Making a Good Impression with Roman Inscriptions

Just got back exhausted but exhilarated from a really successful teaching session about Roman inscriptions with a class of children from both Manchester Grammar School and a Blue Coat School studying Latin and/or Classical Civilisation. The session was led by Dr Andrew Fear from University of Manchester Department of Classics. The idea was to engage schoolchildren with Roman material to help them with their studies and to encourage them to maintain an interest in things Classical.

Earlier this afternoon we divided the class into two groups and one half looked at making impressions from Roman inscriptions using the cliche mould or ‘wet squeeze’ method and the other studied some Roman coins that our Numismatist Keith Sugden had got out in advance for them.

sestertius of Trajan (AD 98-117 ) obverse

The cliche mould technique involves placing a sheet of blotting paper over an inscription and using a stiff brush to push the softened paper into the incised surface of the piece of stone. This is a very old way of making accurate copies of Greek, Latin and other inscriptions in the field. The practical aspect of making a cliche mould from an inscription really engaged the students, whereas talking to them about epigraphy  would almost certainly have left them cold. Fortunately no damage was done to a Roman inscription because we used a piece of marble with an inscription that is a fake. That wasn’t a problem because the whole point of the exercise was getting the students involved in doing something practical.

It’s all in the brush work

 

Finished cliche mould of Roman inscription

The other exercise was looking at and understanding Roman coins. We got out a denarius and a sestertius of the emperor Trajan (AD 98-117) and a denarius and a sestertius of the emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138). Armed with a crib sheet from their earlier session with Andy and a magnifying glass and an angle-poise lamp, the students studied each coin, transcribed the inscriptions or legends and translated them. In this way they were able to consolidate what they had learnt earlier about the use of abbreviations such as COS – Consul, or AVG – Augustus, or PP – Pater Patriae for ‘father of his country’. We swapped the coins over half way so they could look at different coins.

Looking at Roman coins

The students picked this up remarkably quickly, further evidence, if any were needed, that there really is nothing like the real thing for inspiring and engaging young (and old) minds. The thought of teaching Classics without supporting objects seems to me to do students an injustice, and, of course, we are well-placed at the Museum in being able to draw upon some amazing collections and provide invaluable hands-on  experience. If that doesn’t enhance the learning experience, then nothing will. We hear a great deal about digital interpretation and augmented reality, and new technology certainly has a place but I don’t think anything beats tactile interaction with the real thing. My observations of this afternoon suggest that it was a successful session and that the children enjoyed it and were stimulated by it. It’ll be interesting to see the evaluation sheets from the school.

Of course we have to declare an interest. Fewer and fewer students study this type of material. This is hardly surprising given that it used to be government policy to  marginalise Classics. Charles Clarke, back in 2003, said he was little concerned were the study of classics ‘to go the way of all flesh’. The number of pupils taking Latin GCSE in the state sector plummeted from about 8500 in 1988 to less than 3500 in 2004. Yet the benefits of teaching Classics have long been known. An Indianapolis survey on the effects of teaching Latin to 6^th grade children (1973) showed that after 5 months of Latin, the children had advanced 7 months in maths, 8 months in word knowledge, 9 months in problem solving, one year in reading, AND 13 months in language.

denarius of Hadrian (AD 117-138)

The session was supported by the University’s Widening Participation Department. Thanks to to Cat Lumb, Andy Fear and Irit Narkiss for organising and running the session.

Caught Knapping

Preparation for a knap-in

Manchester Museum is holding a knap-in on 19th November and on Friday Dr Elizabeth Healy and a PhD student Ray Nilson came to talk to Anna Bunney, Curator of Public Programmes, and me about the arrangements and to see some examples of worked flint artefacts. At the event, which is limited to 65 participants and ticketed (£10, or £8 concessions)  visitors will be able to watch enthusiasts striking or knapping raw materials and making a range of implements. There will be opportunities for people to try this for themselves under supervision of course. There is a real interest amongst visitors to the Museum in discovering how people in the past made things, some of them of considerable quality and demonstrating breath-taking crafts working skills.

Debate about one of the stone implements

I got out a selection of some of the wonderful flint and other stone objects in the lithics store at the Museum. A fine ground and polished early Bronze Age stone axe-hammer (below) is a wonderful exhibit although sadly we know little about where it was found. It was transferred to Manchester by  Salford Museum some years ago and I live in hope that some day information about the circumstances of discovery will turn up in an antiquarian publication…This kind of material was the focus of research and collecting at Manchester Museum during the later 19th and early 20th centuries when William Boyd Dawkins was Curator. From the 1970s the focus shifted to Classical antiquities but now prehistory in back in fashion, not least because of changes to the National Curriculum.

Anna with early Bronze Age axe-hammer

One of the added benefits is asking the flint-knappers who are coming to the event on 19th November to make copies of stone tools that were used on Easter Island or Rapa Nui. Manchester Museum will show material from the island in a temporary  exhibition opening in early April next year. Exhibits will include a stone statue called moai Hava that was brought back to Britain by HMS Topaze in 1868 and presented to the British Museum, and a range of artefacts borrowed from a number of other museums in the UK. We’re working closely with Prof Colin Richards of the Department of Archaeology at the University who has been conducting fieldwork on Easter Island. We will recreate for the exhibition part of the quarry at Puna Pau where Prof Richards has been excavating with his team. This was where islanders carved pukao or topknots that sat on top of some of the statues or moai.

We will dress the reconstruction of the quarry in the Museum with replica tools made by the flint-knappers for greater authenticity. Large numbers of stone implements or toki have been found in the quarry where the statues were obtained as if the work was suddenly interrupted and the islanders downed tools. It is not clear whether the islanders ceased to honour the statues after ‘first contact’ with Europeans or whether the notorious ‘blackbirding’ raids to secure labourers for Chile compelled the workers to drop their tools and flee or whether discarding the stone implements tools was part of the islanders’ belief system in relation to work on the statues.  It’s a very exciting project and it’s nice to know that the knap-in is contributing to the exhibition.

Roman Finds Group Meeting at Manchester Museum 8th October 2014

Roman military diploma

The last week has been rather busy, not least because of the Roman Finds Group meeting that was held at Manchester Museum on 8th October, which I helped to organize. The group is aimed at people, museum curators, archaeologists and those who share an interest in Roman archaeology. First up was Paul Holder, who works at the University’s library and who is leading authority on Roman military diplomas. It was Paul who published Manchester Museum’s incomplete military diploma from Ravenglass, arguably awarded to a man perhaps from Heliopolis in the Lebanon who was recruited into a regiment from the Roman Army of Britain when an expeditionary force went out to help suppress the serious Judaean revolt during the reign of Hadrian in the 130s AD.

Norman Redhead talking about the recent work at Castleshaw Roman forts

Norman Redhead, County Archaeologist and Director of Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit talked about recent work at Castleshaw Roman forts. This was not the first time the site had been excavated and Norman described the various interventions at this fascinating early Roman military frontier site, which lies between Slack, near Huddersfield, and Manchester. In the 18th century the antiquary Percival sketched two forts here and the people’s poet Ammon Wrigley did some work, but the first serious archaeological work was directed by Francis Bruton over two seasons in 1907-8. Rosser and later Thompson during the late ’50s and early ’60s carried out further work for the University of Manchester, helping to clarify the relationship between the earlier and larger fort for an auxiliary cohort, and the smaller, later fortlet for a garrison for as few as 50 men. There was a community programme excavation on the site during the mid 1980s.

The earlier fort was occupied between about AD 79 and the mid-90s AD and the fortlet between 105 and the early 120s AD. This tight chronological framework means that finds from the site can be closely dated. Unfortunately the soil conditions were prejudicial to the survival of many materials. One coin of Vespasian could only be documented because its imprint had been preserved in the soil, and even samian was very abraded. Glass objects survived very well, however.  Other finds included a lava quernstone, melon beads of glass and faience, rusticated ware greyware sherds, an onyx intaglio depicting Minerva, and a little Black Burnished ware, which must have entered the North of England shortly before the fortlet was decommissioned in the 120s AD. The finds from the most recent work will go to the Saddleworth Museum. Manchester Museum has the finds from the university-led excavations.

Handsome trumpet brooch from the Knutsford hoard

Vanessa Oakden, Finds Liaison Officer for the Portable Antiquities Scheme spoke about the Knutsford Hoard which was found by a metal-detectorist and included 103 coins, three trumpet brooches, finger rings and vessel fragments. Unfortunately the point of deposition had been ploughed out and the hoard dispersed but there was still a dense concentration of metalwork over some 20 x 10 metres. Some of the coins were still stuck together from their time in the container. The coins included denarii struck for Mark Anthony’s legions, and issues of Vitellius, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius and those struck for imperial ladies such as Sabina, Lucilla and Faustina II. Vanessa compared the hoard contents with another Roman hoard found at Church Minshull, which had 58 denarii and trumpet brooches. The trumpet brooches were similar to the beautiful Carmarthen brooch. The more complete brooches helped explain the rosette mount found loose in the Knutsford hoard. It looks as though the Knutsford hoard was deposited in the 190s AD. It may represent the private wealth of a soldier, landowner or merchant, and is perhaps indicative of the importance of the salt trade in the economy of the area. For further details  look this up on the Portable Antiquities database (LVPL -B44185/2012 T406).

A visit to the Manchester Museum store

The last session before lunch was presented by yours truly and I showed some of the Roman treasures from Manchester Museum’s archaeology collection, such as the Manchester word-square and talked about a couple of breakthroughs that had enabled us to provenance a previously unattributed sizeable collection of Romano-British pottery excavated by Prof.Donald Atkinson at Gayton Thorpe in Norfolk during the 1920s and a Romano-British pot from Longendale, purchased from some young lads who had found it hidden amongst some rocks. When first encountered in the store the latter shared its storage box with two unannotated small format black and white photographs showing the place of discovery and a cryptic note saying it was to be collected ‘by a gentleman’. A discussion of this acquisition turned up in an issue of Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society and the mysterious gentleman turned out to be Christopher Hawkes. This presentation was followed by a visit to the Museum archaeology store where I’d got out a selection of interesting material, including small finds from Castleshaw excavations, late iron Age metalwork from Bigbury, a complete set of decorative zoomorphic feet for a box or casket and an interesting but undoubtedly fake Mithras figurine. In this I was ably assisted and supported by Irit Narkiss, a member of the Museum’s conservation team, to whom thanks are due.

Wooden combs from Vindolanda

After lunch we were treated to a wonderful talk by Barbara Birley who presented the preliminary findings of her study of wooden combs from Vindolanda. The anaerobic soil conditions preserved a range of objects made of organic materials, including textiles, leather shoes, writing tablets and the combs. Vindolanda has yielded some 140 combs and this turns out to be the largest site collection to date (Roman London has only yielded 40). Most date from c.AD 85 to the 160s. Some of the combs were marked with graffiti or stamped with a maker’s mark. Some may have been used by professional hairdressers. Some were decorated with fretting and some had a copper alloy plate. The carefully-recorded excavations allowed the combs to be plotted spatially. One particularly interesting example came with its own leather carrying pouch or case.

Gaming counters from Chester

Our next speaker, Gill Dunn, talked about recent finds from the Chester amphitheatre site. There were two phases of building and the dep0sits contained a fragment from the hilt of a sword and remains of fast food consumed by the crowds, such as swans, geese, duck, and chicken, and fish bones from salmon, eels and carp. In fact there are few sites with such a range of domestic fowl. There were pieces of ceramic portable ovens that were probably made at Holt. The glass included pieces of facet cut vessels and are indicative of relatively high status table ware. A large collection of gaming counters (above) – of particular interest to me because of the set found outside Manchester Roman fort – appear to have been redeposited from elsewhere. Metal finds included mail links, hob nails, tools, and iron finger rings.

Enamelled Romano-British metalwork

The next speaker, Justine Bayley, talked about enamelled Roman objects. Enamel is glass fused to a metal sub-strate. Enamelling occurs on small decorative objects such as brooches, belt plates, seal boxes, studs, fittings and fasteners and votive stands, and occasionally is found on larger vessels, such as the Staffordshire Moorlands pan. Sometimes larger objects were made in separate pieces and soldered together. Some were clearly made a souvenirs for people to take away with them after a posting in the province. Reconstructions of enamelled metalwork showed just how gaudy the enamelled material was originally.

Matt Ponting talking about Roman coin analysis

Our next speaker, Matt Ponting of University of Liverpool, presented results of a programme of sampling of silver Roman coins. Earlier work in this area had sampled the surface of the coins but this gave variable and misleading results because the Romans treated the coin blanks to brighten the surface. This project showed that the Julio-Claudian emperors had a fine silver coinage until Nero reduced the fineness from 93% to 80% silver. The results of the recent sampling were more consistent than earlier readings. This brought the  denarius into line with the coinage of the Greek East and resolved problems with tax collection. The speaker also showed how studying isotopes from the samples might indicate the sources of the silver that was used. Some issues can now be characterized as using Spanish silver, some Gallic. It may be possible to identify a fingerprint for recycled metal. Matt acknowledged the institutions that had allowed sampling of coins in their collections, which include the Manchester Museum.

Scan of a coin showing differences in the metal.

Our last speaker, Rob Philpott, from Liverpool Museum discussed finds from the Roman port of Meolls. In the mid 19th century Abraham Hume reported large numbers of mostly metal discoveries on the foreshore when that stretch of coastline was undergoing rapid erosion by the river.  Activity seems to have started during the later Iron Age  and there are Roman finds even before the region was absorbed into the Roman province. Meolls was an important trading centre on the edge of the tribal territory of the Cornovii, close to that of the Brigantes. The exploitation of salt in the North West may lay behind  the economic transactions that we can detect in the coins and other metalwork found at Meolls. Sadly many of Liverpool’s finds were lost during bombing in World War II but more material has been recorded from the vicinity since then, including tantalizing objects from a later period such as a St Menas flask and a small hoard of Byzantine coins. Such discoveries are often explained away as redeposited souvenirs collected by British servicemen during the first and second World Wars but in some cases the original contextual information appears impeccable. A 6th century AD context for such finds in such a location, easily accessible by water, cannot be lightly dismissed.

St Means flask

Meolls reminded me strongly of a Roman port at Faxfleet, near Brough on the Humber Estuary in East Yorkshire, where large quantities of Roman pottery dating from the later 1st and early 2nd centuries AD was found. Its location close to the confluence of  a number of tributaries flowing into the Humber would have made it a useful location for trade. Unlike Meolls, most of the material found was ceramic. Another site further along the estuary at Redcliff, like Meolls, shows evidence of Roman trade some decades before the Romans came to northern Britain.

There was a great mix of papers at this meeting and my thanks to all those who presented or helped with the day.

‘In the Footsteps of Alexander’ with Michael Wood at Manchester Museum

Michael Wood speaking about in the footsteps of Alexander at Manchester Museum

Last night Michael Wood, Professor of Public History at the University of Manchester, gave a public lecture entitled ‘In the footsteps of Alexander: a fresh look at an epic journey’. This drew on the popular 1998 TV series in which Prof Wood re-traced the epic journey of Alexander the Great. In his talk Professor Wood updated the story with new material from the currently beleaguered areas of Syria and Northern Iraq, and illustrated his talk with stunning pictures of the regions Alexander visited and showed clips from his documentary series.

Objects on display

As part of the welcome in the Museum foyer I was asked to show some objects from about the time of Alexander and it was a great pleasure to bring out a tray of ancient Greek coins and some Achaemenid Persian pottery from the site of Yanik Tepe in northern Iran.

Ancient Greek and Persian coins

The coins included a gold stater and a series of what our numismatist, Keith Sugden, describes as ‘monotonous’ tetradrachms of Alexander and some of his Successors. In the photo above the profile of Alexander wearing a lion skin headdress can be seen. The reverse of the coins shows Zeus seated. The only difference between the issues is often only the mintmark, denoting where the coin was struck. Such coins were produced right across the vast empire that Alexander created, replacing the numerous smaller, local and regional currencies that numismatists like Keith find more interesting. A gold stater (on the far left) has on the reverse a depiction of Victory, or Nike, who as we all know, was the ancient Greek goddess of trainers…

Gold coin showing Nike or Victory

Of particular interest to me personally was second from the right a silver coin of Seleucus, one of Alexander’s generals who founded a dynasty that ruled much of Asia until the 2nd and 1st centuries BC when the Seleucid empire fought unsuccessful wars with the Roman Republic. Seleucus commanded a portion of the Macedonian phalanx.

The Macedonian phalanx. Which one was Seleucus?

With the help of Ptolemy, Seleucus established himself in Babylon, expanded eastwards into India, and later swapped several eastern territories for a large herd of elephants, which were deployed to great effect against his rivals. In the Ipsus campaign Seleucus brought his war elephants from Mesopotamia to Turkey. Does that make him greater than Hannibal?  In 281 BC, with Macedonia and mainland Greece almost within his grasp, and after a lifetime’s hard fighting, the old general was assassinated.

Looking at ancient Greek coins

The other material of interest on this table was a group of Achaemenid pottery from Yanik Tepe in northern Iran. It was excavated by Charles Burney of the University’s Archaeology Department who still has sharp memories of driving out there in a jeep in 1960, working with a team of student archaeologists (he still rembmers all their names!) and driving the material back to the UK. The site was on a large mound made of the accumulated debris  of not just hundreds but thousands of  year of habitation from the Neolithic onwards. In one of its most ‘recent’ phases of occupation there seems to have been an Achaemenid Persian  garrison based in a citadel on top of the mound in the late 6th/early 5th centuries BC. The pottery from this phase included a large pitcher for pouring liquids, wheel-made bowls and a pottery lamp. Some of the pottery is decorated with red cross-hatching.

Achaemenid Persian pottery

Of course, all this was really just a warm-up act for the main attraction which was Michael Wood’s talk, which proved to be an extremely popular evening event at the Museum. It was great getting a range of objects out of store that visitors don’t get to see that often. And how refreshing  to show representative material from a civilization that isn’t ancient Egyptian, Greek or Roman (not that they aren’t deeply fascinating).

 

My deepest thanks to Keith for getting out the ancient Greek coins, to Sajia who kindly helped on the objects table and to Sarah in Conservation who took some of the photos.

Young Archaeologists Dig at Castleshaw

The path up to Castleshaw

It was a very wet day when I met members of Manchester Museum’s Young Archaeologists Club in the car park opposite the site of the Roman fort site at Castleshaw near Oldham last Saturday. Despite the weather, it was too good an opportunity to miss because the site is currently the subject of a four week community archaeology excavation, which is funded mainly by the Heritage Lottery Fund.

For those who are not familiar with the site, the fort was made of  turf and timber fort and was built around AD 79. It was abandoned about 15 years later but the Roman army returned to the site around AD 105 and erected a smaller fortlet, which in turn was abandoned after about 20 years. In the 1980s Greater Manchester Archaeological Unit (GMAU) led a project to investigate and landscape the site of the fortlet. More recently, attention has turned to the remains of the larger fort which are poorly understand and difficult to access. Features uncovered so far during the excavations include an extensive area of the Roman road exiting the east gate, the east gate itself, defensive ditches, internal roads and barrack blocks, a  workshop area overlying prehistoric features, and a 17^th century cottage.

17th century cottage converted into a cow byre

I understand that around 300 school children, 150 adult volunteers and various special groups are involved in the project which is being led by the Friends of Castleshaw Roman Forts supported by a small team of professional archaeologists. The dig finishes on Friday 1^st August so the Young Archaeologists Club visit last Saturday was a rare chance to see the excavations in progress before the trenches were backfilled. Incidentally, given that the vast majority of parents naturally  want to encourage their children to do well at school, one way of helping them is to register them for membership of the Young Archaeologists Club. One former member recently told me that his time in the Manchester YAC had a huge influence on his  interests and particularly on his desire to study archaeology at university and his enjoyment of History and Classics at A-level. He said the excavations he did with YAC at sites around Manchester were so exciting and inspiring for him, as well as the other events organised.at the Museum.

Young archaeologists digging at Castleshaw

The Young Archaeologists from Manchester Museum were allocated a section of a trench where the Roman road inside the fort had been exposed and cleaned. The photograph above shows the youngsters lined up and trowelling back from the cleaned Roman road surface. This was till within the plough soil and so the pieces of pottery that they found tended to be of post-medieval date. There on the surface I found a sherd of mustard yellow slipware with two concentric ribs, probably dating from the 17th century.

2000-year-old turves still showing in the rampart section

After seeing some of the objects that had already been found the Young Archaeologists were treated to a tour of the site with site Director Norman Redhead. In one of the trenches Norman showed us the section of the Roman rampart with dark linear stains. These were the tell-tale marks left by turves that the Roman soldiers had cut and stacked one on top of the other to create a defensive rampart. It’s amazing to think they are still clearly visible after some 2000 years.

Looking at finds afterwards

In view of the appalling weather and following site tour the Young Archaeologists decided that discretion was the better part of valour and finished early. Our sincerest thanks to Norman and everyone else who enabled the Young Archaeologists to go out and experience this truly wonderful piece of Roman frontier archaeology.

 

 

Harpy Tomb Corridor at Manchester Museum

Harpy Tomb Corridor at Manchester Museum

It is some time since I posted about the Harpy Tomb. I am now pleased to report that John and the technicians completed the installation last week. The in-fill panels representing the missing panels were placed in the sequence, and a line from Virgil about the harpies and some interpretation were put in position. Visitors can simply walk through the corridor and enjoy the plaster casts of the Harpy Tomb or they can sit and enjoy the atmosphere in the gallery. For those who want some information there is some text and a photograph of the monument as it is today (courtesy of Dr Jonathan Prag). I hasten to say that the original carved panels of the Harpy Tomb were moved to the British Museum from the site at Xanthos in the 19th century. The panels we show are plaster casts of these originals. Unfortunately we didn’t have a complete set  so we’ve made do with graphic panels. This isn’t  so much of a handicap in the corridor which connects the Coins and Medals Gallery with the third of the Ancient Worlds Galleries, where the idea is to encourage visitors to make their way through the space without necessarily lingering too long. Unfortunately the text interpretation hasn’t worked very well and we will now re-position it against the dark grey square in the middle of the panels which was the original entrance to the tomb.

Coin of Antinoos at Manchester Museum

Coin of Antinoos, lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (AD 117-138)

The recent debate about the authenticity of the Warren Cup in the British Museum reminded me that we have a bronze coin in the Numismatic collection at Manchester Museum that depicts Antinoos or Antinous, the male lover of the Emperor Hadrian. It was part of the collection of Harold Raby, a former Keeper of Coins at the Museum, who bequeathed his coins to Manchester Museum. Raby acquired it as part of the Nathan Heywood collection, which he bought en bloc in February 1919.

It is important not to interpret the relationship between Hadrian and Antinoos in modern terms. At the time what was significant was not the sex of the emperor’s sexual partner but whether he took the active role. As Thorsten Opper in Hadrian Empire and Conflict (The British Museum Press, 2008) makes clear in his chapter about Antinoos, Roman men of the upper class were, to all intents and purposes, to be regarded as bisexual. This is why the Warren Cup is so interesting.

The silver Roman drinking vessel depicts two sets of male lovers enjoying sexual intercourse. It is thought to date from the reign of Nero in the first century AD. Luca Giuliani, Professor of Classical Archaeology at Humboldt University in Berlin, has claimed that the cup is in fact an early 20th century forgery  because the sexually explicit scenes are otherwise unknown on Roman silverware. The cup was purchased by Edward Perry Warren in Rome 1911. As Warren was gay it has been suggested that the cup was made expressly for him. However, Professor Dyfri Williams, author of a book on the Warren Cup, disagrees, saying that the unique design is not necessarily evidence that the vessel is a fake.

The coin in Manchester Museum Numismatics collection shows Antinoos in profile on the obverse or ‘heads’ side of the coin and Antinoos on horseback on the reverse or ‘tails’. The obverse gives his name very clearly in Greek letters and the reverse also shows some  letters from the Greek alphabet. This coin is a so-called ‘Greek Imperial’, i.e. a coin issued by town or city of the Greek-speaking world but under Roman rule. Such towns were allowed to strike low-value coins as a concession by the Roman emperors. This coin was struck in the mint of Alexandria in what was then the Roman province of Egypt where there was a sizeable Greek-speaking population.

Reverse of coin showing Antinoos on horseback

Campbell Price, Curator of Egypt and the Sudan, told me recently that people who drowned in the Nile were regarded as gods. It is interesting that Antinoos, the lover of Hadrian, drowned in the Nile and was deified. However, it has been suggested that Antinoos’ death may not have been accidental and that his influence with the emperor was resented by other members of the imperial court. Whatever the cause of his death, a city was founded in his name: Antinopolis.

The relationship between Hadrian and Antinoos was the subject of a critically-acclaimed historical novel, Memoires d’Hadrien (1951) by Marguerite Yourcenar (1903 – 1987). Yourcenar’s personal life may shed some light on why she chose this subject. Yourcenar was bisexual. She met the American literary scholar Grace Frick in 1937. They became lovers and lived together until Frick’s death in 1979. Yourcenar wrote many novels, essays, and poems, and produced three volumes of memoirs of her own. She was elected a member of the Academie Francaise.

Teaching Classics using Objects from the Museum Collection and Star Trek

Irit and the Classics students (3rd February 2014)

Some time ago we were asked by tutors in the Classics department to support teaching using objects from Manchester Museum’s rich archaeology collection. We provided a list of objects from archaeology and numismatics to help the teaching of ancient Greece and Rome. Last week a number of preparatory sessions took place. Irit Narkiss from the Museum’s conservation team led a training session to look at not only how the objects should be handled but how to examine objects too. Obviously special care is needed when handling objects that may be fragile because they are several thousand years old but as a university museum we like to try and find ways of making practical use of the objects in teaching and research that is taking place at the University of Manchester.

Irit leading the session about objects

This came to fruition on Friday afternoon when we spoke to two classes of students and they found out for the first time which objects they would be working with. The objects include a mortarium, a miniature amphora, a Roman coin, some samian pottery, a lamp, a glass vessel, some coarseware pottery and a piece of ammunition from a Roman stone-thrower.

There was a ‘bran tub’ lucky dip whereby the students got their objects. As there were a few leftover items there was also the option to swap objects for other items the student might feel more interested in. They will do a written piece of work called an object biography in which they’ll explore what the object is, how it was made, what it was used for and what it tells us about life in Roman times.

This is something of a new development in working with colleagues in Classics to make objects available for teaching and hopefully it will help to surmount some of the difficulties that students may experience in making use of the Museum and its collections as an educational resource. Many are familiar with written records of the period but for some this will be the first time they will have worked with objects.

Students with objects (7th February)

The benefits of working with objects to me seem obvious. I always think of the wonderful scene in the film Star Trek First Contact in which Jean-Luc Picard (played by Patrick Stewart) and his android officer Commander Data (played by Brent Spiner) go back in time and encounter the first spaceship – the Pheonix – to have warp drive. This development made interstellar travel possible for the first time so the rocket is in Picard’s time, several hundred years later, a very popular exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum.

As Picard explains: “It’s a boyhood fantasy Data. I must have seen this ship hundreds of times in the Smithsonian but I was never able to touch it”. Data asks “Sir, does tactile contact alter your perception of the Phoenix?” And Picard gives what I think is one of the best recommendations for handling objects in museums: “Oh yes, for humans touch can connect you to an object in a very personal way and make it seem more real”.

Of course this is lost on Data, who replies: “I’m detecting imperfections in the titanium casing and temperature fluctuations in the fuel manifold. It is no more real to me than it was a moment ago…”

Patrick Stewart and Brent Spiner meet the Phoenix

Harpy Tomb Gets Go Ahead

Panel from North Side of the Harpy Tomb at Xanthos in Lycia, Turkey

One of the areas that we did not have time to look at last year when we opened our new Ancient Worlds galleries last October was the corridor between the Numismatic gallery and the third gallery of Ancient Worlds. Which was a shame given that some of the conservation work on the objects we planned to display had already been done. In fact the objects concerned, the plaster casts of the Harpy Tomb from Xanthos in Turkey, have already featured in the Ancient Worlds blog. Earlier this week I met Senior Technician, John Miller, to discuss how we might go about displaying them.

Line drawing of the North Side of the Harpy Tomb from the Illustrated London News (courtesy of Debbie Challis)

Unfortunately we don’t have a complete set of the casts of this impressive 2500-year-old funerary monument, which may be no bad thing because the exhibition space we have in mind wouldn’t be long enough, unless we took out some rather useful cupboards to create the space needed. We’ve decided to get round the problem of not having all the pieces of the jigsaw by showing images of the missing panels alongside plaster casts of the panels we do have. In this way we’ll be able to give visitors an overview of this amazing monument using attractive objects from the store that would otherwise hardly be seen, and in a location that lends itelf to a more visual experience.

The plaster casts are copies of panels that once decorated the four sides of a monument known as the Harpy Tomb or the Kypernis tomb at Xanthos, in Lycia, in south western Turkey. The panels were at the top of a stone tower. They appear to show a ceremony taking place at the Lycian court. The ruler, who is sitting on a throne, receives offerings. The ruler and the courtiers hold sweet-smelling flowers or fruits to their noses. One of the figures is carrying Classical Greek armour: a hoplon shield and a Corinthian helmet.

Panel depicting winged deities – Harpies? – from Xanthus. From the Illustrated London News courtesy of Debbie Challis.

It is not clear what the winged figures on some of the panels mean. They may be carrying off the spirits of the dead to the afterlife. In Greek mythology winged women called harpies tormented people. The best-known depiction of  Harpies is in the film Jason and the Argonauts (1963) starring Todd Armstrong and Nancy Kovack. It is the special effects of  Ray Harryhausen that stay in the memory. They put modern CGI to shame. In the film Jason and his crew land on an island to seek some information from the blind seer Phineus, who is being tormented by the harpies. Every time he is served a meal the harpies turn up and eat his food or defecate on it. Jason catches the harpies in a net, imprisons them in a cage and in return Phineus gives him the information he needs to find the golden fleece.  All of which is great fun, especially when you’re a nine-year-old lad and it’s the best thing you’ve ever seen on TV in your entire life.

Line drawings of the Harpy Tomb from the Illustrated London News (courtesy of Debbie Challis)

The original panels from the Harpy Tomb at Xanthos are in the British Museum. They were collected by English archaeologist Charles Fellows (1799-1860) who travelled in Turkey and found the ruins of the town of Xanthos in Lycia in south west Turkey. At this time Britain and France were competing with one another to collect antiquities for their respective museums. With the help of the Royal Navy, Fellows collected stone carvings from some of the tombs at Xanthos for the British Museum.

Faces and Places Big Saturday at Manchester Museum

Anna, Campbell and Jamie at the recent faces and Places Big Saturday

Yesterday (16th November 2013) Campbell Price and Anna Garnett, volunteer, Jamie Skuse, and I helped out at the Faces and Places Big Saturday  at Manchester Museum. The aim of the event was to promote the Koma figurines from Ghana that are now displayed in the Museum’s third floor temporary exhibition space. The faces of the figurines are very expressive and Vicky in Public Programmes set out tables in the Discovery Centre so that visitors, especially families with young children, could make their own figurines out of modelling clay. We selected objects from the Egyptology and Archaeology collections with the intention of inspiring the children’s imaginations to make figurines but they were also a popular talking point with other visitors.

Egyptian faces on the handling table

Campbell and Anna brought out some objects from the Egyptology collection: facial reconstructions of the Two Brothers, a replica of an encaustic protrait, similar to those on display in the Museum’s dedicated gallery, the lid from a Canopic jar depicting the ancient Egyptian god Imsety, busts from Alexandria and a shabti (above).

Heads from the Archaeology collection

For my part I brought out some head related objects from the archaeology collection including a late Iron Age/Romano-British stone head from Tyldesley near Manchester, a tricephalic piece from Standedge Tunnel, some replica carved stone  heads and some rather handsome carved wooden head made for an earlier Lindow Man exhibition. I suspect they are copying discoveries from the important votive deposit at the source of the River Seine at Sequana in Burgundy, France, as well as some stelae found at Rochdale (see above). Keith Sugden, the Museum’s Curator of Numismatics, kindly entrusted us with a selection of coins showing Roman emperors.

Head inspired by one of the Koma Land figurines

It was great fun recognising some of the figurines that visitors made and displayed on the table outside the Discovery Centre.

‘Sanctuary’ or ‘shrine’ showing off the clay figurines made by visitors

As part of the day I showed members of the Museum’s branch of the Young Archaeologists’ Club the facial reconstruction display in Ancient Worlds. There was even time to join Maxine’s inaugural ‘Women in Ancient Worlds’ tour which explored the topic of women and the contribution of women archaeologists and Egyptologists in the new displays. Maxine, who is a Visitor Assistant and  member of the Museum’s Front of House team, showed us the copy of Amelia Edward’s A Thousand Miles up the Nile, the Etruscan terracotta womb votive in the archaeology gallery as well as exhibits in the Egyptology gallery of Ancient Worlds.

Maxine with visitors on the Women in Ancient Worlds tour

We saw over a hundred people at our handling table and gathered some really useful feedback about how interesting visitors had found it. Jamie’s contribution went well beyond the call of duty when he kindly posed for a photograph with one of  the carved wooden figurines (below). What a trooper! As well as being a brilliant Movember photo opportunity, this makes me think there might be some mileage in a future photographic  project comparing the profiles of Roman emperors and empresses with those of modern day visitors. A great time was had by all as they say. A big thank you to everyone who gave up their Saturday to help with the event.

Jamie and carved wooden head