Showing posts from category: Ancient history
Rome’s Chariot Racing: The “Formula One” of the Ancient World
People tend to associate the sport of chariot racing with the ancient Romans, thanks in part to Hollywood and movies like Ben-Hur…chariot racing was a fundamental part of ludi circenses (circus entertainment) for the Roman public, together with gladiatorial combats, mock hunts and wild animals pitted against each other. Chariot racing however wasn’t an activity that originated with the Romans, the ancient Greeks and the Etruscans were right into the sport long before them𝔸. It emerged in the Hellenic world at least as early as 700BC with contests taking place in stadia known as hippodromes (“horse course”). The sport features in the Iliad and by 684BC it was so popular it debuted as an event in the proto-Olympic games. In Greek chariot races the competitors were the owners of the rigs and horses, and with Spartan women entitled to own property, this allowed some women to participate in the popular sporting spectacle. Success in the four-horse races was well remunerated, with prizes for the winner such as 140 ceramic pots of olive oil (‘Ben-Hur: The Chariot Race’, A Historian Goes to the Movies, 16-Sep-2016, http://aelarsen.wordpress.com).
The premier venue for Roman chariot racing, the epicentre of the sport in antiquity, was the massively-proportioned Circus Maximus, a specially-constructed race course located between the Aventine and Palantine hills in Rome. The course was an extended oblong shape along a 2,037-foot-long sand track (spatium) with sharp 180° turns at each end (a race comprised seven laps with the top speeds nudging 40 mph) (Encyclopedia Romana, Upd. 21-Nov-2023, www.penelope.uchicago.edu). The rage for currus circenses (chariot racing) as a spectator sport was such that the Roman went from having 10-12 races a day on 17 days of the year only in Emperor Augustus’ time to 100 races per day during the reign of Domitian. The standard “horse power” for racing chariots was four horses—called a quadriga or quardigae𝔹—piloted by older, more experienced horsemen called agitatos, whereas novice drivers (auriga) were usually assigned a bigae (two-horse vehicles). Less common but not unheard of were six, eight and ten-horse chariots. The best horses for currus circenses were sourced from the Roman provinces of Lusitania and Hispania and from North Africa (‘Chariot Racing: Rome’s Most Popular, Most Dangerous Sport’, Patrick J Kiger, History, Upd. 17-July-2022, www.history.com).
To the Roman masses, the chariot drivers were above all entertainers, just like actors or musicians of the day, but there was a duality to how they were viewed by society. The elite drivers were lauded and lionised by the public (just like elite sportsmen today), but at the same time they were cursed as witches or magicians (this conclusion was drawn because how else could you explain their repeated victories?)(Kiger). Not all social elites in Rome were as gung-ho about the sport as the populus Romanus, although the egregious and unstable emperors Caligula and Nero were both big fans.
Charioteers faced a high danger of injury or death from their profession, but the lure was the prospect of fabulous wealth…for the best race drivers. The prize money for a single victory ranged from 15-30 thousand sesterces up to 60,000 sesterces. If you were successful on the track and survived, you could earn a fortune and set yourself up for life…one such ace driver was Portuguese-born Gaius Appeuleius Diocles whose 24-year career netted him upward of 36,000,000 secterces from 1,462 victories. Diocles’ race winnings, valued today as equivalent to US$17 bn, would place him far above the superstar earnings of the Michael Jordans and Novak Djokovics of the modern era in sport (Kiger).
Charioteers competed in teams under the aegis of factiones (factions) which like Formula One racing today, were under the control of team bosses/owners – these were different associations of contractors. The four principal factions, each one associated with a particular season and god, were known as the Reds, Blues, Greens and Whitesℂ. Each faction team had its own talent scouts whose job it was to find the most promising charioteers and horses, and each team had its own passionate tribal supporters base, much as we see today in professional football𝔻 (‘Chariot Races’, The Roman Empire in the First Century, www.pbs.org).
The faction bosses bankrolled the whole operation of their teams, including the engagement of medical and veterinary staff, in return they took a cut of the drivers’ winnings. With customarily 12 charioteers in a race (three drivers from each team), teams pursued a stratagem of using their two lesser drivers to try to manoeuvre and block their opponents to maximise the chances of success of their team’s star driver (Formula One and contemporary professional cycling adopt similar team tactics in races) (‘Chariot Racing’, Travels Through Greco-Roman Antiquity, http://exhibits.library.villanova.edu).
Chariot racing revolved around money, not just for the drivers and factiones, betting on the outcome by the race-going “punters” was big business too. The Circus Maximus didn’t have on-course bookies or the TAB or Ladbrokes but betting was widespread on an individual basis. Prior to a race spectators in the seated areas or in the refreshment arcades would make private wagers with each other on the upcoming race.
Footnote: Hollywood does currus circenses ⟴⟴⟴ Most movie-watchers would have seen the 1959 biblical era blockbuster Ben-Hur, the Charlton Heston version immortalised for its epic 20-plus minutes chariot race. The race is a thrilling climax to the movie, accurately capturing the danger and drama of a real chariot contest in Ancient Rome, however much of what is shown veers away from historical verisimilitude…there are nine bronze dolphin lap counters, not seven, though the chariots are comparatively light as they needed to be. In Roman charioteering the race drivers were formed into teams (as outlined above), whereas in the film this is completely ignored with each competitor singularly representing different ethnicities (Jew, Roman, Arab, etc). Roman chariot races had staggered starts and starting gates (carceres) to negate the advantage to drivers nearest the inner wall or barrier (the spina), the movie is again historically out-of-kilter. First, the contestants line up one abreast, backing on to the the spina which seems to be borrowed from the way Formula One car races used to start in the 1950s, then they wheel round and start in a straight line across the sand-strewn track. Having Ben-Hur’s antagonist the elite Roman soldier Messala as a charioteer, is also all wrong…chariot drivers were recruited from the lower orders, slaves, freedmen, foreigners, they were infamis, the disreputable in society, men with a black mark against them. Lastly, Ben-Hur and Messala and the other drivers all hold the reins of their horses during the race, unlike what the Romans actually did, which was to tie the reins around the charioteer’s waist during the race (‘A Historian”).
𝔸 and the Byzantines continued the sport after the fall of Rome
𝔹 the quadriga races were the main event of the ludi circenses race day
ℂ the Blues and the Greens, the two largest factions, engaged in a fierce rivalry
𝔻 there were also occasionally spectator riots, as in football
Queen Hatshepsut’s Wondrous Showcase Valley Temple stained by Tragedy
Our visit to the Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, AKA the Deir el-Bahri (“Northern Monastery”) was the highlight of the visit to Luxor, a happy wrap to a long day mostly spent peering into a raft of dark, underground Egyptian burial tombs in the nearby Valley of the Kings. 
From the Queen’s monastery entrance gate near the West Bank of the Nile we were ferried out to the site in “people-movers”, open transit E-vehicles. This sublime gem of a temple stands out from the others for several reasons! First of all – the fun-sounding name, we were informed by Bakr that it is correctly pronounced “Hat-cheap-suit” which is a pretty good memory device to resort to, but the quipsters in our tour party were quick to translate it into “Hot n’chicken-soup” or even more absurdly “Hot-chip’n’soup”! (in the dusty air and baking heat of the Valley, lunch was never far from our minds!). It was special too because remarkably Queen Hatshepsut was only one of two female pharaohs in Ancient Egyptian history (d.1458 BCE, 18th Dynasty). 
The first, Sobekneferu (d.1802 BCE, 12th Dynasty) was a more shadowy figure and a much less substantive ruler. Hatshepsut first ascended the imperial throne as co-regent with her half-brother but assumed full pharaonic powers after his death. Her reign was notable for its building projects, especially around Thebes (her crowning glory this memorial temple, Deir el-Bahri, built in Western Thebes) and for extending the kingdom’s trading links possibly as far as Punt (Eritrea) in the Horn of Africa. 
In the contemporary images, statues and sculptures of Hatshepsut✱, she is depicted (on her own orders) as a man, eg, the free-standing colonnade sculptures of the Queen in her showcase Thebes temple show her with a manly build and a characteristic pharaoh’s beard and attire. Lastly there is its peerless aesthetic appeal. Most of the other mortuary houses in Luxor’s valley look drab and unprepossessing by comparison. The temple is magnificently set in a natural valley against a towering backdrop of massive craggy mountains. Though upward of 3,500 years old in some ways it looks strangely modern with its ramps, two-tired terraces and the simplicity of clean, white, sharp lines of the colonnades and facade…the simplicity of the building and the way it blends into the landscape reminds me a bit of the architecture of Chicago’s Prairie School. Hatshepsut’s pet name for the temple was Djeser Djeseru (“splendour of Splendours”), in the ancient era the elegant simplicity of Deir el-Bahri was enhanced by a number of aesthetic features and elements that haven’t survived to the present day (eg, an avenue of sphinxes, fountains, lines of myrrh trees from the land of Punt) [The Rough Guide to Egypt (2007 Ed.)]. 
The distressing, tragic contemporary association with this sublimely beautiful monument is that it was here that 58 international tourists as well as four Egyptians were massacred by terrorists in 1997, a further 26 visitors or more were injured in the onslaught (the worst-ever terrorist atrocity involving tourists in Egypt). The terrorist group, suspected to be a splinter arm of al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya (Egyptian Sunni Islamist organisation)✥ entered the complex in the guise of security guards, trapping the victims inside the temple and setting on them with knives and guns. The murderers later fled and committed suicide in the surrounding hills. The largest proportion (>60%) of the murdered tourists came from Switzerland (later on Swiss intelligence ‘determined’ that Osama Bin Laden had bankrolled the operation). A direct consequent of the Luxor massacre was both a beefing up of tourist security and a drop in Egypt’s tourist numbers. Subsequent terrorist attacks elsewhere within the country has ensured the maintenance of high levels of security by the Egyptian authorities to this day.
_______________________________________________________________ ✱ the statues of Hatshepsut that survive that is, many at the temple were predictably decimated by later male pharaohs in a chauvinist attempt to erase her from the annals of Egypt’s pharaonic ‘pantheon’ ✥ although this charge has continued to be denied by al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya itself
By Boat to Philae, Visiting an Ancient Egyptian ‘Treasure Island’
The island containing the Temple of Philae and other significant, associated monuments from antiquity is a definite starter on the list of essential things to see when in the Nubian region of Egypt. So, after the tour guide had taken us to the Aswan High Dam to get a sighter from the bridge of the vast reservoirs of water, we made for the island✱. 
The temple and other monuments we were going to see were originally on Philae island, but by the 1960s the Egyptian government, concerned at the harmful effect the periodical flooding of the island was having on the monuments and its archaeological relics (a by-product of the Aswan Low Dam), decided to relocate them to a more optimal place – mirroring the story with the Abu Simbel Tow Temples and the Aswan High Dam. The nearby island of Aglika was chosen as the new site and in a logistics exercise that consumed virtually all the seventies, Philae’s temples and monuments “island-hopped” to Aglika. 
There was some inexplicable delay (becoming quite the norm) when we got to the wharf in getting a boat to ferry us to the new island. One of the random fellow passengers on the boat ride was perhaps the most exotic ‘apparition’ we had encountered in all our time in Egypt. I say ‘apparition’ because although she was real, so oddly and eccentrically was she decked out in extravagant garb and paraphernalia, she was totally out-of-place with everyone else in the sweltering heat of the day. The image that occurred to me when I saw her was of a kind of Egyptian “Mary Poppins”. She was covered from head to foot in multi-layers of gaily coloured clothing, fancy “Sunday-best” gloves, etc, the whole kit! Yes and of course the obligatory umbrella as well! She also looked like she could seamlessly slot into the cast of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, no problems. We were all melting in the oppressive tropical heat in our thin cotton T-shirts, shorts and sandals, so I can’t imagine how she was feeling it. As it transpired, ‘Maryam’ Poppins had an eccentric personality to match her flamboyant attire. She tried to blame us for the boat’s delay and then wanted to use us as money-changers. I couldn’t quite fathom what exactly the proverbial bee in her over-veiled bonnet was! 
As the boat neared the island the vision was an enchanting one, the central complex of buildings seemed to be growing out of the lush green band of trees and bushes which surround it! It was easy to spot the distinctive twin pylons of the Temple of Isis. Philae was one of the strongholds for the cult of worshipping the all-empowering Egyptian goddess. 
Once you set foot on the island you find its full of fascinating monuments and artefacts which reveal a rich and varied history and an assortment of diverse cultural influences. The earliest religious structures reach back to the 4th century BCE and the Pharaonic era. Others date to the Ptolemaic Kingdom (Alexander the Great’s Graeco-Egyptian successors from Ptolemy I up to Cleopatra). A number of the buildings still extant were erected under the aegis and command of Roman emperors, eg, the Kiosk of Trajan (above). Even the early century Byzantine rulers have left an imprint on Philae as did the Coptic Christians. 
Most impressive of all perhaps is the forecourt of the main temple with its splendid colonnaded, the courtyard is an irenic atmosphere-evoking space. Also calming and softening the setting was the afternoon sunlight filtering in between the temple’s columns and reflecting on the still waters of the river in the background. The temple’s stand-out for me remains the striking reliefs of Egyptian deities (especially) on the Second Pylon (above), sharply defined sculptures which have been exceptionally well-preserved (or restored) bearing in mind that the temple walls had been half-submerged for considerable periods when it was still located on the vulnerable Philae island. 
In addition to the Temple of Isis and the Kiosk of Trajan, the island contains five lesser temples, two Roman gates, the Portico of (Emperor) Augustus and the Pavilion or Vestibule of (Pharaoh) Nactanebo I. The site’s various buildings are rich in the representation of pictographic narratives…the trained eye of Egyptologist Biko drew our attention to other, unauthorised markings on the monuments – various graffiti inscriptions is left by past visitors from the Roman epoch through to the Napoleonic period…which is visual confirmation – if we needed it – that graffiti has been around for just about forever (‘How Old is Graffiti?‘, www.wonderopolis.org). 
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✱ 8.8km south of Aswan as the Nubian Corvus flies!
Monumental Abu Simbel: A Desert Gem on the Tropic of Cancer
The stock standard, organised tour of Egypt offered by x-plus one number of tour operators and agents typically has an itinerary which comprises Cairo, Gaza Pyramids, Saqqara, a Nile cruise, Luxor and the Valley of the Kings (and maybe Queens), and Karnak, maybe Aswan if you’re lucky and Alexandria, less likely to be included. Sinai doesn’t score a guernsey and the Temples of Abu Simbel, way down in the Nubian south close to the border with Sudan, is often only available as a cost add-on option. But worth it…if you were permitted to visit just one archaeological site in Egypt, Abu Simbel should be the one!
The trip south to Upper Nile
We left bustling, teeming Cairo and journeyed to the Giza Railway Station preceded by a short stop at the Canadian Youth Hostel for a refresher/change of clothes. There was no rush as it turned out, we twiddled our thumbs while the overnight train to Aswan waited dormant on the platform for two hours before it departed. Egyptian Railways’ so-called Abela “Sleeping Train” was on the whole relatively comfortable, but it took a torturous 13½ hours to get to Aswan, and although we had our own separate (small) compartments I got very little sleep in the night in the noisy, overcrowded carriage with the jerky motion of the train. The on-board toilets were a bit dire and the railway staff gave us something cold and rubbery to eat…though they were very polite about it. As least we fared better than the other half of our tour group, their (following) ER train broke down on route in the heat for five hours, standing still, no air con!
⇩ Tourist stalls outside entrance to Abu Simbel site
The next morning we had to rise and leave our Aswan hotel just after 3am to drive to Abu Simbel. It was a four-hour drive to the site and we needed to get there early enough to be in and out before the severe heat of the day hit. Our bus together with several other tour buses travelled through the desert in a convoy escorted by armed soldiers in the front and rear vehicles (a corollary of the spike in terrorist attacks on Egyptian tourist sites in recent years). We arrived at the AS monument complex at around 7am.
Leaving the car park and side-stepping through the souvenir wallahs trying to steer us towards their goods stalls, we walked along a curved access road down a slight incline. As we rounded a corner, we get our first sighting of what we had come to see. Superimposed on the cliff face of a mountain were two sets of monumental carved figures, it is an amazing spectacle that greets you, the sheer scale is jaw-dropping, breathtaking…no superlatives you can think of seem adequate at the moment. The first wonder you come to are a set of four colossal (20m high) statues representing Rameses II, the famous pharaoh of the New Kingdom (19th Dynasty), seated on his throne. The four❈ monumental figures are set in rock relief, a niche carved out of the mountain wall. Behind the tetrad of Rameses’ is a temple dedicated to the pharaoh. Further along the mountain is a companion monument to Rameses’ consort, the Temple of Queen Nefertari. One hundred metres to the right of Rameses’ monument, also built on an extended arm of the artificial hill, is the smaller Temple of (the Goddess Hathor and) Queen Nefertari. In front of the temple is a frieze comprising large sculptures of figures (Rameses and Nefertari who unusually was rendered to be of equal height to the pharaoh).
⇧ Queen Neferari MonumentMoving the monuments – the engineering marvel of a miracle Almost as fascinating as the Abu Simbel monuments themselves is the back story of how they were forgotten, lost, re-found and then moved. Engulfed by shifting sands and lost for millennia, the temples were discovered by a Swiss orientalist, Johann-Ludwig Burckhardt, in 1813. And there they sat until the Aswan High Dam project of the 1960s…the rising levels of the Nile and the creation of Lake Nasser meant that the Abu Simbel monuments would be submerged in the river. A UN-funded salvage operation (coordinated by Swedish company Impreglio) used engineers and archaeologists from around the world and Egyptian labour⌀ to rescue the 3,200 year-old-monuments and re-position them slightly further south on higher ground that is back a bit from the rushing waters of the Nile.
How to move enormous solid objects of such colossal weight and density was the challenge facing the team. The ingenious solution was to cut the statues into manageable (up to 20-ton) blocks (some sections so delicate that handsaws had to be used) that could be then transported to the temples’ new home and there carefully reassembled. For this to succeed required absolute mathematical precision, patience and a long time…but it worked and the statues were rejoined remarkably without recourse to glue or any form of adhesive substance [‘1964-1968 Rescuing Rameses II’, Amanda Uren, http://mashable.com]
Inside the temples
Concrete domes and arched doorways were integrated into the construction of the artificial hills to create the two temples in the new location. Inside are treasury rooms, sculptures and numerous wall and column decorations in honour of Egypt’s most long-lived pharaoh. Photography within the Greater and Lesser Temples is not permitted, but packets of postcards depicting pictures of the interior treasures and of the 1960s relocation project can be purchased at the site.
We spent two hours exploring Abu Simbel but could have stayed longer, Biko however was quick to hurry us back to our mini-bus with his now familiar cry of yalla-beena! The temple site was becoming people top-heavy with new tourist buses arriving every hour, we knew that we needed to make tracks in the desert – especially if we were to avoid, as much as we could, having to travel in full tropical sun. We left happy and content that we had witnessed one of the best ancient complexes we would see. So many of Egypt’s archaeological monuments are magnificent, but very few of them can be said to match the rarefied atmosphere of Abu Simbel Tow Temples.
A note on nomenclature: The traditional speculation is that the name Abu Simbel derives from the name of the Nubian boy who guided Burckhardt (and later Italian explorer Giovanni Belzoni) to the location of the lost treasure temples…regardless of this claims’ merits it should be noted that Abu Simbel literally means “Father (Abu) of the Ear of Corn”.
Footnote: Remoteness of Abu Simbel – deep in the Nubian South, around 35–50km from the Sudanese border, Abu Simbel is literally in the middle of nowhere…the location of this monumental, eponymous structure was intended as the marker signifying the southern border of Rameses II’s empire
⇧ Night viewings of the spotlighted Rameses II monument are spectacular and popular
⊷⊷⊷⊶⊶⊶⊷⊷⊷⊶⊶⊶⊷⊷⊷⊶⊶⊶⊷⊷⊷⊶⊶⊶⊷⊷⊷⊶ ❈ the head and torso of one of the four Rameses lies at the feet of the statue – this was how Burckhardt found it in 1813, the fissure is thought to have been caused by an earthquake. Another point of difference within the foursome is that Rameses #4 (counting from left to right) is missing the pharaoh’s trademark shaving brush beard ⌀ the project used around 3,000 workers, cost $US42M in 1960s money and nearly five years to complete ⊡ during the project a perhaps surprising decision was made to not replace the detached head and torso of Rameses #2 in its original position, rather it was placed on the ground at the statue’s feet exactly as it was found when re-discovered in 1813