(continued)
(2) "The old Homeric civilizations — the Mycenaeans on the Greek mainland, the Minoans on Crete — are on the wane"
(a) Homer
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer
(Whether and when he lived is unknown)
(b) Mycenae
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycenae
(The period of Greek history from about 1600 BC to about 1100 BC is called Mycenaean in reference to Mycenae)
(c) Minoan civilization
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_civilization
(arose on the island of Crete and flourished from approximately 2700 to 1450 BC; The term "Minoan" refers to the mythic "king" Minos and was first used by Arthur Evans in archaeological contexts)
(3) “You can feel its crosscurrents flowing in the appearance of exotic objects, dating back to the 14th century BC, on Greek islands: on Rhodes, in a ceramic painted with a Near Eastern theme called the ‘Master of Animals’; on Euboia, in a faience cat figurine with a distinctly Egyptian look and gold jewelry that has Babylon written all over it.”
(a) Rhodes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodes
(b) For Master of Animals, see Lord of the animals
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_animals
(c) Euboea
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euboea
(d) faience
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faience
(originally associated by French speakers with wares exported from Faenza in central Italy)
(4) “A tight-lipped, staring stone portrait of one of its major kings, Ashurnasirpal II, stands at the entrance to the Assyrian section, like a rocket rooted in the earth. An inscription on his chest both spells out his cosmic sovereignty as ‘king of the universe,” and details the geographic coordinates of his realm: from the banks of the Tigris to the Mediterranean’s shores.”
Ashurnasirpal II
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashurnasirpal_II
(king of Assyria from 883 to 859 BC)
(5) “In one case, the disaster was modern. In the early 20th century, the German archaeologist Baron Max von Oppenheim (1860-1946) shipped a cache of monumental stone Syro-Hittite sculptures from northeastern Syria to Berlin, where he kept them stored in a former iron foundry. During an Allied air attack in 1943, the foundry was bombed and went up in flames. When hoses were trained on the smoldering ruins, many of the still-hot basalt sculptures exploded. Nearly 30,000 fragments were preserved, and, in 2001, painstaking restoration began. One example of it, a six-foot-long statue of a creature with a human head, a bird’s body and a scorpion’s tail, is in the show. In its original palace setting, it served as a fearsome gatekeeper. In its present blown-apart, patched-together state, it looks unsightly and almost illegible, an irreversibly maimed casualty of war.”
(a) Max von Oppenheim
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Oppenheim
(b) basalt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_von_Oppenheim
(6) “For obvious reasons, less conspicuous, packable objects have always had a better a chance of staying out of harm’s way, and the show, organized by Joan Aruz, curator in charge of the museum’s Near Eastern art department, is rich in them. Assyria certainly produced its share: A smartphone-size ivory relief of a lioness attacking — or is it embracing? — a young man is one of the outstanding things and, on loan from the British Museum, one of the great sculptures in New York at present. (A matching version, even better preserved, was looted from the Iraq Museum in Baghdad in 2003.)”
(a) “on loan from the British Museum”
Inlaid Ivory Panel of a Lioness Devouring a Boy. British Museum, undated
www.britishmuseum.org/explore/hi ... _devouring_boy.aspx
(“Phoenician, 9th-8th century BC[.] From the palace of Ashurnasirpal II, Nimrud, northern Iraq[.] This carved ivory panel is one of an almost identical pair with one now in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad. They originally formed part of a piece of furniture, perhaps a throne * * * It was recovered by the excavator Max Mallowan from the bottom of an ancient well in the palace of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II (reigned 883-859 BC). It had probably been thrown there during the destruction of the palace in the late seventh century BC. The carving is Phoenician in style, which suggests that the piece of furniture may have been made in one of the Phoenician centres along the Levantine coast, and come to the Assyrian capital as tribute or booty. * * * Much of the surface of the [London]ivory was once overlaid with gold leaf and inlaid with carnelian and lapis lazuli. Some of this survives and there are traces of the blue mortar into which the lapis lazuli inlays were pressed. The African [boy] wears a short kilt covered in gold leaf. The curls of his hair are marked with gold. A spot of lapis lazuli is also inlaid on the forehead of the lioness”)
* Max Mallowan
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Mallowan
(1904-1978; a British archaeologist)
(b) Chasing Down History and the 'Thieves of Baghdad.' NPR, Dec 9, 2005
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5024219
(“Antiquities Still Missing [--] Lioness Attacking a Nubian: An extraordinary eighth-century B.C. ivory plaque inlaid with lapis and carnelian and overlaid with gold [photo]. Two such ivory plaques are known to exist, with the other being in the British Museum”)
(7) “But when it came to moving precious portables around, the Phoenicians — merchants by trade, explorers by nature, whose city-state lined the Levantine coast — commanded the field. In a sense, they are, with Assyrians, the show’s other great Iron Age power, though in a recessive, businesslike way. Assyria’s might was strictly land based; Phoenicians plied the sea, coming and going from ports in Lebanon and Syria to Egypt, Greece, Cyprus, Italy and Spain, dropping off and picking up as they went.”
(a) Levant
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levant
(section 1 Etymology)
(b) recessive (adj); "WITHDRAWN"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recessive
(8) “Through objects they created, or copied or transported, their presence is everywhere: It’s there in a gleaming gilded silver bowl with Assyrian and Egyptian divinities in a clinch at its center”
clinch (n): "A struggle or scuffle at close quarters, especially (in boxing) one in which the fighters become too closely engaged for full-arm blows"
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/clinch
(9) “At the end of the seventh century, more change. Babylonia became the new Assyria, as ruthless as its predecessor in erasing resistance, and as ingenious in visually asserting its own imperial brand, most noticeably in glazed brick mosaic images of lions and dragons that covered its palaces. Ahead lay the fluorescence of Classical Greece and the rise of Persia, marching in from the west, sweeping all before it like dust.”
(a) Classical Greece
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Greece
(a 200 year period in Greek culture lasting from the 5th through 4th centuries BC (the most common dates being the fall of the last Athenian tyrant in 510 BC to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC); The Classical period in this sense follows the Archaic period and is in turn succeeded by the Hellenistic period
(i) Aristotle (384–322 BC)
(ii) Hellenistic period
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_period
(between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire as signified by the Battle of Actium [qv] in 31 BC)
Hellenistic: Not to be confused with another adjective Hellenic.
(iii) “Ahead lay * * * the rise of Persia, marching in from the west, sweeping all before it like dust.”
(A) Not from the “west,” but rather from the east. (Romans came much later, conquering Kingdom of Pontus at 63 BC.)
(B) Cyrus the Great
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_the_Great
(Cyrus II; c 600 or 576 – 530 BC; founder of the Achaemenid Empire [The dynasty draws its name from king Achaemenes, who ruled Persis [qv] between 705 BC and 675 BC]; Under his rule, the empire embraced all the previous civilized states of the ancient Near East)
However, Achaemenid Empire never ruled Greece peninsula, for Persians lost the wars. See Greco-Persian Wars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Persian_Wars
(The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus the Great conquered the Greek-inhabited region of Ionia in 547 BC; the war lasted 499–449 BC; table--Result: Greek victory [where Greek city-states united])
* Ancient Civilizations: 4e. Persian Empire. UShistory.org, undated.
www.ushistory.org/civ/4e.asp
Then Alexander the Great arose to conquer Persia and everything else.
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发表于 9-20-2014 12:34:29
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