IN ANCIENT MATERIAL CULTURES

ANIMALS

Conference 15–16 October 2015

Allard Pierson Museum Amsterdam

ANCIENT MATERIAL CULTURES

ANIMALS IN

Speakers

Welcomedrs. S.C.G.T. Scholten, director Heritage, University of Amsterdam

Introductionprof. dr. E. de Jong, Artis, University of Amsterdam

Keynote speakersdr. S. Lewis, University of St. Andrewsprof. Ll. Llewellyn-Jones, University of Edinburgh

Presentationdrs. J. Mulder, curator Artis Library, University of Amsterdam

Respondentdr. J. Bakels, curator Groote Museum, Artis

Chairdr. B.F. van Oppen de Ruiter, curator Allard Pierson Museum

Events

Artis Zooincl. visit to Artis Library

Group dinnerRestaurant de Waag

Conference 15–16 October 2015Allard Pierson Museum Amsterdam

PROGRAMME & EVENTS

Day 1 — October 15, 2015

09:00 Welcome @ APM, incl. refreshments — address by Steph Scholten (University of Amsterdam, Heritage) — introduction by Erik de Jong (University of Amsterdam, Artis)

10:00 Andrew Shapland (British Museum) Animals in the Material Cultures of the Aegean Bronze Age (3000–1100 bc)

11:00 Refreshments

11:15 András Patay-Horváth (Eötvös Loránd University) Greek Geometric Animal Figurines and the Origins of the Ancient Olympic Games

12:15 Lunch break

01:15 Sine Saxkjær (Aarhus University) & Jan Jacobsen (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek) Animals in Indigenous and Greek Imagery along the Ionian Coastline

02:15 Sian Lewis (University of St. Andrews) The Animal World of the Caeretan Hydriae

03:15 Refreshments

03:30 Francesca Oliveri (Superintendence of the Sea, Palermo) & Maria Pamela Toti (Whitaker Foundation, Motya, Trapani)

Animals from Motya: Depictions and Archaeological Evidence in the Phoenician Town in Sicily

04:30 Kenneth Kitchell (University of Massachusetts Amherst) It’s a Dog’s Life: Naturalistic Canine Representations from Athenian Art

05:30 Refreshments

06:30 Dinner

Day 2 — October 16, 2015

09:00 Artis Zoo visit

09:15 Presentation by Hans Mulder (Artis Library, University of Amsterdam)

11:15 Reprise of presentation

12:15 Lunch break

01:15 Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (University of Edinburgh) When Animals Go Wrong: Depicting the Unfamiliar in Ancient Art

Ana Becerra (University of Sydney) The Griffin in Persia: Exploring Numinous Liminality cancelled

02:15 Branko van Oppen (Allard Pierson Museum) Lovely Ugly Bes!

03:15 Refreshments

03:30 Jorge Tomás García (Instituto de Historia del Arte da Lisboa) Mosaics of Animals and Pastoral Life as Examples of Visual Culture in the

Roman World

04:30 Refreshments

ABSTRACTS & RESUMES

Animals!

Erik de Jong (University of Amsterdam)

AbstractThe relationship between animal and man is of a complex nature. The story of their bond is to a high degree a story about man himself, about his changing wish, need, usage, desire and knowledge concerning the living animal world. Our own time shows again how paradoxical this relationship is in bio-industry, hunting, wildlife and its preservation, evolving domesticities, biomimicry and technology.

These topics and the discussions to which they lead, show the broad range of our judgements and prejudices, our emotions and rationalisations, our knowledge and our lack of it. We enduringly seek understanding of the animal world as our contemporary identity in an urbanizing world appears to be insufficient without comprehensive new insights into our relationship to animals. It seems therefore worthwhile to explore the sources of classical antiquity for the range of complex attitudes towards animals they will reveal, cornerstones as they are of our own culture.

ResumeErik A. de Jong holds the Artis-chair for Culture, Landscape and Nature at the University of Amsterdam. He is advisor to the master plan of the Royal Zoological Society Natura Artis Magistra and director of the Groote Museum for Man and Nature (under construction), where – with a small team – he organises the contents of the new museum’s presentation. From 2002 to 2006 he was professor of Landscape Studies at the Bard Graduate Center in New York, and from 2002 to 2007 Senior Harvard Fellow Landscape Studies, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University. His research concerns the history and meaning of garden- and landscape, the relationship between man and nature and heritage issues in the field of natural history and landscape. His publications appeared in Dutch, English, German, French, Swedish, Italian and Spanish.

Animals in the Material Cultures of the Aegean Bronze Age (3000–1100 bc)

Andrew Shapland (British Museum)

AbstractThe material culture of Bronze Age Crete is well-known for its naturalistic animal depictions such as the charging bulls from the palace at Knossos and the lifelike sea creatures depicted on Marine Style vases. As well as a number of iconic objects, a wide variety of animals are depicted on various media, including seal stones, figurines,

pottery and frescoes. Some such objects can be found in the collections of the Allard Pierson Museum. This animal imagery has often been seen as representing a generalised interest in the natural world, usually with religious overtones. This paper will examine animal depictions from Bronze Age Crete in greater detail, suggesting instead that the appearance of different types of animals on different media over time is closely related to social developments. The concept of ‘animal practices’ from the discipline of Human-Animal Studies helps to focus on the socially significant interactions between humans and non-humans in the Bronze Age, including hunting, fishing and bull-leaping. By relating material culture and animal practices, this paper will argue for a move away from regarding Minoan animal depictions simply as art objects. Instead, the increasing realism of many of these depictions, particularly during the Neopalatial period (1700–1450 bc), can be linked with the way in which socially significant animal practices were recorded and disseminated. Animal depictions from the Cycladic and Mycenaean world will also be considered, both in terms of the spread of Minoan iconography and the different animal practices of other areas of the Aegean during the Bronze Age.

ResumeAndrew Shapland is Greek Bronze Age Curator in the Department of Greece and Rome at the British Museum. He received his PhD at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, on the subject ‘Over the Horizon: Human-Animal Relations in Bronze Age Crete.’ He is currently also involved in the Knossos Urban Landscape Project as a pottery specialist. His research focuses on the role of human-animal relations in material culture.

Greek Geometric Animal Figurines and the Origins of the Ancient Olympic Games

András Patay-Horváth (Eötvös Loránd University)

AbstractThe Olympic Games were often supposed to originate from funeral games celebrated for some prominent persons. Alternatively, scholars sought to explain the establishment of the athletic events either as emerging from a harvest festival or from initiation rites involving only a mock death and symbolic resurrection. All these traditional explanations started from various ancient myths concerning the origins of the games and combined them with ethnographic parallels and observations. Therefore, it is only natural that they arrived at widely different results, none of them being able to claim more plausibility than another. Moreover, all these theories fail to explain and do not even address the question why it was precisely the sanctuary of Olympia where the games were established and why these games became so popular here at such an early date and failed to gain this prestige and popularity elsewhere.

I offer therefore another approach, which is mainly based on the analysis of the archaeological material discovered in the sanctuary itself. The exceptionally large number of geometric animal figurines found at Olympia (ca. 80% of the entire comparable

material) consisting almost exclusively of horses and bulls (both represented at ca. 50%), as well as their widely scattered origin, is in fact unparalleled, but has received only cursory treatment. What the figurines actually depict has been little discussed: they are invariably identified as domesticated animals, and generally supposed to have been dedicated by local owners / herdsmen for the prosperity / fertility of their animals. This view is challenged on archaeological, archaeozoological, ecological, and philological grounds. Considering the peculiar characteristics of the bulls’ horns (i.e. their form size and position resembling that of aurochs), it is suggested that they actually depict wild or feral cattle, which could have found an ideal living environment in the vicinity, comparable with e.g. the Camargue region. Based on literary testimonia and comparisons with other contemporary shrines containing similar dedications, the bull figurines are connected with the hunting of these wild/feral animals and it is suggested that they were offered by foreign aristocrats visiting the sanctuary before or after hunting. In a similar way, the horse figurines are interpreted as depicting feral horses, which were presumably captured and taken away by the visitors.

These ritual practices may account for the early popularity of the sanctuary among the contemporary élites and thus offer an explanation for other phenomena including the origins of the Games: there was no initiation of entire age groups, but only hunting, which played an important role in initiation rites afterwards and the first contest, the stadion race is likely to have evolved from a ritual chase (surviving in some harvest ceremonies), which was most probably part of the ceremonies accompanying the common feasts following a successful hunt and were celebrated in order to appease the soul(s) of the game animal(s) or the lord/mistress of animals (‘animal ceremonialism’).

ResumeAndrás R. Patay-Horváth studied classical archaeology, ancient history and classical philology, and is currently employed as Assistant Lecturer in the Institute for Ancient History at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, and is also Research Fellow at the Archaeological Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. His research interest is focused on Olympia and the Peloponnese; his publications, i.a., pertain to the virtual 3D reconstruction of the east pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. Patay-Horváth offered a new interpretation of geometric animal figurines at Olympia on the Living World of Animals in Antiquity panel organized by Sian Lewis and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones at the eighth Celtic Conference in Classics, held at the University of Edinburgh (2014).

Animals in Indigenous and Greek Imagery along the Ionian Coastline

Sine Saxkjær (Aarhus University) & Jan Jacobsen (Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek)

AbstractAlong the Ionian coastline of Southern Italy, the Euboeans were the first Greeks to settle in the early 8th century bc, while the arrival of other Greek groups and the foundation

of the Greek ‘colonies’ are traditionally appointed to the late 8th and 7th century bc. The present paper will concentrate on the cultural dynamics along the Ionian coastline, focusing on the role of animals in the imagery of the indigenous and Greek populations in the earliest phases of the cultural encounters. It seems obvious that animals must have played an essential role in everyday-life of both the Greek and indigenous populations, as they depended on animals for food, work labour and transportation. However, when we turn towards the depictions of animals in the 8th-century material culture, these are mainly seen in the material culture related to ritual spheres, that is, sanctuary and funerary practices and contexts. Within these contexts, we wish to investigate two aspects: the depictions of animals related to myths, ritual practices and religious beliefs, as well as the use of animal depictions as part of a shared Greek-indigenous imagery, displaying social status.

In contrast to our extensive knowledge of Greek mythology, our understanding of indigenous religious beliefs and myths remains limited. However, the indigenous imagery found on matt-painted pottery and loom weights provides a useful insight into these aspects of indigenous culture. The indigenous material culture further attests to the adoption of Greek myths and mythical animals. What is more, although the indigenous production of matt-painted pottery decreased and the Greek/colonial pottery became prevailing in the material culture, we argue that it is possible to observe mythical animals with origin in indigenous myths among 7th-century colonial pottery. In this regard, we will focus on a group of 7th-century bag-shaped pyxides, which are executed in a Greek material style (wheel-turned, decorated with a lustrous paint), but display an indigenous imagery. The imagery includes scenes with part-mythical animals, which have clear links with similar creatures and scenes on Italo-Geometric pottery and Etruscan bucchero.

However, not all animal depictions within sanctuary and funerary contexts should be connected to ritual practice or mythology. In this regard, we will focus on the depictions of horses; the Cesnola Painter style found among the Euboean pottery is of particular interest, as it contains some of the earliest known representations of horses in Southern Italy. Later on, the horse came to be part of a shared Greek-indigenous imagery, where it functioned as a cross-cultural symbol of status.

With the present paper, we wish to shed light on the role of animals in Greek and indigenous imagery in the late 8th and 7th century bc in Southern Italy, while including parallels from the collection of the Allard Pierson Museum in the form of bucchero and Italo-Geometric vessels.

ResumesSine Grove Saxkjær is part-time Lecturer at Aarhus University. She recently completed a four-year PhD scholarship there with her doctoral thesis entitled ‘Markers of Ethnicity in the Archaeological Record: The Emergence of Indigenous Ethnic and Cultural identities in Southern Italy (8th-6th cent. bc).’ Since 2008 she has participated in the excavations on Timpone della Motta, Calabria, where she has especially been involved with the publication of the Colonial and Corinthian pottery.

Jan Kindberg Jacobsen is Curator of Ancient Art at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. He obtained his PhD degree at Groningen University (2007) and directed

the excavations of the Groningen Institute of Archaeology on Timpone della Motta, Calabria, South Italy (2008–2010). Since 2002 Jacobsen has directed the Danish-Italian publication studies of archaeological material from the Timpone della Motta excavations under the auspices of Groningen University.

The Animal World of the Caeretan Hydriae

Sian Lewis (University of St Andrews)

AbstractVase no. 1346 in the Allard Pierson collection is a Caeretan hydria attributed to the Eagle Painter, depicting two animal scenes, on one side a youth with horses and on the other a wild goat hunt. It is part of a small group of pots, mainly but not exclusively hydriae, attributed to a single workshop of emigrant painters, Ionian in origin, who worked at Caere in Italy: the group was extensively and ably studied by J.M. Hemelrijk, Caeretan Hydriae (Mainz 1984); More about Caeretan Hydriae: addenda et clarificanda (Amsterdam 2009), giving it a further link with the Allard Pierson Museum.

The Caeretan hydriae are most often reproduced for their mythological scenes, which are both striking and unusual – Cerberus, the Ketos, the Cattle of the Sun, etc. – but this concentration on the mythological tends to obscure one of the most distinctive features of the group: the variety and originality of animal depictions which it includes. Although animals formed a very important part of black-figure iconography generally, the Caeretan hydriae offer a distinctive bestiary and a remarkable richness of detail in the animals themselves and in the naturalistic settings in which they are depicted.

The strongly regional nature of the group makes it particularly interesting in terms of artistic influence: this paper will examine its relation to other regional styles of black-figure painting (in which animals are often significant markers), to the Ionian-Etruscan tradition of wall-painting, and the Near eastern models which clearly underlie scenes such as animal/animal and human/animal hunts. I hope to show how a detailed consideration of animal depictions can illuminate cultural contacts and help to appreciate a distinctive individual artistic sensibility.

ResumeSian Lewis is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of St Andrews. Her publications include News and Society in the Greek Polis (1996), The Athenian Woman: An Iconographic Handbook (2002), Greek Tyranny (2010) and (as joint editor) The World of Greek Vases (2010). Her current research focuses on animals in the ancient Mediterranean world: she is co-writing (with Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones) a sourcebook, The Culture of Animals in Antiquity, and has organised several conferences on related topics: The Living World of Animals in Antiquity (Edinburgh 2014), Sacred Animals and Monsters (St Andrews 2014) and Animals, Monsters, Demons: A Comparative Approach (St Andrews 2015). A collection of papers from the latter two meetings is in preparation.

Animals from MotyaDepictions and Archaeological Evidence in the Phoenician Town in Sicily

Francesca Oliveri (Superintendence of the Sea, Palermo) & Maria Pamela Toti (Whitaker Foundation, Motya, Trapani)

AbstractAlong the streets and the courtyards of the town of Motya, one of the three settlements founded by the Phoenicians in Sicily according to the Greek historian Thucydides, certainly domestic animals were present, though not many traces are found among the archaeological excavations. Similar is the situation about the marine fauna, a part from unique apparitions of a dolphin and a whale. Much more significant is the evidence of animal representations upon objects of material culture, even if the choice of the subjects we observe may be due to several reasons: certain iconography relates to the field of worship, as in the case of animals depicted on the amulets or on the arulae, while sometimes the configuration of zoomorphic vessels could be explained with practical or aesthetic functions.

We must not forget the representations of animals not associated with reality, reproducing instead inhabitants of a fantasy world, (sphinxes, griffins, centaurs, pistrices), whose portraits are as frequent, if not more, of those related to the real world (lions, dogs, porks, rabbits, panthers, etc). This work has the aims to present the different and various animal iconography found on objects from Motya, animals not always belonging to genders considered usual in a domestic environment, developing the real presence of fauna in everyday life, through the study of bones found during the excavations, and connecting, when possible, the presence of different species to different purposes.

ResumesFrancesca Oliveri is archaeologist at the Superintendence of the Sea, dealing with the marine and coastal area between Trapani and Sciacca (including the Egadi Islands Survey Project). She graduated in Classics at the University of Palermo, attended the School of Specialization in Eastern Archaeology at the Sapienza University of Rome in the Punic Antiquities section and studied Near Eastern Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Oliveri has participated in archaeological excavations in Sicily (Motya, Marsala, Monte Castellazzo Poggioreale, Salaparuta) and abroad (Tel Miqne-Ekron and Bet Shean in Israel); currently she coordinates studies and research on the ‘Submerged Causeway of Motya’ and carries out surveys with new technologies by the waters of the Stagnone Lagoon of Marsala. Additionally, Frances designs and implements school projects on issues related to the ancient Mediterranean harbours, exploration, navigation and trade, Latin epigraphy, as well as cuisine and nutrition in ancient cultures (Punic, Greek and Roman).

Maria Pamela Toti, as archaeologist at the Whitaker Foundation and Museum in Motya, is responsible for the general management of excavations at the island (off the western coast of Sicily). Her favourite subject concerns the interaction of Phoenician (Punic)

civilization with other cultures in Italy. Additionally she has explored issues relating to other Mediterranean civilizations, such as Mycenaean pottery in Cyprus and Egyptian antiquities in Rome during the Imperial period. Each project has resulted in publications. Since 1989 Toti has participated in the excavation campaigns and studies undertaken on the island of Motya by the Sapienza University of Rome and the Superintendence of Trapani. The main focus of her research is to combine the results of the excavations with the new finds, especially those related to the material culture of daily life, to better delineate every aspect of life of the inhabitants of ancient Motya.

It’s a Dog’s LifeNaturalistic Canine Representations from Athenian Art

Ken Kitchell (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

AbstractIt is a well-known fact that dogs are commonly depicted in ancient Greek art, being especially prevalent on vases and grave stelai. They are probably the second most depicted animal in Greek art, second only to the horse. For example, a search of the pottery on the Beazley Database from Oxford University shows that ‘horse’ yields 1,728 hits while ‘dog’ yields 1,242. Such numbers undoubtedly reflect the reality of the situation for wealthy, elite Greeks who could afford to breed and own the best examples of both animals. Dogs have been studied, to be sure, as in the works of Johnson (1919), Hull (1964) and others. Yet such works commonly focus on identification of ancient breeds and, as Pevnick (2014) has recently stated, dogs on vases often go unreported and ‘canine iconography still awaits a comprehensive study.’ Pevnick deals with several ‘good dog’ and ‘bad dog’ behaviors himself, but his study is necessarily limited.

The proposed illustrated paper seeks to broaden the study of canines in Greek art, specifically focusing on the lifelike ways in which they are depicted on vases and stelai. The majority of examples will be taken from Athenian art of the 5th century bce. It is the author’s contention that the behaviors, actions, and especially the body language of many depictions of dogs arise from close observation of the animal in its various relationships with humans rather than from a casual acquaintance with the animal.

As both Cristiana Franco (2014) and I (2004) have argued, the dog was viewed both positively and negatively in Greek society and literature, ranging from the admiration heaped on Odysseus’ faithful Argos to the 150 dogs callously tossed into a well in the Athenian Agora. The work of Calder (2011) on cruelty to animals will form the backdrop of this latter example. Dogs served various functions as work dogs (hunting, guarding) and pets, and even served as ways to flaunt one’s social status and wealth. Artistic representations tend to reflect this, as the dog was a constant companion at the gymnasion, symposia, and male homoerotic encounters.

The paper will first sketch out these manifold associations with humans and will then move on to show, by comparison with modern studies on canine body language and behavior, that Greek artists faithfully represented a wide spectrum of canine behaviors:

fawning, curiosity, fear, aggression, play, and more. Citations from Greek literature will be adduced to demonstrate that reading canine body language was important for the Greeks. In describing Odysseus’ Argos, for example, Homer describes the various positions of his ears, reflecting in turn attentiveness and dejection. Xenophon, in his Cynogeticus, a treatise on training hunting dogs, describes at length the body language of various types of dogs and how to read it.

Alan Boegehold’s When a Gesture Was Expected (1999), showed that it is important to pay attention to human non-verbal communication from Greek antiquity. The same can be said for Greek dogs, who were, perforce, non-verbal.

ResumeKenneth F. Kitchell retired in 2014 after 2 years in the high school classroom, and 38 at the college level (Louisiana State University and University of Massachusetts Amherst). He received his PhD in Classics from Loyola University of Chicago, during which time he spent a year as the Hetty Goldman fellow of the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. His research centers on pedagogy and animals in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. With Irven Resnick he published the first translation of Albertus Magnus’ De animalibus (1999) and two other books on Albert. Most recently he published Animals in the Greek and Roman World A-Z (2013), which was named a CHOICE Magazine Outstanding Academic Title for 2014. He is currently finishing work on a Medieval Latin reader.

When Animals Go WrongDepicting the Unfamiliar in Ancient Art

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (University of Edinburgh)

AbstractThis paper is about the evolution of looking, and in particular how we look at animals. How do we look at animals today and, importantly, how did we look at animals in ancient times? What has changed? Although we encounter them rarely face-to-face, today we are exposed to animals – even the most exotic species – through countless images in books, on the internet, and in hi-definition television. Our practical knowledge of living with animals as inter-dependant species has diminished, but our visual catalogue of animals has expanded considerably.

The act of looking at and depicting animals has its own history and in this paper I will explore how the arts of Egypt, the Near East, and the Classical world responded to the animal kingdom. The focus will be on the familiar (in which we can see how responsive artists were to animal life encountered routinely) and, more particularly, the unfamiliar – exotic animals which were encountered only exceptionally. The ancient artists who created these images based them not only on things they observed in animals (when that was possible), but also on what they knew or thought they knew, or simply believed, about different species. In other words, any ancient image of an animal is self-consciously man-made.

Numerous animal species will be explored but particular attention will be given to the rhinoceros, elephant, giraffe, tiger, monkey, and ape.

ResumeLloyd John Llewellyn-Jones is Professor of Ancient Greek and Iranian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests concentrate on ancient socio-cultural history. His book Aphrodite’s Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece has won much critical acclaim. More recent work has focused on the history and culture of the Achaemenid period (559–331 bce) in Iran. Publications in this field have included Ctesias’ History of Persia: Tales of the Orient and King and Court in Ancient Persia. He is currently working (with Sian Lewis) on a very large work: The Culture of Animals in Antiquity (Routledge, forthcoming 2016), an extensive source book with detailed commentaries on animal life in Egypt, the Near East, Iran, Greece, and Rome. Lloyd often travels to Iran and is engaged in a British Consul programme linking UK and Iranian universities.

The Griffin in PersiaExploring Numinous Liminality

Ana Becerra (University of Sydney)

AbstractHumans first experimented with the composition of the natural world around them in the Near Eastern artistic record. Through a process of isolating, combining and distorting recognisable animal features, this visual domain played host to a striking variety of imaginary composite beings.

Due to its rich visual and textual record, the Mesopotamian tradition has informed much of our understanding of composite creatures in the ancient Near East. Study of the Mesopotamian mythological cosmos reveals the strong sense of alterity ascribed to these creatures not only through their anomalous physical forms, but also their residence in the perceived gulf between human civilisation and the realm of the gods. Composite creatures are elevated from the known world in the Mesopotamian imagination and this disjuncture is often represented in visual culture.

The art of Achaemenid Persia inherited aspects of the Mesopotamian mythological cosmos, yet comparatively little study has been dedicated to the role unnatural animal forms play in this new context. Hampered by a lack of textual evidence, scholarship loosely understands these beings as ‘numinous’ and is understandably hesitant to attribute specific symbolism and function.

With a focus on the representation of the griffin, this paper will explore how a close study of visual grammar and context can shed light on the nature of composite creatures in the Achaemenid Persian imagination. In the monumental sculpture and glyptic arts of Persepolis, the griffin is highly visible and coexists comfortably with animals of the natural world, notably the lion and the bull.

This new combination of supernatural and natural animal iconography raises

questions regarding the status of each of these creatures in Achaemenid thought, their place in the Zoroastrian religious landscape and the continuity of aspects of Assyro-Babylonian mythology. This paper will consider how the long tradition of Elamite creativity with animal motif – in particular the enduring theme of animals acting out human roles – could have contributed to an alternative interpretation of the boundaries between the real and the imagined in ancient Iran, and thus the perception of the lion, the bull and the griffin as creatures of equal status and symbolic function.

ResumeAna Becerra is a graduate student at the Department of Archaeology of the University of Sydney preparing a doctoral thesis on ‘The Lion, the Bull and the Griffin in the Iconography of Assyria, Elam and Persia, ca. 1000–330 bce.’

This paper has been cancelled.

Lovely Ugly Bes!Animalistic Aspects in Ancient Egyptian Popular Religion

Branko van Oppen (Allard Pierson Museum)

AbstractScholars have long debated the exact status and nature, origin and function of ancient Egyptian Bes. He is considered a hideous demon, a deformed dwarf, a pygmy from far away, a fierce animal wielding his knife, a jolly dancing musician, a brave warrior fighting against the forces of evil, a guardian spirit of the household and family life within it, a New-Kingdom addition to the Egyptian pantheon, a protective deity of all of Egypt worshipped throughout the Nile Valley since pre-dynastic times, yet for whom no temples were built and no priests were installed. This friendly beast that charms while he repels, is he human or animal, demon or god?

Though this paper will not be able to address all categories equally, I will argue that Bes transcends definition by combining human and animal, demonic and divine traits – and because of this multivalence was highly suitable for popular religious beliefs. Apart from his own physical appearance, animals and deities will pass the review with whom Bes was closely associated: such as felines and primates, as well as Hathor and Ihy, Ptah and Sechmet, Bastet and Horus, Thouëris and Tithoës. An examination of animalistic aspects that Bes has in common with others will bring notable dualities to the fore which will help to illuminate this lovely ugly character.

ResumeBranko F. van Oppen de Ruiter is Visiting Research Scholar and Curator at the Allard Pierson Museum, with a special focus on Graeco-Roman Egypt. His area of expertise is Ptolemaic queenship, including aspects of royal ideology, dynastic genealogy and religious cult. A collection of essays on Berenice II Euergetis was published earlier this

year (Palgrave Macmillan). Other interests on which he has published or presented talks include terracotta figurines and a signed, silver skyphos in the Allard Pierson, elephants as monsters of military might, and architecture in the city of The Hague.

Mosaics of Animals and Pastoral Life as Examples of Visual Culture in the Roman World

Jorge Tomás García (Institute of Art History, Lisbon)

AbstractCountryside and animals is one of the great legacies of the ancient world, where much of the possessores lived long periods, and classical sources have left descriptions of the villae. Especially interesting for our subject matter is a mosaic from collection of Allard Pierson Museum (APM09850), dated at 450–500 AD, from Syria and Antioch, showing a sheep. This animal was common in the mosaics throughout the Roman world, as exemplifying the idyllic pastoral life, accompanied by other animals such as pigeons, ducks, pheasants, horses, etc.

The genre of mosaic with hunting scenes in which only animals involved, starts at the end of the Hellenistic period and he had much acceptance in Pompeii. Most of the mosaics of Transjordan date from between the first century and the eighth century AD. Mosaics were used in many buildings to decorate walls, floors or ceilings, employing motifs mostly from everyday life: harvesting, hunting, fishing or just pastoral or mythological themes.

Sadly, with the decree of the Emperor Leo in AD726, forbidding the use of people and animals in ‘images’ most of these mosaics was badly defaced. Those which survive today more or less intact are almost always the mosaics which had been hidden by a later mosaic built above them. Otherwise all too often we see a mosaic with pastoral scenes or vignettes, but with the people hammered out. Alternatively, very present in the mosaics with presence of such animals from the pastoral life, it is that they are contain scenes from pastoral life, the first of their kind at Antioch and an even more marked departure than the hunting representations from the tradition of allegory and mythology.

A very representative example of this argument can be found in e in one of the pastoral scenes of the Constantinian Villa (Antioch). It is very representative that in the pastoral mosaics the treatment of space is more abstract, and the arrangement of landscape elements in superimposed registers, rather than receding planes, introduces a system that became a cardinal feature of mediaeval art.

Curiously, although there is no apparent system underlying the choice or distribution of subjects, the pavement does convey a distinct mood, iconographically speaking, which has been aptly described as a kind of poetic romanticism. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to provide an overview, starting from the area of Antioch and Jordan, of the iconographic motif of animals from the pastoral life, to know more profoundly how roman mosaics created a visual culture with this particular type of lifestyle.

ResumeJorge Tomás García is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Art History of the New University of Lisbon where he is involved in a project entitled ‘Visual Culture in Ancient Lusitania.’ He received his BA in Classical Philology and his PhD in Art History at the University of Murcia, during which time he spent three stays at the Warburg Institute in London. Before coming to Lisbon, he was Professor of Art History at the University of Murcia and Fellow of the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome. Tomás García’s publications focus on the aesthetics of Greek and Roman painting and its subsequent survival. Notable monographs include La escuela de pintura de Sición y su fortuna crítica (British Archaeological Reports, 2011) and Pausias de Sición (Bretschneider, 2015).

Picturing the Dutch Pliny

Hans Mulder (Artis Library, University of Amsterdam)

AbstractIn 1469, only fourteen years after the invention of printing with moveable type, Pliny the Elder’s, Historia naturalis was published in Venice. Before the century came to a close eighteen editions were printed all around Europe. This makes Historia naturalis one of the most successful non-religious books of that era. Although Pliny had some reservations when it came to picturing plants, he was very positive about the use of pictures in general. Be that as it may, the earliest printed copies of Historia Naturalia did not contain pictures of animals.

In the sixteenth century picturing animals became more common. Amsterdam University Library holds two albums with watercolours of animals used for the work of Conrad Gesner, Historiae animalium (1551–1558). This work marked a new beginning in studying and describing animals, but still leaned heavily on Aristotle and Pliny. Gessner inserted many pictures of animals ‘drawn from life’ in his work. These woodcuts remained popular well into the seventeenth century. This paper held at the Artis Library will address the use of pictures of animals in printed books by focusing on the Gessner woodcuts, which found their way in seventeenth century Dutch translations of Historia naturalis.

ResumeHans Mulder is curator at the Artis Library of the University of Amsterdam. He studied history at Utrecht University, where he subsequently worked as the curator of Printed Books until 2011. His publications and courses focus on the history of the book. Mulder co-hosted the 2014 symposium on life and work of Maria Sibylla Merian and currently participates in the newly founded research group Natura Artis Magistra. He will co-instruct the ‘Discovery of Nature’ with Bert Van de Roemer at the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies. He chaired the Dutch Book Historical Society and Blue Shield Netherlands (Red Cross for Cultural Heritage) and was Secretary General of the Association of National Committees of the Blue Shield.

RespondentJet Bakels (Groote Museum, Artis Royal Zoo)

ResumeJet Bakels is curator and content developer for the future Groote Museum for Man and Nature at Artis. She studied cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam, and earned her PhD at Leiden University (2000) with her dissertation ‘The Pact with the Tiger,’ which focussed on the relationship between man and man-eating animals in Indonesia, especially the Sumatran tiger. She has published several scientific and popular articles, contributed to museum catalogues and staged a number of exhibitions about the relationship between man and the natural world. Jet additionally wrote several children’s books on the cultural role of animals.

ARTIS NATURA MAGISTRA

Excursion to the Artis Zoo & Library

An excursion to Artis is planned on the morning of the second day of the conference, 16 October. Half the group (members of the audience seated on the right side of the auditorium on the first day) will first visit the zoo, from 9:00 to 11:00 am, and then attend the presentation at the Artis Library, from 11:15 to 12:00. The other half (members of the audience seated on the left side on the first day) will first attend the presentation at the Artis Library, from 9:15 to 10:oo am, and then visit the zoo, until noon.

If so desired guides will accompany the group to and from Artis. We will leave from the Allard Pierson Museum about 8:30 am, splitting up to go to the zoo and the library respectively. From the library the guides will take you to the zoo about 1o:oo am. Vice versa, the guides will walk with you from the zoo to the library about 11:oo am. Around noon the guides will accompany you back to the Allard Pierson Museum, where lunch will be served about 12:15 pm.

The excursion is generously sponsored by Artis.

Artis Royal ZooPlantage Kerklaan 38–401018 cz Amsterdam+31 (0)900 278 4796

Artis LibraryPlantage Middenlaan 45–45a1018 dc Amsterdam+31 (0)20 525 6611