Damnatio memoriae
This term has been used in antiquity already and means the destruction of memory or, politically, the erasure of a name from the public record. Elagabalus (also Heliogabalus or, more neutrally, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) is one of such erased names. He was the ill-famed Arab teenager Roman Emperor from 218 to 222 AD (assassinated at the age of 18). There are wildly diverging opinions about Heliogabalus - from the most incompetent emperor ever, via the "crowned anarchist" (Antonin Artaud) to what in today's terminology would be a transgender person. He is worth remembering, not just for his liberalism in matters of sexual life, but also for the impulses he gave for religious life. He imported the Syrian sun god Elagabal (a version of Ba'al) to Rome, conflated him with the Greek god Helios and the Roman Sol Invictus tradition and became himself their high priest (pontifex maximus). The symbolic representation of Elagabal was abstract, namely a black meteorite, also imported from Syria. The side-lining of Jupiter did not go down well in Rome and was one of the reasons why Elagabalus was murdered.
Fuji X-Pro1 plus Helios 44M-7 at F2. The black object in the foreground is of course not a meteorite. It is black obsidian (volcanic glass) from one of the Aeolian Islands.
Damnatio memoriae
This term has been used in antiquity already and means the destruction of memory or, politically, the erasure of a name from the public record. Elagabalus (also Heliogabalus or, more neutrally, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) is one of such erased names. He was the ill-famed Arab teenager Roman Emperor from 218 to 222 AD (assassinated at the age of 18). There are wildly diverging opinions about Heliogabalus - from the most incompetent emperor ever, via the "crowned anarchist" (Antonin Artaud) to what in today's terminology would be a transgender person. He is worth remembering, not just for his liberalism in matters of sexual life, but also for the impulses he gave for religious life. He imported the Syrian sun god Elagabal (a version of Ba'al) to Rome, conflated him with the Greek god Helios and the Roman Sol Invictus tradition and became himself their high priest (pontifex maximus). The symbolic representation of Elagabal was abstract, namely a black meteorite, also imported from Syria. The side-lining of Jupiter did not go down well in Rome and was one of the reasons why Elagabalus was murdered.
Fuji X-Pro1 plus Helios 44M-7 at F2. The black object in the foreground is of course not a meteorite. It is black obsidian (volcanic glass) from one of the Aeolian Islands.