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All 📸 photos by me. | Telling history through art. Different angles of ancient & some medieval ruins & pieces. | Creator of The Cobra Effect Podcast.
Joined July 2024
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1/ By the 1st century AD, approx. 800k inhabitants lived in the "Eternal City." The imperial grain dole went to 200k of them every month. This was a logistical nightmare for the port city of Ostia.
The solution? The Harbour of Claudius.
A feast to the eyes, 🧵 of 📸 below!
When you look closely at the frescoes and mosaics of Pompeii and Herculaneum, it's hard to dismiss the Early Middle Ages in Western Europe as the "Dark Ages." I'm not talking about the obvious losses: aqueducts, roads, or stability, all of which had brought an abundance of goods and better health standards. I think it's the details that reveal how much was lost and how far life fell in the centuries after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Academics have the incentive to produce new papers and challenge established ideas. That's great, desirable. However, in the process, they sometimes replace obvious reality with a fabricated "new" discovery that, after repetition and reproduction through channels outside academia, becomes the new perceived reality. It happens in fields other than History. Now, I'm specifically referring to Western Europe and the Early Middle Ages (c. AD 500 - 1000). This isn't to say that peasants in that time and region didn't bathe or live the muddy clichés of recent Hollywood productions, or that there was zero progress (agricultural practices, the Carolingian Renaissance, etc.). Perhaps "dark" is too strong a term, but calling the period "the setback ages" doesn't sound right.
Made in Pompeii in the early 1st century BC, this magnificent mosaic of marine life measures 34.6 x 34.6 in (88 x 88 cm) and is on display in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
More than 20 species of fish and mollusks from the Mediterranean Sea adorn this piece. At the center of the scene, an octopus fights a lobster surrounded by a nursehound (a species of catshark), a dogfish (also known as dog sharks), a torpedo ray, a moray eel, and many others.
It was found in August 1890 in the shallow basin of the triclinium (the indoor dining room) of the House of the Geometric Mosaics, and it is not to be confused with a similar mosaic found in the House of the Faun. Both pieces are on display in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.
The technique of this mosaic is opus vermiculatum, meaning “worm-like work.” The opus vermiculatum used small, relatively uniform tesserae, some as small as 1 to 4 millimeters (0.04 to 0.16 in) square, that together formed the chosen design, as in our piece today. Another technique used in Roman mosaics was opus sectile, in which materials such as marble, shell, mother-of-pearl, and even glass were cut and polished into shapes corresponding to the chosen design.
📸 by me at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Hope you enjoyed this post. If so, please Share and Follow for more!
Next to Justinian I, "The Great," was a great woman, Theodora. With nerves of steel and the sensibility of a stateswoman, she climbed from the bottom to change society itself.
She also pushed the Eastern Roman Empire to reach new heights and this is some of her story!
Theodora also worked in favor of women as she was influential in some changes of the law: r@pe was punishable by death despite the rank and class of the offender, whose property passed to the victim; property could be inherited by wives; she did not make prostitution illegal, but forcing women to work as such was strictly forbidden; the ban on intermarriage between different social classes was lifted (Theodora's life was an example of this).
When the Nika Revolt broke out in AD 532 and Constantinople nearly fell to the rebels, Theodora stood firm, showing she was not only smart but also brave. Procopius (not a big fan) records her words in that critical moment: "I do not care whether it is proper for a woman to give brave counsel to frightened men; but in moments of extreme danger, conscience is the only guide. Every man who is born into the light of day must sooner or later die, and how can an Emperor ever allow himself to become a fugitive? (…) As for me, I stand by the ancient saying: royalty makes the best shroud." Theodora and Justinian I prevailed.
Today, Theodora is a Saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Church.
Ancient Egyptians often used cats and mice for satire. Displayed at the Brooklyn Museum, here is a similar limestone ostracon dating to the Ramesside period of the New Kingdom (the 19th and 20th Dynasties, c. 1292-1077 BC), from Thebes.
As per the museum: "A plump mouse disguised as a nobleman is approached by a scrawny cat acting as a servant, cooling her with a fan and presenting a bolt of clothes and a trussed goose."
Perhaps a satire of upper-class life or a popular fable, Tom & Jerry stories are as old as civilization itself!
📸 by me.
1/2 More than 3,000 years ago, an ancient Egyptian drew one of the first known satirical representations in history!
Painted on a limestone ostracon, a cat hits a boy while a mouse magistrate, dressed in a kilt, oversees the punishment. In the back, a text in hieratic describes the scene. In addition to hieroglyphs, ancient Egyptians also used hieratic, a cursive writing system.
An ostracon was a potshard or limestone flake used as an alternative to the expensive papyrus to practice sketching, daily calculations, receipts, etc. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews used ostraca in their daily activities.
Here we have a chunky bronze drachm from Ptolemaic Egypt. Minted in Alexandria under Ptolemy IV Philopator (221 – 204 BC), this coin has 42 millimeters of diameter (~ 1.6 inches) and weighs around 73 grams. The obverse is an excellent example of religious syncretism, where the head of Zeus-Ammon looks to the right. It shows the classical image of a bearded Zeus wearing a tainia. A tainia was a Greek headband (I circled it in red in the last pic). Over the headband, the ram’s horns of the Egyptian god Ammon are visible (I circled it in yellow in the last pic as well). The reverse shows an eagle standing on a thunderbolt with a filleted cornucopia in the left field. A dotted border can be observed on both sides of the coin. The legend reads ΠTOΛEMAIOY BAΣIΛEΩΣ, which translates to “King Ptolemy.” The coin uses the Greek word Basileus, which means Pharaoh in the context of Egypt.
So, next time you eat an Oreo, think about the Ptolemaic Egypt of more than two thousand years ago and their chunky coins.
📸 Coin photo with the Oreo by me.
This piece was also made in ancient Egypt and is associated with Alexander the Great.
An excellent example of religious syncretism, this head of Zeus-Ammon amalgamates the classical Greek bearded Zeus with the ram’s horns of the Egyptian Ammon.
After Alexander took Egypt from the Persians, he was welcomed as a liberator and set out with a group of his closest men for the Oracle of Siwa in 331 BC. The oracle was in the oasis of Siwa, deep in the Libyan Desert, about 360 miles west of modern Cairo. According to Ptolemy, snakes led them, while according to Aristobulus, it was crows. Once there, Alexander had a private conversation with Zeus-Ammon.
The oracle told him of his destiny as world conqueror and who his true father was. Alexander was not the son of Philip II of Macedon, a mortal man. He was the son of Zeus-Ammon himself! Alexander's claim of the world was divine in origin.
Only 8 years later, Alexander died in Babylon in 323 BC, but the cult of Zeus-Ammon survived for centuries.
This piece dates to Imperial Rome, c. AD 120 – 160, and was found at the mouth of the Nile River.
📸 By me at the MET.
Visuals of the Ancients retweeted
This ivory male head, on display at the Archaeological Museum of Mycenae, was excavated from the "Room with the Fresco" in the Cult Center of Mycenae and dates to the Late Helladic III B period (roughly 1250–1180 BC). It measures about 2.67 in (6.8 cm) tall and features wide inlaid or carved eyes, a prominent nose, and stylized hair beneath a headband.
This piece was carved from the solid central portion of an elephant tusk, a luxury material that, along with hippopotamus ivory, Mycenaeans imported into mainland Greece through trade networks reaching Egypt and the Levant.
📸 by me.
This ivory male head, on display at the Archaeological Museum of Mycenae, was excavated from the "Room with the Fresco" in the Cult Center of Mycenae and dates to the Late Helladic III B period (roughly 1250–1180 BC). It measures about 2.67 in (6.8 cm) tall and features wide inlaid or carved eyes, a prominent nose, and stylized hair beneath a headband.
This piece was carved from the solid central portion of an elephant tusk, a luxury material that, along with hippopotamus ivory, Mycenaeans imported into mainland Greece through trade networks reaching Egypt and the Levant.
📸 by me.
Folks, if you are on Instagram, I'd really appreciate it if you stop by visualsoftheancients and drop a follow! Yours truly is trying to get to 10k 🤝🫡
Visuals of the Ancients retweeted
The Empire that Refused to Die
For thousand of year after the fall of the West, Roman Empire remained the beacon of civilization
Light in the darkness. And when the candle finally went dim, it sparkled the Rennaisance, ushering Europe (and the world) into the early modern age.
Visuals of the Ancients retweeted
Saint Albans Cathedral
~Pop-up card~
Which castle or cathedral would you like to see in 3D card next?
1/2 Serapis, one of the most interesting deities of the Graeco-Roman-Egyptian pantheon. Enthroned here, he is accompanied by the hellhound Cerberus and wears a modium/kalathos on his head.
Ptolemy I Soter promoted his cult after succeeding Alexander the Great as pharaoh.
