Reliquary Bust, Charlemagne, Aachen (Photo: public domain)

By Patrick Hunt -

Tradition and some evidence have it that Charlemagne (768-814) revitalized the remnant Roman viticulture in his Frankish kingdom, especially in the northern Rhine region and also oversaw its viticultural progress. Alsace has been famous for wine since Roman colonists settled there; some also believe that the Riesling vine derives from the Roman argitis minor vine varietal [1] possibly hybridized or cultivated by Carolingian vinegrowers under Charlemagne’s orders. According to his biographer Einhard, Charlemagne renamed the month of October in Frankish as windume manuth, or “wine harvest month”. [2] Einhard also makes it clear that Charlemagne himself was extremely temperate:

“He abominated drunkenness in anybody, much more in himself and those of his household…He was so moderate in the use of wine and all sorts of drink that he rarely allowed himself more than three cups in the course of a meal.” [3]

Charlemagne was one of the prime movers in ending the Dark Ages and the Carolingian Renaissance is named after him for his capable administration that brought back order and learning to Europe after the collapse of the Roman Empire. [4] While the Romans had already established Rhine viticulture in the Moselle, Pfalz, Rheinhessen and Alsace regions, [5] in concert with his other ecclesiastic policies, Charlemagne’s Council of Aachen in 814 reorganized monastic winemaking practices, recommending the church’s canons to grow vines for wine, certainly beyond the needs for eucharist. [6]

Schloss Johannisberg, Rheingau (Photo in public domain)

Legend suggests that Charlemagne also stimulated viticulture in the area of Schloss Johannisberg and the production of what would eventually become Riesling, but this is difficult to prove, since the Benedictine monastic site is not recorded until 1100 and the name Riesling is not officially recognized until around 1435 near Mainz with a merchant invoice for riesslingen in die wingarten and Duke René of Lorraine is credited for connecting Alsace with fine Riesling in 1477 but Riesling is not firmly noted until Hieronymus Bock (1498-1554) in the 1552 edition of his herbal.[7] The date of 1628 is a watermark year for absolute documentary proof of Riesling grapes planted in Alsace. On the other hand, Stolz believes Riesling was introduced as early as 843 in the Rheingau during Carolingian rule under Louis II the German where Riesling may also be the gentil aromatique grape. [8] Whatever legacy of Charlemagne and the Carolingian Era can be connected to viticulture, it is both history and the present that should appreciate this great king’s commitment to stabilizing civilization and recognizing wine as one of its most important gifts.

The Rheingau region of Germany is another area associated with Roman viticulture, since they planted vines nearly everywhere they settled. Roman glass artifacts have been found around Rüdesheim and a castrum was in nearby Bingen across the river as well as a Roman bridge. The tenth century Brümserburg castle was also built over Roman fortifications. Less challenged than many viticultural areas, Rheingau is particularly favorable since the Rhine River runs east-to-west here and thus vineyards can face south for maximum solar exposure, with Riesling grapes growing in 82% of the area under vine in 1990 [9]

Rüdesheim vines, Brömserburg Tower (Roman foundations) now a wine museum, and Rhine River (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

By contrast, Alsace has been associated with the better Gewurztraminers, derived from the Traminer grape – grown in Alsace since the Middle Ages – adding the descriptive gewürz as “spiced”, or better “perfumed”. Sadly, this wine is often unjustly maligned by snobby “connoisseurs” as made for plebeian palates, found over the top for being too heady and richly exotic in both flavor and rosy and lychee fragrance, let alone risible for its pink-hued grape. Late harvest Gewurztraminers, however, are far more serious wines, not to be dismissed so easily.  Broadbent, among many others, has long praised Alsace for its storied wines, especially since World War II – as fascinatingly told in the delightful Kladstrup book Wine and War [10] which I brought along for great reading on this trip – and Broadbent lists great vintages from famous Alsatian wine dynasties like the Hugel Family and others like Trimbach and Schlumberger, all recognized globally. [11]

This author was in the Rheingau and Alsace lecturing on a Rhine Cruise in April (2012) and tasted a range of Rieslings and Gewurztraminers in Rüdesheim am Rhein, Strasbourg, Colmar and Wittolsheim. Talking with several growers and winemakers and comparing these wines added depth to prior experience, especially satisfying being in the areas noted for production of both wines.

Rüdesheim, looking down on town from Klosterlay vineyards and Rhine (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

On the ridge above the town of Rüdesheim we were taken to a vineyard tasting (Weinprobe) just southwest of the Niederwald-Denkmal monument at the edge of the forest. The old town itself has many weinstuben – many on the festive Oberstrasse and Drosselgasse – and their common half-timbered architecture recalls the medieval importance of the town we could see below around the 15^th century Pfarrkirche St. Jakobus church.

Rüdesheim, tasting the Weingut Adolf Störzel Kirchenpfad Riesling Kabinett trocken 2010 (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

We started tasting local Rieslings near the Brömserburg  castle ruin with Roman foundations) – now a wine museum – and because the buds were just forming before leafing, the rows of the vine parcels were colorful with yellow dandelion flowers. Local winemaker Carsten Hempel explained the local viticulture as we continued tasting with bottles on tables set up along the slope. In our three stops climbing the ridge toward the Klosterlay parcels we tasted three of Rüdesheim’s wines, including Weingut Adolf Störzel Kirchenpfad Riesling Kabinett trocken 2010, and Weingut Adolf Störzel Berg Rottland Riesling Spätlese 2010. Both of these Rieslings were refreshingly light and delicious with 9% alcohol. Hempel also works in Geisenheim (home of the prestigious viticultural school, the Geisenheim Grape Breeding Institute, which also awards higher academic degrees in winemaking, the only such institution in Germany).

Geisenheim itself just to the east is also adjacent to Schloss Johannisberg, another kilometer further northeast, and the almost equally famous pilgrim destination’s Marienthal Monastery. Since Geisenheim was first mentioned in 772 in Carolingian documents, the Charlemagne wine connections are not without substance. Rüdesheim’s riesling viticulture has its vertical rows parallel to the slope. i.e., facing downward rather than across the topography. The narrow rows also made machine harvesting difficult, so that the majority of picking is by hand. Every other row is offset with natural growth to retain topsoil and yet limit half the plant competition, an experimental conclusion after a compromise between having every row planted but with a resulting weakening of the wine since sharing the soil’s minerals reduced vine vigor. Like all viticultural areas, the geology of the Taunus Massif north of the Rhine directly affects the vines, being high in quartzite and Rüdesheim loess is noted for that acidic high silicate. For geography, it might also be interesting to note that the 50^th latitude north runs through Geisenheim vineyards. Recent 2006 statistics also show that the hardy, cold-resistant Riesling with its late ripening, thick-skinned grape is logically the most planted vine stock in both Germany and Alsace, comprising 21 % with over 21,000 hectares (52,000+ acres) and 22 % with over 3300 hectares (8000+ acres) of all vines in those countries respectively. [12]

One rising star of Rüdesheim’s world class Rieslings is Johannes Leitz of Leitz Weingut, extolled in the New York Times and by Riesling guru Stuart Pigott of Planet Wine and piling up Gold Medals in quite a few categories of the 2010 International Wine Challenge in London, also awarded Gault Millau’s 2010 Winemaker of the Year. It would be a real coup if one can obtain the intense Leitz 2010 Kaisersteinfels, Leitz 2010 Rottland “Hinterhaus” and Leitz 2010 Rüdesheimer Berg Schlossberg Riesling “Ehrenfels” or even the Leitz 2009 Magic Mountain Riesling blended from different Leitz parcels, not just alluding to Thomas Mann but also the steep terraces above the Rhine around Rüdesheim in vineyards like Berg Schlossberg, Drachenstein and Berg Kaisersteinfels. [13] J. Keller at Weingut Leitz told me that the title “Magic Mountain” (Zauberberg) is a local reference to the Rüdesheimer Berg, the main ridge above the town.

Strasbourg Cathedral facade from Rue Mercière (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Upriver from Rüdesheim, while Heidelberg is not a wine-producing area along the Neckar, it is certainly a beer and wine-consuming city, especially at the university and the among what were the thirsty nobles. Although now Heidelberg castle is mostly an uninhabited romantic ruin, one can attempt an impressive gauge of  the amount of wine stored in what may one of the world’s largest “barrels”.  Deep inside Heidelberg Castle this notorious wooden barrel is easily 18 feet high, with a capacity of around 228,000 liters, no doubt for aristocratic bragging rights.

To the south of Heidelberg, well upriver along the Rhine and in Alsace, France, Strasbourg’s cathedral towers over the medieval city of canals and nostalgic half-timbered buildings. This is one of the world’s most sophisticated cities and a bookish haunt, for several decades home to pioneer printer Johannes Gutenberg whose bronze statue adorns the Place Gutenberg just at the terminus of the Rue Mercière viewing the cathedral portal at its most dramatic approach. Along the Ill River on St. Nicolas Quai very near St. Nicolas Church, I noticed the home of Sebastien Brant (1457-1521), Renaissance Humanist and satirist author in 1494 of Ship of Fools (Das Narrenschiff). Having an original illustrated woodcut from the 1494 satire made me appreciate Brant all the more.

Sebastien Brant House, Quai St. Nicolas, Strasbourg (Photo P. Hunt, 2012)

Highly recommended in Strasbourg’s famed gastronomy is the perfect pairing of foie gras and Alsatian Gewurztraminer. Trying this feat twice in one day (necessarily followed in this case by cycling along the canals to attempt diluting the bloodstream cholesterol) is a huge temptation to which one can easily succumb. In the Place de la Cathedral (Müensterplatz), the elegant medieval (begun in 1427) restaurant-hotel Maison Kammerzell offered an excellent slab of foie gras with Gewürz gel and red peppercorns on toast and a green glass of Alsatian Mosbach 2010 Gewurztraminer from Marlenheim, a lunch that I couldn’t refuse. Just to make sure, I had a similar second Strasbourg lunch in the Petite France Tanner’s District at the chic La Corde à Linge in the Place Benjamin Zix. Only slightly extravagant but guiltless, the savory Strasbourg foie gras was just as good but this time the bibendum was a late harvest Alsatian Domaine Gérard Metz Gewurztraminer Vendages Tardives from Itterswiller at the foot of the Vosges Mountains.

A brief word about Strasbourg’s Gothic Cathedral (Notre Dame de Strasbourg) includes that it was built over a Roman sanctuary in the then town of Argentoratum; later buildings on the site were a gold and gem decorated Carolingian church where St. Remigius was buried. It also has some of the most beautiful stained glass windows in the world, especially the thirteenth century “Emperor” windows with brilliant secondary colors including the green, purple and orange more typical for German crafted hues than medieval French primary colors such as red and blue. Like the rest of the cathedral constructed out of pinkish red sandstone, the cathedral’s north tower pinnacle (circa 1439) was for centuries (1647-1874) the highest in the world at 466 feet, and its 19th c. astronomical clock right of the apse is one of the most precise in history – practically a computer telling equinox leap year, etc. – and along with mythological and zodiacal features also has a parade of unusual mechanical figures like an hourglass and death figure as well as Christ and the Apostles passing in front of him. Goethe said of this cathedral, “The more I contemplate the façade of the Cathedral, the more I am convinced of my first impression that its loftiness is linked to its beauty.” Elsewhere he said it is a “sublimely towering, wide-spreading tree of God.”

Maison Kammerzell, Strasbourg, begun in 1427 (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

G. Bruck Foie Gras, Strasbourg (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Strasbourg Lunch of Foie Gras and Mosbach 2010 Gewurztraminer at Maison Kammerzell (Photo P. Hunt, 2012)

Colmar is rightly hailed as the City of Art, with “la Petite Venise” canals connecting to the Louch River, a Rhine tributary, and one of the best surviving late medieval old towns in Europe. Colmar was also the next lovely amble where I had another refreshing Riesling in the covered market right before seeing the birth house and statue of artist Martin Schongauer (1448-91) at the Dominican Church. Schongauer’s 15^th century house is in the old town across from the more picturesque Maison Pfister, and his statue is outside the old 13^th century Dominican Church, home to his delicate International Gothic Style 1473 masterpiece La Vierge au buisson de roses; the old Dominican Church is now a museum. Schongauer was much admired by Albrecht Dürer, who learned this predecessor’s pioneering cross-hatching technique, developing into his own signature style for his famous woodcuts and prints. Colmar is also home for the incredible 1506-15 Isenheim Altarpiece of Mathias Grünewald (c. 1470-1528) in the Unterlinden Museum.

Colmar's "Petite Venise", City of Art (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

In the foothills of the Vosges Mountains we had an Alsatian wine tasting at Wettolsheim for a Grands Vins d’Alsace experience. Jacques Mann of Maison Wunsch et Mann, founded in 1763, offered a winetasting of Alsatian 2011 Riesling, Alsatian 2010 Gewurztraminer. Maison Wunsch et Mann proudly display a Gold Medal (Medaille d’Or) in 1994 at the Colmar Grand Concours des Vins d’Alsace for at least seven of their lots, and among others, a Silver Medal (Medaille d’Argent) at the Concours International for a world-class “Riesling du Monde” 2009 for their Riesling 2007 Grand Cru Steingrubler, grown on calcareous marl and sandstone and praised by Stevenson. [14] Another Wunsch et Mann Grand Cru is their Pfersigberg Gewurztraminer. It is worth noting that in both Rheingau and Alsace, the goal is for a low yield of fruit to make the highest quality wines. The Riesling wines Jacques Mann offered certainly filled that high distinction with their dry, crisp acidity. Jacques finished our tasting with a Crémant d’Alsace traditional méthode champenoise sparkling wine.

Martin Schongauer statue, Old Dominican Church, Colmar (Photo P.Hunt 2012)

A few last cultural rather than solely viticultural comments for Rhine contexts, especially places like Strasbourg and Rüdesheim. When the enterprising Romans moved north, they brought vines with them that would adapt to the climate and terrain. An antiquarian himself, Goethe was a student at the famed Strasbourg University during on of its German periods and later Louis Pasteur was a professor of chemistry at the university (now the medical school here is named after him). Here too, Albert Schweitzer studied theology and played Bach’s profound organ music. Mozart played St. Thomas Church’s Silbermann organ in Strasbourg in 1778. Naturally, I was thrilled to visit a vintage secondhand bookseller in Strasbourg’s Place Kleber where I purchased a weathered centuries-old leather bound biography of Mozart, wondering if he had wandered somewhere nearby himself in 1778. Furthermore, back in the Rheingau, Rüdesheim and its outliers were the environs of medieval 12^th century polymath composer, poet, scientist Abbess Hildegard von Bingen, several of whose monasteries were nearby in Eibingen, Rupertsberg and in Bingen across the river. Rüdesheim was also a town beloved to Johannes Brahms, who loved to play new piano compositions here on frequent visits to the Rhine Valley, staying with the Beckerath family and there is consequently a Brahms chamber music festival, the Brahms-Tage, here at the Villa Sturm. Below Rüdesheim, of course, is the Gorge of Lorelei and Rhine Maidens made even more famous by not just by Wagner but by Heinrich Heine’s lyrics. Thus it should be no surprise that Rhine wines easily accompany music and poetry, other cultural legacies in a place where Romans flourished and revived by the now vanished but greatly influential court of Charlemagne, who advocated literacy and the arts that followed when the light of civilization blazed again out of Europe.

Jacques Mann of Wunsch et Mann, Wettolsheim (Photo P. Hunt 2012))

Wettolsheim Vineyard, Alsace (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Wunsch et Mann Winery Door, Wettolsheim, Alsace (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Notes:

[1]  David Molyneux-Berry. Sotheby’s Guide to Classic Wines. New York: Ballantine Books, 1990, 144; Conseil Interprofessionnel des Vins d’Alsace, Colmar, 2011 (www.vinsalsace.com).

[2]  Hanneke M. Wirtjes in Jancis Robinson, ed. Oxford Companion to Wine, Oxford, 1994, 219. Einhard, 28.

[3]  Einhard, Life of Charlemagne 24

[4] Norman Cantor, ed. Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. New York: Penguin/Viking, 1999, 99-101, 110-11.

[5]  Wirtjes, 219.

[6]  ibid.

[7]  Hieronymus Bock. De stirpium commentariorum libri tres, Strassburg (Strasbourg), 1552. Note also his Neu Kreütter Buch von underscheydt, würckung und namen. Strassburg (Strasbourg), 1539; Brian W. Ogilvie. “The Many Books of Nature: Renaissance Naturalists and Information Overload.” Journal of the History of Ideas 64.1 (2003) 31-33.

[8]  Conseil Interprofessionnel des Vins d’Alsace, Colmar, 2011 (www.vinsalsace.com).

[9]  Ian Jamieson in Jancis Robinson ,ed. Oxford Companion to Wine, Oxford, 1994, 791-3.

[10]  Don and Petie Kladstrup. Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and France’s Greatest Treasure. Broadway/Coronet, 2001. I’ve also recommended this delightful book for my course HIST 177 “History of Wine” at Stanford, 2012.

[11]  Michael Broadbent. The New Great Vintage Wine Book. New York: Knopf/Christie’s, 280-9.

[12]  Deutscher Wein Statistik, German Wine Institute, 2008, Tables 3-4, pp. 7-8.

[13]  In New York, these Leitz wines can be obtained from  Michael Skurnik Wines, 575 Underhill Blvd., Suite 216, Syosset, NY 11791 ( Phone: 516-677-9300 ext. 508, Fax: 516-677-9301, Email: [Kevin Pike] kbpike@skurnikwines.com,  Website: www.skurnikwines.com)

[14]  Tom Stevenson. The New Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia. New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2001 ed., 186.

Taormina's coastline with Mt. Etna (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

by Patrick Hunt - 

When sailing wine dark seas is not an option, read Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s magical Il Professore e da Sirena to catch a glimmer of Sicily’s place in myth, preferably with a mesmerizing glass of Nero d’Avola looking south from Taormina to the curving bay of Giardino Naxos and Mt. Etna along the Ionian Coast where the haunting siren Lighea must still be heard in faraway conch soundings from the blue deep. According to Goethe in 1787 in his Italianische Reise, the best view in Italy – or the world for that matter – may be from the top row of Taormina’s Greco-Roman Theater cavea. But to enjoy the best view with a comparable bit of divine elixir, almost anywhere from the Grand Hotel Timeo will do. Taormina is named after the fourth century BCE Hellenistic Greek general Timoleon who reestablished Tauromenion (so-named because its high double peaks were thought to resemble bull horns).  Even the Corso Umberto, this picturesque town’s main pedestrian street with the lovely evening passagiato, has its restrained Baroque buildings along its east side entirely anchored by the arcade of an ancient Roman naumachia several thousand years old.

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's The Siren (Il Professore e da Sirena) (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

As a caveat for anyone doubting Homeric ken of Sicily, whoever this bardic not-so blind Homer was, enough mention of Sicilian contexts in the epic of the Odyssey should convince otherwise. Scylla and Charybdis were the horrible dangers of rocky cliffs and whirlpools on either side of the Strait of Messina where two seas meet; Polphemus the Cyclops, son of Poseidon blinded in his Mt. Etna cave by Odysseus and his men, threw out the Faraglione Rocks attempting to sink Greek ships (possibly the source of the myth phrase “blind rage”), to name but a few. Odysseus and his men overpowered the Cyclops by wine, and although it was a sweet and powerful wine like the wine of Sicily, it was unlikely to be so local. Homer describes the grapes of Cyclops’ land:

“winegrapes in clusters ripen in heaven’s rain…all good land, fertile for every crop in season, lush well-watered meads along the shore, vines in profusion…” [1]

Under privileged Roman status Pliny notes that the region of Tauromonium (Latin spelling) had excellent wines. [2] Wine stock from Tauromonium was even exported to Pompeii to be grown on Mt. Vesuvius.[3] In antiquity the fame of Sicilian wine was well known, sometimes for its sweetness, as in Messina’s Mamertino wine – praised by Strabo as rivaling the best Italian wines of his era [4] – and the wine of Morgantina also called Morgantina.

Sicilian wines, Chiaramonte Nero d'Avola 2009 and Santagostino Nero d'Avola-Syrah 2009 (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

The best combination of Sicilian food and wine I’ve ever tasted was also in Taormina. Osteria Nero d’Avola is the restaurant-cum-enoteca where this treasured culinary experience took place. The restaurant on Vico Spuches down from the Corso Umberto is owned by Chef Turi (Salvatore) Siligato, who is an integral advocate of Italy’s “Slow Food Movement”(although in reality Sicily never joined the fast food movement). Turi also a friend of the dynamic California natural food and wine pioneers, Alice Waters and Kermit Lynch. The wine came first before the meal with fresh crusty bread and local, highly savory virgin olive oil from the Peloritani Mountains to the north. Rarely does a wine light up every possible place in the mouth as much as this particular wine did. It was a 2009 Syrah bottled by Tasca Almerita from the production of the Prince of Camporeale’s Sallier de la Tour winery estate. Tasca Almerita is justifiably known one of the most demanding wine houses in Sicily for highest quality. This wine’s aroma was immediately both subtle and complex, like an old friend sharing many intimate memories. On the tongue and palate it seemed to be a softened vintage of many more years than it had, with a rich, accessible tannin. Its long finish was layered with many aftertastes, each giving way to another like archaeological strata, from cherry to chocolate and lastly vanilla. Its viscosity was revealed in legs rolling slowly all the way down the glass.

Turi Siligato’s sister Francesca, whom my family has known for years and whose brilliant jewelry boutique, Kiseki right on the Corso Umberto showcases some of the most elegant and creative work in the world, says her brother is a bit crazy for perfection and so passionate about food but only possible to understand his dedication after tasting his artistry firsthand. I believe in his vision after eating his incredible Tagiatelle con Fungi Porcini, Asparagi e Gamberi. The pasta was handmade, perfectly al dente, and the freshest porcini and asparagus were immaculately handpicked that morning. Turi told me the best time to pick both was early in the day and he also showed me from his digital camera at the Hosteria’s front desk a photo of the sea bass he had caught that morning that was being lovingly dismembered by the mouthful at another table. His pasta reminded me that when Greek colonists came by ship in the eighth century BCE they were astonished at how quickly wheat germinated in Sicilian earth compared to their rocky homeland. Semolima wheat pasta from Sicily is still the best in Italy due to the island’s broad geological combination of rich volcanic mafic soil from Mt. Etna mixed with great carbonate soil, both full of different nutrients, to create a natural pH balance. The pairing of the Syrah with the fresh pasta was unimpeachable and that was only one of many possible since the restaurant has an enoteca’s library of good wines. Due to stronger tannins and higher viscosity than many Italian wines, this wine can have a relatively long cellar life, up to 20 years if stored properly and if the bottle quality is assured with an affidavit of DOCG (Vino a Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita), more strict than mere DOC (Denominzione Origine Controllata).

Chef Turi Siligato at his Taormina Restaurant Hosteria Nero d'Avola (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Sallier de la Tour Syrah 2009 (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Other notable Sicilian wines tasted on many occasions in Sicily must include some of Barone Pietro Benevento del Bosco’s Siracusan wines. At a degustazione I shared a few years ago in his magnificent eighteenth century Palazzo Benevento on the Piazza Duomo of Ortygia (Siracusa), the baron offered some of his heady Nero d’Avola. This wine is named after the black wine of the town of Avola on Sicily’s southern tip near Siracusa, and its inkiness is more typical of a syrah. Barone Benevento del Bosco also shared his sweet golden Moscato di Siracusa 2007 with almond amaretti cookies. Passito and Moscato di Pantelleria are other lovely nectar-like golden dessert wines. Zibibbo is yet another sweet wine possibly brought and named by Arabs from the 10th century with a bit of citrus aroma. If one can take sweetness to the highest level, any of these wines could be paired with the famed Sicilian cassuto or cannoli, the former possibly with a marmalade jam. The Santagostino 2009 Nero d’Avola – Syrah blend I tasted in Siracusa was also a powerful, supple wine, so full of sunshine. Yet another good wine that I’ve tasted in different Sicilian degustazioni in Siracusa and also served in the Grand Timeo Hotel restaurant is the excellent Chiaramonte 2009 Nero d’Avola. Although the Chiaramontes themselves may not have survived to the present winemaking name, the old family presence is easily seen in their late medieval palazzi in both Siracusa’s old Ortygia and in Palermo’s Kalsa next to the Giardino Gardibaldi with its giant ficus trees. The Chiaramontes may have originally come from Clermont in Aragonese France in the thirteenth century, and who would blame the wine-loving French for coming to Sicily and staying? Nerello Mascalese is a red wine grape (used in the red wines Etna Rosso and Corvo) said to originate from Catania, whose name originally meant “Under Etna” (kat’ Etna) in Greek.  Most of the memorable wines I tasted in Sicily this past March-April (2012) were all 2009 so this must have been a great year.

Turi Siligato's Hosteria Nero d'Avola: Tagliatelle con Fungi Porcini, Asparagi e Gamberi (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Marsala is one of Sicily’s most known wines, named after the port of the same name. The original name of the port of Marsala in the northwest of Sicily is Marsah-el-Allah from Arabic when Sicily was under Islamic rule from the 9-10^th centuries.[5] The wine itself is a red wine mostly made from the Grillo grape but fortified with higher alcohol spirit and, if needed, a grape concentrate to make it a sweet red wine, although there are also dry (secco) varietals as well. Marsala has its birthplace in the far west of Sicily but only as recent as 1773 when it was blended for British tastes by its creator John Woodhouse.

Prince of Camporeale's Sollier de la Tour 2009 Syrah long wine legs (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Unlike the well-known Marsala, so many of Sicily’s superb wines are underappreciated or outsold by the more aggressive merchandising of super-Tuscans and others, but the Sicilians laugh off that perception by saying that means there’s more for them and that the true cognoscenti who know Sicily love Sicilian wine.  Sicily often produces more wine than any other Italian province. [6] Carricante is another Sicilian white wine grape from Etna, and has a citrus, lemony brightness. The varied lemons of Sicily can hardly be described, but they are likely the best in the world. Turi Siligato brought around a giant lemon to each table in his restaurant and sliced off a juicy lemon piece for each of his patrons. Not at all tart, this little bit of natural dolci was a palate freshener as well as sweet enough in itself to be a stand-alone. Better than Meyer Lemon in both texture and taste, pale pith and yellow lemon fruit could hardly be separated. This lemon reminded me of the ancient legends no one who had not been to Sicily believed true: that this place of unrivalled food prosperity was the Greek spring goddess Persephone’s island, as sophisticated Mary Taylor Simeti has said for decades. [7] Of course, it seems that centuries in Sicily hardly count in a land so ancient and magical. It must therefore not be a myth that the fragrance of Sicily is more lemon blossom than bergamot.

Maiolica Decorations in Taormina's Artists' Quarter (Photo P.Hunt 2012)

Beyond merely coupling Turi Siligato’s exceptional wine list and delectable table with Taormina’s history as a literary topos, where Goethe, Lampedusa, T.S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Tennessee Williams, Roald Dahl, D. H. Lawrence and 1955 Nobel Laureate Haldór Laxness wrote, possibly even the ancients Homer and Aeschylus along with many other poets and writers since, Taormina is also a town of of great maiolica decorations everywhere, especially in the artists’ quarter, and gardens and trees cascading down to the sea, groves pierced by cypress trees and scented with roses and pelargonium growing from rocks and colorful bougainvillea tumbling from walls. Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden’s infamous photographs even lured Oscar Wilde to Taormina’s magical seaside Isola Bella. Despite being the terminus for a century of celebrities and movie stars followed by cruise ships, Taormina somehow remains unspoiled by more touristic visitors ignorant of such longstanding acclaim. Long catering to such literati, connoisseurs and even royalty like Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1906 whose suite is the core for the luxurious Grand Hotel Timeo (part of the Oriental Express chain) Taormina’s wine and food certainly do it justice. Having been there more times than I can count in precious day after day for a dozen years, I’ll be in Taormina – back at the Grand Timeo I hope – every year I can looking out over the wine-dark Ionian Sea, the closest locus to Elysium I know on earth’s surface. This is where I can taste sunshine in the most poetic of Sicilian wines, knowing full well that Sicily can be the most seductive place on earth.

Ionian Sea from Grand Timeo, Taormina (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Notes:

[1]  Homer, Odyssey IX.119, 142-3 (Robert Fitzgerald translation).

[2]  Pliny Natural History XIV.6.8

[3]   J. J. Paterson in Jancis Robinson, ed. Oxford Companion to Wine, Oxford University Press, 1994, 876.

[4]  Strabo, Geography VI.3.102

[5]  Tom Stevenson. The New Sotheby’s Wine Encyclopedia,  3^rd ed., 2001, 341.

[6]  D. Thomases in Jancis Robinson, ed. Oxford Companion to Wine, Oxford University Press, 1994, 877.

[7] Mary Taylor Simeti. On Persephone’s Island: A Sicilian Journal. Random House, 1986.

Triumph of Death, ca. 1448, Palazzo Abatellis, Palermo (Photo in public domain)

By Patrick Hunt - 

Plague in the Middle Ages was a constant specter of death for much of the population for centuries, especially in the Mediterranean where ports were the point of entry for plagues in many kingdoms. Palermo in Sicily was no exception, one of the first places where the pandemic bubonic ‘Black Death’ of 1347-51 reached, possibly killing 50% or more of urban population, especially in Italy. [1] The ubiquity of death from plague was so pervasive that the theme of the Triumph of Death (Trionfo Nella Morte in Italian) was so well recognized in art that often no words or text were needed to accompany paintings or frescoes, as seen here in this anonymous work dated from around the late 1440’s. Nascent etiology of the origins and symptoms of bubonic plague can even be seen in this fascinating encaustic-like fresco now in the Palazzo Abatellis of Palermo, the regional medieval museum.

Measuring 5.9 x 6.4 meters in its dimensions, the painting of the Triumph of Death has been partly damaged in places from where it was originally placed in the Sclafani Palace, which had been rebuilt and transformed by the Aragonese king Alfonso into the ‘New Hospital’ that was itself later turned into barracks. [2] The wall painting was divided into four parts for removal from the Palazzo Sclafani and its quartered edges show signs of wear.

Although the debate over whether the so-called ‘Black Death’ was in fact bubonic plague – such as described by Procopius half a millennium earlier around 540 CE in his histories with details of “buboes” [3] – several clues in this painting provide evidence that the plague represented here was bubonic plague. The transmission of bubonic plague, the culprit now identified as the bacterium Yrsenia pestis, required several vectors including the ship-borne rat (Rattus rattus) and its fleas (Siphonaptera ssp.) in whose intestines the bacterium Yrsenia pestis multiplied. The source of the great particular plague between 1347-51 CE has been long established to derive from Central Asia with the Golden Horde in 1346, moving first into Constantinople before traveling across the Mediterranean in maritime traffic.

Map of Bubonic Plague - 'Black Death' 1347-51 (Photo courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica, 1994)

While no attribution to an artist has been found for this anonymous work, several possible likelihoods have been raised for the artist, generally named the Master of the Triumph of Death (Maestro del Trionfo della Morte), including the more well known Antonio Pisanello (c. 1395-1455) of Pisa and Rome and the lesser known Gaspare Pesaro (c. 1400-61) of Sicily, both of whom did work for Alfonso of Aragon somewhere after 1440 when the New Hospital was founded. [4]

This large wall-sized painting of the Triumph of Death can be divided into roughly six parts in its overall context of a large garden surrounded by a hedge. In the center (1) a skeletal Death himself invades, riding a pale, emaciated and skeletal horse whose ribs show. Death – with shreds of skin hanging off his ankle bones and a few other places – shoots arrows from a bow and also carries a mostly invisible scythe (its curved blade has snagged on the lower clothes of the man in central upper left). Nearly all of Death’s victims, past, recent or present, bear arrows sticking out of their bodies. At central upper left (2) is a man walking several dogs on taut leashes, the one of the left may be best described as a bloodhound and the dog on the right appears to be growling and barking at what has just ridden by (Death) and appears to be a hunting mastiff. As mentioned, Death’s scythe has just hooked the man’s clothes and one of his dogs may be aware – based on its keen sense of smell? – that its master is about to be mowed down.  At lower left (3) is a mysterious group. Some interpretations posit that this group is imploring Death to end their suffering, but the hypothesis suggested instead here in this article is that they are plague survivors: Death has ridden by and they have been left apparently visually unscathed with no arrows protruding from them. It is possible that plague completely swept by them. Several of these ‘survivors’ will be detailed shortly. Below the horse at lower center (4) is a group of Death’s victims, all clearly dead and grey in pallor. The range of people from all walks of life and from every level of wealth and their inability to be protected against plague death is striking here. This powerful group mostly comprises brocaded kings, popes, cardinals, prelates, priests and possibly even a Moslem if based on his turban.[5] Crowns, mitres, and even tonsured heads make it clear that earthly power or a clerical life are not enough to save from Death’s clutches because their collective flesh hue is all grey in death. At upper right (5) a group of musicians and a falconer gather around a spraying fountain. On one hand they seem oblivious of Death’s moving toward them but on the other hand if they understood its health perhaps the fountain might represent the hygienic nature of sanitation and clean water? At the bottom right of the painting in the advancing path of relentless Death (6) is a group of richly dressed nobles – seven women and three men – with the rich flesh tones of the living. Arrows have just struck a few of these young nobles and others are only becoming aware of danger as they look to the left or at the arrows having immediately landed. One member of this last group of ten is a musician holding a theorbo or lute as he looks apprehensive, almost cowering at the approach  of Death.ncluding the more well known Antonio Pisanello (c. 1395-1455) of Pisa and Rome and the lesser known Gaspare Pesaro (c. 1400-61) of Sicily, both of whom did work for Alfonso of Aragon somewhere after 1440 when the New Hospital was founded. [4]

Dead Prelates and Clerics (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Since the Triumph of Death painting is a full generation later than Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, whose literary context is a group of Florentine nobility who have fled Florence to the country for their ten-day sojourn to escape the scale of urban death as a frame for the stories related, this painting may even be a depiction meant to illustrate or reference the Decameron, especially given the circle of seven young noble women and three young men at the right of the painting as framed in Boccaccio’s collection of tales: “recounted in ten days by an honorable company of seven ladies and three young men in the time of the late mortal pestilence”. [6] Boccaccio (1313-75) lived through the Black Death of 1347-51 and was also highly aware of Palermitan wealth and power as he describes its prestigious trade in silk and pearl-laden citizens in his tales, most of whom like the citizens of Florence would be mowed down by plague if they were unable to escape in time to the healthier countryside. Although their lives did not overlap, both Pisanello and the earlier Boccaccio spent considerable time in Florence and while Boccaccio traveled to Palermo, Pisanello also had high favor in the court of Alfonso of Aragon, King of the Two Sicilies who governed from Naples and Palermo. Pisanello appears to have spent the rest of his life after 1448 in Naples and Palermo.

Ten Nobles in Death's Path (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Some important observations from details of the painting deserve mention in increasing relevance. First, in the living group of ‘survivors’ behind Death the artist has painted himself looking out directly at the viewer while holding a brush; left of him is his likely assistant or apprentice also looking out. Second, one elegantly dressed woman grimaces in a rictus of shock and fear at the arrow just having struck her while her companion on the right (further from Death’s advance) may be attempting to comfort her. Third, nearly all of Death’s arrows are protruding from the necks of the victims, which greatly favors the responsive lymphatic nature of bubonic plague where the body attempts – usually in futility – to fight off the assault on the immune system. Fourth, a close look at Death’s bow shows it to be a compound bow from the East, likewise his arrow sheath, suggesting a cognition that this form of death came from the Mongol Empire, commensurate with the plague of 1347-51 arriving with the Golden Horde from Central Asia where the Mongol Empire was then on the wane.[7]

Young Female Nobles, One Stricken, Two Watching (Photo in public domain)

Fifth, the group of what I have suggested are ‘survivors’ on the left also include several hermits, possibly surviving due to their remoteness from the congestion and unsanitary conditions of urban life – their isolation and low population density is the opposite of the wealthy and powerful court and cathedral rulers. Sixth and last, several of the women whom I have termed ‘survivors’ on the left – especially the woman on the far left – appear to be wearing what may be a Jewish prayer shawl (talit) with its white color and a few blue bands on its margins.  If ‘survivors’ of bubonic plague, did they survive because they were faithful to Levitical law (summarized in Leviticus 13), which mandates repeated examination, isolation and quarantine, burning of infect material, kosher lifestyle and other Jewish sanitary habits?  It was not infrequent that Jews were blamed and even burned alive for plague because the toll of death was less in their dense ghettoes. Thus this Palermitan painting shows a high awareness in its portrayal of some of the near-ubiquitous plague conditions and consequences in this exceptionally poignant work of art that may allude to the context of Boccaccio’s Decameron. Regardless, the work of art is a startling visual document of the medieval Triumph of Death.

Survivors in the Triumph of Death Painting (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Notes:

The author of this article has seen this painting at least a dozen times in as many years (most recently in April 2012), having also lectured on it multiple times.

[1]  Philip Daileader, True Citizens: Violence, Memory, and Identity in the Medieval Community of Perpignan, 1162-1397, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000; “The High Middle Ages” lecture,  The Teaching Company, 2007.

[2]  Ingrid Völser. The Theme of Death in Italian Art: The Triumph of Death. M.A. Thesis, McGill University, 96.

[3]  Procopius, History of the Vandal Wars, III.xiv.5-10

[4]  Volser, 97-98. Pisanello was also professionally known as Antonio di Puccio Pisano or Antonio di Puccio da Cereto.

[5]  This dead victim of plague may be literate, since he holds a document. One word of this document may read peccatu[m] as “sin” or “error” in Latin, but this is speculative. Due to the high number of clerics in the painting, who may have preached the cause of plague as sin, this perception would also be clearly in “error” to the medieval observers who saw they were just as vulnerable; as in much later Existentialist literature like Camus’ The Plague, their religious lives did not protect them.

[6] Boccaccio, Decameron, Proem. xiii

[7]  ibid., Decameron, First Day, Introduction, 8

Golden Fleece Medallion (Photo in public domain)

The Order of the Golden Fleece in late medieval Europe found its source in the old Greek myth – at least as old as Homeric lore – of the hero Jason’s search for the Golden Fleece. This magical ram fleece of pure gold itself recalled an earlier tradition – with a grain of historical truth – of collecting riverine placer gold washed down from Anatolian mountains by placing a thick wooly fleece at a point in a stream bearing gold where the nuggets or gold dust would be trapped in the curly wool.  The tale is best told in the third century BCE by Apollonius of Rhodes in his Argonautica in Alexandria. Another brief episode can be found in the poet Pindar’s Fourth Pythian Ode (circa 460 BCE). The most consistent location for the Golden Fleece in Greek myth was in Colchis. In the Greek myth, however, Jason needs either the magic of his lover-witch Medea or the aid of the goddess Athena to obtain the Golden Fleece, the golden ram skin hanging from a tree but guarded by a serpent or dragon.

One famous Greek vase in the Vatican apparently painted by the artist Douris in the fifth century BCE (circa 475 BCE) depicts a variant of the Greek myth not found in the literature, as seen in the illustration (Fig. 2). We have no other surviving literary or artistic examples of this ancient Greek telling of the myth where Jason dies or is regurgitated from the dragon and must be resurrected by Athena. On the right is the goddess Athena in her role as protectress of heroes. On the left is the giant serpent dragon with a possibly dead and seemingly wet Jason hanging from its mouth. In the left background behind the dragon is the small tree with the ram fleece also hanging in parallel symmetry to Jason.  Here it is the power of the goddess, with her spear planted in the chthonic earth, that both divides the scene between human and monstrous elements and the Olympian world of powerful deities who intercede on behalf of humans. In some way, this ancient myth of divine connection and the fleece as a symbol of both human endeavor – Jason in search of the magic fleece – and divine blessing mediated by the goddess of wisdom connects to the European order envisioned by its French founder, Duke Philip III the Good of Burgundy.

Jason, Athene and the Golden Fleece, attributed to Douris, circa 460 BCE, Vatican (Photo in public domain)

In 1430 the Duke of Burgundy, Philip III the Good, borrowed the tradition of the Golden Fleece from Greek myth. He and his high officers founded an order of knighthood based on the challenging precedent of obtaining such a golden fleece by heroic will aided by divine power. One of the events associated with the founding of the order was Philip’s wedding to the Princess of Portugal, the Infanta Isabella in the same year.

Emperor Joseph II (1741-90) court portrait detail, private collection (Photo P. Hunt 2011)

Starting in Bruges, Philip as grand master of the order instituted this noble order by naming 23 knights to its ranks, their primary prestige coming from first being able to prove impeccable noble ancestry and second from their oath to defend the faith [1] and furthering chivalric ideals and third from their to the Duke of Burgundy (which may have been after all the real purpose). The last goal also inevitably embroiled the knights in politics because while they were assumed more trustworthy if they were above bribery, the prestige associated with the order made the gamble of being deemed unworthy (corrupt based on ends justifying means) worthy of risk. It was not that knighthood was any less pragmatic than another great challenge as much as the candidates were assumed to be of the best breeding if one could satisfy all the conditions, most important of which was an unassailable, near endless genealogy of noble ancestry. It was also probably more important that the knights were the Duke’s team players than if their rosaries might be slightly tarnished or not quite as holy as expected. Although as mentioned the original number of knights was 23, it soon grew to 31 and was then fixed thereafter at 51 (currently about this number in 2012).

Order of the Golden Fleece, circa 16th c., Drents Museum, Netherlands

While Duke Philip founded the order in Bruges in Flanders, its first chapter was in Lille and within two years (1432) its original French administration moved permanently to Dijon, the ducal capital. Vicissitudes of war, territorial changes and family divisions within the various European realms – especially within the fragmentations of the so-called Holy Roman Empire and the absorption of duchy of Burgundy into the kingdom of France – ultimately witnessed the establishment of the Order of the Golden Fleece under the Hapsburgs first in Spain and then Austria. Descendants and newly minted knights have continued the order’s traditions, especially not allowing heretics, although even after the Reformation in the 16^th century, Protestants have not been represented in its ranks. The order is still active, however diminished, in Austria as well as other parts of Europe, mostly in remnant noble houses in France and Germany, although the order’s seat is Austria where the Hapsburgs mostly ruled. Although it is rare for modern member knights to come from outside the traditional aristocracy of long-standing families, a notable current exception has been French President Nicolas Sarkozy (as elected co-ruler of Andorra). On the other hand, as one of the few ruling monarchs in the world and from an old Hapsburg family, the Prince of Liechtenstein is one of the highest ranking living noble members of the order. The two surviving branches of the Order of the Golden Fleece are Spanish and Austrian.

The medallion of the order has changed over time from the Burgundian to Hapsburg branches but the visual image has always retained the pendant of the limp fleece held around its middle by a belt. The order’s insignia is generally made in gold – sometimes resplendent instead in diamonds – and often decorated with many colored gems and enamel, as in the Dresden Green Diamond. The Wittelsbach Family, with many members belonging to the Order of the Golden Fleece, and others like royalty could mount enormous sapphires or other stones as emblematic of their wealth and power.

Order of the Golden Fleece, Wittelsbach House (copy)

For cachet in the nineteenth century, the American New England-based clothiers Brooks Brothers adopted the embroidered insignia of the golden fleece as a small pendant only attached to the cloth and it still remains the company logo despite efforts of the surviving order to litigate against its borrowing by American non-nobility, although for a few years in recent past, the clothing line was owned by British holding company Marks & Spencer. Europeans usually wonder if Americans actually understand the matter of old pedigree associated with the Golden Fleece, especially when mass-produced as a logo.

Understanding the history of a late medieval order associated with the highest nobility can be tricky, especially in a modern country and culture where aristocracy is only a memory. Hapsburg Emperors like Joseph II (1741-90) are almost always shown in court paintings decorated with the Order of the Golden Fleece, in an above photo where the pendant insignia is shown over his red and white Austrian sash.

In old Heidelberg, along the Hauptstrasse by the University Square (Universität Platz), a little alehouse named ‘To The Golden Sheep’ (Zum Güldenen Schaf) is a reminder that even in a romantic diminution, the Golden Fleece lives on in the magical memory of myth.

Zum Güldenen Schaf, Heidelberg (Photo: P. Hunt 2012)

Eagle and Child Pub, St Giles, Oxford (photo P. Hunt, 2012)

By Patrick Hunt - 

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) had a long half century of association with Oxford, commencing as an Oxford university undergraduate and continuing in a three decade teaching fellowship from 1925-54 at Magdalen College, Oxford University. One of the most enduring, accessible relationships “Jack” Lewis – as he was known to his friends – enjoyed can still be found today in the popular venue he shared at the now famous pub Eagle and Child on St. Giles Street.  The “Inklings” were a group of literary friends who met to read and discuss their works by the fire with a pint or more of beer. J.R.R. Tolkien, who greatly influenced Lewis’ broadly ecumenical Christianity, was arguably the most famous of the Inklings along with Lewis. The Inklings included Charles Williams and Owen Barfield, among others.

As early as 1929 the Inklings gathered in and around Oxford and, in the growing shadows of war, 1939 appears as the year when the Inklings most frequently met at Eagle and Child. The ominous war clouds over continental Europe, including rumors of the Nazi Holocaust and the invasion of  Poland even made their way into their fictional works as glimmerings of the universal battles between forces of good and evil like those in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings epics and against Queen Jadis of Charn in Lewis’ Narnia, although Tolkien had personally experienced World War I in the trenches and thought it was just as painful as World War II. Their correspondence between the Inklings reflects men deeply anxious about their times, as were all thinking people, but with a perception that the world was up against something greater or worse than mere fallen humanity.

Magdalen College, Oxford (Photo P.Hunt 2012)

Tolkien often mentions Lewis in his letters to his son Christopher and corresponded with Lewis as well on quite a few occasions. The Inklings felt some literary responsible for one another as critics and while never nasty, they could be hypercritical.  In one of Tolkien’s letters of 1948 to Lewis after Lewis complained of being “pained” by his subtle criticism of one of his works, possibly his English Literature in the Seventeenth Century in the Oxford History of English Literature Series (OHEL), Tolkien wrote to Lewis:

“But I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge. (It is an Inkling’s duty to be bored willingly. It is his privilege to be a borer on occasion). I sometimes conceive and write other things than verses or romance! And I may come back at you.”

The Eagle and Child, often affectionately abbreviated in Oxford to Bird and Babe, had its Rabbit Room with its warm fire and a general congeniality between these collegial literary friends who could nonetheless be prickly at times given their academic reputations. The wooden alcove where they met, read, drank and discussed is mostly preserved, and before an addition was made to the back of the pub to extend it further in the 1950′s, its intimacy gave the Inklings considerable privacy.

Inklings' Rabbit Room, Eagle and Child Pub (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

Although their contributions to the Oxford academic community, including teaching and tutorial responsibilities, and continuing solid scholarship in medieval literary epics took precedence in their time commitments, they always found time to devote to creative enterprises in verse writing and fiction, the latter arguably for what both Lewis and Tolkien became most famous in Middle Earth and Narnia fables that are compendia of mythology, saga, medieval craft and intelligences other than human and animal. Tolkien said the general rubric in which his tales best fit was the genre of legendarium.

Broad Street Oxford (Photo P. Hunt (2012)

The Oxford the Inklings knew best beyond their own quarters, academic lecture halls and meeting places included Broad Street with the Sheldonian Theater and Blackwells Bookshops as well as the different parish churches like Holy Trinity Church in nearby Headington Quarry where  Lewis, an Anglican, and St. Anthony of Padua Church in Headington where Tolkien, a Catholic, privately worshipped. As a sort of reminder to be religiously civil (Lewis once waspishly quipped that he was not usually fond of Papists and philologists although Tolkien was both), ever-visible in the middle of the old cobblestones of Broad Street is the yet unpaved stone cross where Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, Anglican bishops, and Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer were burned at the stake for heresy as Anglican bishops under “Bloody” Queen Mary in 1555-56. Fortunately, the Inklings’ good sense and recognition of rare literary genius made their stamp on each other’s work. If both wise and foolish animals talk in both Tolkien and Lewis,  it’s only a short walk to Christchurch College where hardly a full generation before them Charles Dodgson wrote as Lewis Carroll and smaller beasts converse over tea instead of a pint of good ale at Eagle and Child.

While Lewis finally accepted a professorship at Cambridge in the 1950′s where his scholarship was fully rewarded - as Cynthia Havens notes, he remained in his Headington house, The Kilns, outside Oxford – his longer  academic presence at Oxford University is rightly celebrated. Even the pub sign of Eagle and Child, a pub in the St Giles neighborhood since 1650, had mythological associations not lost on Lewis and Tolkien. The Greek myths of Zeus have a famous tale where Zeus in his eagle guise carries off the child Ganymede, one often painted in art, e.g., Rembrandt’s version. Regardless whether this pub sign has a Classical evocation, eagles have benevolent roles in both Lewis and Tolkien. Eagles often carry humans to safety, as in the Great Eagles carrying hobbits to safety from Mordor in Tolkien, or eagles also fighting on the side of good in Lewis’ Narnian Battle of Beruna. C.S. Lewis’ great talking eagle is wisely named Farsight, an attribute of Lewis himself who took the long view of history. Those who know history can better understand the past, thus are more realistic about the present, and can even be prescient about times to come because past and present lead to the future. Lewis, like Tolkien believed mythology to be a deeper and perhaps a divine echo of truth.

Eagle and Child Pub Sign (Photo P. Hunt 2012)

]]> http://www.electrummagazine.com/2012/03/c-s-lewis-and-oxford/feed/ 3 http://www.electrummagazine.com/2012/03/the-great-zimbabwe/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-great-zimbabwe http://www.electrummagazine.com/2012/03/the-great-zimbabwe/#comments Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:34:49 +0000 patrick http://www.electrummagazine.com/?p=372

Great Zimbabwe's Great Enclosure (photo in public domain)

By Patrick Hunt - 

The Great Zimbabwe ruins in Zimbabwe form what is probably the greatest African monument ever, impressive in the high granite walls of the Great Enclosure towering up to 36 feet high and length of walls extending over 820 feet. This site’s importance is such that the country is named after it, a rare accomplishment that an archaeological ruin can lend its name to a modern state. The Great Zimbabwe’s primary structure, the Great Enclosure is certainly the largest manmade edifice south of Saharan / Egyptian cultures.

Originally built between 1050 and 1450 CE, at the same time as Medieval cathedrals began to rise in Europe, it was once the proud capital of an African Bantu-related people who were great cattle herders, and its granite blocks took advantage of the stone’s fracturing into flat blocks that required no mortar or other internal reinforcement. The name Zimbabwe is originally a Shona name, derived mostly from the word dzimba for “house” and mabwe for “stones”.

While it took centuries for Eurocentric cultures to acknowledge it was the work of indigenous Africans – some associating the Great Zimbabwe with the likely Semitic but still legendary Queen of Sheba and King Solomon’s Mines; others with earlier Phoenician colonization – no credible source today argues against its African construction and site history. An advocate of Semitic (Phoenician or Arab) construction of the Great Zimbabwe was J. Theodore Bent, one of whose sponsors was Cecil Rhodes, and who wrote about the Great Zimbabwe in The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1891). Karl Mauch, also late 19th century, favored the Queen of Sheba and Phoenician stone working. The Shona speaking people themselves migrated into the region several centuries prior to the Great Zimbabwe, possibly earlier. The previous country of Rhodesia severely restricted any public acknowledgments of African origins under Ian Smith and others, falsifying the archaeological record; some mid-20th century Rhodesian archaeologists – whites or not – did not toe the line on censoring what the evidence was increasingly verifying and thus lost their jobs as racist politics trumped archaeology. Between 1905-29 both Gertrude Caton-Thompson and David Randall-MacIver firmly held to Bantu-African construction, in the 1960′s onward, however, Peter Garlake, Roger Summers and Paul Sinclair were all censored or removed from archaeological and museum posts for advocating Africans as the builders of the Great Zimbabwe.

While gold mining in the area reaches back at east a thousand years, a natural geological phenomenon associating plutonic gold with granite batholiths, goldworking and trade in this precious metal trade do not necessarily explain the construction of the Great Enclosure, although iron mining began in this same valley as early as the 4th century CE and may have contributed to the ultimate centralization of the local population here. Thought by many to be the primary living space of the elites who ruled the region, the Great Enclosure was only one of many granite stone structures here in this valley.

Great Zimbabwe Map (photo courtesy of Heilbrunn Timeline of Art, Metropolitan Museum, New York)

If gold mining in the region is synchronous with the site, some of the Great Enclosure’s purposes may also have been to smelt and protect stockpiles of royal gold, as David Koeller and others assert. Otherwise the granite walls offered almost complete protection from external forces, so they may also have functioned as defensive barriers.

The rich mineral geology of Zimbabwe includes gold and iron extracted for at least a millennium by locals, who historically had both the technology and trade network for utilizing these natural resources without any outside assistance. As found distributed worldwide, auriferous (“gold-bearing”) geological connections to contact metamorphism is abundant in Zimbabwe where the granite plutons and batholiths are adjacent to serpentine formations. Like California’s Sierra Nevada granites and foothill serpentines (Serpentine is even the California state rock because of its associations with the mid-19th century Gold Rush) and elsewhere, Zimbabwe is rich in serpentine with many iron-rich varieties, also near gold mining regions. Zimbabwe’s serpentine is coveted today for modern Shona sculpture. Zimbabwe’s Great Dyke of abundant serpentine formations include those at Mvurwi, Nyanga, Chiweshi, Domboshawa and Kwekwe, among others. So the Great Zimbabwe ruins may be long connected to historical mineral extraction. Some soapstone and serpentine sculptures also functioned at the Great Zimbabwe in strategic wall placements that possibly had totemic value. For example, the most notable stone sculptures from the site are the “Eight Zimbabwe Birds” carved from local micaceous schist.

Bird's Eye Overhead View of the Great Enclosure (Photo courtesy of David Koeller)

The elliptical structure of the Great Enclosure has a rough diameter of almost 300 feet at its widest, its walls being almost 20 feet thick in places, tapering gently upwards for stability. There are technically two walls and the Great Enclosure also has a conical tower reaching 30 feet high and 18 feet in diameter. Internally the structure may have also had more temporary construction such as wood and mud, and the area around the ruins could have sustained up to 18,000 to 20,000 people with additional animal grazing land and streams surrounding the stone ruins. The other two primary groups of ruins of the Great Zimbabwe site are simply called the Valley Ruins Complex and the Hill Complex, stretching almost 20 acres across the landscape. The great size and complexity of the engineering of quarrying, moving and placing the stone staggered the imaginations of European visitors, at first mostly Portuguese explorers, since the 16th century. Unable to credit Africans for the monumentality of the Great Zimbabwe, many Europeans limited its technology and superb architectural accomplishments for political reasons, much in the same way that Spanish conquistadors denigrated Mesoamericans as being barbarians and even without souls – as the Spanish apologist Sepulveda wrote in the 16th century – so their economic and mineral exploitation could be more easily accomplished without accountability.

Modern Zimbabwe, symbolically adopting iconic images of the site and even the Zimbabwe stone birds seen on the national flag, is rightly proud of the Great Zimbabwe and its extensive ruins that show indigenous African architecture and a complex society capable of a dynamic technology and trade reaching great distances across Africa as early as a millennium ago.

Renaissance Faun Fountain of Verona Marble, Filoli Gardens, California (Photo P. Hunt 2011)

One of the most important marbles of Italy has almost become synonymous with the splendor of Venice, indeed this marble has itself traveled further than the outposts of Venice’s extensive empire. Such is the lure of Verona Marble. While it can be found in the most important contexts of Venice – prominently displayed, for example, in St. Mark’s Cathedral – it can also be found as far away from Italy as California, seen above in the Gardens of Filoli near Woodside, where it graces a weathered Renaissance fountain with faun heads from which water once spouted in double sprays either sides of the fauns’ mouths.

Rosso di Verona Marble (photo in public domain)

The city of Verona itself deserves far greater attention as one of Italy’s most beautiful cities.  Situated in the Padana- the Po River Valley – from Celtic times onward centuries before Rome conquered the region, Verona became an important east, west, north, south junction between Lombardy and the Alps through the Brenner Pass connecting Italy to Austria along the Adige River Valley. Not only was Verona eventually an important Roman city with great monuments like its splendid amphitheater – the venue for one of the world’s most important summer outdoor lyric opera series – and a vital Ostrogoth metropolis in the sixth century AD/CE when Rome was mostly in ruin, but later through its benevolent ruler Cangrande I, Verona also provided Dante a safe harbor during his permanent exile from Florence between 1312-18. Verona’s medieval bridges are also engineering feats, like the Ponte Scaligero finished in 1356, at the time the medieval world’s greatest double arched bridge at 49 meters.

Verona. The Protiro Porch of the Cathedral, William Wicke Wilkiins, R.A. 19th c.

Most literary people remember Verona because Shakespeare immortalized it as the city of the Montagues and Capulets in Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps the bloody feuds between the Montagues and Capulets symbolically figure in the reddish marble patterns of Verona marble and a sophisticated Shakespeare would have known this marble color through his contacts with Tudor stately homes where it graced expensive pavements. When Shakespeare describes blood spreading on Verona’s pavements, its spattered marble hue is already an apropos foreshadowing. As Act III, Scene I warns, “For now, these hot days, the mad blood is stirring.” In Scene V, Romeo mourns that his “reputation is stained” by Mercutio’s death and after Tybalt’s like fall, Lady Capulet also cries out, “O, the blood is spilt”. All this illicit dueling is summed up by the Prince of Verona as a “bloody fray.” Looking at Verona Marble in this Shakespearian context may be a deliberate poetic figure apropos for a dramatically colored stone.

Griffin of Verona Marble, Verona Cathedral (Photo public domain)

British Victorian artist and critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) praised Verona as his favorite city in Italy; his correspondence with friends frequently admonished them that if they only visited Florence and Siena in Tuscany and Venice in the Adriatic without seeing Verona that they were greatly losing out. Ruskin was enough of an arbiter of 19th century British aesthetic taste that there is even an Oxford University art school named after him. Ruskin’s meticulous watercolors of the sculpted griffins and lions of Verona Cathedral show some of the pride of Verona over its distinctive reddish marble. Ruskin’s superb watercolor collection in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, which this author tries to view every year, rival those of the German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.

John Ruskin, Verona Marble Griffin, Verona Cathedral Porch (Courtesy of Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

Geologically, Verona Marble – often called Rosso di Verona – should technically be considered a limestone because it is usually found as a sedimentary to low-grade metamorphic stone. Its distinctive color patterns range from creamy white to beige in its lesser grades and in its highest grade (most expensive), its orange nodules are set within a reddish matrix. Verona Marble is also geologically similar to other local breccias or conglomerate rocks in northern Italy. As this rock formed in the Jurassic,  lighter-hued fragments floated in solidifying darker muds. Sometimes Verona Marble even mixes veins of white between the orange and red nodules, seen in Jacopo Bassano’s (1510-92) unique Adoration of the Magi painted on a dish of dramatic Verona Marble layered over slate, circa 1565 and now in the Loyola University of Chicago Collection. Its range of hues still make it dramatic and expensive to import abroad, and in original contexts like the Cathedral of Verona, Verona marble is the perfect medium for the breathtaking lions and griffins of the protiro porch where the backs of the guardian griffins and lions support spiraled Byzantine style columns from their backs. Verona Marble’s legacy is a rich one, making it a marble of choice not only in Italy but also wherever highly-colored marble has been prized.

Jacopo Bassano, Magi Adoration, 1565 (Photo courtesy of Loyola University, Chicago)

Renaissance Verona Marble Faun Fountain at Filoli Gardens, California (Photo: P Hunt, 2011)

Vesuvius Vineyard of Cantina del Vesuvio (Photo: P. Hunt, 2011)

By Patrick Hunt -

On the southern flanks of Mt. Vesuvius in Campania south of Naples, here seen above the farming village of Trecase, winemakers like Maurizio Rosso continue traditions that are several thousand years old. No doubt the fertility of Campania is assured by the rich volcanic soil of Vesuvius, and everywhere on the ground one can see bits of volcanic rock scattered along the topsoil between the rows of vines. One of these famous wines noted in Campania for centuries is the Lacryma Christi (“Tears of Christ”).

Cantina del Vesuvio Lacryma Christi del Vesuvio Rosso (Photo P. Hunt 2011)

More ancient varietals are also grown in this volcanic region of Campania, with names like Massico and Falernio that recall at least the praise of the Roman poet Horace whose odes often regale such viticultural standouts. In June 2011, the author went to Cantina Vesuvio in Trecase for a degustazione and lunch. Among the wines tasted from this 11 hectare vineyard were reds Aglianico and Lacryma Christi, and the white Greco di Tufo. While at least 20 different varietals are grown in Campania, the Cantina’s fabulous Lacryma Christi is 80% Piedirosso and 20% Aglianico varietals. Maurizio Rosso’s Lacryma Christi Rosso DOC ( Dominazione di Origine Controllata) delivers immediate full bodied taste and shows long legs down the side of the glass, demonstrating high viscosity. The deep ruby color of the Lacryma Christi makes it almost opaque. The Cantina del Vesuvio is in the National Park of Vesuvius covering thousands of hectares surrounding the volcano. The Rosso family has been making wine for the last century in this rich Vesuvian soil, bringing a considerable bulk of the wine to Naples for generations, including by horse cart even up to 1948 when postwar petrol shortages were still common in rural Italy.

The winery lunch under the olive trees at the edge of the vines also included a zesty pasta pomodoro with basilico and local Campanian salzichi. Local breads were also liberally doused with their home pressed cantinas extra virgin olive oil. If any food can taste better outside in the fresh breeze off the Bay of Naples and the sweet odor of an olive orchard surrounded by vines, this delicious lunch at Cantina del Vesuvio would be hard to top given all the fresh quality ingredients and ambience of these vineyard slopes.

Cantina del Vesuvio Pasta Pomodoro with fresh tomatoes and basil (Photo P. Hunt 2011)

We walked through the vine rows, which were trellised much like their Roman ancestors were – as seen in wall paintings from Pompeii – nearly two thousand years ago on that fateful day in late August 79 AD/CE when Vesuvius exploded. The Monte Somma cone of the original Roman period Vesuvius stratovolcano was apparently higher than the present double cone that reaches 4,200 ft elevation (1281 meters).  Subsequent eruptions have continued repeatedly in the last 500 years, with especially frequent episodes in the 18th century as seen in paintings by the likes of Pietro Fabris from 1767 and Pietro Antoniani onward to Giovanni Lusieri in 1787 and 1794 and Xavier Gatta in 1794. The Antoniani painting ca. 1774, seen below, shows the direction of the lava flow southerly toward the commune of Trecase where Cantina del Vesuvio is now located high above the town. Although this list of recent historic eruptions is far from complete, Vesuvius blew again in 1834 and the last major eruptions of Vesuvius were in 1906 and again in 1944. Sir William Hamilton, the British diplomat to the Bourbon Court as Minister Plenipotentiary of King George III, and immortalized in fact and fiction as “The Volcano Lover” also roamed these slopes for volcanic lava and scoria samples for his geological collection just as he also scoured Pompeii for antiquities while his infamous wife Lady Emma Hamilton did more than merely entertain Lord Nelson. Trecase is only a few miles northwest of Pompeii and right next to Trecase was a famous Augustan period Roman villa now known as Boscotrecase, extremely rich in Roman paintings and artifacts – many now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York – after excavation from the Vesuvian destruction of 79 AD/CE, a sumptuous villa originally owned by Marcus Agrippa, general, engineer, friend and son-in-law of the emperor Augustus and married to his daughter Julia, who herself oversaw much of the finest Roman wall painting in Boscotrecase that is among the best in the Roman world for Third Style from imperial artists. Marcus Agrippa must have chosen this region for his villa due to its great vistas and its lush volcanic fertility.

Pietro Antoniani, The Bay of Naples with the eruption of Vesuvius seen from the Riviera di Chiaia, ca. 1774 (photo in public domain)

Today the Trecase trellised vines tower overhead as they climb the lower slopes of Vesuvius, their tendrils almost appearing to grow before one’s eyes because of the often refreshed volcanic mafic minerals. The local Vesuvian soil around Trecase is made up of fragmented lavas, scoria, ash and  pumice. Its mineral content is low in silica but high in potassium and high in feldspathoids. Cantina del Vesuvio is on the upper reaches of Trecase in the foothills of the volcano above 500 ft. elevation and some of the vines are even higher. Clouds often cover the heights of Vesuvius because of its elevation, fostering agricultural plenty by orographic precipitation where dew point in condensation is reached here first rather than in the much hotter Naples plain below, so it has the best of all possible worlds to satisfy that old Roman epithet that Pliny described as Campania Felix, or “Happy Campania.” . The undergrowth here would be overly lush if vine growers didn’t constantly work to keep the soil bare except for the vines, preserving the nutrients for the vines instead of other vegetation, although the soil seems sufficient to share fertility with whatever plants might root here. Most of the vine rows this author examined were up to 20 to 30 years in age, although the family still maintains older vines that continue to produce good fruit quality each year.

Rosso Family Horse carts delivering wine barrels to Naples in 1948 (Photo courtesy of Maurizio Rosso 2011))

Maurizio Rosso culls most of the grapes to the lower vine branches in order to maximize fruit concentration. Thus his wines are opulent and deliver full taste even after two years in the bottle. The longevity of the wines is also likely for up to ten years because of concentrated tannins assuming good storage in cool cellars. Rosso’s vision for Vesuvian wines promises a long legacy, not only for his family but for the other Trecase growers. If other local viticoltori are as sensitive to the ecology and the land use needs as he is, the future of Vesuvian wine has still yet to reach its great promise as well as the past renown of its long Roman ancestry. Cantina del Vesuvio is high enough on the mountain to see the island of Capri across the shining bay in one direction southward and northward to the cloud-shaded cone of the modern summit of Vesuvius itself less than a mile away. But like Nietzshe who ironically warned against the folly of building houses on Vesuvius (but stated satirically, “Go ahead, build your houses on Vesuvius”), Maurizio Rosso agrees that Vesuvius is even better for great wine than great views.

Maurizio Rosso, viticoltore / owner of Cantina del Vesuvio (Photo P. Hunt 2011)

Mosaic vault from the Roger Rooms of the Norman Palace, 12th c. (Photo in public domain)

By Patrick Hunt - 

In the Palazzo Normanni of Palermo, the uniquely famous gold background mosaics of the Salle di Roger were designed by artists who either consciously or unconsciously evoked Sassanian Persian motifs that were also known from earlier Byzantine and imported silks. The Sassanian Empire (224-651 AD) followed the Parthian Empire in controlling much of Mesopotamia and ancient Persia, vigorous enough to more than stave off Roman domination. Several Roman emperors met defeats at the hands of Sassanians, including Valerian, Gordian III, and Philip the Arab by Shapur I in the 3rd century AD. The Sassanians had their capital at Ctesiphon in present day Iraq. The first Sassanian king Ardashir (224-241) set the course for Sassanian independence for the next 400 years, effectively melding Mesopotamian and Persian elements and controlling the central Silk Road routes.

Silk Shroud fragment of St. Sernin of Toulouse, 12th c. from Andaluz (Moorish Spain), Cluny Museum, Paris (photo in public domain

Sassanian monopoly on silk mobility to the West stymied Byzantine efforts to acquire silk at reasonable costs and it wasn’t until near the end of the Sassanian Empire, around 563 AD, that Justinian in Constantinople was able to surreptitiously begin a Byzantine silk industry. The Sassanian empire ended with the Arab invasions in the middle 7th century that brought Islam to the region ending Persian rule. Famous for their textiles and especially their silk designs, which were distinct even while incorporating Sogdian and Bactrian patterns. These patterns have rondels often surrounded by pearls and dual animals facing each other in symmetry. In 11th century Sicily the Rogerian Dynasty, after conquering the Moslem caliphate, established one of the most benevolent and religiously tolerant partnerships ever seen before and after allowing for a modicum of Moslem self government, including the office of sheriff (sharif) and mudrasas. Jewish officials were also part of the administration and they did not serve only the considerable Jewish population, but also the full Sicilian government. Thus both Moslem and Jewish elements served alongside Latin Norman Christian officers in the Sicilian court. Trilingual inscriptions in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew adorned Palermo. Roger II (1095-1154) even brought the renowned Arab geographer and scholar al-Idrisi from Andaluz (Moorish Spain), who compiled several encyclopedias for the Sicilian court. This wise and tolerant regime in Palermo alienated only the intolerant for several generations. The brilliant Norman king of Sicily, Frederick II (1194-1250), last great Rogerian ruler and Holy Roman Emperor also known as the wonder of the world, Stupor Mundi, usually ran afoul of the Church for his refusal to expel Muslims and Jews from his cosmopolitan court.

Sassanian Textile from 6-8th c. CE (Poto courtesy of Julianna Lees)

Roger II King of Sicily (1095-1154) (Image in public domain)

Medieval silk vestments and even shrouds often displayed Sassanid motifs even when loomed and embroidered long after the Sassanid Empire. For example, the silk shroud of St. Sernin of Toulouse, 12th century from Al Andaluz (Moorish Spain), and now in the Cluny Museum in Paris, represents two Sassanian peacocks facing each other across a Tree of Life. Other examples include the Reliquary of St. Len at the Victorian Albert in London as well as other silk and textile fragments whose motif and style were borrowed from Sassanian art long after its own floruit was forgotten or possibly never really k own in the West. That Al Andaluz, Moorish Spain, would preserve some of this imagery is no surprise given the Alhambra and other Moorish mudejarelements still preserved in Cordoba and elsewhere that earlier came across North Africa from further East. Architecturally, Islamic architects also helped to create some of the first churches, like San Giovanni Degli Eremiti in the 11th-12th century with conversions of fours sided towers to eight sided pendentives to domes, also seen in San Giovanni Degli Lebbrosi as well as the La Zisi Palace. Elsewhere Islamic influences can be seen in Palermo’s Cathedral, especially its apse and Monreale Cathedral with its apse and mave. The Norman Palace in Palermo also shows Islamic architectural influence, especially in its arcades and the royal suites of the kings. Equally inclusive the churches of Sicily, especially in Palermo, also employed Greek mosaicists to render many gold tessera backgrounds as would be seen in Byzantine churches.

Sassanian style Mosaic from Salle Roger II / William II, Norman Palace (photo in public domain))

In the Norman Palace rooms of Roger II and William II, the Arabic arched vaults contain Sassanian influenced mosaics in multiple tiers. All of the mosaics are gold backed and gleam with beautiful reflected light. One upper tier contains lemon trees and Saggitarius-like centaur archers facing each other with a date palm tree in between them. A lower tier, moving inward, again has lemon trees, peacocks, date palm trees, and finally at center, two leopards face each other under a tree laden with oranges. Yet another tier has archers on the outside but moving in, date palm trees and great horned stags facing each other with a central lemon tree. In its Arab arched vaults, a last tier has two peacocks facing each other as they feed from a central date palm tree. Seeing the citrus trees visually, would remind viewers of fragrant lemon groves spreading over the valley just south of the palace.

Islamic Architecturally-infuenved Norman Palace, Palermo

All these mosaics were designed with Sassanian animals and created by Byzantine, Greek, and Norman Latin skilled artists. In this way, the best of the different medieval cultures here in Sicily – Norman, Greek, and Near Eastern – embellished the Rogerian Dynasty spaces in the most cosmopolitan style of Sassanian animal symmetry. These beautiful mosaics backed in gold tesserae at the Norman Palace are the perfect expression of the hybridized art that drew from all over the world in that brief period of enlightened and tolerant Sicilian Norman kings, the likes of whom have not been seen again.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel, c. 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Photo in public domain)

By Patrick Hunt - 

Most readers of history will recall how the mighty juggernaut Assyria finally fell at the hands of the rebel Babylonians and how Nineveh was sacked in 612 BCE at the able hands of Nabopolassar, Babylon’s new warlord king. Fewer readers know he rebuilt temples in his spare time after carefully studying plans and foundations, examining records in his archives and surveying ancient sites. Whether it was for religious motivation or intellectual curiosity, he was clearly careful in studying the Mesopotamian past.

The reversal of fortune for the Assyrians was long in coming after they had conquered a huge swath across much of the Near East from eastern Iraq to the Mediterranean and even Egypt for centuries, from the mountains of Anatolian Urartu to the Persian Gulf through desert waste and farmland alike. Having laid waste to fortress city after city and enslaving untold thousands in their path, the Assyrians were as much hated as feared, their self-styled kings of kings often celebrating their heavy-bearded macho with cruelty to their humiliated captives, like brutal Ashur-Nasirpal II (ruling 883-859 BCE) boasting of “cutting off lips, noses, ears of rebels” and elsewhere of putting out the eyes of royal children in front of their parents and dragging the kings and queens away with bronze hooks in their tongues.  The little book of Nahum in the Hebrew Minor Prophets sings a false lament with relief about Nineveh’s fall: “Woe to the city of blood, full of plunder, never without victims, the crack of whips, piles of dead… Nineveh in ruins, who will mourn for her?” (Nahum 3:1-7 excerpted).

While this Assyrian hegemony was now finishing its second surge as Neo-Assyria, just as Old Babylon of the Middle Bronze Age under such legendary rulers as the law-giver Hammurabi (ruling ca. 1792-50 BCE) had long passed and was now to become Chaldean Neo-Babylon in its rebirth, the upstart Babylonian leader Nabopolassar laid siege to Nineveh in 612 BCE when Assyrian power was waning, when the plundering had stopped and there was nothing left to fill their coffers. Perhaps an economy based on vassalage tribute, plunder and loot had been artificially engorged and was collapsing on itself. In any case, Nabopolassar did what no one else had done before – marched on the proud capital city and took it, burning its timber roofs to ash and charcoal and ironically firing its clay archives so that the event of its destruction also preserved its records, as the 30,000 clay tablet Royal Assyrian Library at the British Museum shows.

The above ca. 1563 painting of Bruegel, while not at all about Nabopolassar or even necessarily Neo-Babylon, imaginatively portrays the mythical Tower of Babel being built on the Plain of Shinar near where Babylon (derived from the Septuagint Greek version of Bab-El in Gen. 11). As an extrapolation of the Colosseum actually observed in Rome by the artist on his travel stay in Rome in 1552-53, Bruegel has its construction employing Renaissance tools and wheeled mechanisms around the cylindrical arcaded levels resembling the Roman landmark.

The U.C. Berkeley Nineveh excavations under Prof. David Stronach in 1987-90 found plenty of evidence for Nabopolassar’s siege at Nineveh’s southeastern Halzi Gate as well as at the northern Adad Gate, where carbonized material and some of the dozen skeleta of defenders were excavated exactly as they had fallen with scattered bronze and iron arrow points in places from the battle. [1]

After consolidating his liberated Babylon, Nabopolassar set about rebuilding sacred precincts and temples of his patron gods, especially Marduk and Nabu. The best record of his rebuilding is found in a small but highly legible clay cylinder in Emory University’s Carlos Museum now known as the Nabopolassar Cylinder, 9.8 cm in length and with three columns and 102 lines of writing, technically described as a foundation inscription because it was placed in a traditional context of a restored temple foundation. [2]

Nabopolassar Cylinder, ca 600 BCE, Emory University Museum (Photo in public domain)

Here are the pertinent lines that best describe his “archaeological” work:

“When I was young, although the son of a nobody, I constantly sought out the temples of Nabu and Marduk, my patrons…shrines, walls and temples… which had weakened and collapsed because of age; whose walls had been taken away because of rain and deluge; whose foundations had heaped up and accumulated into a mound of ruins—I mustered Enlil’s, Shamash, and Marduk’s troops. I had them use the hoe and imposed the basket of conscription on them. From the bank of the Arhtu canal, on the lower side near the Urash gate, I removed its accumulated debris, surveyed and examined its old foundations, and laid its brickwork in the original place. I established its base on the edge of the underworld. I surrounded the east bank with a mighty mountainous belt….I Nabopolassar, the one who discovers (inscribed) bricks from the past, the one who implements the work on the original, eternal foundations, the one who wields the hoe of the Igigi.”  [3]

In unusual humility for a king, several times on the cylinder Nabopolassar has his scribes mention he was a nobody and anonymous before the gods raised him to leadership. In return, his devotion also restored the civic pride of Babylon. The restored and rebuilt temples, sacred enclosures and shrines in his inscription include those of Ishtar, Ninurta, Enlil, Ea and others. The Igigi were Babylonian heavenly deities thought to be mostly involved in supervising the digging canals, moats and related hydrology irrigation functions. Sometimes rebellious, as in the Atra-Hasis flood myth, they may number from 10-300.

The universal archaeological tasks involved in Nabopolassar’s inventory are carefully ordered. First, he details the fallen condition: 1) “which had weakened and collapsed because of age”;  2) “whose walls had been taken away because of rain and deluge”;  3) “whose foundations had heaped up and accumulated into a mound of ruins”.   Therefore, Nabopolassar could recognize the aged weathering of ancient brickwork no longer capable of structural weight-bearing load and knew that unfired brick in particular would dissolve back to mud after long-term exposure to rain and excess water. What he found as ruins he knew had prior historic use.

Second, Nabopolassar’s plan was to utilize tools and forced labor to lay bear the buried remains after faithfully establishing their contexts: 4) I had them use the hoe and imposed the basket of conscription on them. From the bank of the Arhtu canal, on the lower side near the Urash gate, 5)  I removed its accumulated debris. Here, Nabopolassar demonstrates that the remains were partly subsurface and required excavation due to accumulation through time.

Third, Nabopolassar’s seemingly most exacting archaeological task involved quantitative topographical analyses and careful recording:  6) surveyed and 7)  examined its old foundations  8) and laid its brickwork in the original place. To an archaeologist, these phrases of Nabopolassar leap out because this is exactly how the discipline operates by stratigraphic and mathematical principles to make sure survey benchmarks and cardinal directions are recorded in order to contextualize remains.  His use of “examined” demonstrates careful observation.

Finally, Naboplassar summarizes his findings and records them for an unknown posterity on this clay cylinder and identifies himself as the project director responsible for the work:  9) I, Nabopolassar, the one who discovers (inscribed) bricks from the past,  10) the one who implements the work on the original.  By claiming the “discovery” as something from the “past”, Nabopolassar also makes sure he doesn’t just abandon the remains but also “implements” the restoration on the “original foundations”.

By precedent, was Nabopolassar first and foremost a logical military leader who could take down Nineveh by utilizing similar advance careful observation, planning and strategy? Regardless of whether or not his archaeological work was done for religious reasons to please the gods he claimed gave him his reign and apparently secured his Neo-Babylonian dynasty, Nabopolassar’s Cylinder gives us the best evidence for carefully contexted and recorded material history over 2,500 years ago, just about 2,350 years before archaeology became a scientific and historical discipline. Was Nabopolassar thus history’s first known archaeologist?

Notes:

[1] Diana Pickworth. “Excavations at Nineveh: The Halzi Gate.” Iraq [British Institute for the Study of Iraq] 67.1 (2005) 295-316, esp. fig. 1 on 296 and 298.

[2]   K. C. Hanson. Nabopolassar Cylinder, 2012.  See Dr. K. C. Hanson, Wipf and Stock Publishers,199 W. 8th Ave. Eugene, OR 97401. See http://www.kchanson.com/ancdocs/meso/nabo.html

[3]  These texts are translated and discussed by F. N. J. Al-Rawi. “Nabopolassar’s Restoration Work on the Wall Imgur-Enlil at Babylon.” Iraq 47 (1985) 1-13; and P.-A. Beaulieu. “Nabopolassar’s Restoration of Imgur-Enlil, the Inner Defensive Wall of Babylon.” The Context of Scripture, W. W. Hallo, ed. Leiden: E. J. Brill (2000) vol. 2, 307-8.

Note: the author was a post-doctoral Research Fellow under Prof. David Stronach at U.C. Berkeley’s Near Eastern Studies Dept. from 1992-95 and worked on post-processual Nineveh material under Stronach.