Funerary podia of Hippos of the Decapolis and the phenomenon in the Roman world

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Michael Eisenberg ◽  
Arleta Kowalewska
Keyword(s):  
Architectural Design ◽  
Main Approach ◽  
Funerary Monuments ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Funerary Architecture ◽  
Roman East

Abstract In the Roman world a wide variety of funerary architecture was erected along the access roads of cities to catch the eye of passersby. In Hippos (Sussita in Aramaic) of the Decapolis, the most notable funerary structures stood along the city's main approach within the Saddle Necropolis. The most distinctive elements of the necropolis's architectural remains were a series of 13 large funerary podia – the focus of the 2020 excavations. The Hippos podia are unique in the Roman world, in their dating, their architecture, and their multiplicity. The architectural design of this series of structures may be the first evidence of necropolis planning and erection of funerary monuments by the polis itself within the Roman world. The article describes the freshly exposed Hippos podia, proposes reasoning for the choice of this particular type of construction, and analyzes similar funerary structures throughout the Roman world, with emphasis on the Roman East, where sarcophagi were widespread.

The Roman Military Base at Dura-Europos, Syria

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Examination ◽  
Military Base ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The World ◽  
Social Dynamic ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
History Of ◽  
Roman Military ◽  
Roman East

Dura-Europos, a Parthian-ruled Greco-Syrian city, was captured by Rome c.AD165. It then accommodated a Roman garrison until its destruction by Sasanian siege c.AD256. Excavations of the site between the World Wars made sensational discoveries, and with renewed exploration from 1986 to 2011, Dura remains the best-explored city of the Roman East. A critical revelation was a sprawling Roman military base occupying a quarter of the city's interior. This included swathes of civilian housing converted to soldiers' accommodation and several existing sanctuaries, as well as baths, an amphitheatre, headquarters, and more temples added by the garrison. Base and garrison were clearly fundamental factors in the history of Roman Dura, but what impact did they have on the civil population? Original excavators gloomily portrayed Durenes evicted from their homes and holy places, and subjected to extortion and impoverishment by brutal soldiers, while recent commentators have envisaged military-civilian concordia, with shared prosperity and integration. Detailed examination of the evidence presents a new picture. Through the use of GPS, satellite, geophysical and archival evidence, this volume shows that the Roman military base and resident community were even bigger than previously understood, with both military and civil communities appearing much more internally complex than has been allowed until now. The result is a fascinating social dynamic which we can partly reconstruct, giving us a nuanced picture of life in a city near the eastern frontier of the Roman world.

Bedrock, foothills and kinship: reconstructing the funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Costanzo ◽  
Filippo Brandolini ◽  
Habab Idriss Ahmed ◽  
Andrea Zerboni ◽  
Andrea Manzo
Keyword(s):  
Regional Scale ◽  
Local Scale ◽  
Point Pattern Analysis ◽  
Environmental Drivers ◽  
Point Pattern ◽  
Funerary Monuments ◽  
Funerary Architecture ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Cattle Breeders ◽  
Eastern Sudan

<p>Monumental funerary landscapes are paramount representations of the relationship between environment and superstructural human behavior. Their formation sometimes requires millennia and they cover wide territories, often adding up to complex palimpsests of monuments belonging to different time periods. In this regard, the funerary landscape of the semi-arid foothill region of Kassala (Eastern Sudan) represents a solid example. Therein, a comprehensive geoarchaeological investigation conducted by means of field survey and remote sensing allowed the creation of a regional geomorphological base-map and a dataset of funerary monuments. The latter comprises several thousand raised stone-built tombs spanning from the early first millennium AD clusters of tumuli (belonging to the pan-African traditions) to regionally exclusive variants of medieval Islamic funerary architecture (<em>qubbas</em>). Funerary monuments are found as eye-catching scatters of hundreds of elements along the foothills of the many rocky outcrops dotting the pediplain of the western periphery of the Eritrean Highlands. In this study, the two categories of monuments were not considered as separate <em>burialscapes</em>, but rather examined as a unique, diachronic funerary landscape in its relationship with the geological and geomorphological settings and constraints. Point Pattern Analysis (PPA) was employed to determine the main environmental drivers of their locations on a regional scale, as well as to assess the existence of superstructural factors acting on their aggregation at the local scale. Our results strongly suggest the presence of a geological/environmental/societal synthesis underlying the choice of monuments’ location: at the regional scale, the pattern follows a precise set of rules residing in the concomitant presence of stable, gently rolling slopes and available metamorphic rock slabs; at the local scale, the clustering is heavily conditioned by superstructural dynamics that most likely reside in kinship and collective social memory of local Beja people. We suggest that the creation of the funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan is the result of a repeated and well coded social behavior of the Beja people, semi-nomadic cattle breeders known to have inhabited the region since “time immemorial”. Despite their mobile lifestyle and cultural contact with other North African and Arabic cultures, the monumental palimpsest portrays how the funerary habits of this millennia-old society persisted almost undisturbed, valuing location and kinship over external influences.</p>

scholarly journals The peristyle of House H1 in the ancient town at Marina el-Alamein

2011 ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Rafał Czerner ◽  
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Mediterranean Coast ◽  
Architectural Elements ◽  
Roman World ◽  
The Mediterranean

A thorough study of the architectural elements found in the ruins of House H1 in the northern part of the ancient town at the site of Marina el-Alamein led to a reconstruction of a two-storeyed portico around the inner courtyard. The upper storey of the peristyle would have accommodated the galleries from which one could enter the rooms on the first floor. The author, an architectural historian, presents the architecture and proportions of two-storeyed peristyle porticoes as they would have been implemented at this seaside town in the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, just 100 km west of Alexandria, and uses this example to review the known parallels from other regions, including the “Palazzo delle Colonne” in Ptolemais and the Meroitic Palace of Natakamani in Gebel Barkal, Sudan. He concludes that both the general layout of the house at Marina el-Alamein and the two-storeyed peristyle architectural design were hardly unique in the Hellenistic and Roman world of North Africa, but what made the Marina house different was the stateliness of its appearance.

Building the Monuments of the Future

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Architectural Design ◽  
Future Generations ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Social Functions ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Complex Functions ◽  
Funerary Architecture ◽  
New Construction ◽  
Market Gardening ◽  
Trade Market

The preservation of ancient structures like the house of Alexander at Thebes not only reinforced Romans’ sense of the passing of time, but also encouraged them to aspire to make their monuments last as long or even longer as legendary examples of the past. But the primary influence of historical archetypes was not on monuments’ precise architectural design, but on their identification as monuments by name and the implication of this for their memorializing function. This can be seen most clearly through those buildings that preserved the remains of human beings for future generations, in other words, tomb structures. It has often been argued that the purest form of building is funerary architecture, intended to commemorate and to endure, and not distracted by any social functions. This was the view of the early twentieth-century Moravian architect Adolf Loos, who wrote in his 1910 essay ‘Architektur’ that: ‘Nur ein ganz kleiner Teil der Architektur gehört der Kunst an: das Grabmal und das Denkmal. Alles andere, alles, was einem Zweck dient, ist aus dem Reiche der Kunst auszuschliessen.’ In the Roman world, tomb monuments had more complex functions for the living as well as the dead: they were not only a setting for ritual funerary processions and banquets in commemoration of the deceased, but also a backdrop to a wide range of economic and social activities in the suburbia of Roman cities, such as trade, market-gardening, and new construction. Yet the Antonine age also shows an interest in funerary buildings as a pure form of architecture in their own right. As Loos commented later in the same essay: ‘Wenn wir im Walde einen Hügel finden, sechs Schuh lang und drei Schuh breit, mit der Schaufel pyramidenförmig aufgerichtet, dann werden wir ernst, und es sagt etwas in uns: Hier liegt jemand begraben. Das ist Architektur.’ Potentially cut off from the functions of everyday life, the tomb monument expresses an ideal architecture. Tomb buildings had always been conspicuous monuments in the ancient world, and the biggest and most famous ones inspired others to follow their example.

MORE THAN MISTRESSES, LESS THAN WIVES: THE ROLE OF ROMAN CONCUBINAE IN LIGHT OF THEIR FUNERARY MONUMENTS

2020 ◽  
Vol 88 ◽  
pp. 151-184
Author(s):  
Tatjana Sandon ◽  
Luca Scalco
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Funerary Monuments ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Roman Italy ◽  
Marital Union ◽  
Legal Marriage

This article focuses on the role of concubinae in the Roman world, through analysis of inscriptions and reliefs on funerary monuments involving these women and their relatives. It investigates why concubinatus was chosen in preference to legal marriage, and how the concubina was perceived as a member of her partner's family. The results bring to light how this type of quasi-marital union was an appealing option for men of social standing, and that the role of concubinae accepted by their partners was not so dissimilar to that of legal wives. The article considers funerary monuments from Roman Italy, dating from the first century BC to the early third century AD. It deals with the role of Roman concubinae by analysing tombstones from both an archaeological and historical point of view; the aim of this analysis is to reconstruct a social pattern of concubinatus and of the individuals involved in this type of quasi-marital relationship, with the aid of two different types of ancient sources.

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