Travelling through Israel

From July, 8 until 24th 2009, I will travel throught Israel and plan to visit the theaters of Caesarea, Beth She'an (Scythopolis), Sepphoris (Zippori) and Shuni. When possible, you'll find the appropriate pictures - possibly picked from the internet, before I have edited my own - and some background stories at this blog.

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Polydus, champion charioteer for the reds

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Last week, I visited Landesmuseum Trier for the third time, which probably sounds boring but its collection is of great quality. The museum was renovated a few years ago, so a good excuse to visit it again. In my previous blog post I already wrote that the circus of Colonia Augusta Treverorum dates back to the earliest period of the cities history. The race track may have been created immediately after the city was founded. Quite some interesting finds, referring to the circus are in Landesmuseum Trier on display, including this mosaic of Polydus, a popular charioteer for the red faction (factio russata), and his lead horse Compressor. He is taking a victory lap. My picture is the centerpiece of a mosaic floor from a villa in front of the Imperial Baths in Trier. The representations on Roman mosaics of the victorious charioteer of the circus may be compared with similar representations in other forms of Roman art, both major and minor. Certa...
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Subterranean theater of Herculaneum

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I visited Herculaneum twice, and both times my camera mall functioned. Or, I only made a very limited amount of pictures because of whatever. Which is a pitty, while the remains of the city are of great splendor and in many aspects more intense than Pompei. At the internet I found this chalk model of the theater of Herculaneum, which was made in 1808. In 1711, workers digging a well in a small town of Resina, found three mostly intact marble statues of draped women. Heralding the discovery of ancient Herculaneum, the sculptures are known today as the Large and Small Herculaneum Women. But that is not the topic of this entry. When they were discovered, the Herculaneum Women were hoisted through a well shaft that led down to the remains of a Roman theater buried 75 feed below the street level of modern Ercolano. The theater of Herculaneum was the first Roman theater found largely intact. Its grand arcades and polychrome wall paintings influenced a new generation - I learned - of a...
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Mosaic of theatrical masks

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This great mosaic is at display at the Musei Capitolini in Rome. It was found on the site of the baths constructed by Trajan Decius (AD 249-251). Other sources, like wikipedia, claim the mosaic to be found in Hadrian's villa at Tivoli. Despite the fact that I found it hard to make any proper pictures in the lightbulb environment of the museum, it belongs to this blog. The first one is taken by Anthony Moose (Wikimedia Commons), the second one by me. The mosaic represents two masks leaning on a socle projecting out from two walls that meet an angle, seen in perspective. Two flutes lean on one wall. The female mask depicts a woman with large eyes and wide-open mouth. A ribbon knotted into a bow at the center of her brow, appears in her curly hair with long ringlets. The physiognomic features of the man are exaggerated and ridiculed. On his head ivy and berries, associated with the cult of Dionysus, which was linked to the birth of the Greek theater .  The masks belonged to two ...
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