archaeological models (Cf. Johnson 2010: 50-67).

However, do we really need theory in the classical world? Why should one speculate, theoretically, about how ancient Athenians perceived a statue of Zeus when all we need to do is read their writings? Prehistory is one thing, but with classical cultures we have textual based evidence to help us ‘understand’ past dynamics. And yet, can historical writings be trusted as ‘objective’? In other words, are historical writings devoid of subjective influences and equally representative of the masses of people? After all, texts are essentially tools of persuasion; pieces of rhetoric tuned to a specific audience (Pelling 1999; Potter 1999). The motivations governing the construction of ancient historical texts and literary writings is questionable (See TMC 2015: 36-40). Furthermore, what about the ‘little people’ — those whose voices are silent in the historical record? What can be said of their individual thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and customs if the veracity and motivations behind textual sources is called into question? To all of these problems, theory offers solutions — but also poses more questions.

How important is theory to the classical disciplines? To answer this I shall draw from four main bodies of theory: anthropology, archaeology, sociology, and politics. Specifically, I will narrow my focus to four theoretical frameworks: 1) Marxism, 2) Comparative Studies, Analogy, and Cultural Evolution, and 3) Poststructuralism and the American Polis. All the while, I shall attempt to underscore how deeply classical disciplines have been influenced by these theories and attempt to demonstrate how certain disciplines, such as Ancient History and Classical Archaeology, have been more deeply affected by them than others. Moreover, I will seek to answer the question: Do we really need theory to understand classical antiquity? Please note that several hypothetical frameworks have been imparted to classical studies (e.g. reception theory, historiography, feminist and gender studies), and I have only selected a few that I utilize in my archaeological studies.

Part I: Marxism

One such theoretical framework which has had enormous impact to nearly all branches of classical studies is Marxist theory. An import from Sociology, Marxism — or historical materialism — is one of the most transcending and influential bodies of theory (Johnson 2010: 95). In earlier forms of historical research, historians focused more on descriptive narratives of history instead of explanatory analysis. Culture history models of archaeology are an example of this (Johnson 2010: 15-21). Descriptive narratives, while theoretical in nature, do not emphasize explanatory methods as to ‘how’ or ‘why’ dynamics in the past occurred (ECW 2013: 98; See Johnson 2010: 97). Marxist approaches, however, seek to explain these cultural (and subcultural) dynamics as the product of ‘dialectic exchange’ and ‘social contradictions’ between groups of people which are categorized, traditionally, as materialistic or economically based ‘classes’ (Renfrew and Bahn 2008: 478-80). History is explained as a series of interactions between social groups in contention with each other, where one ‘class’ oppresses another which in turn ‘struggles’ against it (Fig.1) (Johnson 2010: 95-97).

In historical materialistic (pure Marxist) ideology, the two principal groups are the wealthy (ruling) and labor (subservient) classes — with the former exploiting the latter. Today, these classes are further subdivided along ethnic, racial, gender, sexual, and religious lines within theoretical bodies, such as Poststructuralism and Post-Processualism (Johnson 2010: 102-42). That being said, Marx’s thoughts on class and struggle — whether one is conscious of it or not — permeate most applications to classical inquiry with regards to interpretation of basic structures and how they are presented. For example, the layout of the workbook for this course (AR7553) critically enquires into the definition of the word ‘classical’ by emphasizing the word ‘class’ and associating it with an economic subsect of Roman élite society: the classici (ECW 2013: 16).

Hence, not only is a ‘class’ of Roman society divided along historical materialistic lines, but our understanding of how ‘classical antiquity’ is defined as a subject is interpreted through a prism of Marxist thought. The same can be said about the boundaries of ‘classical antiquity’ when the limits of its social-geographical parameters are questioned in light of ‘ethno-cultural associations’ between Classical and non-Classical communities (ECW 2013: 20-22). Here, Marxist interpretation identifies the use of cultural (Græco-Roman v ‘others’) and physical (i.e. Mediterranean) boundaries as a means of discriminating against non-Classical societies. Hence, a ‘struggle between classes’ is outlined in the textbook. This underscores the degree to which Marxist theory has influenced classical disciplines.

An interesting use of Marxism in classical studies regards the somewhat abstract distinctions between rural and urban cultures in the Greek speaking Eastern Mediterranean (Boer 1997). A case in point is the work of Ste. Croix (1981: 9-16) and his identification of the χώρα and its distinct socioeconomic characteristics. The χώρα, or khôra, was the rural periphery of a πόλις, or polis. By Roman times, this distinction took on a legal connotation which distinguished the two areas — khôra and polis — as two distinct sociocultural communities. According to Ste. Croix’s treatise, by the 1^st century AD, the people who inhabited the khôra were economically exploited — if not politically subservient — to the citizens of the polis.

In other words, the rural hinterland was the ‘labor’ class that lived in direct contention to the ruling people of the polis. However, Ste. Croix goes further and asserts that a reexamining of the Gospels of the New Testament in light of this Marxist interpretation may shed new meaning on the social dynamics of Jesus’ ministry.  For example, Ste. Croix (1981: 427-32) describes the ministry of Jesus Christ as centering mainly around the khôra and that Christ’s work reflected an association with the common or ‘country folk’ or ‘poor’ as opposed to the élite of the city. Ste. Croix further reduces the Gospels as the story of a struggle between ‘rich v. poor’ with the rich inhabiting the city (polis), while the poor are exploited in the country (khôra). In other words, according to Ste Croix, Jesus’ mission is to be a voice of the poor or ‘less propertied’ people, leading an opposition to the urban wealthy classes of the city who oppress them. Therefore, according to Marxist theory, Jesus was a ‘revolutionary’.

While this is an interesting exercise in Marxist interpretation of ancient history, I would contend that Christ was merely railing against a ‘corrupt establishment’ which is the essence of His message to the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes in Jerusalem and that the ‘wealthy classes’ in of themselves were not a target (See Gospel of Mathew 23:3). For example, contradicting Ste. Croix’s Marxist reinterpretation of the New Testament, Jesus clearly associated with more citified persons, such as the Pharisee Nicodemus, and had dinner with ‘tax collectors’ who were part of the Romano-Jewish plutocracy from the cities (Gospel of John 3; Gospel of Luke 5:27-32). Fascinatingly, Jesus was addressed as ‘rabbi’ by the Pharisees; that is to say a teacher of rabbinic law (Gospel of John 3:2; See also 1:38, 1:49, 6:25). Now, to be called ‘rabbi’ by Pharisees meant that in their eyes, Christ was one of them (See Falk 2003). How could this be if Christ was a proto-Marxist revolutionary? After all, these were the élite of the polis — the wealthy classes — who St. Croix clams Jesus was contentious with.

Later, another Pharisee, St. Paul of the city of Tarsus, became an apostle of Jesus (Acts 9:3-9, 26:5; Philippians 3:5). Paul was sanctioned by the original disciples who were themselves from the khôra. Yet, based upon the book of Acts, Paul maintained a status among the wealthier ‘citified’ members of the Sanhedrin. This may be deduced from the fact that Paul not only attended the Temple festivals and participated publicly in their rituals, but had studied law under Gamliel, and sponsored the religious rites of other Jews (an expensive process) at the behest of the original disciples (Acts 21:21-16; 22:3). Consequently, dividing Christ’s work into a city:rural or wealthy:poor theoretical dichotomy may lead to erroneous interpretations of early Christian doctrine. During the 1^st century AD, Christian society along with its tenants were more ideologically complex.

There is an argument that can be made here that excessively applying Marxist theory to find ‘class struggles’ within a Christian community is not useful. Reverse projecting one’s ideology onto a past culture may inadvertently lead to ‘politicizing’ the past in ways alien to the people who were living it (See ECW 2013: 101). Another example may be the issue of slavery in the ancient world. For instance, Urbainczyk (2008: 32-33) argues that ancient Roman slaves wanted to abolish slavery, not just gain freedom. In other words, they were not revolting against their masters for individual freedom but seeking to overthrow the system. Urbainczyk (2008: 33-35) interprets their ‘struggle’ as a ‘revolution’ (whether the individuals understood that or not) (See ‘false consciousness’ in Morley 2004: 87). In other words, from Urbainczyk’s point of view, it may be argued that their ‘slave class’ contained the same characteristics as modern slavery and the impact of their revolts challenged existing institutions (Urbainczyk 2008: 118). Such extreme Marxist interpretations may distort reasonable interpretations of past social histories because they take ostensibly subjective interpretations of past actions.

Part II: Comparative Studies, Analogy, and Cultural Evolution

A statistical tool often utilized by archaeologists is comparative analogy. But I must give some background first. Probably the most intuitive model in archaeology of comparative studies is Middle-range Theory, a model pioneered by Lewis Binford in which he utilized ethnographic studies to draw analogous comparisons with living (present day) cultures to interpret dynamics of past (prehistory) cultures (Johnson 2010: 50-64; Cf. ECW 2013: 100). This Processual driven approach to archaeological study, rooted in anthropology, became a pillar of ‘New Archaeology’ and is interrelated with Cultural Evolutionary and Structuralist approaches, as well as scientific methodology (ECW 2013: 102. Today, the use of comparative analogy is a tool employed in comparative history and archaeology (See ECW 2013: 99-102; Cf. Kim 2009 and Scheidel 2011).

In Classical antiquity, the purpose of comparative studies is to elucidate answers for missing facts in the historical or archaeological record by inferring plausible explanations from parallel societies, living or dead, thus expanding our understanding (Scheidel 2013). For example, Humphreys’ (1978: 23-24, Cf. 17-18) notes comparative studies of ancient Greek socio-economies have helped to infer what role ecologies may have played in ancient demographics. The result was an anthropological hypothesis which augmented the historical record. Of course, the underlining assumption is that analogous trajectories are shared by the cultures being compared (See Johnson 2010: 151).

In this manner, comparative studies appear somewhat similar to intertextuality. A recent example of this can be seen in the analysis of early Imperial China (221 BC – AD 220) and the late Roman Republic/Imperial periods (c. 100 BC – AD 100) by Walter Scheidel (2011). Broadly speaking, the two cultures appear analogous in many socioeconomic, political, and ecological aspects. For example, both empires had similar environmental systems, chiefly because they lay in the North Temperate Zone (Scheidel 2011: 11-12). In both cases, the suggestion being that wetter climates to the south were responsible for surplus food production which would be transported north to imperial centers (e.g. Rome, Xianyang, Chang’an), thereby giving rise to ‘complex polities’ in otherwise divergent states (See also Whitley 2001: 166-67). The keyword here being ‘transportation’ and how both empires achieved it.

However, geographic differences are also noted, such as the lack of a ‘temperate sea core’ in China and a geography which hindered transportation of food and goods (Scheidel 2011: 13-14). In short, China did not have a Mediterranean Sea at its geopolitical center. If sea-lanes are essential for the dissemination of food and goods, let alone the political networking of disparate communities within a society, how did the Early Imperial Chinese achieve centralized unification? At this point, instead of comparison, we have contrast. This creates a problem because it becomes difficult to explain how a state maintained sociopolitical unity while not possessing a strategic waterway advantage for the transportation of goods, ideas, and military personnel.

Moreover, it may undermine emphases placed on Roman transportation networks in historical records. For example, in Geography 4.1.2, Strabo elaborates on the manner in which rivers in Gaul are interconnected with the Mediterranean and how these were exploited by the Romans. Elsewhere, Strabo (Geography 17.1.13) describes how Roman sea-lanes included the extensive use of the Red and Arabian Seas and their adjoining straits, thereby connecting the Southern and Eastern regions of the Empire. But could Strabo be exaggerating? Historical texts are literary constructions and should not be accepted at face value. After all, ancient authors did have audiences they wrote for (See Pelling 1999; Potter 1999).

Another theoretical approach will be necessary to further bridge a physical gap in the comparative analogy. Borrowing from Neo-evolutionary theory, the Chinese might have utilized overland transportation to greater extent than waterways to unify the country. This might be supported by the fact that both the Qin and Han Dynasties constructed thousands of miles of roads to link their empire (Fig.2) (Bulliet et al. 2014:164; See Scheidel 2011:13-14; Cf. Johnson 2010:155-56). For instance, at Wushan, a state-maintained plank road was utilized extensively to transport goods between north and south, buoyed by bridge supports over inhospitable topography such as mountainous regions (Chetham 2002: 41). In addition, Sanft (2014: 101-21) has argued that the construction of the ‘Direct Road’ was part of an elaborate highway system which may have aided the bureaucratic concentration of the state, and the cultural unification of Imperial China by the Qin Dynasty.

What can be said then? For the classicalist, this comparative study strengthens our understanding of the role transportation played in the formation of Mediterranean state polities. Additionally, by contrasting Early Imperial Chinese overland routes with Roman seaways, one may deduce that each society made technological adaptations in an independent (bilinear) fashion (Cf. Johnson 2010: 151). For the Romans, this may be exemplified in their shipbuilding techniques (Cf. 1986: Green 17-35). For example, the Madrague de Giens, a Roman mercantile ship which sank off the coast of ancient Gaul (modern France), has provided an interesting look into Roman nautical sophistication. Based on analysis from underwater archaeology, the ship’s design contained a heavy keel and wide frames for stability in rough waters, while possessing staggered planking along the hull to enhance its displacement (See Greene 1986: 26-27). This would make it ideal for carrying large cargos through turbulent waters.

Regardless, in the case of Roman and Chinese societies, technological adaptation occurred to overcome physical geography. Thus, differing conveyance methods were created to achieve a singular purpose: transportation. Why? Because both the Chinese and Romans understood that transportation was necessary for the building of an empire. This fact substantiates Strabo’s claim of Rome’s exploitation of sea-lanes from the Mediterranean to the Arabian Sea. Moreover, this example showcases how a variety of theories enhance our understanding of Classical Antiquity. Here, comparative analogy, cultural evolution, and archaeological analysis of material remains, helped to critically evaluate the historical texts and illuminate a small portion of the political history of the Roman Empire.

Part III: Poststructuralism and the ‘American Polis’

Marxism, with its emphases on the identification of social classes, dialectic exchanges and intersocial and intra-social ‘contradictions’ identified the underlining causes of social change in history and reduces them to competing classes. While analogy, with its emphasis on comparative analyses and quantitative methods, interprets dynamics within and between classes by inferring explanations from unrelated sources. Different approaches that work, sometimes in conjunction with each other, to explain classical antiquity. While these bodies of theory have clearly influenced the classical disciplines, the question must be asked: do we really need theory to understand classical antiquity? In short, yes. Is it infallible? No.

One must be cautious when approaching past peoples from a modern theoretical position. Returning to Ste. Croix’s theory on ‘polis v. khôra’ above, people are going to act based on many individual — not necessarily class or group — needs. Both Jesus and Paul interacted with a variety of individuals from outside their social ‘class’. Indeed, it may be argued that they did not fit into any specific ‘class’. And here lies the problem with class distinctions being applied to historical dynamics: the individual — their ideas, desires, beliefs, understandings, emotions, impulses, passions — is overlooked in favor of a ‘group’ identity superimposed upon him or her through expert consensus. In other words, one risks categorizing people according to the sum of their parts, which may lead to incorrect assumptions regarding past dynamics.

For example, a case in point may be the 2016 Presidential Elections in the United States. The general consensus by experts relied on inferential statistics and historical trends of demographic groups (classes) based upon probability models from the 2008 and 2012 electorates. All of it pointed to a theoretical victory for the Democratic Party candidate (See Sabato et al. 2016a). However, demographic groups voted contrary to historical patterns in many regional areas. Arguably against their own special interests, many voted along parallel lines with other ‘classes’ defying their social groups (Barone 2016; Trende 2016). The only way to explain this is the individual was overlooked in the analysis of data. Humans are not monolithic beings. People are not necessarily herded or subscribe to ‘group mentality’ (Cf. Fromm 1941: 203, 253).

Blinded by probability, pundits forgot people are individuals — independent agents — who may act outside of ‘character’ and divorce themselves from their ‘class’ in decision (Sabato et al. 2016b; Cf. Johnson 2010:108). This is because class distinctions are subjective ideas; a product created by humans for the sake of convention. Grippingly, Foucault suggested that any form of analysis of individual identity which inferred characteristic groups — whether ‘status, class, or gender’ based — was a form of social oppression (Morley 2004:97-99; Johnson 2010:202-03). From this perspective, one may argue against the reduction of human behavior into any interpretive ‘trend’. For instance, Ste. Croix’s khôra and any (perceived) similarities between Imperial Chinese and Roman cultures are merely human invention. Taken to its natural conclusion, the entire premise of interpreting past cultures through theoretical frameworks which involve social classes contending with each other — let alone comparing such groups — dissolves. That being said, if scholars cannot correctly infer present day dynamics from more recent data, how can they accurately ascertain past dynamics from ancient data? As nihilistic as it may sound, they probably cannot.

Conclusions

Theory does not involve making arbitrary conclusions from abstract hypotheses, rather it is about interrogating data (what is known) and drawing sound deductions (or inductions) regarding sociocultural dynamics that are unknown. In this essay, I focused on theoretical frameworks lifted from three bodies of theory: anthropological, sociological, and archaeological. Specifically, I selected Marxism, Comparative Studies and Analogy, Cultural Evolution, and Poststructuralism, with ancillary methods directly or indirectly touched upon (e.g. quantification, probability, Maritime archaeology). At every turn, I attempted to illustrate how theory works to illuminate the dynamics of classical antiquity through an analysis of present day data. I ended with the brief deconstruction of theoretical frameworks to highlight how theorizing is a subjective endeavor, while still being necessary for perspective and to expand our knowledge. After all, knowledge is inferred (contra Ashenden 2005:202-06).

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Ancient Author Cited

Strabo. Geography, trans. H. L. Jones. Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library. 1923.

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