Ancient Cities 3: Leptis Magna

Severan Basilica, Leptis Magna. Image Souce: Sascha Coachman/Wiki.

Since mid-June, fears have increased that the ancient Roman city of Leptis Magda, on Libya's coastline could be bombed.  There are reports that pro-Gaddafi forces have been using the city as cover for tanks and military vehicles.  By 18 June, the Telegraph reported they assume that NATO forces would not attack them if their equipment is stored in the UNESCO site: "Colonel Gaddafi is using the site as an archaeological shield. Missiles, launchers and troops are, they say, snuggled among columns, corridors and archways. Nato forces – in Gaddafi’s reckoning – won’t bomb them, or his men. Clever. They won’t. But if Gaddafi is holding explosives in this World Heritage Site, a single stray cigarette butt could kick start a sequence that sends it all up in smoke."  The city lies 120 kilometres east of Tripoli, in the district of present day Al Khums. From the Washington Post:

Leptis Magna, Libya’s most important archaeological site, has not been engulfed in fighting as the country’s conflict enters its fifth month. But airstrikes have been carried out nearby, and Libyans on both sides of the battle worry that the U.N. World Heritage Site could sustain damage if rebels in the east push toward Tripoli.

Alarm about the archaeological site soared this week after NATO officials said they could not rule out bombing in the area if Gaddafi’s troops are found to be using it as a military staging ground.

Susan Kane, a professor of archaeology at Oberlin College in Ohio who has done extensive work in Libya, said Libyan contacts she deems credible have told her the government is storing munitions in cultural sites, such as museums and ruins. She said that fighting around Leptis Magna would be a tragedy.

“It’s one of the best preserved ruins sites in the world,” she said. “It’s staggering.”

Leptis Magna was one of the most prominent cities in the Roman empire.  Its high state of preservation means that walking through it is like walking back in time.  Founded in the Bronze Age around 1100 BCE by the Phoenicians, it became part of the Roman Empire in 146 BCE when the Romans defeated Carthage.  Under the Emperor Septimus Severus, who hailed from the city, Leptis Magna became the third most important city in Africa. With Rome's decline, Leptis Magna became a provincial capital in the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century CE.  It was the site of a massacre in 543 CE.  The city was abandoned by the 650s, except for a Byzantine garrison.  Its 1,700 years of habitation ended with the Arab conquest.

An illustration of what Leptis Magna would have looked like. Image Source: Temehu.

Map of the town. Image Source: Wiki.

The Theatre. Image Source: 3xploration.

A reconstruction of the theater. Image Source: Temehu.

Caption for the above image: (1) Ima Cavea; (2) Media Cavea; (3) Summa Cavea; (4) Vomitori; (5) Orchestra; (6) Seats for important dignitaries; (7) Entrance to stage; (8) Stage; (9) Wall of scenery; (10) Wooden ceiling; (11) Stakes to secure the canvas awning; (12) Attic gallery.

Pilasters inside Basilica of Septimus Severus, Leptis Magna. Image Source: Sascha Coachman/Wiki.

Element of Basilica of Septimus Severus, Leptis Magna. Image Source: Sascha Coachman/Wiki.

Image Source: IB Times/Reuters.

The Arch of Septimius Severus at Leptis Magna. Image Source: David Quinn/Wiki.

Statue in the Law Courts theatre at Leptis Magna. Image Source: Horizons Unlimited.

The Forum. Image Source: Sascha Coachman/Wiki.

One of the Medusa heads, Forum in Leptis Magna.Image Source: Sascha Coachman/Wiki.

The Market. Image Source: Robert Bamler/Wiki.

The Marketplace.  Image Source: Sascha Coachman/Wiki.

Street view, from Septimius Severus Arch to Trajan Arch. Image Source: Sascha Coachman/Wiki.

Street view. Image Source: Temehu.

The Hadrianic Baths. Image Source: Temehu.

Latrines, Leptis Magna. Image Source: Sascha Coachman/Wiki.

The Libyan Goddess Medusa (or the Gorgon) Guarding the Severan Forum. Image Source: Workbase Info.

Image Source: Photo Library/Telegraph.

Image Source: IB Times/Reuters. 

Villa Silene. Image Source: Temehu.

Caption for the above photograph: Villa Silene is a private house of a wealthy owner from Leptis Magna, dating back from the Byzantine period. Overlooking the magnificent Mediterranean sea the villa is widely recognised as one of the must-see places in Libya, especially its lavish decorations and the highly detailed and intricate mosaics across the villa's floor, including sea nymphs, animals, geometrical designs and amphora-helmeted pygmies.

Mausoleum of Qaser Duirat, 200 AD., Leptis Magna Museum. Image Source: Temehu.

Caption for the above photograph: The original location of this funerary monument was about 2 kilometres south-west of Leptis Magna city (Lubdah). It was moved to its current location outside Leptis Magna museum for safety reasons, owing to the high voltage pylons which passed by its previous location. This mausoleum is among the best preserved mausoleums and most decorated of all the Mausoleums found in Libya. Among the designs are the zodiacal and astrological signs. The name found inscribed on the monument is half Roman and half Libyan, which indicates that the tomb belonged to a Libyan dignitary, as it was the custom then for dignitaries to keep their Libyan name in order to indicate their ancestry. The structure was dated to 200 AD.

In 2005-2006, a team from the University of Hamburg, including Helmut Ziegert and Marliese Wendowski uncovered an astonishing 30 foot wall of mosaics from the 1st-2nd centuries CE (reports here and here).  Ziegert, incidentally, is known for uncovering the Palace of the Queen of Sheba in 2008 in Ethiopia, and a possible resting place for the Ark of the Covenant, bringing him into Indiana Jones territory (see report here).

From Workbase Info: "The mosaics show with exceptional clarity depictions of a warrior in combat with a deer, four young men wrestling a wild bull to the ground, and a gladiator resting in a state of fatigue and staring at his slain opponent. The mosaics decorated the walls of a cold plunge pool in a bath house within a Roman villa at Wadi Lebda in Leptis Magna. The gladiator mosaic is noted by scholars as one of the finest examples of representational mosaic art ever seen."  More mosaics from the city can be seen here.  Only about one-third of Leptis Magna has been excavated.

Regatta of Cupids, detail. From the Nile Villa at Leptis Magna. Roman, 3rd CE. Mosaic, 380 x 118 cm. Image © Gilles Mermet / Art Resource, NY.

Gladiators' Arena. Image Source: Temehu.

See all my posts on Lost Cities.

Summer Interludes

Points of Departure II: Nijinsky Variations (1996) © Peter Milton.

The blog is going on a summer interlude while I polish off some work on other projects.  I will post weekly pieces between now and summer's end - more if events merit it.  Regular posting will resume in late August.  For today: check out these remarkable, time-tossed, surreal images by Peter Milton.  All images are © Peter Milton and found on his Website; you can see an animation of how he changes the same scene in different prints here (Hat tip: Woods Lot). There's a bit of Edward Gorey in these art pieces, as well as some neo-Realist-Impressionist touches, neo-Art Nouveau, Steampunk, Escher, and some Piranesi.  But the overlapping, ethereal, mental-physical realities, along with the neo-fin-de-siècle temporal themes, are pure turn of the Millennium.

In Search of Lost Time (Second State: Visions and Revisions [No. 123]) (2006) © Peter Milton.

Sight Lines III: Eclipse (2011) © Peter Milton.

Welcome the Strawberry Moon

Image Source: SLOweather.

The Farmers' Almanac confirms the cultural significance of today's full moon, which is also known as the 'Strawberry Moon' according to Algonquian tribal lore.  The moon is thusly named because this is the week when wild strawberries in the Algonquin regions of North America bear fruit, to which I can well attest, since they grow all around my house.  They are amazing.  They put the bloated hybrid grocery store monsters to shame.

Marking time with these tiny explosions of sweetness is a nice reminder of a period when the whole calendar was determined by the seasonal cycles of hunter gatherer cultures, and later by agriculture and horticulture.  But be warned: start exploring the metaphors around this history, and you open the doors to true strangeness.

Wild strawberries. Image Source: AMC.

Comics that Made Me a Fan: Elfquest

The Wolfriders' Holt in the Original Quest. "Wolfsong," Elfquest #4.

Boing Boing recently reported that all 6,500+ pages of the comics cult saga Elfquest are now online, to read for free.  In fact, they've been up since 2009, and were generously posted by their creators, who initially set a milestone by self-publishing their issues; you can read them here.  Published from 1978 up to 2007 (with more stories promised, and long-running plans for a movie), these comics are an American classic of pulp fiction and pre-manga story-telling (read a review here).  In an earlier post, I talked about DC Comics stories that caught my attention.  This is another title that made me a fan and a collector.

The Wolfriders encounter Savah, leader of desert Elves known as the Sun Folk in the Original Quest. "Raid at Sorrow's End," Elfquest #2.

Drawn and written by Wendy Pini and written and edited by her husband Richard Pini, Elfquest is a mesmerising tale that spans millennia, about an Earth-like world inhabited by primitive humans.  The World of Two Moons is forever changed, however, when a race of alien Elves, called High Ones, lands on the planet.  They hail from a society of advanced technology, but only develop their inner abilities once they relinquish their dependence upon tools and weapons. Their spaceship is driven by Elvish psychic and physical powers, which appear to terrified human observers as magic.  The 'Original Quest' - the first Elfquest story ever published - however, begins long after this huge event.  By this time, the Elves have dispersed.  They have adapted to this world.  Different tribes of Elves form close psychic bonds with creatures such as wolves, elk, eagles and dolphins, and build their respective societies around those bonds.  But they are all characterized by their hazy and legendary cultural memories of a lost central experience.  They all yearn to find the original spaceship that brought them, the Lost Palace of the High Ones.  The main protagonist, Cutter, a wolf-riding Elf leader, plans to find the Palace and unite all the Elves, the scattered children of the High Ones. Along the way, he meets many different Elves, including one of the best villains in comics, the Glider Winnowill.

The Art of the Retcon 1: DC Does the Time Warp Again

This isn't an alternate timeline, this is the only timeline. Booster Gold #44 (July 2011).

Tomorrow, DC's solicitations for September comic books come out.  But for the past two weeks, they have been releasing news about their rebooted fictional universe that will arrive that month. For those who don't bother with pulp fiction, this matters because the company, which owns Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, is doing a complete overhaul of all its series, based on a gigantic crazy time warp storyline it's putting out this summer called Flashpoint.  And it's the time warp story that interests me, because it involves the renumbering of all titles to coincide with the first historical transition in comics from paper to digital formats.  There's a history of DC's notorious reboots here at Comics Alliance.  Of this one, CA said: "Flashpoint Throws Out the Bathwater, Baby Reported Missing."

Anniversaries: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Image Source: Paramount via Gizmodo.

Thirty years ago today, the legendary hit film Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was helmed by American director Stephen Spielberg opened in cinemas.  A travelling international exhibition, currently at the Montreal Science Centre, features props from the movie contrasted with actual archaeological artifacts.  For a report on the exhibition and where it will go next, go here.

Retro-Futurism 16: The Retro Charm of the Millennial Man

"Becoming Superhuman in 2011." From: The Art of Manliness. Batman © DC Comics. Batman is one of the most enduring surviving masculine cultural icons from the 1930s, a man who has taken matters into his own hands. 

Today, the blog pays tribute to a growing movement among men who are looking to the past to find themselves, their role models, their direction, but recasting it in a Millennial style.  One of the most useful, funny and poignant blogs in that regard is The Art of Manliness, which states as its goal "reviving the lost art of manliness"; it's something I know a few Millennial women would appreciate (Hat tip: Kate Sherrod).

There's been a lot of commentary about feminism using reverse-sexism to weaken Millennial males.  One sign of the aftermath is advertising campaigns that always make men look like bumbling idiots, perpetual teenagers or comical liars. Fight Club, a critical novel (1996) and film (1999) that struck a chord with Generation Jones and Gen X men, probably expressed the backlash best: "We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need."  A simmering misogyny, weirdly combined with apathy, arose from the mid-1990s to mid-2000s, perhaps most evident in the appearance of players who joined movements like the Pickup Artists (profiled in 2005 by Neil Strauss) and their Seduction Communities; this is a group that promises the self-appointed alpha male a chance to find his true mate, a real alpha female.  There was also a backlash against the feminist-approved male, the Millennial Metrosexual.  This argument has been strangely subjected to the seeming rigours of scientific authority, whether through studies that say the sexes are alike - or through the 2005 firing of Harvard's president, Larry Summers, for suggesting that men are better at high-level scientific research than women.

Slowly, the masculine rights movement has moved away from anti-feminism and misogyny and concentrated on self-improvement.  Meanwhile, third-wave feminism has stepped back from full-blown man-hating, and focussed on practical issues.  This debate famously caused a rift between Boomer feminist Alice Walker and her Gen X third-wave feminist daughter, Rebecca Walker (who is also the goddaughter of Gloria Steinem).  In 2008, Rebecca Walker wrote some pretty jaw-dropping stuff about her mother's negative responses to her decisions to have a baby and not reject men as fellow contributors to society (here, here and here).  When you see what Rebecca Walker has gone through (see: "The day feminist icon Alice Walker resigned as my mother"), you get a glimpse of how Boomers have sometimes confused their generational narcissisms with their ideologies, idealism and goals.  Rebecca Walker seeks to discuss the place of emancipated women in a Millennial society that does not blankly accept that gender wars must be the norm.  As a result, she has to fend off Boomer feminist attacks without pulling punches. When you see stories like this, you realize that the first and second waves of feminism had important, needed struggles - as well as terrible blind spots that ravaged not just Generation X men, but also their female contemporaries.

This malaise is not just about ideology, politics, feminism, and generation and gender wars.  Fight Club also talked about the impact of tech on the workforce, our daily lives, our slipping grip on the self and the erosion of time: "You wake up at Seatac, SFO, LAX. You wake up at O'Hare, Dallas-Fort Worth, BWI. Pacific, mountain, central. Lose an hour, gain an hour. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. You wake up at Air Harbor International. If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"

The Art of Manliness comments on the modern male malaise, and pegs it on a combination of modern life conditions:

What’s Plaguing Modern Men?

There has been a copious amounts of hand wringing lately about the state of modern men, about the fact that men appear to be falling behind in life and seem unmotivated and listless.

Why all this concern? The statistics are familiar to anyone who has read this genre of articles:

• Women are more likely than men to graduate from high school.
• Only 44% of undergraduates at community and four year colleges are men.
• Female college students have higher grade point averages than men and are more likely to graduate within four years.
• According to the US Census, “Among young adults 25 to 29, 35 percent of women and 27 percent of men possessed a bachelor’s degree or more in 2009. This gap has grown considerably in the last decade: it was only 3 percentage points in 1999 (30 percent for women, 27 percent for men).”
• Women are 60% more likely than men to earn a bachelor’s degree by the time they are 23.
• According to the US Census, for the first time in history, more women than men are earning advanced degrees. “In the 25-29 age group, 9 percent of women and 6 percent of men held either a master’s, professional (such as law or medical) or doctoral degree.” Nearly six out of ten adults holding advanced degrees between the ages of 25 and 29 are women.
• Men lost 3/4 of the 8 million jobs that disappeared during the recession.
• For the first time in history, there are now more women in the workforce than men.
• 1/3 of men ages 22-34 still live at home with their parents. An increase of 100% in the last 20 years. According to the census, among young adults ages 18-24, 56 percent of men and 48 percent of women still live at home with their parents.

Plenty of theories have been offered as to what is behind these statistics. Some say the economy is to blame, as traditionally male industries have been moved off shore or gone extinct. Another reason given is that corporate culture and bureaucracy have sucked the soul out of men and taken away their manly autonomy. Others say it’s our consumer culture and the rise of particularly time-sucking hobbies like video games. And some say the root of the problem is feminism, the changing dynamic of male/female relationships, and the “cheapness of sex.”

But I would argue that there isn’t just one thing that you can point at and decisively say, “That one. That one was the man killer.” Instead, the source of the modern male’s lack of motivation is a conglomeration of all these factors. In short, the “problem” is modern life in general.

To me the modern world is the best possible world to live in, without a doubt. The advancements we’ve made in technology and culture have made life safer, freer, and longer than ever before.

At the same time, no matter how unmitigated a good is, there are always unintended consequences that we have to grapple with. And the unintended consequence of modern life is that men feel lost and adrift.

In a way, the Tech Revolution was the cold bath we needed; it reinforced the fact that we're all in this together.  One post comments that the reason men feel aimless is because we are all moving through a period when we have lost old values and new ones have not yet replaced them.  This is a state of anomie, or normlessness, caused by radical changes in society and technology:

Anomie, which literally means “without law” in German and French, was defined by Durkheim to be a state of “normlessness.” Durkheim posited that in times of social change and upheaval, clear societal standards and expectations for individuals vanish. Without “clear rules, norms, or standards of value” people feel anxious, rootless, confused, and even suicidal. Life in an age of anomie can often feel empty and meaningless. 

Thus, The Art of Manliness steps back from the gender wars and makes a retro move that focusses on reexamining and revamping old standards which used to constitute what it took to be a man.  These values are not (or are no longer), as feminists would contend, about forcing women to submit or obliterating the feminine contribution to society.  Rather, they concentrate on the male condition, a suprisingly nebulous concept that nonetheless indicates that men have to drag themselves out of their existential funk by finding a balance between the past, present and future:

The solution means moving beyond the all-or-nothing proposition we sometimes feel we are stuck with. Men feel like they cannot fully embrace the old ways nor move into the new ways, and so they decide to do nothing at all. But it doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition. You don’t have to become a sensitive ponytail guy OR a Neanderthal.

Here are some of many retro-futuristic articles, which recall manuals, books and culture from the 19th and 20th centuries, but speak to current and future masculine concerns and problems:

• Facing the Mistakes in Life (from a 1909 tract)
• The Essential Man's Library
• What Man Understands that He is Dying Daily?
• The Masks Men Wear
• Losing Dad: How a Man Responds to the Death of his Father
• Finding Your Calling: Why Pursue a Vocation?
• The Bucket List Generation and the Age of Anomie
• Lessons in Manliness from Atticus Finch
• Lessons in Manliness from Beowulf
• Weasels Ripped My Flesh! Vintage Men's Adventure Magazines
• A Generation of Men Raised by Women
• Bringing Back the Hat
• Rediscovering the Barber Shop (with a retrospective on the role of barber shops from the 1880s to the 1940s)
• How to Shave Like your Grandpa

See all my posts on Retro-Futurism.

Retro-Futurism 15: Millennial Women and Future Tech as Seen from 1966

Women's wear vintage op art (1966). Image Source: Flickr.

Below the jump, I've posted a video today from 1966, which predicted what life with computers would be likeby the turn of the Millennium (thanks to -C.).  They didn't quite peg the combined impact of feminism and technology on Millennial women.