In 30 BC, Octavian, soon to be Emperor Augustus, conquered Egypt and incorporated it as a Roman province. The last pharaoh of Egypt, Cleopatra VII, committed suicide, bringing an end to the rule of the pharaohs. Octavian appointed his friend Gaius Cornelius Gallus to rule over the new province. After putting down an insurrection in the south, he erected a trilingual victory monument at Philae that combined Greek, Latin and Hieroglyphic text and iconography. Dr. Martina Minas-Nerpel has been working as part of a team to develop a new translation of this monument. In this lecture she will be talking about her work.
NMC Department Conference Room, room 200B,
4 Bancroft Ave., Dept. Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations, University of Toronto
Who is the man in this picture? How did this fellow, whose maternal ancestry is East Asian, end up in a modest grave in southern Italy about 2000 years ago?
Just a quick recap; a team of scientists based at McMaster University in Hamilton Canada have found that this man, buried in a Roman cemetery at Vagnari, in southern Italy, is of East Asian ancestry on this mother’s side.
They determined this through mitochondrial DNA testing.
A settlement in Lower Nubia which was occupied from the start of the Third Intermediate Period (11 century BC) to recent times. The earliest settlement was 80 meters by 150 meters and was constructed at a time when the central government, in Egypt, had collapsed and Lower Nubia was believed to be depopulated.
During the 25th dynasty a Nubian state controlled Qasr Ibrim and conquered Egypt. One of the Nubian pharaohs of that dynasty, Taharqa, built a temple at Qasr Ibrim during the 7th century BC.
At the time of Augustus, the Romans turned the settlement into a border fortress, to protect its southern flank in Egypt. It soon was retaken by the Merotic state, located to the the south. In medieval times it became a substantial settlement with a Christian cathedral which can still be seen.
Today, what’s left of Qasr Ibrim is an island on Lake Nasser. When the Egyptian government built the Aswan Dam in the 1960’s, the area of Qasr Ibrim became flooded, with only its highest elevation remaining above water. Water level rose in 2000, flooding more of the island and its long-term stability has been called into question.
Submitted by Bija Knowles on Mon, 09/28/2009 - 18:47
Amid all the excitement over the return of HBO's Rome to our cinemas in 2011, as well as ongoing whispers about a remake of I, Claudius, it is only natural that our thoughts turn to those Roman emperors immortalised in a way they would never have dreamed possible. In Rome, Pullo and Vorenus stole the limelight but Ciarán Hinds was a dark and charismatic Julius Caesar. So how does he compare to other screen versions of the character? Rex Harrison was overshadowed in the role in 1963 by Richard Burton's Mark Anthony in Cleopatra, and who could out-beef John Gavin's Caesar in the 1960 film Spartacus?
Submitted by Bija Knowles on Thu, 09/10/2009 - 15:25
From Sheep Pasture to Number One Tourist Attraction
The Roman Forum and the surrounding monuments, such as the Colosseum and the Imperial Forum, are today considered to be some of Rome's most valuable heritage sites. They are visited by millions of tourists each year and generate vast sums of money towards their own maintenance, not to mention the associated income from the tourist industry. Efforts are made to protect and preserve them. But it hasn't always been that way.
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To understand the Fascist attitude towards Roman archaeological heritage, we need to also consider the Fascists' self-aggrandising identification with the Roman empire, their aspirations to follow the imperial model of colonisation and perhaps most of all, the personality cult of Mussolini.
Who is the man in this picture? How did this fellow, whose maternal ancestry is East Asian, end up in a modest grave in southern Italy about 2000 years ago?
