"The Byzantine Empire was the continuation of the Roman Empire [see comment] in the Greek-speaking, eastern part of the Mediterranean. Christian in nature, it was perennially at war with the Muslims, Flourishing during the reign of the Macedonian emperors, its demise was the consequence of attacks by Seljuk Turks, Crusaders, and Ottoman Turks." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
Comment: The Byzantine Empire is usually referred to as the "Roman empire in the East," but I've never thought there was anything particularly Roman about the Byzantines. Romans weren't Greek-speaking Christians; they were pagans who spoke Latin. If you ask me, the real Roman empire had already ceased to exist for all practical purposes by the time Italy and the western provinces were overrun by Germanic tribes in the fifth century AD. The Byzantines retained Roman institutions, but they were essentially an Oriental kingdom, a kind of hybrid of western and eastern traditions.
According to this view, the Roman Empire collapsed as a culture long before it was conquered militarily. When Rome fell in the West, that was the end of it. Parts of its territory still remained, however, most of it in the East, but it's hard to see these surviving territories as Roman.
The picture is very complicated, naturally. There were similarities and differences beween the Roman and Byzantine empires. It would be surprising if nothing had carried over from the old world. As a general rule, civilizations aren't suddenly obliterated, leaving no trace behind. Collapse doesn't work that way. Kingdoms and empires rise and fall and evolve into new political systems, usually after a period of chaos and warfare. Zombie civilizations are common in history -- nations that still exist long after their cultures have died or changed out of all recognition. Christian Rome and the Roman Byzantine Empire are both good examples, I think, of zombie empires.
The Byzantine empire was a "continuation" of the Roman Empire in the sense that it was once part of the Roman empire with all of its legal and political institutions, but it was Roman in name only. The main difference, I think, was religious. Paganism had been outlawed and driven underground, replaced by Christianity, an essentially Oriental religion.
Here's a modern analogy. Let's say that the United States becomes a Muslim caliphate, but keeps all of its current institutions in place. There's a White House, a Congress, a Supreme Court, and so on. People still vote, but all the candidates are Muslims. The county courthouse still looks the same, but Christianity is illegal and the courts enforce Shariah Law. Then the western half of the country is invaded and overrun by savage barbarians who settle down and take over the existing legislative machinery. The eastern half of the country still survives as an independent nation, but is it American? The answer is obvious.
Comment: Welcome to Clown World, UK. I'm not religious, but installing fun rides and miniature golf courses in medieval cathedrals is a sacrilege. There's no other word for it. Of course, this is exactly the kind of stunt you'd expect from the ultra-liberal and largely secularized Church of England, a once powerful institution which has been in decline for decades:
"The number of people who identify as belonging to the Church of England has dropped to a record low in an 'unrelenting decline' that could threaten the denomination’s future, research suggests." Source: The Independent (2018).
"CofE affiliation has fallen to just 2 per cent among adults aged 18 to 24, while the majority of every age group now has no religion, the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey found.
"The number of Britons who describe themselves as part of the church has more than halved since 2002, from 31 per cent to 14 per cent. The number who actually attend sermons is far lower."
The decline of the CofE is just one part of a much larger story -- the collapse of the West and the transformation of Christianity into a third-world religion.
This brief piece from the History Channel (2013) blames Julius Caesar for the destruction of the Library of Alexandria as if this is a proven fact.
Whatever the case, it's true that Caesar was widely blamed at the time:
"The prime suspect in destruction of the Library of Alexandria is Julius Caesar. It is alleged that during Caesar's occupation of the city of Alexandria in 48 BCE, he found himself in the Royal Palace, hemmed in by the Egyptian fleet in the harbour. For his own safety he had his men set fire to the Egyptian ships, but the fire got out of control and spread to the parts of the city nearest the shore, which included warehouses, depots and some arsenals." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
That's the story, anyway, but it probably isn't true:
"In his book The Vanished Library, Luciano Canfora interprets the evidence from ancient writers to indicate the destruction of manuscripts stored in warehouses near the port waiting for export, rather than the great Library itself." Furthermore, "[t]he great scholar and stoic philosopher Strabo, was working in Alexandria in 20 BC and from his writings it is obvious that the Library was not at that time the world-renowned centre for learning it had been in previous centuries." (Ancient History Encyclopedia)
Clip from Cosmos (1980). Note the standard assumption that the library was deliberately destroyed.
The Christians have been blamed as well, but it doesn't look like they did it, either:
"The second possible culprit would be the Christians of the 4 th century AD. In 391 AD, the Emperor Theodosius issued a decree that officially outlawed pagan practices. Thus, the Serapeum or Temple of Serapis in Alexandria was destroyed. However, this was not the Library of Alexandria, or for that matter, a library of any sort. Furthermore, no ancient sources mention the destruction of any library at this time at all. Hence, there is no evidence that the Christians of the 4 th century destroyed the Library of Alexandria." Source: Ancient Origins.
So if Caesar wasn't responsible and the Christians seem to have been exonerated, who destroyed the library and its priceless collection of ancient texts? Strangely enough, considering how widespread the traditional story is, there's a possibility that the library wasn't destroyed by a fire in the first place. The truth may be radically different and a lot less dramatic.
"Though it seems fitting that the destruction of so mythic an institution as the Great Library of Alexandria must have required some cataclysmic event ... – and while [riots, fires and other disasters] certainly took their toll on the Library - in reality, the fortunes of the Great Library waxed and waned with those of Alexandria itself. Much of [the library's] downfall was gradual, often bureaucratic, and by comparison to our cultural imaginings, somewhat petty." Source: "The Great Library Of Alexandria?" by Heather Philips (PDF).
This article appeared in 2010, I think. If Heather Philips is right, her version of events would radically change the traditional history of the destruction of the Great Library, but that would be a good thing for those of us who want to know the true story. The traditional history has always been highly speculative since no one really knows what happened.
If Philips is right, we'd lose some dramatic stories, though. For example, her revisionist view would demolish the historical accuracy (such as it is) of the excellent 2009 movie, Agora, which tells the heavily romanticized story of Hypatia of Alexandria and blames the destruction of the library on a rioting Christian mob.
Agora is a good flick, highly recommended, but it's undeniably a work of anti-Christian propaganda. That doesn't bother me particularly, but some people get all worked up about it. For instance, here's a harsh attack on the movie (2010) by David Bentley Hart who admits he never saw the film but argues that its premise is completely ahistorical, which may very well be true. Considering their record of destroying pagan shrines and writings, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Christians destroyed the library, but it looks like they weren't involved.
Various other individuals and groups have been blamed for the destruction of the Great Library --the emperor Aurelian, the Muslims, Pope Theophilus of Alexandria -- but if Heather Philips is right, the library may never have been "destroyed" at all, only damaged over the years in various wars and riots before it went out of business due to budget cuts. That doesn't make for a good movie, however, so if that's what really happened, I doubt if the story will ever make it to the Big Screen.
"Landfills in flames and rats feasting on waste in the streets have sparked health fears in Rome, as doctors warn families to steer clear of disease-ridden curbside garbage and locals launch a disgusting dumpster contest online." Source: AFP.
"Crowds of summer tourists are forced to navigate overflowing bins in the stifling heat, as the pungent perfume of neglected garbage draws scavenging animals and the threat of disease to the Eternal City and locals fume over the city's refuse management."
Note: The garbage crisis in Italy has been going on for years. For more information see The Garbage Problem in Rome and Naples posted here in Jan. 2019. The Italian Mafia is responsible for a lot of this, but since the same thing is happening in San Francisco, Los Angeles and other cities in the United States, it's hard not to also see it as a symptom of general cultural decline. Ancient Rome was never the most sanitary place in the world, granted, but Augustus would be shocked if he could see what's happened to the former heart of the Roman Empire.
Back in May, 2019, Russia Today reported that the Swedish government was "looking into the possibility of forbidding the use of Norse runes ... amid concerns that the ancient symbols have been misappropriated by neo-Nazi groups." According to RT, Justice Minister Morgan Johansson was "investigating whether or not runes should be banned in Sweden as a way to deter hate groups ..."
This proposed ban was absurd, of course, but it was a particularly dumb idea because banning runes would be impossible. Runic inscriptions can be found all over Scandinavia and Europe, for one thing, but even if you destroyed every runestone and medieval artifact in the West, you still couldn't get rid of these "racist" symbols. This ancient writing system is not only the subject of scholarly research, but "runic alphabets were added to the Unicode Standard in September, 1999 with the release of version 3.0." (Wikipedia) Hundreds of rune-related books and merchandise can be found on Amazon and rune tattoos are very popular (see next video). You'd have to be crazy, not to mention unbelievably arrogant, to think you could actually "forbid" runes.
That's not what this proposal was about, of course. The Swedish government would just use a ban as a legal tool to persecute political groups they don't approve of. This kind of thing is SOP for the modern left. Attacks on national symbols have been taking place all over Europe and the US. For example, the Union Jack is now considered to be "racist" in Britain. So is the Betsy Ross flag in the United States.
Evil Nazi girl gets rune tattoos, including the notorious Tyr rune (2017).
The proposed criminalization of runes was typical of the current Swedish government. Malicious little creatures like Justice Minister Johansson are actively hostile to the culture and heritage of their own country, and they'll end up destroying Sweden completely if they aren't driven out of office. But even if these idiots were all purged tomorrow, it may be too late to turn the situation around. Sweden is dying. The level of violence there is soaring and the country is rapidly becoming Islamified thanks to its self-destructive immigration policies. The truly insane thing about all of this is that Sweden's "feminist government" has been bending over backwards to import an alien culture which treats women like chattel, but that's typical of the clown world we live in today.
Sweden is a classic example of cultural decay. It's hard to believe that its people are descended from the Vikings.
Video from 2015.
UPDATE: Surprisingly, the idiotic Swedish government decided not to ban runes. According to The Local (May 30, 2019), "an inquiry in Sweden has recommended against bringing in a ban on racist symbols such as the Tyr or Tiwaz rune used by the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement ... The inquiry, led by Charlotte Brokelind, President of the Göta Court of Appeal, found in its conclusions that existing ethnic hate laws were sufficient, and did not need to be supplemented by additional bans on specific symbols."
The Local is a left-wing rag. Note the ridiculous assertion that the Tyr or Tiwaz rune is a "racist symbol."
"In Germanic mythology, Týr (Old Norse), Tíw (Old English), and Ziu (Old High German) is a god. Stemming from the Proto-Germanic deity *Tīwaz and ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European deity *Dyeus, little information about the god survives beyond Old Norse sources. Due to the etymology of the god's name and the shadowy presence of the god in the extant Germanic corpus, some scholars propose that Týr may have once held a more central place among the deities of early Germanic mythology" (Wikipedia)
The Tyr rune is a symbol of national identity. That's why the Nordic Resistance Front adopted it. If they had used a Nordic Cross instead, the Swedish government would probably hold an inquiry into banning the Swedish flag.
"French prosecutors have ruled out deliberate criminal action in the April fire that destroyed the roof and spire of Notre Dame cathedral, but are investigating possible negligence." Source: Breitbart.
"After two months of preliminary investigation, the Paris public prosecutor’s office announced on Wednesday that the initial inquiry into the fire at the Notre-Dame-de-Paris has been completed, and that 'no element' of their investigation backs the hypothesis that the blaze was of criminal origin."
Comment: No big surprise here. If the investigators had found evidence that the fire was started deliberately, they never would have admitted it. Meanwhile, there has been a "major surge" in attacks on churches in France over the last two years. Ranging from arson to acts of desecration and vandalism, some of these attacks were carried out by Muslims, others by radical leftists. I have no evidence that the Notre Dame fire was arson, but considering the culture war which has been going on in France it's hard to believe that it was just an accident.
"Mummies from ancient Egypt have revealed another secret — some of them share very little of the sub-Saharan African ancestry that dominates the genetic heritage of modern Egyptians." Source: ABC News (2017).
"The discovery, published today in Nature Communications, suggests the African heritage evident in modern Egyptian populations may have been the result of the slave trade down the Nile in the past 1,500 years."
Comment: The story here, while buried in a flood of technical jargon, is fairly simple. The ancient Egyptians had more in common with people from the Near East (which includes parts of Europe) than with the modern Egyptian population. In recent centuries, the Egyptians began to mix with Sub-Saharan Africans, creating a kind of genetic discontinuity. In other words, the current Egyptian population are not the same people as their ancestors:
According to the paper in Nature, "modern Egyptians are shifted towards sub-Saharan African populations. Model-based clustering ... further supports these results and reveals that the three ancient Egyptians [mummies used in the study] differ from modern Egyptians by a relatively larger Near Eastern genetic component, in particular a component found in Neolithic Levantine ancient individuals ... In contrast, a substantially larger sub-Saharan African component, found primarily in West-African Yoruba, is seen in modern Egyptians compared to the ancient samples."
"The ruins date from at least 2800 BC through to intact buildings, courtyards, streets, chamber tombs and some thirty-seven cist graves which are thought to belong to the Mycenaean period (c.1680-1180 BC). This Bronze Age phase of Greece provides the historical setting for much Ancient Greek literature and myth, including Homer's Age of Heroes." Source: Science Daily (2009).
According to Wikipedia, the town "was submerged around 1000 BC by the first of three earthquakes that the area suffered. The area never re-emerged, so it was neither built-over nor disrupted by agriculture. Although eroded over the centuries, the town layout is as it was thousands of years ago. The site is under threat of damage by boats dragging anchors, as well as by tourists and souvenir hunters."
"Analysis of plant, animal and human remains from Portus, the maritime port of Imperial Rome, has reconstructed for the first time the diets and geographic origins of its inhabitants, suggesting a shift in food resources following the Vandal sack of Rome in AD 455." Source: Science Daily.
Great Library Of Alexandria Destroyed By Budget Cuts, Not Fire?
This brief piece from the History Channel (2013) blames Julius Caesar for the destruction of the Library of Alexandria as if this is a proven fact.
Whatever the case, it's true that Caesar was widely blamed at the time:
"The prime suspect in destruction of the Library of Alexandria is Julius Caesar. It is alleged that during Caesar's occupation of the city of Alexandria in 48 BCE, he found himself in the Royal Palace, hemmed in by the Egyptian fleet in the harbour. For his own safety he had his men set fire to the Egyptian ships, but the fire got out of control and spread to the parts of the city nearest the shore, which included warehouses, depots and some arsenals." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
That's the story, anyway, but it probably isn't true:
"In his book The Vanished Library, Luciano Canfora interprets the evidence from ancient writers to indicate the destruction of manuscripts stored in warehouses near the port waiting for export, rather than the great Library itself." Furthermore, "[t]he great scholar and stoic philosopher Strabo, was working in Alexandria in 20 BC and from his writings it is obvious that the Library was not at that time the world-renowned centre for learning it had been in previous centuries." (Ancient History Encyclopedia)
Clip from Cosmos (1980). Note the standard assumption that the library was deliberately destroyed.
The Christians have been blamed as well, but it doesn't look like they did it, either:
"The second possible culprit would be the Christians of the 4 th century AD. In 391 AD, the Emperor Theodosius issued a decree that officially outlawed pagan practices. Thus, the Serapeum or Temple of Serapis in Alexandria was destroyed. However, this was not the Library of Alexandria, or for that matter, a library of any sort. Furthermore, no ancient sources mention the destruction of any library at this time at all. Hence, there is no evidence that the Christians of the 4 th century destroyed the Library of Alexandria." Source: Ancient Origins.
So if Caesar wasn't responsible and the Christians seem to have been exonerated, who destroyed the library and its priceless collection of ancient texts? Strangely enough, considering how widespread the traditional story is, there's a possibility that the library wasn't destroyed by a fire in the first place. The truth may be radically different and a lot less dramatic.
"Though it seems fitting that the destruction of so mythic an institution as the Great Library of Alexandria must have required some cataclysmic event ... – and while [riots, fires and other disasters] certainly took their toll on the Library - in reality, the fortunes of the Great Library waxed and waned with those of Alexandria itself. Much of [the library's] downfall was gradual, often bureaucratic, and by comparison to our cultural imaginings, somewhat petty." Source: "The Great Library Of Alexandria?" by Heather Philips (PDF).
This article appeared in 2010, I think. If Heather Philips is right, her version of events would radically change the traditional history of the destruction of the Great Library, but that would be a good thing for those of us who want to know the true story. The traditional history has always been highly speculative since no one really knows what happened.
If Philips is right, we'd lose some dramatic stories, though. For example, her revisionist view would demolish the historical accuracy (such as it is) of the excellent 2009 movie, Agora, which tells the heavily romanticized story of Hypatia of Alexandria and blames the destruction of the library on a rioting Christian mob.
Agora is a good flick, highly recommended, but it's undeniably a work of anti-Christian propaganda. That doesn't bother me particularly, but some people get all worked up about it. For instance, here's a harsh attack on the movie (2010) by David Bentley Hart who admits he never saw the film but argues that its premise is completely ahistorical, which may very well be true. Considering their record of destroying pagan shrines and writings, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the Christians destroyed the library, but it looks like they weren't involved.
Various other individuals and groups have been blamed for the destruction of the Great Library --the emperor Aurelian, the Muslims, Pope Theophilus of Alexandria -- but if Heather Philips is right, the library may never have been "destroyed" at all, only damaged over the years in various wars and riots before it went out of business due to budget cuts. That doesn't make for a good movie, however, so if that's what really happened, I doubt if the story will ever make it to the Big Screen.
Posted at 07:00 AM in Ancient Africa, Ancient Literature, Christianity, Collapse, Commentary, Culture, Egypt, Rome, Videos | Permalink