The desire for things and great tales

Studies presented to Pontus Hellström Edited by Lars Karlsson Susanne Carlsson and Jesper Blid Kullberg ACTA UNIVERSITATIS UPSALIENSIS BOREAS. Uppsala Studies in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Civilizations 35 Series editor: Gunnel Ekroth Editors: Lars Karlsson, Susanne Carlsson and Jesper Blid Kullberg Address: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Box 626, SE-751 26, Uppsala, Sweden The English text was revised by Catherine Parnell Abstract Lars Karlsson, Susanne Carlsson and Jesper Blid Kullberg (eds.), . Studies presented to Pontus Hellström. Boreas. Uppsala Studies in Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Civilizations 35, Uppsala 2014. 533 pp., with 231 ills., ISBN 978-91-554-8831-4 This volume contains studies on Classical Antiquity presented to Professor Pontus Hellström on his 75th birthday in January 2014. The 41 papers cover subjects ranging from the Etruscans and Rome in the west, to Greece, the landscape of Karia, and to the Sanctuary of Zeus at Labraunda. Many papers deal with new discoveries at Labraunda, but sites in the surrounding area, such as Alabanda, Iasos, and Halikarnassos are well represented, as well as Ephesos and Smyrna. Many architectural studies are included, and these examine both Labraundan buildings and topics such as masonry, Vitruvius, the Erechtheion, stoas, watermills, and Lelegian houses. Other papers deal with ancient coins, ancient music, Greek meatballs, and Karian theories on the origin of ancient Greece. Keywords: Pontus Hellström, Labraunda, Karia, Ancient Turkey, sanctuary, Ancient Greece, Hellenistic, Roman, Hekatomnid, archaeological excavations Jacket illustration: Pontus Hellström Collage by Jesper Blid Kullberg 2013.  Respective authors ISSN 0346-6442 ISBN 978-91-554-8831-4 Printed in Sweden by Edita Bobergs AB, 2014 Distributor: Uppsala University Library, Box 510, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden www.uu.se; [email protected] Contents To Pontus................................................................................................... 7 Pontus Hellström, a dynamic exhibition curator at Medelhavsmuseet by Suzanne Unge Sörling .......................................................................... 9 LABRAUNDA Flowers and garlands of the alsos. Verdant themes in the architectural sculpture of Labraunda by Jesper Blid Kullberg ................ 19 The travels of Zeus Labraundos by Naomi Carless Unwin ..................... 43 Antae in the afternoon: notes on the Hellenistic and Roman architecture of Labraunda by Ragnar Hedlund ....................................... 57 Then whose tomb is that ? by Olivier Henry ........................................... 71 The Labraunda hydrophoroi by Lars Karlsson ....................................... 87 Coins from Labraunda in Ödemi3 by Harald Nilsson ............................. 93 Greek notes on Labraunda and Milas by Katerina Stathi ..................... 101 Quelques observations sur la forteresse de Labraunda par Baptiste Vergnaud ........................................................................... 107 A room with a view. Karian landscape on display through the andrones at Labraunda by Christina G. Williamson ............................. 123 ETRUSCANS AND ROME Ein kilikischer Sarkophag mit Sänftendarstellung im Museum von Adana von Eva Christof & Ergün Laflõ ........................... 141 Tracking solidi—from Thessalonica to Hjärpestad by Svante Fischer .................................................................................. 153 Egyptian gods on Athenian lamps of the Late Roman period by Arja Karivieri ................................................................................... 163 The “Bearded intellectual” in the Villa of the Papyri: How about Cineas? by Allan Klynne ............................................................. 171 Some notes on an ivory diptych and the reputation of an emperor by Hans Lejdegård .................................................................. 179 The book and the building:Vitruvian symmetry by Johan Mårtelius................................................................................ 187 Images of animals in Etruscan tomb paintings and on cinerary urns and sarcophagi by Charlotte Scheffer............................................ 195 Early water-mills east of the Rhine by Örjan Wikander ....................... 205 ANCIENT GREECE A note on minced meat in ancient Greece by Gunnel Ekroth ................ 223 Marginally drafted masonry as an aesthetic element by Axel Frejman..................................................................................... 237 The stone doors of the Erechtheion by Henrik Gerding ........................ 251 Rediscovery of a donator: FW Spiegelthal, Swedish consul at Smyrna by Anne-Marie Leander Touati ................................................ 271 Music, morale, mistresses, and musical women in Greece by Gullög Nordquist .............................................................................. 279 Looking (again) at the grave stelai from Smyrna by Eva Rystedt.......... 289 Karian theories: seeking the origins of ancient Greece by Johannes Siapkas .............................................................................. 301 The Greek oikos: a space for interaction, revisited and reconsidered by Birgitta L. Sjöberg ....................................................... 315 Was anything measured? by Thomas Thieme ........................................ 329 Why it should be obvious that Euhemerus did not write his Sacred History to bolster ruler cult by Marianne Wifstrand Schiebe .... 341 KARIA A marble head from Alabanda by Fatma Ba0datlõ Çam ....................... 353 Culti orientali a Iasos: ipotesi interpretativa di un edificio di età romana di Daniela Baldoni .............................................................. 369 A monumental tomb complex from Thera in Karia by A. Baran .......... 387 A Lelegian house or a honey-tower by Gunilla Bengtsson ................... 405 The triad from Ephesos: The Mother Goddess and her two companions by Susanne Berndt-Ersöz................................................... 415 Iasos e i Mente3e by Fede Berti ............................................................. 427 Gladiators in ancient Halikarnassos by Jesper Carlsen ......................... 441 The desire for things and great tales by Anne Marie Carstens .............. 451 Dining rooms in the sanctuary: old and new epigraphic evidence from Halikarnassos by Signe Isager and Poul Pedersen ....................... 457 Tra natura e cultura: rocce-altari in ambiente ‘lelego’? di Raffaella Pierobon Benoit ................................................................. 467 A pilgrim flask from Halikarnassos by Birte Poulsen ........................... 479 Göktepe in Caria by Paavo Roos ........................................................... 497 Auf der Suche nach der diple stoa – nicht nur in Priene von Frank Rumscheid ............................................................................ 507 APPENDIX The published writings of Pontus Hellström. A bibliography 1965往2013 .................................................................... 527 The desire for things and great tales by Anne Marie Carstens Archaeology is about culture, history, human life, and human interaction with things. The archaeological contribution to history uses the physical remains of past lives as a point of departure. This article, however, is not about the importance of such things, their importance to our attempts to reconstruct life as it might have been, nor is it on the self perception of archaeology as an academic discipline. On the contrary, it is on the direct importance of things in and for the formation of communities, social structures, and social rules. It is about ideological iconography—political art in Western Anatolia in the period when the area was part of the Persian Empire, that is, from the 6th to 4th century BC. I will tell a tale about a specific thing that was important for the creation and the maintenance of aristocratic status, in order to demonstrate the links between things, social and political actions, and messages. A calcite vase During C.T. Newton’s excavations at the Maussolleion of Halikarnassos in the 1850s, a peculiar calcite vase was found. On the vase a cartouche is incised with the words Great King Xerxes in Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian, and Egyptian. How and why did it end up at the large memorial to the Karian dynast and Persian satrap Maussollos? And moreover, in a context dated to a century after Xerxes’ expansion of the great empire, which then included the vast territory from the Aegean Sea to Mesopotamia, from Sardis to Samarkand, more than a century after the great battle between Persia and Greece in the famous battlefields of Salamis and Marathon? The answer lies in the human desire for things and the appetite for great tales. In 480 BC, five Karian ships under the command of a certain Artemisia fought against the Greeks with Xerxes’ fleet at Salamis. Artemisia’s cunning and deeds were described by the Greek historian Herodotos, who was born in Halikarnassos in 484 BC. I see no need to mention any of the other captains except Artemisia. I find it a great marvel that a woman went on the expedition against Hellas: after her husband died, she took over his tyranny, though she had a young son, and followed the army from youthful spirits and manliness, under no compulsion. Artemisia was her name, and she was the daughter of Anne Marie Carstens Lygdamis; on her father’s side she was of Halicarnassian lineage, and on her mother’s Cretan. She was the leader of the men of Halicarnassus and Cos and Nisyrus and Calydnos, and provided five ships. Her ships were reputed to be the best in the whole fleet after the ships of Sidon, and she 1 gave the king the best advice of all his allies. Herodotos relates that Xerxes was very fond of her, and respected her military advice not to continue the attack against the Greek fleet, although he did not follow it. By means of an unfortunate mistake Artemisia came to sink an ally because the ship got in her way. But when she rammed and sank it, she had the luck of gaining two advantages. When the captain of the Attic ship saw her ram a ship with a barbarian crew, he decided that Artemisia's ship was either Hellenic or a deserter from the barbarians fighting for them, so he turned away to deal with others. Thus she happened to escape and not be destroyed, and it also turned out that the harmful thing which she had done won her exceptional esteem from Xerxes. It is said that the king, as he watched the battle, saw her ship ram the other, and one of the bystanders said, “Master, do you see how well Artemisia contends in the contest and how she has sunk an enemy ship?” When he asked if the deed was truly Artemisia's, they affirmed it, knowing reliably the marking of her ship, and they supposed that the ruined ship was an enemy. As I have said, all this happened to bring her luck, and also that no one from the Calyndian ship survived to accuse her. It is said that Xerxes replied to what was told him, “My men have become 2 women, and my women men.” They say this is what Xerxes said. The calcite vase, the subject of this article, has from time to time been seen as a sign of proxenia, a symbol of the relationship or alliance between the Persian supremacy, which was personified by Xerxes the Great, and the tyrant of Halikarnassos, Artemisia the Elder. The vase, as previously mentioned, bears the inscription Great King Xerxes in Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian, and Egyptian, the four official languages in the Persian Empire. In Halikarnassos is not a unique finding. The British Museum registry lists a total of seventeen calcite fragments, all of which were found during C.T. Newton’s excavations at the Maussolleion. Only this one bears an inscription; but in the treasury of Persepolis, the administrative capital of the Persian Empire, fifty-three similar calcite vases have been found, all with a similar inscription, Great King Xerxes. Maybe the vase found at the Maussolleion of Halikarnassos was a personal gift from the grateful Great King to one of his loyal satraps? However, it was also a mass-produced export product, one of many vases made for just such purposes—to seal political agreements. In Halikarnassos it found a different meaning. Here, it was a special object, a sign of the aristocratic roots of the dynasty, either real or contrived, since we do not know if the Artemisia who fought with Xerxes was a predecessor of the Hekatomnid rulers of the 4th century BC. 1 2 Herodotos 7.99, all translations by Godley. Herodotos 8.87–88. 452 Boreas 35 The desire for things and great tales Fig. 1. The Alabaster Vase (from Newton, Appendix II, p. 667, Plate VII). The Hekatomnids Maussollos was the second (or perhaps the third) local ruler of his family, his father was Hekatomnos and his grandfather was Hyssaldomos. The Boreas 35 453 Anne Marie Carstens Hekatomnids were a local Karian aristocratic family, and it is generally presumed that Hekatomnos was appointed a Persian satrap by the Persian Great King sometime in the early 380s BC. At that point in time, Karia was separated from the satrapy of Great Frygia, which, ever since the conquest of Kyros the Great in 547 BC, had been ruled from Sardis. Either Karia became an independent satrapy in its own right early in the 4th century BC, or maybe it was still controlled from Sardis as a dependent satrapy of a kind. The local Hekatomnid family were chosen as leaders of the dependent or independent satrapy Karia, because they already possessed the important position as leader of the religious and political federation, the Karian Koinon, an organization whose leader bore the double title of king and high priest. There are many peculiarities in play when it comes to the Hekatomnids, this local dynastic family, who for three generations lived and prospered on the edge of both the Greek world and the Persian Empire. Most politically striking is the fact that they managed to establish themselves as local hereditary rulers of the Persian Empire. Nothing of this kind could have been completed without the blessing of the Great King. All the same, they were neither entirely Achaemenized nor Hellenized. Maussollos created a dynasty through the conscious and self-promoting usage of what we would call political propaganda in the form of state art, 3 an ideology expressed in iconography and with things. One of the key monuments in the creation of the dynasty was the construction of Maussollos’ own tomb and ruler-cult monument, the Maussolleion of Halikarnassos. The ideological meaning of the tomb was to place Maussollos and his family in a genuine aristocratic sphere and, most of all, to create a crucial monument that celebrated the ancestry of the family and its Karian roots, with the divine Maussollos himself as the foremost exponent. Origin was the key to aristocratic self-perception, and Maussollos as high priest and king on high represented a gateway to the divine. Among the stories of past glory, which legitimized the power and position of the Hekatomnids, were the tales that Herodotos told of Artemisia and Xerxes. These must have been stories that people knew and remembered, not least in Halikarnassos. They focused on Artemisia the Elder, and they were part of Herodotos’ great History. Also, Maussollos’ wife (and sister) was named Artemisia—an obvious reference to former glory. And this is exactly the reason why the calcite vase was found at the Maussolleion: it was a reminder of, a reference to the close relationship between the Hekatomnids and the Persian Empire, in particular Xerxes the Great. There might even be a double meaning in play: it was Xerxes who led the battles in which Hellas conquered the Persian fleet and put an end to the Persian ambitions to incorporate the Greek mainland into the kingdom. A reference to the double game of Maussollos manoeuvring between Hellas and the Persian Empire. 3 Carstens 2009. 454 Boreas 35 The desire for things and great tales The desire for things and great tales In 2004, the British archaeologist Chris Gosden published a thoughtful 4 book about the relationship between material culture and colonialism. Gosden viewed colonialism as a state of mind and a number of actions invoked as a consequence of the link between material culture and human relations with the rest of the world, driven by the desire for things. Desire creates a network between people and things because things carry meaning and because material culture is a central part of what it means to be human. Gosden puts it this way: Colonialism is a process by which some things shape people, rather than the reverse. Colonialism exists where material culture moves people, both culturally and physically, leading them to expand geographically, to accept new material forms and to set up power structures around a desire for material culture.5 The calcite vase I have described here was wanted and valued because it contained a compressed tale of aristocracy: the great tale of aristocratic birth and strength, not to mention a tale of the ability to encapsulate changes in power relations. Therefore, the calcite vase was desired, and thus it played a crucial role in the formation of a new sense of being Karian and Hekatomnid. *** Bibliography Carstens, A.M. 2009. Karia and the Hekatomnids. The creation of a dynasty (BAR-IS, 1943). Oxford. Gosden, C. 2004. Archaeology and colonialism, Cambridge. Herodotos, Herodotus. The Persian Wars, 3, Books 5–7, transl. by A.D. Godley (Loeb Classical library), London 1922. Herodotos, Herodotus. The Persian Wars, 4, Books 8–9, transl. by A.D. Godley (Loeb Classical library), London 1925. Newton, C.T. 1862-1863. A history of discoveries at Halicarnassus, Cnidus and Branchidae, London. 4 5 Gosden 2004. Gosden 2004, 153. Boreas 35 455