Ancient World Review

The Pyramids Of Abusir

Note: "The Unfinished Pyramid of Abusir, an ancient Egyptian royal tomb which was probably abandoned shortly after the start of construction in the 5th Dynasty, is located in the necropolis of Abusir, an archaeological site near Cairo. Shepseskare, a pharaoh who is known only from a single roughly contemporary seal impression from the mortuary temple of Neferefre, has been suggested as the pyramid's builder." Source: Wikipedia (entry edited for clarity)

Muting the hideous background music is highly recommended.

"Abusir is the Arab name given to the Greek town of Busiris and the Old Kingdom necropolis in its vicinity. The Greek name Busiris is derived from the ancient Egyptian phrase 'pr wsir' (the house of Osiris) which relates to the temple of Osiris.'" Source: Ancient Egypt Online.

"...The necropolis of Abusir was the primary burial site for the pharaohs of the fifth dynasty of ancient Egypt. It lies across the Nile from the ancient city of Memphis ... to the south of Giza and north of Saqqara. The site was probably chosen because the necropolises of Giza and Saqqara were already littered with pyramids and tombs and Abusir Lake linked the site to the river and made it easier to deliver supplies to the site by boat."

The next video ( published in 2015) shows the unveiling at Abusir of "the mummified body of a Pharaonic palace chief thought to be more than 2,400 years old." Closed captions in English are available. The tomb itself was discovered in 1996, but the mummy wasn't recovered until later.

"The sands of Abu Sir revealed important secrets of the tomb of Iufaa that really is one of the tombs in the cemetery of the 26th dynasty with the rebirth of Egyptian civilization, because this period they imitated art of the old kingdom, the middle kingdom and the new kingdom; and this person was an important person, was the one in charge of the palace of the king and this is why we always believe that we never know what the sands of Egypt might hide of secrets; this is the most new secret that has been discovered in Egypt." - Dr.Zahi Hawass, Giza Antiquities Director (quoted from the video).

Time has reduced the Abusir necropolis to a kind of mortuary junk heap."Only four [of the tombs] are still in recognizable condition," according to Ancient Egypt Online.

According to Wikipedia, "[t]here are a total of 14 pyramids at this site, which served as the main royal necropolis during the Fifth dynasty. The quality of construction of the Abusir pyramids is inferior to those of the Fourth Dynasty; perhaps signalling a decrease in royal power or a less vibrant economy. They are smaller than their predecessors, and are built of low quality local stone. All of the major pyramids at Abusir were built as step pyramids, although the largest of them — the Pyramid of Neferirkare [next video]— is believed to have originally been built as a step pyramid some seventy metres in height and then later transformed into a 'true' pyramid by having its steps filled in with loose masonry."

Video from 2017.

"Fantastically Preserved" Viking Boat Graves & Skeletons Discovered In Sweden

"Archaeologists recently unearthed two Viking burial boats in Uppsala, Sweden — one of which was exceptionally preserved and held the remains of a dog, a man and a horse." Source: Live Science.

Note: "A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as a container for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave. This style of burial was used among the Germanic peoples, particularly by Viking Age Norsemen. According to the Boxer Codex, ship burials were also practiced by the indigenous peoples of the Philippines." (Wikipedia)

"A unique eyewitness account of a 10th-century ship burial among the Volga Vikings is given by Arab traveller Ibn Fadlan. The largest Viking ship (65 foot long) grave was discovered in Norway by archeologists in 2018, and it is estimated to have been covered over 1000 years ago to be used as a boat grave for an imminent Viking king or queen."

Comment: It seems kind of odd that ship burials also took place in the Philippines, of all places. I haven't been able to verify this, however.

 

Pagan Ship Burials - Valsgarde

Closed-captions sort of helpful.

"Valsgärde or Vallsgärde is a farm on the Fyris river, about three kilometres north of Gamla Uppsala, the ancient centre of the Swedish kings and of the pagan faith in Sweden. The present farm dates from the 16th century. The farm's notability derives from the presence of a burial site from the Swedish Vendel Age (part of the Iron age (c. 550–793) and the Viking Age); it was used for more than 300 years. The first ship burial is from the 6th century and the last graves are from the 11th century." (Wikipedia)

"The Valsgarde cemetery is known primarily for its fifteen boat-graves. Less well-known are the at least 62 cremation burials and the fifteen inhumations and chamber graves. From the very beginning of the excavations in Valsgarde, focus centered on the boat-graves. This was quite understandable, since most of them were spectacular." -- "Valsgarde - Development and change of a burial ground over 1300 years", John Ljungkvist (PDF).

Some incredible Vendel Age helmets have been discovered at Valsgarde.

"In one of the boat burials from the grave field at Valsgärde a rich nobleman is buried. The grave is from the Vendel period and about 1500 years old. The undisturbed graves show us that the people who lived in the area between 550 and 800 AD were wealthy. Valsgärde was strategically placed by the Fyris river, a major traffic artery for long-distance travel to continental Europe. The men in the graves embarked on their last journey equipped with war gear, household utensils, tools and many animals. Resting in comfort on eiderdown mattresses they departed for eternity." Source: Uppsala University.

Prehistoric Burials: A Revolution In Consciousness

Video from 2011.

"According to archaeological records, early humans began doing what no other primate had done before; intentionally covering their dead with earth. From these simple beginnings, we developed our funerary practices making humanity's attitude toward death a defining part of our species." Source: Science Daily.

"And as our understanding of other living creatures grows, we realize that humans are not the only ones whose behavior changes in the presence of death. Known today as 'Comparative Thanatology', researchers extensively study the cognitive, psychological, and physiological aspects of death among non-human animals."

Comment: The sad videos above show clear signs of primate awareness. The chimpanzee mother in the first video is obviously trying to understand what has happened to her infant and seems to be checking for signs of life. There's no way to know if the mother is in mourning or just confused, of course -- we tend to project our own emotions and interpretations onto scenes like these, but the idea that a chimpanzee can feel grief isn't all that outlandish. The differences between human consciousness and that of the lower primates is only one of degree:

"Old world monkeys such as rhesus macaques have many similarities in psychophysical performance with humans .... At the same time, anatomical and functional organization of their brains share many similarities with that of human brains ... Therefore, they are frequently used as models for consciousness in humans." -- "Consciousness in Humans and Non-Human Animals: Recent Advances and Future Directions" (2013).

Monkeys and other animals are aware of death even if they don't understand what it means. Some animals have even evolved what appear to be mourning rituals.

In the beginning, early humans and were probably just as mystified about death as their chimp and ape relatives. But then something changed and humans started to bury their dead, sometimes with a variety of grave goods, a type of religious practice indicating a higher level of consciousness. Neanderthals buried their dead as well, but the reasons for this are still unclear.

"Evidence suggests that the Neanderthals were the first human species to practice burial behavior and intentionally bury their dead, doing so in shallow graves along with stone tools and animal bones. Exemplary sites include Shanidar in Iraq, Kebara Cave in Israel and Krapina in Croatia. Some scholars, however, argue that these bodies may have been disposed of for secular reasons." (Wikipedia)

"Though there is ongoing debate regarding the reliability of the dating method, some scholars believe the earliest human burial dates back 100,000 years. Human skeletal remains stained with red ochre were discovered in the Skhul cave at Qafzeh, Israel [see next video]. A variety of grave goods were present at the site, including the mandible of a wild boar in the arms of one of the skeletons."

Animals may not understand the concept of death, but they know that something has happened. When the first human primates evolved they were capable of thinking about death and the presence of grave goods in many of their burials suggests a belief in some kind of afterlife or supernatural dimension.

Grave goods "are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods may be classed as a type of votive deposit. Most grave goods recovered by archaeologists consist of inorganic objects such as pottery and stone and metal tools but organic objects that have since decayed were also placed in ancient tombs." (Wikipedia)

Description of grave goods starts around 1:56.

Homo Sapiens is thought to be around 200,000 - 300,000 years old. If the earliest human burial is only 100,000 years old, this means that it took our species at least a hundred-thousand years to develop a concept of the afterlife, but considering the possibility that neanderthals buried their dead it seems more likely that the idea of a "spirit" or "vital force" that lives on in another realm is much older than that.

Burial, to a limited extent, may even be a prehuman activity. According to TalkDeath, magpies show signs of mourning and conduct funeral-like rituals, "covering the deceased magpie with some grass, leaves, or other natural materials." Actual burials don't seem to occur in the animal kingdom, though. Chimps apparently carry their dead infants around with them until they have decomposed enough to be unrecognizable, at which point they simply abandon the bodies.

In the beginning, humans or their proto-human ancestors probably left their dead to decay in the open. Maybe the first burials were carried out to protect bodies from scavengers, but even that would have been a radical departure from a purely animal state of mind. Death was a mystery, though, and, unlike the chimpanzees in the first video, early hominins had the cognitive capacity to think the mystery through and eventually came up with a theory to explain it. This didn't happen in isolation, of course. The human brain itself was evolving and they must have been wondering all the time about life and death and the nature of the world they lived in. At some point, they crossed some kind of cognitive threshold and created the first religion, probably a primitive form of animism. The evolution of burial practices and everything that went along with them was just a part of the revolution in consciousness that was taking place back then.

Prehistoric Ireland

"Ireland's early history is dominated by the end of the last Ice Age. It has been mooted that perhaps in South West Ireland some hunter-gatherers remained in occupation during the Ice Age [1].  However apart from that the first evidence we see for occupation appears in the River Bann area in North Ulster (Mountsandel - Toomebridge - Ballymoney). Such occupation -- per land-bridge or by water from West Scotland -- has been dated to around 7000 BC. It is interesting to note that these early arrivals lived in quite substantial houses, and as well as being hunter-gatherers and fishermen practised a basic form of agriculture. " Source: Nowth.

[1] See Animating Irish Ice Sheets During the Last Glacial Period. If this simulation is accurate, Ireland would have been completely covered with ice until around 20,000 years ago. The Last Glacial Period is thought to have ended around 11,700 years ago, by which time most of Ireland was clear of ice again, so it's possible that hunter-gatherers could have been living there before 7000 BC.  Vaguely Related: Glacial Deposits in Ballycotton Bay, Co. Cork, Ireland.

The dating is uncertain and confused, but my impression is that the megalithic period in Ireland is thought to have started around 4,000 BC. There may be some (or many) older monuments - I'm not really sure. "In Europe megaliths are, in general, constructions erected during the Neolithic or late stone age and Chalcolithic or Copper Age." (Wikipedia). This covers a time period of between app. 10,200 - 1500 BC.

According to The Sacred Island, "[t]here are four main types of megalithic monument to be found in Ireland. These are chambered cairns (also known as passage tombs or passage graves) with perhaps 300 - 500 in the country. Court cairns, (court tombs), about 400, dolmens (portal tombs or cromleacs), some 190 examples and wedges, again around 400 monuments. A fifth type or category are unclassified monuments of which there are at least 200. There is a sixth much smaller group, called Linkardstown cists, not very common."

There are thousands of prehistoric megaliths in Ireland.  "The NW European megalithic era is represented in Ireland on a very big scale." (Nowth). "The passage mound building dates in Ireland would appear to be from around 3500 BC. (That is -- in their present form -- they would have even earlier beginnings) ..." and the dolmens and circle stones probably first appeared later, around 2000 BC.

Note: The chronology given by Nowth seems to contradict the information on other sites I've found. According to The Sacred Island, for instance, "[c]ourts and dolmens are thought to be the oldest types, dating to about 4,000 BC, followed by passage graves, 3,800 BC onwards and wedges on the threshold of the bronze age." Some of this confusion may be due to the fact that it's sometimes difficult to distinguish between the different types of monuments.

By 4000 BC the transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture was apparently well underway in Ireland. If it's true that megaliths first started to appear on the island around this time, it would seem that there is a connection between the rise of farming and the construction of stone tombs and other monuments. Maybe a new form of religion began to evolve, but my guess is that the settled lifestyle of these prehistoric farmers made it more feasible for them to undertake what must have been major construction projects.

Video from 2011.

Evidence has been found suggesting that the prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Ireland were burying their dead a long time ago:

"Ireland's oldest human grave has become even more exceptional for one of its contents: The oldest polished ax on record in Europe was likely created solely for a burial, archaeologists say." Source: Live Science (2016).

"The finding sheds new light on the beliefs and complex funerary rituals of the early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers who lived in Ireland about 9,500 years ago, from about 7530 B.C., the researchers said." (Emphasis added)

The dates are all over the place, but the basic outline of Ireland's prehistory is straightforward enough. As the glaciers retreated, bands of hunter-gatherers migrated to the island, perhaps across a land bridge. As the centuries went by, they developed agriculture and began to build thousands of stone tombs, standing circles and other monuments which can still be seen today. There's no great mystery about why people would construct tombs to memorialize their dead, but their religious beliefs are still unknown and probably always will be:

"There are no extant textual sources from the Neolithic era, the most recent available dating from the Bronze Age, and therefore all statements about any belief systems Neolithic societies may have possessed are glimpsed from archaeology." (Wikipedia)

Time Team: The Druid's Last Stand, Anglesey

This is, I believe, the Y Werthyr hillfort or earthwork on the Isle of Anglesey, "the largest island in Wales and the seventh largest in the British Isles." (Wikipedia) "...There are numerous megalithic monuments and menhirs on Anglesey, testifying to the presence of humans in prehistory.

"...Historically, Anglesey has long been associated with the druids. In AD 60 the Roman general Gaius Suetonius Paulinus, determined to break the power of the druids, attacked the island using his amphibious Batavian contingent as a surprise vanguard assault and then destroying the shrine and the nemeta (sacred groves)."

Paulinus' attack on the Druids happened just before Boudica's Revolt in 60 or 61 AD. The whole story is told in George Shipway's fantastic 1968 novel Imperial Governor, one of the best historical novels I've ever read. Highly recommended, especially if you're interested in military history.

Byzantine Baptismal Font Discovered At Church Of Nativity In Bethlehem

"A new baptismal font appears to have been discovered at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in the West Bank." (Sky News)

"The find would allow for more studies about the traditional birthplace of Jesus, Palestinian officials say."

Note: "The Church of the Nativity... is a basilica located in Bethlehem in the Palestinian West Bank. The grotto it contains holds a prominent religious significance to Christians of various denominations as the birthplace of Jesus. The grotto is the oldest site continuously used as a place of worship in Christianity, and the basilica is the oldest major church in the Holy Land." (Wikipedia)

A lot of Christians believe that Jesus was born in the Nativity Grotto, but I'm not sure why. As far as I can tell, there is no scriptural basis for the legend at all. According to Wikipedia, "Of the four canonical gospels, only two offer narratives regarding the birth of Jesus: Matthew (Matthew 1:18-25, plus a genealogy of Joseph at Matthew 1:1-17) and Luke (Luke 2:1-7, plus a genealogy of Joseph at Luke 3:21-38). Of these two, only Luke offers the details of Jesus' birth in Bethlehem." These details, however, aren't very specific. Jesus was born in Jerusalem, in a manger; that's about it. There's no mention of a cave or grotto. That legend was apparently started by the second-century Christian apologist Justin Martyr.

According to later Christian writers, the pagans planted a sacred grove around the Nativity Grotto in an attempt to suppress the new religion, but this story sounds kind of suspicious to me:

"...In 135, Emperor Hadrian had the site above the Grotto converted into a worship place for Adonis, the Greek god of beauty and desire. Jerome noted in 420 that the grotto had been consecrated to the worship of Adonis, and that a sacred grove was planted there in order to completely wipe out the memory of Jesus from the world. Some modern scholars dispute this argument and insist that the cult of Adonis-Tammuz originated the shrine and that it was the Christians who took it over, substituting the worship of Jesus. However, the fact that the site was associated with the birth of Jesus at least since the second century CE, is attested by Justin Martyr (c. 100–165) who noted in his Dialogue with Trypho that the Holy Family had taken refuge in a cave outside of town." (Wikipedia)

Judging by their record, it seems more likely that the Christians built their basilica on top of a previously existing pagan site in an effort to wipe out the memory of Adonis. It would be ironic if all these Christian pilgrims are actually visiting a site sacred to an ancient pagan god of beauty and desire who was born by a woman in the shape of a myrhh tree and killed by a wild boar sent by a jealous goddess.

Jesus, Mithras, Osiris

Comment: It's possible that early Christians borrowed elements from the cults of Mithras and Osiris when they were developing their new Jesus religion, but it's also possible that the similarities between these three savior gods simply reflect a common strain of religious ideas that had been in circulation in the ancient Mediterranean world for millennia.

Mithras and Osiris are much older than Jesus. The first mention of Osiris dates back to Egypt's Fifth Dynasty (~2494 to 2345 BC) and Mithras was "an ancient Indo-Iranian god adopted in the Roman empire as the principle deity of a mystery cult which flourished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), 3rd ed. revised.

The Osiris cult spread through the Roman empire after the Roman conquest of Egypt. Mithraism, popular with the legions, was introduced after the Roman conquests in the East. Christianity, an obviously syncretic religion with many pagan elements, evolved from a combination of Egyptian, Roman, Asiatic and Hellenized Jewish influences. In many cases, the early Christian church simply appropriated pagan ideas and festivals as part of its ongoing culture war against paganism.

Mithraism has many similarities to other religions of the time. The beliefs of the cult have to be pieced together from inscriptions and artwork, however. According to the OCD, "the cult is known primarily from its archaeological remains. Over 400 find-spots are recorded, many of them excavated meeting-places. These and the ... dedicatory inscriptions give a good idea of cult life and membership."

In the case of Christianity, it's hard to know whether the beliefs of the Jesus cult simply emerged through a process of syncretism or whether the Christians just stole their ideas from the pagan belief systems they were competing against. Both of these things probably happened at the same time. One way or another, the "new" religion was hardly original and it could have lost the culture war to Mithraism if it hadn't acquired enough secular power to suppress its competitors.

Book Review: Jesus Was Caesar

Jesus Was Caesar by Francesco Carotta is an interesting book even if you don't buy its central premise that the story of Jesus is essentially a retelling of the story of Divus Julius -- the deified Julius Caesar. I don't buy it myself and Carotta's theory has been completely ignored by serious scholars, probably for good reason, but the book's worth checking out if you're interested in alternate histories of the origin of Christianity.

"The thesis of Carotta's book Jesus was Caesar is based on a comparison of the gospels, especially the earliest Gospel of Mark, with the ancient sources about the last years in the life of Caesar and his immediate legacy," according to Wikipedia. "Within Carotta's theory the gospels are hypertexts after a diegetic transposition." This basically means that the story of Caesar's assassination and deification is the story hidden within the story of Jesus.

According to Carotta, the cult established by Augustus for the Divine Caesar evolved into the Jesus cult over the years:

"Julius Caesar, son of Venus and founder of the Roman Empire, was elevated to the status of Imperial God, Divus Julius, after his violent death. The cult that surrounded him dissolved as Christianity surfaced. A cult surrounding Jesus Christ, son of God and originator of Christianity, appeared during the second century. Early historians, however, never mentioned Jesus and even now there is no actual proof of his existence. On the one hand, an actual historical figure missing his cult, on the other, a cult missing its actual historical figure: intriguing mirror images." -- from the synopsis of Jesus Was Caesar.

On the face of it, I don't see any reason why one kind of cult couldn't have morphed into another like this, but Carotta's theory isn't very convincing, to say the least. He suffers from a bad case of parallelism, i.e., the tendency to find parallels everywhere, and some of his arguments are tenuous at best, even more shaky than many of the parallels Joseph Atwill claims to find between the gospels and The Jewish War by Josephus.

Carotta makes some strange claims, arguing, for instance, that Jesus may have already been dead when he was crucified, assuming he was crucified at all, and Jesus Was Caesar describes in incredible detail a bewildering maze of connections that aren't exactly overpowering in their persuasiveness, to put it mildly. One way or another, though, it's obvious that Carotta's done a huge amount of research on the history of early Christianity and the imperial cult of Caesar.

This is a massive book (358 pages with over a hundred pages of footnotes and a detailed bibliography) full of details about Roman and Jewish religion, paleography, ancient languages, geography, statuary, artwork, cultic practices, etc. At times Carotta reaches an almost Robert Burton level of scholastic obsessiveness, but it's fascinating stuff if you're into this kind of thing. Jesus Was Caesar is the kind of humongous tome you could easily spend months or years reading and studying. In fact, it would probably take a lifetime of research just to track down and verify all of Carotta's sources.

Jesus Was Caesar should be classified as "speculative nonfiction." It's one of those books that's worth reading for its details rather than its conclusion, though it's almost impossible to know if Carotta got the details right. Reading it would also make a good intellectual exercise in spotting leaps of logic and hidden assumptions, but I'm not sure it's worth the effort. I've got to admit that I couldn't make it through the whole thing. I gave it a shot, but I got bogged down pretty quickly.

I have to give Carotta credit for one thing, at least. His book is well-sourced with extensive footnotes. Maybe his argument is wrong -- I'm not saying it is or isn't -- but Jesus Was Caesar is definitely a scholarly work, which is more than can be said for a lot of the alternate histories of early Christianity that are floating around out there.

The Newgrange Megalithic Passage Tomb

"The Megalithic Passage Tomb at Newgrange was built about 3200 BC," according to Nowth.com, a great site about the prehistoric megaliths of Ireland. "The kidney shaped mound covers an area of over one acre and is surrounded by 97 kerbstones, some of which are richly decorated with megalithic art. The 19 metre long inner passage leads to a cruciform chamber with a corbelled roof. It is estimated that the construction of the Passage Tomb at Newgrange would have taken a work force of 300 at least 20 years."

"Newgrange is the best known Irish passage tomb and dates to c.3,200BC. The large mound is approximately 80m in diameter and is surrounded at its base by a kerb of 97 stones. The most impressive of these stones is the highly decorated Entrance Stone [see next video]." Source: World Heritage Ireland.

"A tomb such as Newgrange would lead one to suppose that it must have been destined as the final resting-place of a leading or kingly family (passage-graves were collective tombs) but in the absence of the kind of evidence that has proved so informative in other lands, notably in Egypt, we can only speculate about the matter." Source: Newgrange.com.