The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean
Page 75
On the cultural front, results will be easier to show: a Euro-Mediterranean University has been founded in Slovenia, and ever more intense cultural exchanges are proposed between Mediterranean countries. The aim, of course, is to break down barriers – to recreate, within a fresh mould, the ‘integrated’ Mediterranean of past times and to recover some elements of the lost convivencia of Jew, Christian and Muslim. Yet what is most striking about the Union for the Mediterranean is that most of its members, who include Finland, Estonia, Slovakia, Holland and Ireland, are remote from the Mediterranean. The centre of gravity of Europe still lies in the north, despite the accession to the EU of a few more Mediterranean countries (all small) at the start of the twenty-first century. This confirms the impression that the Mediterranean has lost its place at the centre of the western world, a process that began as early as 1492 when new opportunities beckoned in the Atlantic; and, early in the twenty-first century, it has become clear that the great economic powerhouse of the future will be China. In the worldwide economy of the twenty-first century, an integrated Mediterranean has local rather than global significance. Ease of contact across the globe – physical contact by air, virtual contact through the Web – means that political, commercial and cultural contacts can be sustained rapidly across vast distances. In this sense, the world has become one big Mediterranean, and the Fifth Mediterranean is the last Mediterranean in which, in any meaningful sense, the world has revolved around the Great Sea.
1. Mnajdra in Malta is the site of several temples from the fourth and third millennium BC, closely packed together, beside steep cliffs overlooking the sea; the large central temple here was the last to be built. The Maltese temples are the oldest large-scale buildings in the Mediterranean.
2. The 16 cm-long ‘sleeping lady’ preserved in the Archaeological Museum, Valletta, may represent an earth goddess, or is perhaps a personification of Malta and Gozo, with the humps representing the two islands.
3. Most Cycladic figurines are female and may portray companions of the dead, whether servants or spirits in the next world.
4. A female head from Keros in the Cycladic islands, made from local marble in the first half of the third millennium BC. Its purity and simplicity are deceptive, since it would have been highly coloured.
5. Manufactured in Crete around 1500 BC, this vase is one of several Minoan pots which uses the body and arms of an octopus to create a fluid and naturalistic design, breaking away from Egyptian and Syrian models to form a distinctive island style.
6. Fresco of c. 1420 BC from the tomb of Pharaoh’s vizier Rekhmire in Upper Egypt. One of Rekhmire’s functions was to arrange the arrival of tribute from neighbouring lands, portrayed here and boastfully labelled ‘every land is subject to His Majesty’. Some tribute, such as jars of oil or wine, seems to come from Crete, other objects and animals from lands to the south.
7. Akrotiri on Thera was a major centre of trade and shipping before its destruction in a massive volcanic eruption in c. 1500 BC. This remarkable fresco from the sixteenth century BC shows the port and oared vessels bound for or returning from a Mediterranean voyage.
8. A gold death mask from Mycenae, from around 1500 BC, buried in a princely grave. ‘Mycenae rich in gold’, as Homer called it, was ruled by Greek-speaking warrior princes who eventually fell under the spell of Minoan culture. These masks may imitate the infinitely grander death masks of the Pharaohs.
9. Deprived of the gold with which their Aegean forebears had covered the faces of the dead, the early Philistines moulded clay images of their leaders. This face forms part of a sarcophagus found at Beth She’an in northern Israel.
10. The twelfth-century Warrior Vase from Mycenae shows a troop of soldiers wearing horned helmets typical of the invaders and mercenaries the Egyptians called the Shardana. Other parts of their equipment bear comparison with Homer’s descriptions of his heroes’ armour.
11. The Philistines appear on the walls of the early twelfth-century BC temple of Madinat Habu in Upper Egypt, whose friezes celebrate victories attributed to Rameses III over the so-called Sea Peoples.
12. In the late ninth century BC Phoenician merchants established a settlement at Nora in southern Sardinia. They commemorated the dedication of a temple with one of the earliest inscriptions in the Semitic alphabet to survive in the western Mediterranean.
13. This stone tablet or stele, engraved in Carthage around 400 BC, is thought to show a priest, identifiable from his distinctive headdress, carrying a child victim to the place of sacrifice.
14. A model of a Phoenician ship, converted into a lamp and dedicated in AD 232 in the temple of Zeus Beithmares in what is now Lebanon. Although late in date, it gives a good idea of the appearance of Phoenician and Carthaginian ships.
15. Phoenician silver coin portraying a Phoenician ship and the sea monster known to the Greeks as the hippocamp.
16. A battle between Greek foot soldiers or hoplites depicted on the Chigi Vase, found near Veii, north of Rome, and dating from around 600 BC. Prodigious quantities of often magnificent Corinthian pottery were acquired by Etruscan princes.
17. Panel from the bronze gates of the Assyrian royal palace at Balawat in northern Iraq, ninth century BC. The Phoenicians bring tribute across the Mediterranean and overland to the Assyrian court.
18. Late sixth-century BC krater decorated in black figure by the Athenian artist Exekias and exported to Vulci in Etruria, where it was discovered in a tomb. The bowl, used as a shallow wine cup, illustrates the story of the capture of the wine god Dionysos by Etruscan pirates, and the transformation of the pirates into dolphins.
19. Tomb of the Hunting and Fishing, Tarquinia, late sixth century BC. The delightful scenes on this Etruscan fresco betray strong influence from Ionian Greek art.
20. Tablet from Marsiliana d’Albegna, Etruria, seventh century BC. Probably used for teaching the alphabet, this tablet provides the earliest evidence for the importation of the archaic Greek alphabet into Etruria; the letters were written from right to left, as in Phoenician, and the alphabet contains several letters such as delta that were dropped from the Etruscan script because the sound did not exist in Etruscan speech.
21. ‘This is the temple and this is the place of the statue which the king Thefarie Velianas has dedicated to Uni-Astarte …’ One of three gold tablets discovered in 1964 at Pyrgoi on the Etruscan coast, two in Etruscan and one in Phoenician, recording a dedication made by the king of Caere at the end of the sixth century BC.
22. Following his naval victory over the Etruscans at Kyma near Naples in 474 BC, the tyrant Hieron of Syracuse dedicated an enemy pot-helmet at the shrine of Zeus in Olympia inscribed: ‘Hieron, son of Deinomenes and the Syracusans and Zeus: Tyrsenian from Kyma’.
23. The fortified tower (nuraghe) of Orolo in central Sardinia is one of the best-preserved examples of the prehistoric castles that once dotted the island in their thousands; many, such as this one, were surrounded by villages. Built between 1500 and 900 BC, it was occupied for many centuries thereafter.
24. The early Sards exploited the minerals on their island and were gifted copper workers. This bronze boat, made around 600 BC, may have been used as a lamp. Other examples have been found as far away as Vetulonia in Etruria.
25. Periandros ruled Corinth from 627 to 585 BC and actively promoted its economy. His reputation as a harsh tyrant was tempered by praise for his wisdom and justice.
26. A posthumous representation of Alexander the Great as the sun god. Alexander visited the temple of the Egyptian sun god Amun Ra in 331 BC and wanted the Egyptians to worship him as that god. After his death, ancient Egyptian and Greek religious ideas fused in Egypt during the rule of the Ptolemies.
27. The most famous ancient Iberian sculpture is the ‘Dama de Elche’, a bust of a priestess or goddess wearing elaborate jewellery, from the fourth century BC. It shows Greek influence, but also bears close comparison with other life size sculptures left by the remarkable civilization of the ancient Ibe
rians.
28. The cult of Sarapis was promoted by Ptolemy I of Egypt. The god was an eclectic fusion of the bull god Apis, the god of rebirth Osiris and several Greek gods, including Zeus and Dionysos.
29. In the third century BC the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal’s father, built a personal empire in Spain and issued coins which show either him or the god Melqart wreathed in Greek style; probably the intention was to identify Hamilcar with the Punic god, thought to be the same as the Greek Herakles.
30. Bronze coin of Nero (d. AD 68) celebrating the grain trade. The goddess Ceres holds ears of wheat and faces Annona (‘Harvest’), who holds a cornucopia; also visible are an altar on which a grain measure has been placed, and the stern of a grain ship.
31. Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemies, was a cultured though ruthless ruler of Egypt. Her affairs with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony eventually brought disaster on her dynasty and led to the Roman occupation of her country.
32. Coin marking the completion of a new harbour at Ostia, from the reign of Nero. The miniature portrayal of different kinds of ship, observed from various angles, is striking.
33. A large Roman warship or quinquireme, ready for battle at Actium in 31 BC. This relief comes from Praeneste, now Palestrina, south-east of Rome.
34. This striking fresco showing ships coming and going from a harbour near Naples, possibly Puteoli, decorated the walls of a house at Stabiae and was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.
35. Sixth-century mosaic from the basilica of Sant’Apollinare in Ravenna, showing the Byzantine fleet at Classis, Ravenna’s outport, and its impressive harbour fortifications.
36. Cornice from the synagogue at Ostia, showing the seven-branched candlestick (menorah) that was one of the symbols of Judaism in the late Roman empire. The synagogue remained in use between the first and fourth centuries.
37. An inscription from the second century commemorates the building of the Ark for the scrolls of the Law in the Ostia synagogue, at the expense of Mindis Faustos; the inscription is mainly in Greek, the daily language of the Jews of Rome, together with a few Latin words.
38. At the start of the twelfth century the magnificent altarpiece known as the Pala d’Oro, or Golden Standard, was installed on the high altar of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice. This panel shows the ship carrying the relics of St Mark sailing towards Venice after the saint’s bones were stolen from Alexandria in 828.
39. In a photograph from 1885 Amalfi can be seen clinging to the steep peninsula which was home to a lively community of early medieval merchants. It was little more than a village even at the height of its influence in the eleventh century, when its ships were run up on the beach, as here. It remains a tiny town, though the convent higher up the slopes has now become a luxury hotel.
40. The highly glazed basins (bacini) that adorn the outside of several Romanesque churches in Pisa would have glistened in the sun, proclaiming the success of Pisan merchants in penetrating Muslim lands where know how for their manufacture existed. This bacino, probably Majorcan, shows a Muslim ship under sail, accompanied by a smaller boat.
41. Fonduks were generally arcaded buildings on two floors built around a quadrangle. The royal fonduk in crusader Acre, now called the Inn of the Columns (Khan al-‘Umdan), where taxes on merchandise were collected, was rebuilt by the Turks but preserves its form well. The Italian merchants possessed their own fonduks in other parts of the city.
42. Four magnificent horses of ancient Greek workmanship adorned the hippodrome in Constantinople and formed part of the loot carried away by the Venetians after they stormed the city during the Fourth Crusade. Until they began to deteriorate, they stood proudly above the entrance to St Mark’s Basilica.
43. The Muslim scholar and prince Idrisi, from Ceuta, served the Norman kings of Sicily as their geographer. Although twelfth-century manuscripts of his work do not survive, this late-medieval world map is probably a copy of one drawn by Idrisi. South is at the top and so the Mediterranean is in the bottom right segment, with the Adriatic cutting deep into the European landmass.
44. Detail of an early fourteenth-century portolan chart drawn in Majorca. Sardinia stands in the centre, and Majorca is flamboyantly distinguished by the flag of its Catalan king. Place-names crowd the coasts.
45. Thirteenth-century wall-paintings showing the capture of the City of Majorca in 1229 by the troops of King James I of Aragon. These events were also celebrated in King James’s Book of Deeds, written in Catalan, the first royal autobiography from the Middle Ages.
46. Aigues-Mortes, meaning ‘dead waters’, was founded on the edge of the Carmargue as a base for French trade into the Mediterranean and as a departure point for crusaders bound for the East. Most of its well-preserved buildings date from the start of the fourteenth century, by which time it was functioning as the outport of its former rival Montpellier, which lay under Majorcan rule.
47. Genoa is squeezed between the Ligurian Alps and the sea, and Hartmann Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle printed in 1493 conveys well the mass of buildings, towers and churches clustered together beside the port, including (top centre) the imposing gateway built when the city was under threat from the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa in the mid-twelfth century.
48. Dubrovnik seen from the south-east, with its imposing line of fifteenth-century walls. The harbour, just visible, lay on the other side and one of the tall buildings on the right was the grain store. The town is bisected by the street known as Placa or Stradun, ending on the right next to the weighing-house or Sponza Palace, which now houses the city’s rich archives; the Jewish quarter lay to the left of the palace.
49. In the fifteenth century, Manises in the Valencian hinterland was the great centre for the production of glazed ceramics with lustre decoration. This bowl bears the coat-of-arms of the degli Agli family of Florence; Italian patricians were keen purchasers of these Hispano-Moresque wares. Inspired by Moorish technology, Christian potters came to dominate production, but there were some joint workshops where Muslims and Christians worked side by side.
50. This votive model of a cargo ship, a unique survival from the Middle Ages, originally stood in a church in Mataró in Catalonia. Nearly 120 cm long and over 50 cm broad, it dates from around 1420 and is made partly of mulberry wood from the Mediterranean, its hull constructed out of planks laid flush, in Mediterranean style.
51. The magnificent Exchange (llotja) in Valencia, built between 1483 and 1498. This hall with its soaring columns was used for the transaction of business, while in another room the commercial court of Valencia sat. The inscription glorifying honest trade can be seen running around the cornice.
52. The code of maritime law known as the Consulate of the Sea determined commercial law in Valencia and among Catalan merchants overseas. A printed edition appeared in 1494. This earlier manuscript copy portrays King Alfonso the Magnanimous (d. 1458) surrounded by his courtiers, a reminder that the king and the merchants worked closely together to create a political and commercial empire in the Mediterranean.
53. Mehmet II, Ottoman sultan, known as ‘the Conqueror’ (Fatih) in recognition of his capture of Constantinople. Fascinated by Italian culture, he summoned the Italian artist Giovanni Bellini to his court, where this portrait was painted not long before Mehmet’s death in 1481.
54. At the end of his life, Mehmet launched ambitious expeditions against Latin Christendom, sending his fleet to Otranto in southern Italy, which was occupied, but failing in 1480 to capture Rhodes. Here, a French miniaturist celebrates the defeat of the Turks, forced to come to terms with the Knights Hospitallers, whose flags can be seen along the walls and atop the maritime fortress.
55. Hisr also known as Hayrettin and as Barbarossa (d. 1546), was one of the most ruthless Barbary corsairs; based in Algiers, he launched attacks on Minorca and Italy and wintered in Toulon at the invitation of King Francis I of France. This painting was the work of Nakkep Reis Haydar, who had himself served at sea.