Text and translation of three Coptic stelae – by Anthony Alcock
We don’t do a lot with inscriptions here. But I wonder if people realise that there are inscriptions in Coptic? I certainly never thought about this; but there are. Anthony Alcock has made a text and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Roman statue used for “alien relic” in album cover
We forget, sometimes, how extraordinary the remains of antiquity really are, when seen for the first time. Look at this: An album by progressive rock group Magellan, it depicts a fantasy scene. But...
View ArticleThe owner of the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” papyrus unmasked!
Back in 2012 a Harvard “religious studies” academic named Karen King announced the discovery of a papyrus fragment containing a Coptic text which referred to Jesus having a wife. It takes little...
View ArticleThe Annals of Eutychius of Alexandria (10th c. AD) – chapter 18c (part 3)
The reign of the Caliph Omar continues, with the seige of Damascus. The Roman garrison defends the city against what is seen at the time as merely a large-scale raid. But in the end, after six...
View ArticleClik here to view.
WARNING!!! Fragments of Euripides “Palamedes” NOT rediscovered in Jerusalem
On June 21 2016 I wrote a post here to the effect that fragments of the lost play, “Palamedes”, by Euripides had been found in a manuscript in Jerusalem by Dr Felix Albrecht. This I based on other...
View ArticleScribes removing paganism from Galen’s “On my own opinions”?
In 2005 a bored PhD student, left hanging around the catalogue desk at the Vlatades Monastery in Thessalonika, looked through the catalogue and discovered a previously unknown Greek manuscript of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Qasr Bashir – A Roman fortlet in Jordan
I found this marvellous photograph of a Roman fortlet in the Jordanian desert on Twitter here. The tweeter also added: Great photos & interesting survey diagrams of Qasr Bashir done by Brunnow...
View ArticleClik here to view.
That old bull again! – the recent international conference on Mithras in Italy
I must have missed the announcement, but Csaba Szabo kindly drew my attention to his report on an international conference on Mithraic studies in Italy. About 50 people attended. Sadly the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The serpent column in Constantinople in early printed books
More and more early printed books are becoming available online. Fortunately the German libraries are scanning them at high resolution. This includes the line-drawings, which have hitherto been...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Old photographs of the Nemi ships
Here are some photographs that I found online about the massive pleasure barges of Caligula, excavated from Lake Nemi during the 30s, on the orders of Mussolini, placed in a “Museum of Roman...
View Article