Represents an aeroplane operated by the Air Fighting Development Unit, based at Duxford in 1942, although an original photograph in the Imperial War Museum archives shows AA937 to have had ‘clipped’ wingtips when operating with the AFDU.

Duxford Airfield, Cambridgeshire, UK

17th October 2020

Pointe er long, Locmariaquer, 11 octobre 2020, 19h11-2

My model represents one of the first production Ospreys, which was used during the type's first OpEval (Operational Evaluation) in 1999-2000. Four Ospreys were assigned to USMC squadron HMX-1, which flew them under conditions as close as possible to operational missions, to check whether the Osprey was ready to enter service.

 

Military innovation unfortunately doesn't usually happen without lives being lost. Unfortunately the OpEval ended in a tragedy. During a night mission at Marana airport, Az on the 9th of April 2000, one Osprey crashed, killing all the Marines on board. A second aircraft made a hard landing and was written-off. When another Osprey crashed a few month's later, in December, all the Ospreys were grounded, while the program underwent a comprehensive review. They returned to flight only in 2002.

 

Représentation

portfolio shoot with model Sonja in Bohuslän, Sweden

 

Sonja is represented by Avenuemodeller

 

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This photo represents the first change to waste services for a Sydney council since amalgamations some months ago. Actually there aren’t really any changes, it’s still the same company servicing the same area, just with new trucks and the previous council name is no longer featured. A little while ago I heard that Cleanaway won back the Ashfield contract, but that didn’t make any sense when other councils were extending contracts, due to uncertainty about amalgamations and the need to streamline services once councils did merge. It is on the verge of being 7 years since the current Ashfield/Cleanaway contract started in Nov 2009, but I expected the partnership would extend for a few more years. However, a top bloke I know visited an Iveco dealership and spotted a few new Cleanaway trucks with Inner West Council printed on the side, confirming indeed a new contract had been signed with Cleanaway. These side loaders will likely start work in a couple of weeks, but this time joined by some rear loaders, to service the former Ashfield area under an altered collection regime. I’ve come to the conclusion that the newly formed council decided it wasn’t crucial to standardise waste services and the collection workforce across the former Ashfield, Leichhardt and Marrickville areas yet, so they’ve decided to essentially continue with business as usual for now. I also see the fact that Leichhardt and Marrickville have very young collection vehicles as another influence to put off any changes at this point in time. I’m sure in around 7 years the three separate council waste management systems will have transitioned into one big organisation - it will be a staged work in progress.

PLEASE, NO invitations or self promotions, THEY WILL BE DELETED. My photos are FREE to use, just give me credit and it would be nice if you let me know, thanks.

 

The Bahá’í World Center, the spiritual and administrative heart of the Bahá’í community, is located in the twin city of Haifa. It comprises the Shrines of Bahá’u’lláh, the Báb, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as well as other holy sites in the surrounding area.

 

Much of the international governance and coordination of the Bahá'í Faith occurs at the Bahá'í World Center. These include decisions that affect the religion on a global level, and the study and translation of the Bahá'í holy writings. The Universal House of Justice, representing the supreme governing body of the Bahá'í Faith.

 

This is the Shrine of the Báb on Mount Carmel.

 

This process to build the shrine took 10 years and was completed in 1909.

 

The dome which is set on an 18-windowed drum is composed of 12,000 fish-scale tiles of 50 different shapes and sizes made in Portugal. The cylinder drum rises 11 meters (35ft) and rests on a circular steel-reinforced-concrete ring on the top of the octagon.

 

The Shrine has 19 garden terraces that stretch one kilometer from the base of Mount Carmel to its summit, and both the terraces and the Shrine are illuminated at night.

The Glasshouse is an international centre for musical education and concerts on the Gateshead bank of Quayside in northern England. Opened in 2004 as Sage Gateshead and occupied by North Music Trust The venue's original name honours a patron: the accountancy software company The Sage Group.

 

History

Planning for the centre began in the early 1990s, when the orchestra of Sage Gateshead, Royal Northern Sinfonia, with encouragement from Northern Arts, began working on plans for a new concert hall. They were soon joined by regional folk music development agency Folkworks, which ensured that the needs of the region's traditional music were taken into consideration and represented in Sage Gateshead's programme of concerts, alongside Rock, Pop, Dance, Hip Hop, classical, jazz, acoustic, indie, country and world, Practice spaces for professional musicians, students and amateurs were an important part of the provision.

 

The planning and construction process cost over £70 million, which was raised primarily through National Lottery grants. The contractor was Laing O'Rourke. The centre has a range of patrons, notably Sage Group which contributed a large sum of money to have the building named after it. Sage plc has helped support the charitable activities of Sage Gateshead since its conception. The venue opened over the weekend 17–19 December 2004.

 

Sage Gateshead was developed by Foster and Partners following an architectural design competition launched in 1997 and managed by RIBA Competitions. Over 100 architects registered their interest and 12 – a mixture of local, national and international talent – were invited to prepare concept designs. A shortlist of six was then interviewed with Foster and Partners unanimously selected as the winner. The Design has gone on to win a number of awards: the RIBA Inclusive Design Award, Civic Trust Award and The Journal North East Landmark of the Year Award.

 

As a conference venue, the building hosted the Labour Party's Spring conference in February 2005 and the Liberal Democrat Party conference in March 2012. On 18 August 2009, Sage Gateshead was selected to host the 2010 and 2011 National Union of Students annual conference. The 2010 Annual Conference took place 13–15 April 2010.

 

In 2022 The Sage Group announced that they were also sponsoring a new development that is being built next to Sage Gateshead which will be called The Sage. Sage Gateshead announced that they will be finding a new name for the venue prior to The Sage opening in 2024. On 13 September 2023 the venue announced its new name, The Glasshouse International Centre for Music.

 

Building

The centre occupies a curved glass and stainless steel building designed by Foster and Partners, Buro Happold (structural engineering), Mott MacDonald (engineering consultants) and Arup (acoustics), with views of Newcastle and Gateshead Quaysides, the Tyne Bridge and the Gateshead Millennium Bridge.

 

The Glasshouse contains three performance spaces; a 1,700-seater, a 450-seater, and a smaller rehearsal and performance hall, the Northern Rock Foundation Hall. The rest of the building was designed around these three spaces to allow for maximum attention to detail in their acoustic properties. Structurally it is three separate buildings, insulated from each other to prevent noise and vibration travelling between them. The gaps between them may be seen as one walks around inside. A special 'spongy' concrete mix was used in the construction, with a higher-than-usual air capacity to improve the acoustic. These three buildings are enclosed (but not touched) by the now-famous glass and steel shell. Sage One was intended as an acoustically perfect space, modelled on the Musikverein in Vienna. Its ceiling panels may be raised and lowered and curtains drawn across the ribbed wooden side walls, changing the sound profile of the room to suit any type of music. Sage Two is a smaller venue, possibly the world's only ten-sided performance space.

 

The building is open to the public throughout the day.

 

Concerts

The Glasshouse will host concerts from a wide range of internationally famous artists, and those who have played at the venue include Above and Beyond, Blondie, James Brown, Bonobo, Andy Cutting, De La Soul, Nick Cave, George Clinton, Bill Callahan, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Dillinger, Grace Jones, Gretchen Peters, Elbow, Explosions in the Sky, the Fall, Herbie Hancock, Mogwai, Morrissey, Mumford & Sons, Pet Shop Boys, Sunn O))), Nancy Sinatra, Snarky Puppy, Sting, Yellowman, Shane Filan of Westlife and others. In February 2015, it was one of the hosts of the second annual BBC Radio 6 Music Festival.

 

It is also home to Royal Northern Sinfonia, of which The Guardian wrote there is "no better chamber orchestra in Britain", and frequently hosts other visiting orchestras from around the world. The current music director for Royal Northern Sinfonia is the pianist and conductor Lars Vogt. In late 2014, Royal Northern Sinfonia collaborated with John Grant, performing at Sage Gateshead, and other venues throughout the UK. Recordings from this tour were made available as a limited edition CD and 12" record via Rough Trade Records in 2015.

 

Opinion

There has been popular debate surrounding what was Sage Gateshead. The venue is popular in the local area because of its concerts, and also its accessible learning courses for all ages and its constant interaction with local schools and academies through programmes such as Sing Up and the option of school visits.

 

Awards

2019: UK National Lottery 25th Birthday Award - Best Arts, Culture and Film

2019: Julie's Bicycle Creative Green 2 Star

2019: Gold Standard - Attitude is Everything

2018: Gold Award for Inclusive Tourism (North East Tourism Awards)

2018: Gold Award for Business Tourism (Visit England Awards for Excellence)

2005: Local Authority Building of the Year

2005: British Construction Industry Awards

2005: RIBA Award for Inclusive Design

 

Gateshead is a town in the Gateshead Metropolitan Borough of Tyne and Wear, England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank. The town's attractions include the twenty metre tall Angel of the North sculpture on the town's southern outskirts, The Glasshouse International Centre for Music and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art. The town shares the Millennium Bridge, Tyne Bridge and multiple other bridges with Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

Historically part of County Durham, under the Local Government Act 1888 the town was made a county borough, meaning it was administered independently of the county council.

 

In the 2011 Census, the town had a population of 120,046 while the wider borough had 200,214.

 

History

Gateshead is first mentioned in Latin translation in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People as ad caput caprae ("at the goat's head"). This interpretation is consistent with the later English attestations of the name, among them Gatesheued (c. 1190), literally "goat's head" but in the context of a place-name meaning 'headland or hill frequented by (wild) goats'. Although other derivations have been mooted, it is this that is given by the standard authorities.

 

A Brittonic predecessor, named with the element *gabro-, 'goat' (c.f. Welsh gafr), may underlie the name. Gateshead might have been the Roman-British fort of Gabrosentum.

 

Early

There has been a settlement on the Gateshead side of the River Tyne, around the old river crossing where the Swing Bridge now stands, since Roman times.

 

The first recorded mention of Gateshead is in the writings of the Venerable Bede who referred to an Abbot of Gateshead called Utta in 623. In 1068 William the Conqueror defeated the forces of Edgar the Ætheling and Malcolm king of Scotland (Shakespeare's Malcolm) on Gateshead Fell (now Low Fell and Sheriff Hill).

 

During medieval times Gateshead was under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Durham. At this time the area was largely forest with some agricultural land. The forest was the subject of Gateshead's first charter, granted in the 12th century by Hugh du Puiset, Bishop of Durham. An alternative spelling may be "Gatishevede", as seen in a legal record, dated 1430.

 

Industrial revolution

Throughout the Industrial Revolution the population of Gateshead expanded rapidly; between 1801 and 1901 the increase was over 100,000. This expansion resulted in the spread southwards of the town.

 

In 1854, a catastrophic explosion on the quayside destroyed most of Gateshead's medieval heritage, and caused widespread damage on the Newcastle side of the river.

 

Sir Joseph Swan lived at Underhill, Low Fell, Gateshead from 1869 to 1883, where his experiments led to the invention of the electric light bulb. The house was the first in the world to be wired for domestic electric light.

 

In the 1889 one of the largest employers (Hawks, Crawshay and Company) closed down and unemployment has since been a burden. Up to the Second World War there were repeated newspaper reports of the unemployed sending deputations to the council to provide work. The depression years of the 1920s and 1930s created even more joblessness and the Team Valley Trading Estate was built in the mid-1930s to alleviate the situation.

 

Regeneration

In the late noughties, Gateshead Council started to regenerate the town, with the long-term aim of making Gateshead a city. The most extensive transformation occurred in the Quayside, with almost all the structures there being constructed or refurbished in this time.

 

In the early 2010s, regeneration refocused on the town centre. The £150 million Trinity Square development opened in May 2013, it incorporates student accommodation, a cinema, health centre and shops. It was nominated for the Carbuncle Cup in September 2014. The cup was however awarded to another development which involved Tesco, Woolwich Central.

 

Governance

In 1835, Gateshead was established as a municipal borough and in 1889 it was made a county borough, independent from Durham County Council.

 

In 1870, the Old Town Hall was built, designed by John Johnstone who also designed the previously built Newcastle Town Hall. The ornamental clock in front of the old town hall was presented to Gateshead in 1892 by the mayor, Walter de Lancey Willson, on the occasion of him being elected for a third time. He was also one of the founders of Walter Willson's, a chain of grocers in the North East and Cumbria. The old town hall also served as a magistrate's court and one of Gateshead's police stations.

 

Current

In 1974, following the Local Government Act 1972, the County Borough of Gateshead was merged with the urban districts of Felling, Whickham, Blaydon and Ryton and part of the rural district of Chester-le-Street to create the much larger Metropolitan Borough of Gateshead.

 

Geography

The town of Gateshead is in the North East of England in the ceremonial county of Tyne and Wear, and within the historic boundaries of County Durham. It is located on the southern bank of the River Tyne at a latitude of 54.57° N and a longitude of 1.35° W. Gateshead experiences a temperate climate which is considerably warmer than some other locations at similar latitudes as a result of the warming influence of the Gulf Stream (via the North Atlantic drift). It is located in the rain shadow of the North Pennines and is therefore in one of the driest regions of the United Kingdom.

 

One of the most distinguishing features of Gateshead is its topography. The land rises 230 feet from Gateshead Quays to the town centre and continues rising to a height of 525 feet at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Sheriff Hill. This is in contrast to the flat and low lying Team Valley located on the western edges of town. The high elevations allow for impressive views over the Tyne valley into Newcastle and across Tyneside to Sunderland and the North Sea from lookouts in Windmill Hills and Windy Nook respectively.

 

The Office for National Statistics defines the town as an urban sub-division. The latest (2011) ONS urban sub-division of Gateshead contains the historical County Borough together with areas that the town has absorbed, including Dunston, Felling, Heworth, Pelaw and Bill Quay.

 

Given the proximity of Gateshead to Newcastle, just south of the River Tyne from the city centre, it is sometimes incorrectly referred to as being a part of Newcastle. Gateshead Council and Newcastle City Council teamed up in 2000 to create a unified marketing brand name, NewcastleGateshead, to better promote the whole of the Tyneside conurbation.

 

Economy

Gateshead is home to the MetroCentre, the largest shopping mall in the UK until 2008; and the Team Valley Trading Estate, once the largest and still one of the larger purpose-built commercial estates in the UK.

 

Arts

The Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art has been established in a converted flour mill. The Glasshouse International Centre for Music, previously The Sage, a Norman Foster-designed venue for music and the performing arts opened on 17 December 2004. Gateshead also hosted the Gateshead Garden Festival in 1990, rejuvenating 200 acres (0.81 km2) of derelict land (now mostly replaced with housing). The Angel of the North, a famous sculpture in nearby Lamesley, is visible from the A1 to the south of Gateshead, as well as from the East Coast Main Line. Other public art include works by Richard Deacon, Colin Rose, Sally Matthews, Andy Goldsworthy, Gordon Young and Michael Winstone.

 

Traditional and former

The earliest recorded coal mining in the Gateshead area is dated to 1344. As trade on the Tyne prospered there were several attempts by the burghers of Newcastle to annex Gateshead. In 1576 a small group of Newcastle merchants acquired the 'Grand Lease' of the manors of Gateshead and Whickham. In the hundred years from 1574 coal shipments from Newcastle increased elevenfold while the population of Gateshead doubled to approximately 5,500. However, the lease and the abundant coal supplies ended in 1680. The pits were shallow as problems of ventilation and flooding defeated attempts to mine coal from the deeper seams.

 

'William Cotesworth (1668-1726) was a prominent merchant based in Gateshead, where he was a leader in coal and international trade. Cotesworth began as the son of a yeoman and apprentice to a tallow - candler. He ended as an esquire, having been mayor, Justice of the Peace and sheriff of Northumberland. He collected tallow from all over England and sold it across the globe. He imported dyes from the Indies, as well as flax, wine, and grain. He sold tea, sugar, chocolate, and tobacco. He operated the largest coal mines in the area, and was a leading salt producer. As the government's principal agent in the North country, he was in contact with leading ministers.

 

William Hawks originally a blacksmith, started business in Gateshead in 1747, working with the iron brought to the Tyne as ballast by the Tyne colliers. Hawks and Co. eventually became one of the biggest iron businesses in the North, producing anchors, chains and so on to meet a growing demand. There was keen contemporary rivalry between 'Hawks' Blacks' and 'Crowley's Crew'. The famous 'Hawks' men' including Ned White, went on to be celebrated in Geordie song and story.

 

In 1831 a locomotive works was established by the Newcastle and Darlington Railway, later part of the York, Newcastle and Berwick Railway. In 1854 the works moved to the Greenesfield site and became the manufacturing headquarters of North Eastern Railway. In 1909, locomotive construction was moved to Darlington and the rest of the works were closed in 1932.

 

Robert Stirling Newall took out a patent on the manufacture of wire ropes in 1840 and in partnership with Messrs. Liddell and Gordon, set up his headquarters at Gateshead. A worldwide industry of wire-drawing resulted. The submarine telegraph cable received its definitive form through Newall's initiative, involving the use of gutta-percha surrounded by strong wires. The first successful Dover–Calais cable on 25 September 1851, was made in Newall's works. In 1853, he invented the brake-drum and cone for laying cable in deep seas. Half of the first Atlantic cable was manufactured in Gateshead. Newall was interested in astronomy, and his giant 25-inch (640 mm) telescope was set up in the garden at Ferndene, his Gateshead residence, in 1871.

 

Architecture

JB Priestley, writing of Gateshead in his 1934 travelogue English Journey, said that "no true civilisation could have produced such a town", adding that it appeared to have been designed "by an enemy of the human race".

 

Victorian

William Wailes the celebrated stained-glass maker, lived at South Dene from 1853 to 1860. In 1860, he designed Saltwell Towers as a fairy-tale palace for himself. It is an imposing Victorian mansion in its own park with a romantic skyline of turrets and battlements. It was originally furnished sumptuously by Gerrard Robinson. Some of the panelling installed by Robinson was later moved to the Shipley Art gallery. Wailes sold Saltwell Towers to the corporation in 1876 for use as a public park, provided he could use the house for the rest of his life. For many years the structure was essentially an empty shell but following a restoration programme it was reopened to the public in 2004.

 

Post millennium

The council sponsored the development of a Gateshead Quays cultural quarter. The development includes the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, erected in 2001, which won the prestigious Stirling Prize for Architecture in 2002.

 

Former brutalism

The brutalist Trinity Centre Car Park, which was designed by Owen Luder, dominated the town centre for many years until its demolition in 2010. A product of attempts to regenerate the area in the 1960s, the car park gained an iconic status due to its appearance in the 1971 film Get Carter, starring Michael Caine. An unsuccessful campaign to have the structure listed was backed by Sylvester Stallone, who played the main role in the 2000 remake of the film. The car park was scheduled for demolition in 2009, but this was delayed as a result of a disagreement between Tesco, who re-developed the site, and Gateshead Council. The council had not been given firm assurances that Tesco would build the previously envisioned town centre development which was to include a Tesco mega-store as well as shops, restaurants, cafes, bars, offices and student accommodation. The council effectively used the car park as a bargaining tool to ensure that the company adhered to the original proposals and blocked its demolition until they submitted a suitable planning application. Demolition finally took place in July–August 2010.

 

The Derwent Tower, another well known example of brutalist architecture, was also designed by Owen Luder and stood in the neighbourhood of Dunston. Like the Trinity Car Park it also failed in its bid to become a listed building and was demolished in 2012. Also located in this area are the Grade II listed Dunston Staithes which were built in 1890. Following the award of a Heritage Lottery Fund grant of almost £420,000 restoration of the structure is expected to begin in April 2014.

 

Sport

Gateshead International Stadium regularly holds international athletics meetings over the summer months, and is home of the Gateshead Harriers athletics club. It is also host to rugby league fixtures, and the home ground of Gateshead Football Club. Gateshead Thunder Rugby League Football Club played at Gateshead International Stadium until its purchase by Newcastle Rugby Limited and the subsequent rebranding as Newcastle Thunder. Both clubs have had their problems: Gateshead A.F.C. were controversially voted out of the Football League in 1960 in favour of Peterborough United, whilst Gateshead Thunder lost their place in Super League as a result of a takeover (officially termed a merger) by Hull F.C. Both Gateshead clubs continue to ply their trade at lower levels in their respective sports, thanks mainly to the efforts of their supporters. The Gateshead Senators American Football team also use the International Stadium, as well as this it was used in the 2006 Northern Conference champions in the British American Football League.

 

Gateshead Leisure Centre is home to the Gateshead Phoenix Basketball Team. The team currently plays in EBL League Division 4. Home games are usually on a Sunday afternoon during the season, which runs from September to March. The team was formed in 2013 and ended their initial season well placed to progress after defeating local rivals Newcastle Eagles II and promotion chasing Kingston Panthers.

 

In Low Fell there is a cricket club and a rugby club adjacent to each other on Eastwood Gardens. These are Gateshead Fell Cricket Club and Gateshead Rugby Club. Gateshead Rugby Club was formed in 1998 following the merger of Gateshead Fell Rugby Club and North Durham Rugby Club.

 

Transport

Gateshead is served by the following rail transport stations with some being operated by National Rail and some being Tyne & Wear Metro stations: Dunston, Felling, Gateshead Interchange, Gateshead Stadium, Heworth Interchange, MetroCentre and Pelaw.

 

Tyne & Wear Metro stations at Gateshead Interchange and Gateshead Stadium provide direct light-rail access to Newcastle Central, Newcastle Airport , Sunderland, Tynemouth and South Shields Interchange.

 

National Rail services are provided by Northern at Dunston and MetroCentre stations. The East Coast Main Line, which runs from London Kings Cross to Edinburgh Waverley, cuts directly through the town on its way between Newcastle Central and Chester-le-Street stations. There are presently no stations on this line within Gateshead, as Low Fell, Bensham and Gateshead West stations were closed in 1952, 1954 and 1965 respectively.

 

Road

Several major road links pass through Gateshead, including the A1 which links London to Edinburgh and the A184 which connects the town to Sunderland.

 

Gateshead Interchange is the busiest bus station in Tyne & Wear and was used by 3.9 million bus passengers in 2008.

 

Cycle routes

Various bicycle trails traverse the town; most notably is the recreational Keelmans Way (National Cycle Route 14), which is located on the south bank of the Tyne and takes riders along the entire Gateshead foreshore. Other prominent routes include the East Gateshead Cycleway, which connects to Felling, the West Gateshead Cycleway, which links the town centre to Dunston and the MetroCentre, and routes along both the old and new Durham roads, which take cyclists to Birtley, Wrekenton and the Angel of the North.

 

Religion

Christianity has been present in the town since at least the 7th century, when Bede mentioned a monastery in Gateshead. A church in the town was burned down in 1080 with the Bishop of Durham inside.[citation needed] St Mary's Church was built near to the site of that building, and was the only church in the town until the 1820s. Undoubtedly the oldest building on the Quayside, St Mary's has now re-opened to the public as the town's first heritage centre.

 

Many of the Anglican churches in the town date from the 19th century, when the population of the town grew dramatically and expanded into new areas. The town presently has a number of notable and large churches of many denominations.

 

Judaism

The Bensham district is home to a community of hundreds of Jewish families and used to be known as "Little Jerusalem". Within the community is the Gateshead Yeshiva, founded in 1929, and other Jewish educational institutions with international enrolments. These include two seminaries: Beis Medrash L'Morot and Beis Chaya Rochel seminary, colloquially known together as Gateshead "old" and "new" seminaries.

 

Many yeshivot and kollels also are active. Yeshivat Beer Hatorah, Sunderland Yeshiva, Nesivos Hatorah, Nezer Hatorah and Yeshiva Ketana make up some of the list.

 

Islam

Islam is practised by a large community of people in Gateshead and there are 2 mosques located in the Bensham area (in Ely Street and Villa Place).

 

Twinning

Gateshead is twinned with the town of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray near Rouen in France, and the city of Komatsu in Japan.

 

Notable people

Eliezer Adler – founder of Jewish Community

Marcus Bentley – narrator of Big Brother

Catherine Booth – wife of William Booth, known as the Mother of The Salvation Army

William Booth – founder of the Salvation Army

Mary Bowes – the Unhappy Countess, author and celebrity

Ian Branfoot – footballer and manager (Sheffield Wednesday and Southampton)

Andy Carroll – footballer (Newcastle United, Liverpool and West Ham United)

Frank Clark – footballer and manager (Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest)

David Clelland – Labour politician and MP

Derek Conway – former Conservative politician and MP

Joseph Cowen – Radical politician

Steve Cram – athlete (middle-distance runner)

Emily Davies – educational reformer and feminist, founder of Girton College, Cambridge

Daniel Defoe – writer and government agent

Ruth Dodds – politician, writer and co-founder of the Little Theatre

Jonathan Edwards – athlete (triple jumper) and television presenter

Sammy Johnson – actor (Spender)

George Elliot – industrialist and MP

Paul Gascoigne – footballer (Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur, Lazio, Rangers and Middlesbrough)

Alex Glasgow – singer/songwriter

Avrohom Gurwicz – rabbi, Dean of Gateshead Yeshiva

Leib Gurwicz – rabbi, Dean of Gateshead Yeshiva

Jill Halfpenny – actress (Coronation Street and EastEnders)

Chelsea Halfpenny – actress (Emmerdale)

David Hodgson – footballer and manager (Middlesbrough, Liverpool and Sunderland)

Sharon Hodgson – Labour politician and MP

Norman Hunter – footballer (Leeds United and member of 1966 World Cup-winning England squad)

Don Hutchison – footballer (Liverpool, West Ham United, Everton and Sunderland)

Brian Johnson – AC/DC frontman

Tommy Johnson – footballer (Aston Villa and Celtic)

Riley Jones - actor

Howard Kendall – footballer and manager (Preston North End and Everton)

J. Thomas Looney – Shakespeare scholar

Gary Madine – footballer (Sheffield Wednesday)

Justin McDonald – actor (Distant Shores)

Lawrie McMenemy – football manager (Southampton and Northern Ireland) and pundit

Thomas Mein – professional cyclist (Canyon DHB p/b Soreen)

Robert Stirling Newall – industrialist

Bezalel Rakow – communal rabbi

John William Rayner – flying ace and war hero

James Renforth – oarsman

Mariam Rezaei – musician and artist

Sir Tom Shakespeare - baronet, sociologist and disability rights campaigner

William Shield – Master of the King's Musick

Christina Stead – Australian novelist

John Steel – drummer (The Animals)

Henry Spencer Stephenson – chaplain to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II

Steve Stone – footballer (Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Portsmouth)

Chris Swailes – footballer (Ipswich Town)

Sir Joseph Swan – inventor of the incandescent light bulb

Nicholas Trainor – cricketer (Gloucestershire)

Chris Waddle – footballer (Newcastle United, Tottenham Hotspur and Sheffield Wednesday)

William Wailes – stained glass maker

Taylor Wane – adult entertainer

Robert Spence Watson – public benefactor

Sylvia Waugh – author of The Mennyms series for children

Chris Wilkie – guitarist (Dubstar)

John Wilson - orchestral conductor

Peter Wilson – footballer (Gateshead, captain of Australia)

Thomas Wilson – poet/school founder

Robert Wood – Australian politician

En 1834, le Louvre faisait l’acquisition d’une statue en bronze découverte au large de Piombino, en Toscane (fig. 1). Sa configuration générale évoquait de près celle de l’Apollon Payne Knight1, réplique miniature de l’image du dieu que Canachos de Sicyone avait élevée à Didymes, à une date que l’on savait déjà antérieure à la destruction du sanctuaire par Xerxès, et que l’on situe aujourd’hui entre 499 et 4942. Toutefois, la sculpture du Louvre portait sur son pied gauche une inscription qui la présentait comme une « dîme à Athéna » (fig. 2). Or il paraissait inconcevable que la statue d’une divinité, Apollon, fût dédiée à une autre divinité, Athéna. Pour Désiré Raoul-Rochette, qui fut le premier à l’étudier de manière approfondie, la statue représentait donc un éphèbe, et remontait à l’époque archaïque. La paléographie de la dédicace semblait certes postérieure à cette époque, mais y avait-il lieu de tirer argument chronologique d’une « inscription à-peu-près unique dans son genre, et consistant en deux mots seulement, où la lettre A est répétée six fois3 » ?

 

Fig. 1. L’Apollon dit « de Piombino »

Fig. 1. L’Apollon dit « de Piombino »

Agrandir Original (jpeg, 520k)

H. 115 cm, musée du Louvre, Br 2.

 

© RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre)/Les frères Chuzeville.

 

Fig. 2. La dédicace inscrite sur le pied gauche de la statue

Fig. 2. La dédicace inscrite sur le pied gauche de la statue

Agrandir Original (jpeg, 144k)

Telle que reproduite pour le compte de D. Raoul-Rochette dans les Monumens inédits publiés par l’Institut de correspondance archéologique I, Rome, Paris, 1829-1833, pl. LIX.

 

4 Letronne, 1834, p. 198-232, 235-236.

2Confrère et rival de Raoul-Rochette à l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, Jean-Antoine Letronne était précisément de cet avis. Le style de la statue, notamment le modelé du dos et le travail des articulations, l’incitait en effet à y reconnaître une œuvre d’imitation, que la paléographie de la dédicace l’amenait à dater du iiie siècle avant J.-C. Cette même dédicace, en revanche, n’empêchait pas de considérer la statue comme un Apollon, puisque les Anciens avaient plus d’une fois dédié la statue d’un dieu à un autre dieu4.

 

5 Letronne, 1845, p. 128-176 (imprimé sous forme monographique en 1843).

3Éphèbe archaïque ou Apollon archaïsant ? La controverse en était à ce stade encore embryonnaire lorsque la statue commença à se couvrir d’altérations dont rien ne paraissait pouvoir entraver la progression. L’un des sous-conservateurs du Louvre, Jean-Joseph Dubois, s’avisa cependant que la cause du phénomène devait être cherchée dans les sédiments marins restés piégés à l’intérieur du bronze. Il fut donc décidé de faire sortir par les orbites de la statue tout ce qui ne pouvait être extrait à travers le trou pratiqué dans le talon gauche. C’est alors, en août 1842, que les ouvriers du musée découvrirent, au milieu d’un agglomérat de sable et de gravier auquel se mêlaient les résidus de l’âme de la statue, trois fragments d’une lame de plomb portant des lettres grecques (un quatrième fragment similaire avait été malencontreusement détruit). Aussitôt informé, Letronne y reconnut la signature de deux sculpteurs, dont les noms n’étaient ni entièrement conservés ni même restituables, mais qu’il tint pour les auteurs de la statue (fig. 3) : [.]ηνόδο[τος --- καὶ ---]φῶν ‛Ρόδ[ι]ος ἐπόο[υν]. La paléographie de cette nouvelle inscription interdisait de la faire remonter au-delà du ier siècle avant J.-C. : le bronze était donc bien une œuvre d’imitation, plus récente encore que la dédicace ne l’avait d’abord laissé supposer5.

 

Fig. 3a, b et c. Les fragments de la lame de plomb découverts à l’intérieur de la statue

Fig. 3a, b et c. Les fragments de la lame de plomb découverts à l’intérieur de la statue

Agrandir Original (png, 69k)

Tels que reproduits pour le compte de J.-A. Letronne dans les Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres XV, Paris, 1845, p. 139 et 143.

 

6 Piot, 1842a, p. 481-486.

4Telles étaient les principales conclusions de la communication que Letronne lut devant l’Académie le 30 septembre 1842. Quatre mois plus tard, alors que cette communication était encore inédite, Eugène Piot faisait paraître un article retentissant dans le premier numéro du Cabinet de l’amateur et de l’antiquaire, dont il était le directeur : il y insinuait que la lame présentée à l’Académie était un faux, inspiré par une inscription conservée au Cabinet des médailles6. La rumeur enfla, et désigna bien vite Dubois comme l’auteur de la supercherie.

 

7 Dubois 1843; Piot, 1842b, p. 529-540.

8 Voir principalement Raoul-Rochette, 1847, p. 101-309 ; Letronne, 1844, p. 439-444 ; Letronne, 1848, (...)

9 Longpérier, 1868, p. 17 ; voir infra, p. 67.

5Piot fut menacé d’un procès en diffamation, Dubois exigea un droit de réponse qui lui fut refusé ; il fit donc paraître à son propre compte une défense bien maladroite, à laquelle son adversaire répondit par de nouvelles accusations7. Quant à Raoul-Rochette et à Letronne, ils développèrent sur plusieurs centaines de pages la controverse entamée huit ans plus tôt8, mais moururent au milieu du xixe siècle sans que le débat ne fût tranché. Sur le plan social, Letronne fut incontestablement vainqueur : sa promotion à la tête de la Bibliothèque royale, qui fit de lui le supérieur hiérarchique de son rival – trop conservateur pour n’avoir rien à espérer de la Monarchie de Juillet et démis de ses fonctions aussitôt après la révolution de 1848 –, ne fut que l’une des étapes d’une très brillante carrière. Sur le plan scientifique, en revanche, l’avantage resta à Raoul-Rochette. On s’accorda en effet à regarder la statue comme un Apollon, mais on en fit une œuvre du vie ou du ve siècle avant J.-C., et ce d’autant plus facilement que la lame fut considérée comme perdue après avoir été déclarée fausse par la dernière personne à l’avoir examinée9.

 

10 Dow, 1941, p. 357-359.

11 Sismondo Ridgway, 1967, p. 43-75 ; cf. Sismondo Ridgway, 2004, p. 553 (réédition mise à jour d’une (...)

6Il fallut attendre le milieu du xxe siècle pour que la thèse de Letronne connût un premier regain de faveur, rendu possible par l’oubli dans lequel était désormais tombée la figure sulfureuse de Dubois. En 1941, Sterling Dow déclarait ainsi ne voir aucune raison de douter de l’authenticité de la lame de plomb. Néanmoins convaincu de l’archaïsme de la statue, il proposait de l’attribuer aux auteurs d’une réparation antique10. En 1967, au terme d’une analyse stylistique très poussée, qui rejoignait sur plus d’un point celle de Letronne, Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway conclut que l’Apollon de Piombino ne pouvait appartenir ni à l’époque archaïque ni au style sévère. Dans son opinion – maintes fois réaffirmée jusqu’en 2016 –, il ne pouvait s’agir que d’une œuvre du ier siècle avant J.-C., dont le style archaïsant était destiné à abuser les acheteurs du marché romain. Pour elle, les auteurs de la supercherie avaient revendiqué leur forfait en signant la lame de plomb cachée à l’intérieur de l’Apollon, mais s’étaient trahis en imitant imparfaitement l’écriture archaïque dans la dédicace apposée sur le pied de la statue11.

 

12 Bieber, 1970, p. 87 ; Richter, 1970, p. 144-145 ; Lauter, 1971, p. 600 ; Willers, 1975, p. 17 ; Fuc (...)

13 Soprintendenza speciale per i Beni archeologici di Pompei, Ercolano e Stabia, inv. 22924. La notice (...)

14 Voir en dernier lieu, avec diverses nuances, Daehner, Lapatin dans Exp. Florence-Los Angeles-Washin (...)

15 Hallof, Kansteiner, 2015, p. 503-505.

16 Brendel, 1978, p. 306 ; Congdon, 1981, p. 61-62 ; Zagdoun, 1989, p. 147-148, 213 ; Kreikenbom, 1990 (...)

7La thèse de Sismondo Ridgway fut loin d’emporter une adhésion immédiate12. En 1978, on découvrit cependant une statue très semblable à l’Apollon de Piombino dans la maison de C. Iulius Polybius à Pompéi, où elle était utilisée comme trapézophore13. Cette trouvaille remarquable a paru confirmer la thèse de Sismondo Ridgway, qui prévaut largement aujourd’hui14, certains épigraphistes ayant même cru pouvoir arguer de la lame de plomb pour dater la statue du début du ier siècle après J.-C.15 Plusieurs savants continuent cependant à attribuer l’Apollon de Piombino aux vie-ve siècles16. Ni les uns ni les autres n’ont été en mesure d’établir l’origine de la statue, qui reste aujourd’hui imprécisément grecque quand elle n’est pas considérée comme étrusque.

 

8L’étude des inscriptions et l’analyse de la controverse ayant opposé Letronne à Raoul-Rochette permettent non seulement de lever cette double aporie, mais aussi d’appréhender la fonction exacte de l’Apollon de Piombino, bien différente de celle qu’on lui prête aujourd’hui.

 

La dédicace inscrite sur le pied gauche de la statue

17 Longpérier, A., 1868, p. 16.

9Le fil d’argent qui rehaussait la dédicace a en grande partie disparu, mais l’empreinte des lettres se distingue encore nettement sur deux lignes. Au-dessus de ces deux lignes, on en devine une troisième, aujourd’hui très abîmée. Adrien de Longpérier est parvenu à établir qu’elle portait le nom de Charidamos17, qui est donc l’auteur de la dédicace à Athéna : Χαρ̣ί̣δα̣µ̣ος̣ | Ἀθαναίαι̣ | δεκάταν (fig. 4-5).

 

Fig. 4. La dédicace inscrite sur le pied gauche de la statue

Fig. 4. La dédicace inscrite sur le pied gauche de la statue

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D’après A. de Longpérier, Notice des bronzes antiques exposés dans les galeries du Musée impérial du Louvre (ancien fonds et Musée Napoléon III). Première partie, Paris, 1868, p. 16.

 

Fig. 5. État de la dédicace en 2014

Fig. 5. État de la dédicace en 2014

Agrandir Original (jpeg, 512k)

© RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre)/Stéphane Maréchalle.

 

10Sur le plan de la paléographie, la forme de l’epsilon, du kappa, du nu et du sigma, comme la taille réduite des lettres rondes, permettent de placer l’inscription entre 200 et 50 avant J.-C. ; l’absence d’apices s’explique par la technique employée, qui associait gravure et incrustation. L’écriture ne peut en aucun cas être définie comme « archaïsante » ou « pseudo-archaïque », et n’autorise donc pas à faire de la statue un faux antique. Du point de vue de la morphologie, la préservation du A long montre en revanche que le dédicant de la statue s’exprimait dans un dialecte du groupe occidental, ce qui laisse certes un grand nombre de possibilités, mais permet au moins d’exclure l’Attique et l’Ionie.

 

18 Lindos 251, l. 4, fournit la dernière occurrence. Voir provisoirement Badoud 2015, p. 45.

11Si l’on considère maintenant la répartition des inscriptions mentionnant le nom de Charidamos, il s’avère que Rhodes fournit environ 30 % du corpus, bien plus qu’aucune autre cité, qu’aucune région même, du monde hellénophone. Or, dans la dédicace, Athéna est appelée Athanaia. Il s’agit là du vieux nom de la déesse, peu fréquent dans les inscriptions, si ce n’est, une nouvelle fois, à Rhodes, qui fournit à elle seule près de 70 % du corpus. À compter du iiie siècle, la forme Athanaia n’est plus usitée qu’à Lindos, d’où elle disparaît après 115 avant J.-C.18

 

19 Lindos 175 fournit la dernière occurrence ; la structure de l’inscription est presque celle de la d (...)

20 Voir infra, p. 70.

12Le dernier mot de l’inscription, dékata, est lui aussi digne d’intérêt, dans la mesure où le sanctuaire d’Athana Lindia a fourni une très riche série de dîmes offertes à la déesse, qui commence à l’époque archaïque pour s’achever, une nouvelle fois, au iie siècle avant J.-C.19 Le même mot prouve en outre que la statue n’est pas une offrande ancienne dont Charidamos se serait contenté de renouveler la dédicace, comme cela se produisait parfois20, mais qu’elle a tout au contraire été fabriquée grâce aux gains qu’il avait réalisés dans une opération quelconque. À en juger par sa seule dédicace, l’Apollon de Piombino est donc une statue archaïsante produite à Rhodes au iie siècle avant J.-C., et consacrée à Athana Lindia.

 

21 Alroth, 1989, p. 84.

13Letronne et Raoul-Rochette ont âprement débattu de l’usage de dédier ainsi (ou non) la statue d’un dieu à un autre dieu. Cet usage est aujourd’hui mieux compris, grâce notamment aux travaux de Brita Alroth, qui a forgé le concept de visiting god pour en rendre compte. L’historienne suédoise a en particulier montré que si certains dieux n’entretenaient aucune espèce de relation, d’autres se fréquentaient régulièrement. Elle se demandait à ce propos si Apollon n’était pas l’une des divinités les mieux représentées parmi les figurines de terre cuite dédiées à Athana Lindia21. L’identification des effigies, qu’elle considérait encore comme incertaine, et l’origine attribuée à l’Apollon de Piombino se renforcent désormais l’une l’autre.

 

La lame de plomb portant la signature des sculpteurs

22 Sismondo Ridgway 1967, p. 44, n. 12.

23 Dubois, 1843.

14Venons-en maintenant à la lame de plomb et à la polémique qui a entouré sa découverte. Le résumé qui en a été donné en 1967 montre à quel point celle-ci a été mal comprise : Dubois aurait été accusé d’avoir forgé le document pour jouer un tour à Letronne, mais ses fonctions et son âge au moment des faits le mettraient à l’abri de tout soupçon22. Tout au contraire, Dubois a été accusé d’avoir commis un faux pour servir les intérêts de Letronne dans ce qui est probablement la plus longue et la plus violente controverse qu’ait connue l’Académie, et son activité de faussaire ne fait absolument aucun doute, puisque lui-même l’a publiquement reconnue dans sa réponse au premier article de Piot. Dubois y assurait cependant que cette activité, limitée à quelques dessins frauduleusement vendus comme des copies de vases grecs, avait cessé depuis longtemps, et qu’il n’était pas l’auteur de la lame découverte dans l’Apollon23 ; faut-il le croire ?

 

24 Institut de France, ms 2231.

25 Supra, p. 66.

26 Supra, n. 24.

15L’étude de la correspondance de Piot24 montre que Raoul-Rochette et Charles Lenormant sont à l’origine des accusations lancées contre Dubois, à l’endroit duquel les deux conservateurs du Cabinet des médailles entretenaient, pour des raisons diverses, une animosité personnelle. Raoul-Rochette avait également été le protecteur d’Adrien de Longpérier, qui, devenu conservateur au Louvre, déclara la lame fausse et la fit retirer des vitrines du musée25. Le même Raoul-Rochette s’était cependant refusé à apporter publiquement son soutien à Piot lorsque celui-ci avait été pris à partie par Dubois et Letronne, se bornant à lui conseiller de retirer ses accusations s’il n’était pas en mesure de les étayer26.

 

27 Letronne, 1845, p. 143.

16Letronne, de son côté, avait bien vu que l’un des deux sculpteurs nommés dans l’inscription portait un nom en –phôn, et qu’il était originaire de Rhodes27. Or, compte tenu de l’état de la documentation au milieu du xixe siècle, il était rigoureusement impossible de présumer l’origine rhodienne de l’Apollon trouvé au large de Piombino : Letronne lui-même ne l’a d’ailleurs jamais envisagée. En d’autres termes, la signature inscrite sur la lame de plomb confirme l’analyse de la dédicace, laquelle établit en retour l’authenticité du document découvert par Dubois et publié par Letronne.

 

17L’examen matériel du document, longtemps considéré comme perdu, mais retrouvé à la faveur d’un récolement réalisé en 2009 – alors que je m’étais enquis de son sort –, permet d’aboutir indépendamment à la même conclusion, puisque les fragments présentent des concrétions qui recouvrent également le sillon des lettres de l’inscription (fig. 6a, b et c). La gravure de la lame est donc antérieure à l’immersion de la statue ; elle est bien antique, et ne peut plus être considérée comme l’œuvre d’un faussaire.

 

Fig. 6a, b et c. Les fragments de la lame de plomb, après restauration

Fig. 6a, b et c. Les fragments de la lame de plomb, après restauration

Agrandir Original (jpeg, 570k)

Louvre, Br 2a-c.

 

© Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/ Hervé Lewandowski.

 

18Le document n’en pose pas moins trois problèmes majeurs. Le premier, que Letronne s’est employé à relativiser, est celui de sa paléographie, qui a paru nettement plus récente que celle de la dédicace ; le deuxième, qu’il a laissé entièrement ouvert, est celui de sa restitution ; le troisième, qu’il a tout simplement dissimulé, est celui de sa morphologie, la forme ἐπόουν demeurant à ce jour un hapax.

 

28 Lindos 617.

29 Voir par exemple Nilsson, 1909, p. 465, no 340.9 (193 av. J.-C.), et p. 362, no 33.10 (ca 116 av. J (...)

19D’un point de vue paléographique, les lettres, munies de grands apices, revêtent incontestablement un aspect tardif. Le nu et le pi ont des jambes égales ou presque, la barre du phi déborde en haut, le omikron et le oméga occupent toute la hauteur de la ligne ; surtout, le sigma affecte une forme carrée qui n’apparaît guère – à en juger par les publications – que dans une trentaine d’inscriptions rhodiennes, imputables, en règle générale, à l’époque impériale. La règle connaît certes au moins une exception, puisque le sigma carré est attesté à Lindos au iie siècle (?) avant J.-C.28 : cela pourra sembler trop peu pour soutenir une datation de la lame à l’époque hellénistique, mais il ne faut pas perdre de vue que la gravure de la pierre, où le ciseau percute un matériau dur, n’a guère de rapport avec celle du plomb, où la pointe incise un matériau mou, comme c’était également le cas dans la gravure des matrices en argile destinées à être imprimées, après cuisson, sur les anses des amphores commerciales rhodiennes. Les timbres amphoriques qui, par centaines de milliers, témoignent de ce procédé d’écriture sont aujourd’hui assez précisément datés pour établir que le sigma carré, encore inconnu au iiie siècle, a fait l’objet d’un usage discret, mais répété, tout au long du iie siècle29. La lame de plomb peut donc appartenir à cette époque (et plutôt à sa fin), tout comme la dédicace.

 

30 Voir désormais Badoud, Fincker, Moretti, 2016, p. 345-416 (base A).

31 Dow, 1941, p. 341-360.

32 Badoud, 2010, p. 125-143 ; Badoud, 2015, p. 304.

33 Badoud, 2015, p. 281, no 106.

34 AER I, 7.

20Venons-en maintenant à l’établissement du texte. On se souvient que le deuxième sculpteur était originaire de Rhodes ; l’adjectif ʻPόδιος étant au singulier dans l’inscription, le premier sculpteur avait une origine différente. Tout en déclarant ne pas croire à l’authenticité de la lame, Raoul-Rochette est le premier à avoir suggéré d’y reconnaître Mènodotos de Tyr, qui n’était alors attesté que sur une base de statue découverte à Athènes30, mais dont Dow a justement fait observer qu’il appartenait en réalité à une dynastie de bronziers établie à Rhodes31. Une nouvelle analyse de cette dynastie, dont le savant américain a donné une reconstitution erronée (qui amena à placer la prétendue restauration de l’Apollon vers 56 av. J.-C.), permet aujourd’hui d’affirmer que Mènodotos de Tyr a déployé son activité au tournant des iie et ier siècles avant J.-C., spécialement sur l’acropole de Lindos32. Parmi les très nombreux artistes attestés dans l’épigraphie rhodienne, il est le seul à pouvoir être identifié au premier sculpteur mentionné sur la lame de plomb. Que dire alors de son associé ? Jusqu’à présent, on ne connaissait aucun artiste rhodien dont le nom se terminât en –phôn, ce qui ne pouvait que renforcer les soupçons de faux pesant sur la lame ; mais en examinant le fonds d’estampages constitué au moment de l’occupation italienne du Dodécanèse, j’ai eu la chance de découvrir une inscription inédite, dont il m’a ensuite été possible de retrouver l’original au musée de Rhodes33. Il s’agit d’une base sur laquelle apparaît la signature d’un sculpteur nommé Xénophôn fils de Pausanias, de Rhodes, que la paléographie autorise tout à fait à identifier au –phôn de Rhodes mentionné sur la lame de plomb. Il y a plus : le monument sculpté par Xénophôn a été offert à Peithô, la déesse de la persuasion érotique, puis politique. Or, dans tout le monde grec, on ne connaît qu’une seule autre dédicace à Peithô, associée cette fois à Hermès ; non seulement cette dédicace provient de Rhodes, mais elle a été signée par Charmolas et son frère Mènodotos de Tyr34. Nous pouvons donc reconnaître en Xénophôn de Rhodes et Mènodotos de Tyr deux artistes contemporains, et rétablir leurs noms sur la lame de plomb.

 

35 Rossignol, 1850, p. 108-110, est le seul à avoir attiré l’attention sur ce problème, dont il arguai (...)

21Ne reste alors plus qu’un seul mot à examiner dans notre inscription : le verbe que Letronne lisait ἐπόο[υν], et qu’il présentait comme un « imparfait attique ». La forme n’a toutefois rien d’attique, et constitue même un barbarisme que l’on aurait eu beau jeu d’attribuer à un faussaire ignorant du grec, comme l’était Dubois, si Letronne n’en avait pas dissimulé l’incongruité derrière son autorité de philologue, et cela sans s’inquiéter du fait que la dédicace était rédigée dans un dialecte différent35. En réalité, la quatrième lettre du verbe n’est pas un omikron, mais un iota, qui se distingue nettement sur la lame, et à droite duquel apparaît encore la haste d’un êta. Il faut donc lire et restituer : [Μ]ηνόδο|[τος Τύριος καì Ξενο]|φῶν ‛Pόδ[ι|]ος ἐποί̣η̣[σαν], « Mènodotos de Tyr et Xénophôn de Rhodes ont fait (la statue). »

 

Un contexte singulier pour une pratique singulière

36 Letronne, 1845, p. 170.

37 Sismondo Ridgway 1967, p. 71 ; cf., en dernier lieu, Hemingway 2015, p. 69 ; Hurwit 2015, p. 21 ; C (...)

38 Bieber, 1970, p. 88.

22L’hypothèse d’une supercherie commise par Dubois écartée, comment expliquer qu’une lame de plomb portant la signature des auteurs de l’Apollon de Piombino ait été insérée dans la statue ? Letronne posait déjà la question : selon lui, les deux artistes, empêchés de signer la base destinée à accueillir l’ouvrage, ou craignant qu’il n’en fût un jour retiré, avaient recouru à ce procédé pour obtenir une « gloire à distance » lorsque sa destruction révélerait le plomb marqué à leurs noms36. Sismondo Ridgway et les archéologues qui considèrent avec elle l’Apollon de Piombino comme un faux antique ont imposé une explication légèrement différente : les deux sculpteurs, ne pouvant signer une œuvre qu’ils devaient faire passer pour archaïque, auraient ressenti le besoin d’affirmer leur paternité – ou leur fierté d’avoir dupé le client romain – d’une manière qui était destinée à demeurer indétectable37. Enfin, Margarete Bieber a suggéré que la lame pouvait avoir appartenu à une autre statue, et avoir été utilisée comme matériel de remplissage lors de la réparation de l’Apollon38.

 

39 Dow, 1941, p. 358.

40 Supra, p. 67-68.

23Cette dernière hypothèse, qui se contente de déplacer le problème qu’elle entend résoudre, peut être immédiatement écartée, puisque l’Apollon n’a pas subi les dommages qu’elle suppose. Parce qu’elle est éminemment contradictoire, l’idée qu’il ait fallu détruire la statue pour attirer l’attention sur ses auteurs ne peut pas davantage être retenue. Malgré sa popularité, celle qui ferait de la lame une marque de l’orgueil de faussaires antiques est tout aussi insatisfaisante, la marque en question ayant été conçue pour demeurer inaperçue. Tout en se méprenant sur le rôle joué par les deux sculpteurs, dans lesquels il voyait les auteurs d’une réparation antique, Dow se demandait s’il ne fallait pas considérer la lame comme « a reminder to the god of their work39 ». C’est à n’en pas douter le début de la bonne explication : au même titre, par exemple, qu’une partie des décors sculptés dans l’architecture religieuse, la signature, dissimulée aux yeux des humains, ne peut valoir que pour la divinité à laquelle la statue a été consacrée. Or, on l’a vu, la dédicace gravée sur le pied de l’Apollon démontre que la statue a été conçue, non pour duper le client romain, mais comme une offrande à Athéna40. Les deux inscriptions s’éclairent donc mutuellement : un léger détour permettra de réaliser à quel point.

 

41 Momigliano, 1951, p. 150-151.

42 D.Chr. 31.141.

24Dans un discours célèbre, prononcé à Rhodes sous le règne, semble-t-il, de Vespasien41, Dion Chrysostome a dénoncé une pratique qu’il jugeait impie, en s’appuyant sur des témoignages locaux pour la situer dans son évolution historique : à l’en croire, les Rhodiens avaient commencé par autoriser que l’on s’épargnât le coût de fabrication d’une statue honorifique (εἰκών) en en remployant une ancienne, si celle-ci était abîmée et désolidarisée de sa base ; cette mesure avait ensuite été étendue aux sculptures installées sur des bases anépigraphes, avant de finir par englober, à son époque, des œuvres conservant leur dédicace originelle42.

 

43 AER II, 66 (règne de Vespasien) ; Lindos 447 (règne de Nerva) ; Lindos 427 ; Lindos 556-558.

44 TRI 27, l. 30-44.

45 Lindos 2 (nouvelle édition du décret dans TRI 24). Sur la signification de l’inscription, voir Bres (...)

46 D.Chr. 31.89.

25Quelques bases d’époque impériale (dont la plus ancienne remonte précisément au règne de Vespasien) présentent une regravure de la dédicace qui illustre la dernière phase du processus évoqué par l’orateur43. Plus en amont, un décret nous apprend que, confrontés à des difficultés financières, les Lindiens résolurent de mettre aux enchères le droit d’apposer une nouvelle dédicace sur les bases de statues honorifiques (ἀνδριάντες) dont l’inscription avait disparu ou était devenue inintelligible44 : cela se passait en 22 après J.-C., époque qui marquait donc, à Lindos tout au moins, le début de la deuxième phase évoquée par Dion Chrysostome à propos de la ville de Rhodes. Continuons notre remontée : en 99 avant J.-C., la « Chronique de Lindos » se proposait de cataloguer les principales offrandes (ἀναθέματα) dont le temps, voire un accident, avait causé la ruine, ou rendu les dédicaces illisibles45. La décision de rédiger le catalogue des offrandes n’est pas mise en relation avec un quelconque remploi de leurs bases, qui ne semble avoir débuté qu’un siècle plus tard (car les statues honorifiques, consacrées aux dieux, étaient bien une catégorie d’offrandes, comme Dion Chrysostome le souligne pour mettre en relief le sacrilège commis par les Rhodiens46). Nous pourrions donc nous situer là dans la première phase décrite par l’orateur, celle où une statue-portrait désolidarisée de sa base pouvait être utilisée pour le compte d’un nouvel honorandus (et une effigie divine reconsacrée par un nouveau dédicant ?), ou un peu avant. Quoi qu’il en soit, l’existence d’offrandes inintelligibles était un sujet de préoccupation à l’endroit précis et au moment même où l’Apollon dit « de Piombino » venait d’être offert à Athéna. N’est-ce donc pas pour se prémunir contre l’usure du temps que Mènodotos et Xénophôn déposèrent leur signature dans la statue, et que Charidamos y fit graver sa dédicace ? Pour la divinité, les sculpteurs resteraient ainsi à jamais liés à leur ouvrage, et le commanditaire à son offrande.

 

De Lindos à Piombino

47 Badoud, 2011, p. 118.

48 D.C. 47.33.

49 TRI 25, l. 40-44.

50 Strab. 5.2.6.

26Déprédation ponctuelle, pillage ou achat : autant de manières d’expliquer que l’Apollon de Lindos ait été arraché à son sanctuaire. Au milieu du ier siècle avant J.-C., le consul P. Lentulus revenait ainsi de Rhodes, et sans doute plus précisément Lindos, avec une tête signée par Charès, qu’il fit exposer sur le Capitole47 ; devenus maîtres de Rhodes en 42, les partisans de Brutus allèrent jusqu’à piller les sanctuaires de la cité48 ; en 22 après J.-C., le décret de Lindos déjà mentionné interdisait d’enlever toute statue au sanctuaire d’Athéna, sauf dérogation49... Le fait est que l’Apollon fut chargé dans un navire qui fit naufrage au large de Populonia, ville presque abandonnée depuis les guerres civiles50 et qui n’était donc pas, selon toute vraisemblance, sa destination finale. Aux yeux de ses nouveaux propriétaires, la statue devait acquérir une valeur nouvelle, purement ornementale, dont témoigne le lampadophore découvert dans la maison de C. Iulius Polybius à Pompéi ; avant d’être ainsi réunis en Italie, les deux Apollons avaient revêtu des fonctions différentes dans deux sociétés qui ne l’étaient pas moins.

 

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2021 represents a significant milestone in the history of the Phoenix Railway-Photographic Circle with the celebration of our 50th anniversary by publishing a book to showcase some of the members work, past and present, from 1971 to the present day.

 

The book contains 14 chapters and 144 pages of photographs depicting the work of over 50 accomplished railway photographers with many differing styles and approaches. It takes an alternative view on photographing the railway scene over the past 50 years.

 

The book, called 50 Years of Phoenix will be published on 14th May 2021 with pre-orders now being taken – click on this link to order your copy: www.mortonsbooks.co.uk/product/view/productCode/15554

 

Why not take a look at the PRPC web site at www.phoenix-rpc.co.uk/index.html.

Élisabeth-Rachel Félix, dite Rachel ou Mlle Rachel, est une actrice née le 21 février 1821 à Mumpf (Suisse) et morte le 3 janvier 1858 au Cannet (France). Grande tragédienne, elle fut un modèle pour Sarah Bernhardt.

 

Fille de Jacob Félix, colporteur ambulant juif né à Metz (1796-1872), et d'Esther-Thérèse Hayer née à Gerstheim (1798-1873), Élisabeth Félix naît à Mumpf en Suisse, dans une auberge où sa mère s'est arrêtée, trop fatiguée pour continuer jusqu'à Endingen, la seule localité de la région qui tolère le séjour de juifs. Elle est la seconde fille, après Sarah, du couple qui aura encore un fils, Raphaël, et trois filles[1].

Sa famille misérable erre de ville en ville à la poursuite d'une pitance que leur apportent la vente de colportage du père et celle des colifichets de la mère. Élisabeth Félix vit une partie de sa jeunesse à Hirsingue, dans le sud de l'Alsace (Sundgau).

Comme d'autres parents miséreux de cette époque, le père considère ses enfants comme une source de revenus : Élisabeth chante en s'accompagnant à la guitare avec sa sœur aînée Sarah, récite et mendie dans les rues des villes (d'Alsace, puis à Besançon, Lyon, Saumur…) que ses parents traversent avant leur arrivée à Paris en 1831, où la famille s'installe dans un mauvais logement rue des Mauvais Garçons, puis place du Marché-Neuf dans l'île de la Cité.

Analphabète, Élisabeth Félix suit alors les cours du musicien Alexandre-Étienne Choron et de Saint-Aulaire, et prend quelques cours d'art dramatique au Conservatoire. Pour subvenir aux besoins de sa famille, elle débute en janvier 1837 au théâtre du Gymnase. Delestre-Poirson, le directeur, lui fait prendre comme nom de scène Rachel, nom qu'elle adopte dès lors également dans sa vie privée. Auditionnée en mars 1838, elle entre au Théâtre-Français à l'âge de 17 ans. Son succès est immédiat. Elle débute dans le rôle de Camille d'Horace, dont la recette s'élève à 735 francs le premier soir, pour atteindre dix-huit jours plus tard, la somme de 4 889,50 francs.

Son interprétation des héroïnes des tragédies de Corneille, Racine et Voltaire la rendent célèbre et adulée, et remettent à la mode la tragédie classique, face au drame romantique. Elle créa un modèle nouveau d'actrice et de femme et fut une des femmes les plus célèbres de son siècle. Elle fut ainsi portraiturée, entre autres, par le sculpteur Jean-Auguste Barre.

Elle ne fait toutefois pas l’unanimité en raison, paradoxalement, de ses indéniables talents d’actrice. Ainsi, Victor Hugo qui « admire Rachel sans passion », aime citer le mot de Frédérick Lemaître[2] : « Rachel ? la perfection, et rien de plus ! »

En 1850, elle est reçue par le roi de Prusse qui lui fait élever dans le parc du château de l'île des Paons, près de Potsdam, une statue qui sera détruite par les nazis en 1935[1].

Elle eut deux fils : Alexandre (3 novembre 1844 - 20 août 1898), du comte Walewski, fils de Napoléon et de Marie Walewska, et Gabriel (26 janvier 1848 - ?) d'Arthur Bertrand, fils du maréchal Bertrand.

Rachel meurt le 3 janvier 1858 des suites d'une tuberculose, entouré par dix représentants du Consistoire de Nice et en prononçant la prière du Shema Israel. Lors de ses derniers moments, elle demanda à sa sœur Sarah d'appeler le grand rabbin de France, Lazare Isidor, à Paris pour venir à son chevet, qui arriva trop tard

fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_F%C3%A9lix

 

sim build for represent (2017)

Representing a more modern version of the number 1 bus route is Daimler Fleetline 3780 KOX 780F. The bus is taking part in Wythall Transport Museum's celebration of 100 years of the Birmingham number one bus route. The bus is seen at Westbourne Crescent in Edgbaston.

Copyright Geoff Dowling; all rights reserved

Details best viewed in Original Size.

 

According to Wikipedia, the cabin was built as a homestead in Jackson Hole and represents an adaptation of an Appalachian building form to the West. The cabin was built by John Pierce Cunningham, who arrived in Jackson Hole in 1885 and subsisted as a trapper until he established the small ranch in 1888. John Pierce Cunningham was one of the original county commissioners chosen when Teton County was organized in 1923. He was also, at various times, justice of the peace, postmaster and game warden. The cabin is a double-pen or dog-trot style building with a room on either side of the central breezeway. After 1895 the Cunninghams used the cabin as a barn or a smithy. A small fortification was erected in 1895 during unrest involving the Bannack Indians and the fortification foundations survive. In 1899 the cabin was the scene of a shootout between a posse and two horse thieves, who were killed at the scene. The Cunninghams left the valley for Idaho in 1928, when land was being acquired for the future Grand Teton National Park.

This image was captured during the morning to insure direct lighting on the cabin and on the lower Teton Range in the background.

For a view out one of the cabin's back windows click here.

extra dresak con stik peñalolein

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. According to traditions dating back to the 4th century, it contains the two holiest sites in Christianity: the site where Jesus was crucified, at a place known as Calvary or Golgotha, and Jesus's empty tomb, where he is believed by Christians to have been buried and resurrected. Each time the church was rebuilt, some of the antiquities from the preceding structure were used in the newer renovation. The tomb itself is enclosed by a 19th-century shrine called the Aedicule. The Status Quo, an understanding between religious communities dating to 1757, applies to the site.

 

Within the church proper are the last four stations of the Cross of the Via Dolorosa, representing the final episodes of the Passion of Jesus. The church has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination since its creation in the 4th century, as the traditional site of the resurrection of Christ, thus its original Greek name, Church of the Anastasis ('Resurrection').

 

Control of the church itself is shared, a simultaneum, among several Christian denominations and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for over 160 years, and some for much longer. The main denominations sharing property over parts of the church are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic, and to a lesser degree the Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopian Orthodox churches.

 

Following the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 during the First Jewish–Roman War, Jerusalem had been reduced to ruins. In AD 130, the Roman emperor Hadrian began the building of a Roman colony, the new city of Aelia Capitolina, on the site. Circa AD 135, he ordered that a cave containing a rock-cut tomb be filled in to create a flat foundation for a temple dedicated to Jupiter or Venus. The temple remained until the early 4th century.

 

After allegedly seeing a vision of a cross in the sky in 312, Constantine the Great began to favor Christianity, signed the Edict of Milan legalising the religion, and sent his mother, Helena, to Jerusalem to look for Christ's tomb. With the help of Bishop of Caesarea Eusebius and Bishop of Jerusalem Macarius, three crosses were found near a tomb; one which allegedly cured people of death was presumed to be the True Cross Jesus was crucified on, leading the Romans to believe that they had found Calvary. Constantine ordered in about 326 that the temple to Jupiter/Venus be replaced by a church. After the temple was torn down and its ruins removed, the soil was removed from the cave, revealing a rock-cut tomb that Helena and Macarius identified as the burial site of Jesus. A shrine was built, enclosing the rock tomb walls within its own.

 

In 327, Constantine and Helena separately commissioned the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to commemorate the birth of Jesus.

 

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, planned by the architect Zenobius, was built as separate constructs over the two holy sites: a rotunda called the Anastasis ("Resurrection"), where Helena and Macarius believed Jesus to have been buried, and across a courtyard to the east, the great basilica, an enclosed colonnaded atrium (the Triportico, sometimes called the Martyrium) with the traditional site of Calvary in one corner. The church was consecrated on 13 September 335. The Church Of The Holy Sepulchre site has been recognized since early in the 4th century as the place where Jesus was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead.

 

This building was destroyed by a fire in May of AD 614, when the Sassanid Empire, under Khosrau II, invaded Jerusalem and captured the True Cross. In 630, the Emperor Heraclius rebuilt the church after recapturing the city. After Jerusalem came under Islamic rule, it remained a Christian church, with the early Muslim rulers protecting the city's Christian sites, prohibiting their destruction or use as living quarters. A story reports that the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab visited the church and stopped to pray on the balcony, but at the time of prayer, turned away from the church and prayed outside. He feared that future generations would misinterpret this gesture, taking it as a pretext to turn the church into a mosque. Eutychius of Alexandria adds that Umar wrote a decree saying that Muslims would not inhabit this location. The building suffered severe damage from an earthquake in 746.

 

Early in the 9th century, another earthquake damaged the dome of the Anastasis. The damage was repaired in 810 by Patriarch Thomas I. In 841, the church suffered a fire. In 935, the Christians prevented the construction of a Muslim mosque adjacent to the Church. In 938, a new fire damaged the inside of the basilica and came close to the rotunda. In 966, due to a defeat of Muslim armies in the region of Syria, a riot broke out, which was followed by reprisals. The basilica was burned again. The doors and roof were burnt, and Patriarch John VII was murdered.

 

On 18 October 1009, Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of the church as part of a more general campaign against Christian places of worship in Palestine and Egypt. The damage was extensive, with few parts of the early church remaining, and the roof of the rock-cut tomb damaged; the original shrine was destroyed. Some partial repairs followed. Christian Europe reacted with shock and expulsions of Jews, serving as an impetus to later Crusades.

 

In wide-ranging negotiations between the Fatimids and the Byzantine Empire in 1027–28, an agreement was reached whereby the new Caliph Ali az-Zahir (al-Hakim's son) agreed to allow the rebuilding and redecoration of the church. The rebuilding was finally completed during the tenures of Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople in 1048. As a concession, the mosque in Constantinople was reopened and the khutba sermons were to be pronounced in az-Zahir's name. Muslim sources say a by-product of the agreement was the renunciation of Islam by many Christians who had been forced to convert under al-Hakim's persecutions. In addition, the Byzantines, while releasing 5,000 Muslim prisoners, made demands for the restoration of other churches destroyed by al-Hakim and the reestablishment of a patriarch in Jerusalem. Contemporary sources credit the emperor with spending vast sums in an effort to restore the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after this agreement was made. Still, "a total replacement was far beyond available resources. The new construction was concentrated on the rotunda and its surrounding buildings: the great basilica remained in ruins."

 

The rebuilt church site consisted of "a court open to the sky, with five small chapels attached to it." The chapels were east of the court of resurrection (when reconstructed, the location of the tomb was under open sky), where the western wall of the great basilica had been. They commemorated scenes from the passion, such as the location of the prison of Christ and his flagellation, and presumably were so placed because of the difficulties of free movement among shrines in the city streets. The dedication of these chapels indicates the importance of the pilgrims' devotion to the suffering of Christ. They have been described as 'a sort of Via Dolorosa in miniature'... since little or no rebuilding took place on the site of the great basilica. Western pilgrims to Jerusalem during the 11th century found much of the sacred site in ruins." Control of Jerusalem, and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, continued to change hands several times between the Fatimids and the Seljuk Turks (loyal to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad) until the Crusaders' arrival in 1099.

 

Many historians maintain that the main concern of Pope Urban II, when calling for the First Crusade, was the threat to Constantinople from the Turkish invasion of Asia Minor in response to the appeal of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Historians agree that the fate of Jerusalem and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was also of concern, if not the immediate goal of papal policy in 1095. The idea of taking Jerusalem gained more focus as the Crusade was underway. The rebuilt church site was taken from the Fatimids (who had recently taken it from the Abassids) by the knights of the First Crusade on 15 July 1099.

 

The First Crusade was envisioned as an armed pilgrimage, and no crusader could consider his journey complete unless he had prayed as a pilgrim at the Holy Sepulchre. The classical theory is that Crusader leader Godfrey of Bouillon, who became the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, decided not to use the title "king" during his lifetime, and declared himself Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri ("Protector [or Defender] of the Holy Sepulchre"). By the Crusader period, a cistern under the former basilica was rumoured to have been where Helena had found the True Cross, and began to be venerated as such; the cistern later became the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross, but there is no evidence of the site's identification before the 11th century, and modern archaeological investigation has now dated the cistern to 11th-century repairs by Monomachos.

 

According to the German priest and pilgrim Ludolf von Sudheim, the keys of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre were in hands of the "ancient Georgians", and the food, alms, candles and oil for lamps were given to them by the pilgrims at the south door of the church.

 

Eight 11th- and 12th-century Crusader leaders (Godfrey, Baldwin I, Baldwin II, Fulk, Baldwin III, Amalric, Baldwin IV and Baldwin V — the first eight rulers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem) were buried in the south transept and inside the Chapel of Adam. The royal tombs were destroyed by the Greeks in 1809–1810. It is unclear if the remains of those men were exhumed; some researchers hypothesize that some of them may still be in unmarked pits under the church.

 

William of Tyre, chronicler of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, reports on the renovation of the Church in the mid-12th century. The Crusaders investigated the eastern ruins on the site, occasionally excavating through the rubble, and while attempting to reach the cistern, they discovered part of the original ground level of Hadrian's temple enclosure; they transformed this space into a chapel dedicated to Helena, widening their original excavation tunnel into a proper staircase. The Crusaders began to refurnish the church in Romanesque style and added a bell tower. These renovations unified the small chapels on the site and were completed during the reign of Queen Melisende in 1149, placing all the holy places under one roof for the first time. The church became the seat of the first Latin patriarchs and the site of the kingdom's scriptorium. It was lost to Saladin, along with the rest of the city, in 1187, although the treaty established after the Third Crusade allowed Christian pilgrims to visit the site. Emperor Frederick II (r. 1220–50) regained the city and the church by treaty in the 13th century while under a ban of excommunication, with the curious consequence that the holiest church in Christianity was laid under interdict. The church seems to have been largely in the hands of Greek Orthodox patriarch Athanasius II of Jerusalem (c. 1231–47) during the Latin control of Jerusalem. Both city and church were captured by the Khwarezmians in 1244.

 

There was certainly a recognisable Nestorian (Church of the East) presence at the Holy Sepulchre from the years 1348 through 1575, as contemporary Franciscan accounts indicate. The Franciscan friars renovated the church in 1555, as it had been neglected despite increased numbers of pilgrims. The Franciscans rebuilt the Aedicule, extending the structure to create an antechamber. A marble shrine commissioned by Friar Boniface of Ragusa was placed to envelop the remains of Christ's tomb, probably to prevent pilgrims from touching the original rock or taking small pieces as souvenirs. A marble slab was placed over the limestone burial bed where Jesus's body is believed to have lain.

 

After the renovation of 1555, control of the church oscillated between the Franciscans and the Orthodox, depending on which community could obtain a favorable firman from the "Sublime Porte" at a particular time, often through outright bribery. Violent clashes were not uncommon. There was no agreement about this question, although it was discussed at the negotiations to the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. During the Holy Week of 1757, Orthodox Christians reportedly took over some of the Franciscan-controlled church. This may have been the cause of the sultan's firman (decree) later developed into the Status Quo.

 

A fire severely damaged the structure again in 1808, causing the dome of the Rotunda to collapse and smashing the Aedicule's exterior decoration. The Rotunda and the Aedicule's exterior were rebuilt in 1809–10 by architect Nikolaos Ch. Komnenos of Mytilene in the contemporary Ottoman Baroque style.[citation needed] The interior of the antechamber, now known as the Chapel of the Angel, was partly rebuilt to a square ground plan in place of the previously semicircular western end.

 

Another decree in 1853 from the sultan solidified the existing territorial division among the communities and solidified the Status Quo for arrangements to "remain in their present state", requiring consensus to make even minor changes.

 

The dome was restored by Catholics, Greeks and Turks in 1868, being made of iron ever since.

 

By the time of the British Mandate for Palestine following the end of World War I, the cladding of red marble applied to the Aedicule by Komnenos had deteriorated badly and was detaching from the underlying structure; from 1947 until restoration work in 2016–17, it was held in place with an exterior scaffolding of iron girders installed by the British authorities.

 

In 1948, Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan and the Old City with the church were made part of Jordan. In 1967, Israeli forces captured East Jerusalem in the Six Day War, and that area has remained under Israeli control ever since. Under Israeli rule, legal arrangements relating to the churches of East Jerusalem were maintained in coordination with the Jordanian government. The dome at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was restored again in 1994–97 as part of extensive modern renovations that have been ongoing since 1959. During the 1970–78 restoration works and excavations inside the building, and under the nearby Muristan bazaar, it was found that the area was originally a quarry, from which white meleke limestone was struck.

 

East of the Chapel of Saint Helena, the excavators discovered a void containing a second-century[dubious – discuss] drawing of a Roman pilgrim ship, two low walls supporting the platform of Hadrian's second-century temple, and a higher fourth-century wall built to support Constantine's basilica. After the excavations of the early 1970s, the Armenian authorities converted this archaeological space into the Chapel of Saint Vartan, and created an artificial walkway over the quarry on the north of the chapel, so that the new chapel could be accessed (by permission) from the Chapel of Saint Helena.

 

After seven decades of being held together by steel girders, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) declared the visibly deteriorating Aedicule structure unsafe. A restoration of the Aedicule was agreed upon and executed from May 2016 to March 2017. Much of the $4 million project was funded by the World Monuments Fund, as well as $1.3 million from Mica Ertegun and a significant sum from King Abdullah II of Jordan. The existence of the original limestone cave walls within the Aedicule was confirmed, and a window was created to view this from the inside. The presence of moisture led to the discovery of an underground shaft resembling an escape tunnel carved into the bedrock, seeming to lead from the tomb. For the first time since at least 1555, on 26 October 2016, marble cladding that protects the supposed burial bed of Jesus was removed. Members of the National Technical University of Athens were present. Initially, only a layer of debris was visible. This was cleared in the next day, and a partially broken marble slab with a Crusader-style cross carved was revealed. By the night of 28 October, the original limestone burial bed was shown to be intact. The tomb was resealed shortly thereafter. Mortar from just above the burial bed was later dated to the mid-fourth century.

 

On 25 March 2020, Israeli health officials ordered the site closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the keeper of the keys, it was the first such closure since 1349, during the Black Death. Clerics continued regular prayers inside the building, and it reopened to visitors two months later, on 24 May.

 

During church renovations in 2022, a stone slab covered in modern graffiti was moved from a wall, revealing Cosmatesque-style decoration on one face. According to an IAA archaeologist, the decoration was once inlaid with pieces of glass and fine marble; it indicates that the relic was the front of the church's high altar from the Crusader era (c. 1149), which was later used by the Greek Orthodox until being damaged in the 1808 fire.

 

The courtyard facing the entrance to the church is known as the parvis. Two streets open into the parvis: St Helena Road (west) and Suq ed-Dabbagha (east). Around the parvis are a few smaller structures.

 

South of the parvis, opposite the church:

 

Broken columns—once forming part of an arcade—stand opposite the church, at the top of a short descending staircase stretching over the entire breadth of the parvis. In the 13th century, the tops of the columns were removed and sent to Mecca by the Khwarezmids.

The Gethsemane Metochion, a small Greek Orthodox monastery (metochion).

On the eastern side of the parvis, south to north:

 

The Monastery of St Abraham (Greek Orthodox), next to the Suq ed-Dabbagha entrance to the parvis.

The Chapel of St John the Evangelist (Armenian Orthodox)

The Chapel of St Michael and the Chapel of the Four Living Creatures (both are disputed between the Copts and Ethiopians), giving access to Deir es-Sultan (also disputed), a rooftop monastery surrounding the dome of the Chapel of St Helena.

North of the parvis, in front of the church façade or against it:

 

Chapel of the Franks (Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows): a blue-domed Roman Catholic Crusader chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, which once provided exclusive access to Calvary. The chapel marks the 10th Station of the Cross (the stripping of Jesus's garments).

Oratory of St. Mary of Egypt: a Greek Orthodox oratory and chapel, directly beneath the Chapel of the Franks, dedicated to St. Mary of Egypt.

The tomb (including a ledgerstone) of Philip d'Aubigny aka Philip Daubeney (died 1236), a knight, tutor, and royal councilor to Henry III of England and signer of the Magna Carta—is placed in front of, and between, the church's two original entrance doors, of which the eastern one is walled up. It is one of the few tombs of crusaders and other Europeans not removed from the Church after the Khwarizmian capture of Jerusalem in 1244. In the 1900s, during a fight between the Greeks and Latins, some monks damaged the tomb by throwing stones from the roof. A stone marker[clarification needed] was placed on his tomb in 1925, sheltered by a wooden trapdoor that hides it from view.[citation needed]

A group of three chapels borders the parvis on its west side. They originally formed the baptistery complex of the Constantinian church. The southernmost chapel was the vestibule, the middle chapel the baptistery, and the north chapel the chamber in which the patriarch chrismated the newly baptized before leading them into the rotunda north of this complex. Now they are dedicated as (from south to north)

 

The Chapel of St. James the Just (Greek Orthodox),

The Chapel of St. John the Baptist (Greek Orthodox),

The Chapel of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (Greek Orthodox; at the base of the bell tower).

 

The 12th-century Crusader bell tower is just south of the Rotunda, to the left of the entrance. Its upper level was lost in a 1545 collapse. In 1719, another two storeys were lost.

 

The wooden doors that compose the main entrance are the original, highly carved arched doors. Today, only the left-hand entrance is currently accessible, as the right doorway has long since been bricked up. The entrance to the church leads to the south transept, through the crusader façade in the parvis of a larger courtyard. This is found past a group of streets winding through the outer Via Dolorosa by way of a souq in the Muristan. This narrow way of access to such a large structure has proven to be hazardous at times. For example, when a fire broke out in 1840, dozens of pilgrims were trampled to death.

 

According to their own family lore, the Muslim Nuseibeh family has been responsible for opening the door as an impartial party to the church's denominations already since the seventh century. However, they themselves admit that the documents held by various Christian denominations only mention their role since the 12th century, in the time of Saladin, which is the date more generally accepted. After retaking Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, Saladin entrusted the Joudeh family with the key to the church, which is made of iron and 30 centimetres (12 in) long; the Nuseibehs either became or remained its doorkeepers.

 

The 'immovable ladder' stands beneath a window on the façade.

 

Just inside the church entrance is a stairway leading up to Calvary (Golgotha), traditionally regarded as the site of Jesus's crucifixion and the most lavishly decorated part of the church. The exit is via another stairway opposite the first, leading down to the ambulatory. Golgotha and its chapels are just south of the main altar of the catholicon.

 

Calvary is split into two chapels: one Greek Orthodox and one Catholic, each with its own altar. On the left (north) side, the Greek Orthodox chapel's altar is placed over the supposed rock of Calvary (the 12th Station of the Cross), which can be touched through a hole in the floor beneath the altar. The rock can be seen under protective glass on both sides of the altar. The softer surrounding stone was removed when the church was built. The Roman Catholic (Franciscan) Chapel of the Nailing of the Cross (the 11th Station of the Cross) stretches to the south. Between the Catholic Altar of the Nailing to the Cross and the Orthodox altar is the Catholic Altar of the Stabat Mater, which has a statue of Mary with an 18th-century bust; this middle altar marks the 13th Station of the Cross.

 

On the ground floor, just underneath the Golgotha chapel, is the Chapel of Adam. According to tradition, Jesus was crucified over the place where Adam's skull was buried. According to some, the blood of Christ ran down the cross and through the rocks to fill Adam's skull. Through a window at the back of the 11th-century apse, the rock of Calvary can be seen with a crack traditionally held to be caused by the earthquake that followed Jesus's death;[78] some scholars claim it is the result of quarrying against a natural flaw in the rock.

 

Behind the Chapel of Adam is the Greek Treasury (Treasury of the Greek Patriarch). Some of its relics, such as a 12th-century crystal mitre, were transferred to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Museum (the Patriarchal Museum) on Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Street.

 

Just inside the entrance to the church is the Stone of Anointing (also Stone of the Anointing or Stone of Unction), which tradition holds to be where Jesus's body was prepared for burial by Joseph of Arimathea, though this tradition is only attested since the crusader era (notably by the Italian Dominican pilgrim Riccoldo da Monte di Croce in 1288), and the present stone was only added in the 1810 reconstruction.

 

The wall behind the stone is defined by its striking blue balconies and taphos symbol-bearing red banners (depicting the insignia of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre), and is decorated with lamps. The modern mosaic along the wall depicts the anointing of Jesus's body, preceded on the right by the Descent from the Cross, and succeeded on the left by the Burial of Jesus.

 

The wall was a temporary addition to support the arch above it, which had been weakened after the damage in the 1808 fire; it blocks the view of the rotunda, separates the entrance from the catholicon, sits on top of four of the now empty and desecrated Crusader graves and is no longer structurally necessary. Opinions differ as to whether it is to be seen as the 13th Station of the Cross, which others identify as the lowering of Jesus from the cross and located between the 11th and 12th stations on Calvary.

 

The lamps that hang over the Stone of Unction, adorned with cross-bearing chain links, are contributed by Armenians, Copts, Greeks and Latins.

 

Immediately inside and to the left of the entrance is a bench (formerly a divan) that has traditionally been used by the church's Muslim doorkeepers, along with some Christian clergy, as well as electrical wiring. To the right of the entrance is a wall along the ambulatory containing the staircase leading to Golgotha. Further along the same wall is the entrance to the Chapel of Adam.

 

The rotunda is the building of the larger dome located on the far west side. In the centre of the rotunda is a small chapel called the Aedicule in English, from the Latin aedicula, in reference to a small shrine. The Aedicule has two rooms: the first holds a relic called the Angel's Stone, which is believed to be a fragment of the large stone that sealed the tomb; the second, smaller room contains the tomb of Jesus. Possibly to prevent pilgrims from removing bits of the original rock as souvenirs, by 1555, a surface of marble cladding was placed on the tomb to prevent further damage to the tomb. In October 2016, the top slab was pulled back to reveal an older, partially broken marble slab with a Crusader-style cross carved in it. Beneath it, the limestone burial bed was revealed to be intact.

 

Under the Status Quo, the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic Churches all have rights to the interior of the tomb, and all three communities celebrate the Divine Liturgy or Holy Mass there daily. It is also used for other ceremonies on special occasions, such as the Holy Saturday ceremony of the Holy Fire led by the Greek Orthodox patriarch (with the participation of the Coptic and Armenian patriarchs). To its rear, in the Coptic Chapel, constructed of iron latticework, lies the altar used by the Coptic Orthodox. Historically, the Georgians also retained the key to the Aedicule.

 

To the right of the sepulchre on the northwestern edge of the Rotunda is the Chapel of the Apparition, which is reserved for Roman Catholic use.

 

In the central nave of the Crusader-era church, just east of the larger rotunda, is the Crusader structure housing the main altar of the Church, today the Greek Orthodox catholicon. Its dome is 19.8 metres (65 ft) in diameter, and is set directly over the centre of the transept crossing of the choir where the compas is situated, an omphalos ("navel") stone once thought to be the center of the world and still venerated as such by Orthodox Christians (associated with the site of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection).

 

Since 1996 this dome is topped by the monumental Golgotha Crucifix, which the Greek Patriarch Diodoros I of Jerusalem consecrated. It was at the initiative of Israeli professor Gustav Kühnel to erect a new crucifix at the church that would not only be worthy of the singularity of the site, but that would also become a symbol of the efforts of unity in the community of Christian faith.

 

The catholicon's iconostasis demarcates the Orthodox sanctuary behind it, to its east. The iconostasis is flanked to the front by two episcopal thrones: the southern seat (cathedra) is the patriarchal throne of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, and the northern seat is for an archbishop or bishop. (There is also a popular claim that both are patriarchal thrones, with the northern one being for the patriarch of Antioch — which has been described as a misstatement, however.)

 

South of the Aedicule is the "Place of the Three Marys", marked by a stone canopy (the Station of the Holy Women) and a large modern wall mosaic. From here one can enter the Armenian monastery, which stretches over the ground and first upper floor of the church's southeastern part.

 

West of the Aedicule, to the rear of the Rotunda, is the Syriac Chapel with the Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, located in a Constantinian apse and containing an opening to an ancient Jewish rock-cut tomb. This chapel is where the Syriac Orthodox celebrate their Liturgy on Sundays.

 

The Syriac Orthodox Chapel of Saint Joseph of Arimathea and Saint Nicodemus. On Sundays and feast days it is furnished for the celebration of Mass. It is accessed from the Rotunda, by a door west of the Aedicule.

 

On the far side of the chapel is the low entrance to an almost complete first-century Jewish tomb, initially holding six kokh-type funeral shafts radiating from a central chamber, two of which are still exposed. Although this space was discovered relatively recently and contains no identifying marks, some believe that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were buried here. Since Jews always buried their dead outside the city, the presence of this tomb seems to prove that the Holy Sepulchre site was outside the city walls at the time of the crucifixion.

 

The Franciscan Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene – The chapel, an open area, indicates the place where Mary Magdalene met Jesus after his resurrection.

 

The Franciscan Chapel of the Apparition (Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament), directly north of the above – in memory of Jesus's meeting with his mother after the Resurrection, a non-scriptural tradition. Here stands a piece of an ancient column, allegedly part of the one Jesus was tied to during his scourging.

 

The Arches of the Virgin are seven arches (an arcade) at the northern end of the north transept, which is to the catholicon's north. Disputed by the Orthodox and the Latin, the area is used to store ladders.

 

In the northeast side of the complex, there is the Prison of Christ, alleged to be where Jesus was held. The Greek Orthodox are showing pilgrims yet another place where Jesus was allegedly held, the similarly named Prison of Christ in their Monastery of the Praetorium, located near the Church of Ecce Homo, between the Second and Third Stations of the Via Dolorosa. The Armenians regard a recess in the Monastery of the Flagellation at the Second Station of the Via Dolorosa as the Prison of Christ. A cistern among the ruins beneath the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu on Mount Zion is also alleged to have been the Prison of Christ. To reconcile the traditions, some allege that Jesus was held in the Mount Zion cell in connection with his trial by the Jewish high priest, at the Praetorium in connection with his trial by the Roman governor Pilate, and near the Golgotha before crucifixion.

 

The chapels in the ambulatory are, from north to south: the Greek Chapel of Saint Longinus (named after Longinus), the Armenian Chapel of the Division of Robes, the entrance to the Chapel of Saint Helena, and the Greek Chapel of the Derision.

 

Chapel of Saint Helena – between the Chapel of the Division of Robes and the Greek Chapel of the Derision are stairs descending to the Chapel of Saint Helena. The Armenians, who own it, call it the Chapel of St. Gregory the Illuminator, after the saint who brought Christianity to the Armenians.

 

Chapel of St Vartan (or Vardan) Mamikonian – on the north side of the Chapel of Saint Helena is an ornate wrought iron door, beyond which a raised artificial platform affords views of the quarry, and which leads to the Chapel of Saint Vartan. The latter chapel contains archaeological remains from Hadrian's temple and Constantine's basilica. These areas are open only on request.

 

Chapel of the Invention of the Cross (named for the Invention (Finding) of the Holy Cross) – another set of 22 stairs from the Chapel of Saint Helena leads down to the Roman Catholic Chapel of the Invention of the Holy Cross, believed to be the place where the True Cross was found.

 

An Ottoman decree of 1757 helped establish a status quo upholding the state of affairs for various Holy Land sites. The status quo was upheld in Sultan Abdülmecid I's firman (decree) of 1852/3, which pinned down the now-permanent statutes of property and the regulations concerning the roles of the different denominations and other custodians.

 

The primary custodians are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches. The Greek Orthodox act through the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate as well as through the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre. Roman Catholics act through the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. In the 19th century, the Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox also acquired lesser responsibilities, which include shrines and other structures in and around the building.

 

None of these controls the main entrance. In 1192, Saladin assigned door-keeping responsibilities to the Muslim Nusaybah family. The wooden doors that compose the main entrance are the original, highly carved doors. The Joudeh al-Goudia (al-Ghodayya) family were entrusted as custodian to the keys of the Holy Sepulchre by Saladin in 1187. Despite occasional disagreements, religious services take place in the Church with regularity and coexistence is generally peaceful. An example of concord between the Church custodians is the full restoration of the Aedicule from 2016 to 2017.

 

The establishment of the modern Status Quo in 1853 did not halt controversy and occasional violence. In 1902, 18 friars were hospitalized and some monks were jailed after the Franciscans and Greeks disagreed over who could clean the lowest step of the Chapel of the Franks. In the aftermath, the Greek patriarch, Franciscan custos, Ottoman governor and French consul general signed a convention that both denominations could sweep it. On a hot summer day in 2002, a Coptic monk moved his chair from its agreed spot into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopians and eleven were hospitalized after the resulting fight. In another incident in 2004, during Orthodox celebrations of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a door to the Franciscan chapel was left open. This was taken as a sign of disrespect by the Orthodox and a fistfight broke out. Some people were arrested, but no one was seriously injured.

 

On Palm Sunday, in April 2008, a brawl broke out when a Greek monk was ejected from the building by a rival faction. Police were called to the scene but were also attacked by the enraged brawlers. On Sunday, 9 November 2008, a clash erupted between Armenian and Greek monks during celebrations for the Feast of the Cross.

 

In February 2018, the church was closed following a tax dispute over 152 million euros of uncollected taxes on church properties. The city hall stressed that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and all other churches are exempt from the taxes, with the changes only affecting establishments like "hotels, halls and businesses" owned by the churches. NPR had reported that the Greek Orthodox Church calls itself the second-largest landowner in Israel, after the Israeli government.

 

There was a lock-in protest against an Israeli legislative proposal which would expropriate church lands that had been sold to private companies since 2010, a measure which church leaders assert constitutes a serious violation of their property rights and the Status Quo. In a joint official statement the church authorities protested what they considered to be the peak of a systematic campaign in:

 

a discriminatory and racist bill that targets solely the properties of the Christian community in the Holy Land ... This reminds us all of laws of a similar nature which were enacted against the Jews during dark periods in Europe.

 

The 2018 taxation affair does not cover any church buildings or religious related facilities (because they are exempt by law), but commercial facilities such as the Notre Dame Hotel which was not paying the municipal property tax, and any land which is owned and used as a commercial land. The church holds the rights to land where private homes have been constructed, and some of the disagreement had been raised after the Knesset had proposed a bill that will make it harder for a private company not to extend a lease for land used by homeowners. The church leaders have said that such a bill will make it harder for them to sell church-owned lands. According to The Jerusalem Post:

 

The stated aim of the bill is to protect homeowners against the possibility that private companies will not extend their leases of land on which their houses or apartments stand.

 

In June 2019, a number of Christian denominations in Jerusalem raised their voice against the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the sale of three properties by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to Ateret Cohanim – an organization that seeks to increase the number of Jews living in the Old City and East Jerusalem. The church leaders warned that if the organization gets to control the sites, Christians could lose access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In June 2022, the Supreme Court upheld the sale and ended the legal battle.

 

The site of the church had been a temple to Jupiter or Venus built by Hadrian before Constantine's edifice was built. Hadrian's temple had been located there because it was the junction of the main north–south road with one of the two main east–west roads and directly adjacent to the forum (now the location of the Muristan, which is smaller than the former forum). The forum itself had been placed, as is traditional in Roman towns, at the junction of the main north–south road with the other main east–west road (which is now El-Bazar/David Street). The temple and forum together took up the entire space between the two main east–west roads (a few above-ground remains of the east end of the temple precinct still survive in the Alexander Nevsky Church complex of the Russian Mission in Exile).

 

From the archaeological excavations in the 1970s, it is clear that construction took over most of the site of the earlier temple enclosure and that the Triportico and Rotunda roughly overlapped with the temple building itself; the excavations indicate that the temple extended at least as far back as the Aedicule, and the temple enclosure would have reached back slightly further. Virgilio Canio Corbo, a Franciscan priest and archaeologist, who was present at the excavations, estimated from the archaeological evidence that the western retaining wall of the temple itself would have passed extremely close to the east side of the supposed tomb; if the wall had been any further west any tomb would have been crushed under the weight of the wall (which would be immediately above it) if it had not already been destroyed when foundations for the wall were made.

 

Other archaeologists have criticized Corbo's reconstructions. Dan Bahat, the former city archaeologist of Jerusalem, regards them as unsatisfactory, as there is no known temple of Aphrodite (Venus) matching Corbo's design, and no archaeological evidence for Corbo's suggestion that the temple building was on a platform raised high enough to avoid including anything sited where the Aedicule is now; indeed Bahat notes that many temples to Aphrodite have a rotunda-like design, and argues that there is no archaeological reason to assume that the present rotunda was not based on a rotunda in the temple previously on the site.

 

The New Testament describes Jesus's tomb as being outside the city wall,[l] as was normal for burials across the ancient world, which were regarded as unclean. Today, the site of the Church is within the current walls of the old city of Jerusalem. It has been well documented by archaeologists that in the time of Jesus, the walled city was smaller and the wall then was to the east of the current site of the Church. In other words, the city had been much narrower in Jesus's time, with the site then having been outside the walls; since Herod Agrippa (41–44) is recorded by history as extending the city to the north (beyond the present northern walls), the required repositioning of the western wall is traditionally attributed to him as well.

 

The area immediately to the south and east of the sepulchre was a quarry and outside the city during the early first century as excavations under the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer across the street demonstrated.[citation needed]

 

The church is a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Old City of Jerusalem.

 

The Christian Quarter and the (also Christian) Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem are both located in the northwestern and western part of the Old City, due to the fact that the Holy Sepulchre is located close to the northwestern corner of the walled city. The adjacent neighbourhood within the Christian Quarter is called the Muristan, a term derived from the Persian word for hospital – Christian pilgrim hospices have been maintained in this area near the Holy Sepulchre since at least the time of Charlemagne.

 

From the ninth century onward, the construction of churches inspired by the Anastasis was extended across Europe. One example is Santo Stefano in Bologna, Italy, an agglomeration of seven churches recreating shrines of Jerusalem.

 

Several churches and monasteries in Europe, for instance, in Germany and Russia, and at least one church in the United States have been wholly or partially modeled on the Church of the Resurrection, some even reproducing other holy places for the benefit of pilgrims who could not travel to the Holy Land. They include the Heiliges Grab ("Holy Tomb") of Görlitz, constructed between 1481 and 1504, the New Jerusalem Monastery in Moscow Oblast, constructed by Patriarch Nikon between 1656 and 1666, and Mount St. Sepulchre Franciscan Monastery built by the Franciscans in Washington, DC in 1898.

 

Author Andrew Holt writes that the church is the most important in all Christendom.

 

Jerusalem is an ancient city in West Asia, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the oldest cities in the world, and is considered holy to the three major Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Both Israel and Palestine claim Jerusalem as their capital; Israel maintains its primary governmental institutions there, and the State of Palestine ultimately foresees it as its seat of power. Neither claim, however, is widely recognized internationally.

 

Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured and recaptured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The part of Jerusalem called the City of David shows first signs of settlement in the 4th millennium BCE, in the shape of encampments of nomadic shepherds. During the Canaanite period (14th century BCE), Jerusalem was named as Urusalim on ancient Egyptian tablets, probably meaning "City of Shalem" after a Canaanite deity. During the Israelite period, significant construction activity in Jerusalem began in the 10th century BCE (Iron Age II), and by the 9th century BCE, the city had developed into the religious and administrative centre of the Kingdom of Judah. In 1538, the city walls were rebuilt for a last time around Jerusalem under Suleiman the Magnificent of the Ottoman Empire. Today those walls define the Old City, which since the 19th century has been divided into four quarters – the Armenian, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim quarters. The Old City became a World Heritage Site in 1981, and is on the List of World Heritage in Danger. Since 1860, Jerusalem has grown far beyond the Old City's boundaries. In 2022, Jerusalem had a population of some 971,800 residents, of which almost 60% were Jews and almost 40% Palestinians. In 2020, the population was 951,100, of which Jews comprised 570,100 (59.9%), Muslims 353,800 (37.2%), Christians 16,300 (1.7%), and 10,800 unclassified (1.1%).

 

According to the Hebrew Bible, King David conquered the city from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of the United Kingdom of Israel, and his son, King Solomon, commissioned the building of the First Temple. Modern scholars argue that Jews branched out of the Canaanite peoples and culture through the development of a distinct monolatrous—and later monotheistic—religion centred on El/Yahweh. These foundational events, straddling the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE, assumed central symbolic importance for the Jewish people. The sobriquet of holy city (Hebrew: עיר הקודש, romanized: 'Ir ha-Qodesh) was probably attached to Jerusalem in post-exilic times. The holiness of Jerusalem in Christianity, conserved in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which Christians adopted as their own "Old Testament", was reinforced by the New Testament account of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection there. In Sunni Islam, Jerusalem is the third-holiest city, after Mecca and Medina. The city was the first qibla, the standard direction for Muslim prayers (salah), and in Islamic tradition, Muhammad made his Night Journey there in 621, ascending to heaven where he speaks to God, according to the Quran. As a result, despite having an area of only 0.9 km2 (3⁄8 sq mi), the Old City is home to many sites of seminal religious importance, among them the Temple Mount with its Western Wall, Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

 

Today, the status of Jerusalem remains one of the core issues in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, West Jerusalem was among the areas captured and later annexed by Israel while East Jerusalem, including the Old City, was captured and later annexed by Jordan. Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequently effectively annexed it into Jerusalem, together with additional surrounding territory.[note 6] One of Israel's Basic Laws, the 1980 Jerusalem Law, refers to Jerusalem as the country's undivided capital. All branches of the Israeli government are located in Jerusalem, including the Knesset (Israel's parliament), the residences of the Prime Minister (Beit Aghion) and President (Beit HaNassi), and the Supreme Court. The international community rejects the annexation as illegal and regards East Jerusalem as Palestinian territory occupied by Israel.

 

Etymology

The name "Jerusalem" is variously etymologized to mean "foundation (Semitic yry' 'to found, to lay a cornerstone') of the pagan god Shalem"; the god Shalem was thus the original tutelary deity of the Bronze Age city.

 

Shalim or Shalem was the name of the god of dusk in the Canaanite religion, whose name is based on the same root S-L-M from which the Hebrew word for "peace" is derived (Shalom in Hebrew, cognate with Arabic Salam). The name thus offered itself to etymologizations such as "The City of Peace", "Abode of Peace", "Dwelling of Peace" ("founded in safety"), or "Vision of Peace" in some Christian authors.

 

The ending -ayim indicates the dual, thus leading to the suggestion that the name Yerushalayim refers to the fact that the city initially sat on two hills.

 

Ancient Egyptian sources

The Execration Texts of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (c. 19th century BCE), which refer to a city called rwšꜣlmm or ꜣwšꜣmm, variously transcribed as Rušalimum, or Urušalimum, may indicate Jerusalem. Alternatively, the Amarna letters of Abdi-Heba (1330s BCE), which reference an Úrušalim, may be the earliest mention of the city.

 

Hebrew Bible and Jewish sources

The form Yerushalem or Yerushalayim first appears in the Bible, in the Book of Joshua. According to a Midrash, the name is a combination of two names united by God, Yireh ("the abiding place", the name given by Abraham to the place where he planned to sacrifice his son) and Shalem ("Place of Peace", the name given by high priest Shem).

 

Oldest written mention of Jerusalem

One of the earliest extra-biblical Hebrew writing of the word Jerusalem is dated to the sixth or seventh century BCE and was discovered in Khirbet Beit Lei near Beit Guvrin in 1961. The inscription states: "I am Yahweh thy God, I will accept the cities of Judah and I will redeem Jerusalem", or as other scholars suggest: "Yahweh is the God of the whole earth. The mountains of Judah belong to him, to the God of Jerusalem". An older example on papyrus is known from the previous century.

 

In extra-biblical inscriptions, the earliest known example of the -ayim ending was discovered on a column about 3 km west of ancient Jerusalem, dated to the first century BCE.

 

Jebus, Zion, City of David

An ancient settlement of Jerusalem, founded as early as the Bronze Age on the hill above the Gihon Spring, was, according to the Bible, named Jebus. Called the "Fortress of Zion" (metsudat Zion), it was renamed as the "City of David", and was known by this name in antiquity. Another name, "Zion", initially referred to a distinct part of the city, but later came to signify the city as a whole, and afterwards to represent the whole biblical Land of Israel.

 

Greek, Roman and Byzantine names

In Greek and Latin, the city's name was transliterated Hierosolyma (Greek: Ἱεροσόλυμα; in Greek hieròs, ἱερός, means holy), although the city was renamed Aelia Capitolina for part of the Roman period of its history.

 

Salem

The Aramaic Apocryphon of Genesis of the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QapGen 22:13) equates Jerusalem with the earlier "Salem" (שלם), said to be the kingdom of Melchizedek in Genesis 14. Other early Hebrew sources, early Christian renderings of the verse and targumim, however, put Salem in Northern Israel near Shechem (Sichem), now Nablus, a city of some importance in early sacred Hebrew writing. Possibly the redactor of the Apocryphon of Genesis wanted to dissociate Melchizedek from the area of Shechem, which at the time was in possession of the Samaritans. However that may be, later Rabbinic sources also equate Salem with Jerusalem, mainly to link Melchizedek to later Temple traditions.

 

Arabic names

In Arabic, Jerusalem is most commonly known as القُدس, transliterated as al-Quds and meaning "the holy" or "the holy sanctuary", cognate with Hebrew: הקדש, romanized: ha-qodesh. The name is possibly a shortened form of مدينة القُدس Madīnat al-Quds "city of the holy sanctuary" after the Hebrew nickname with the same meaning, Ir ha-Qodesh (עיר הקדש). The ق (Q) is pronounced either with a voiceless uvular plosive (/q/), as in Classical Arabic, or with a glottal stop (ʔ) as in Levantine Arabic. Official Israeli government policy mandates that أُورُشَلِيمَ, transliterated as Ūrušalīm, which is the name frequently used in Christian translations of the Bible into Arabic, be used as the Arabic language name for the city in conjunction with القُدس, giving أُورُشَلِيمَ-القُدس, Ūrušalīm-al-Quds. Palestinian Arab families who hail from this city are often called "Qudsi" (قُدسي) or "Maqdasi" (مقدسي), while Palestinian Muslim Jerusalemites may use these terms as a demonym.

 

Given the city's central position in both Jewish nationalism (Zionism) and Palestinian nationalism, the selectivity required to summarize some 5,000 years of inhabited history is often influenced by ideological bias or background. Israeli or Jewish nationalists claim a right to the city based on Jewish indigeneity to the land, particularly their origins in and descent from the Israelites, for whom Jerusalem is their capital, and their yearning for return. In contrast, Palestinian nationalists claim the right to the city based on modern Palestinians' longstanding presence and descent from many different peoples who have settled or lived in the region over the centuries. Both sides claim the history of the city has been politicized by the other in order to strengthen their relative claims to the city, and that this is borne out by the different focuses the different writers place on the various events and eras in the city's history.

 

Prehistory

The first archaeological evidence of human presence in the area comes in the form of flints dated to between 6000 and 7000 years ago, with ceramic remains appearing during the Chalcolithic period, and the first signs of permanent settlement appearing in the Early Bronze Age in 3000–2800 BCE.

 

Bronze and Iron Ages

The earliest evidence of city fortifications appear in the Mid to Late Bronze Age and could date to around the 18th century BCE. By around 1550–1200 BCE, Jerusalem was the capital of an Egyptian vassal city-state, a modest settlement governing a few outlying villages and pastoral areas, with a small Egyptian garrison and ruled by appointees such as king Abdi-Heba. At the time of Seti I (r. 1290–1279 BCE) and Ramesses II (r. 1279–1213 BCE), major construction took place as prosperity increased. The city's inhabitants at this time were Canaanites, who are believed by scholars to have evolved into the Israelites via the development of a distinct Yahweh-centric monotheistic belief system.

 

Archaeological remains from the ancient Israelite period include the Siloam Tunnel, an aqueduct built by Judahite king Hezekiah and once containing an ancient Hebrew inscription, known as the Siloam Inscription; the so-called Broad Wall, a defensive fortification built in the 8th century BCE, also by Hezekiah; the Silwan necropolis (9th–7th c. BCE) with the Monolith of Silwan and the Tomb of the Royal Steward, which were decorated with monumental Hebrew inscriptions; and the so-called Israelite Tower, remnants of ancient fortifications, built from large, sturdy rocks with carved cornerstones. A huge water reservoir dating from this period was discovered in 2012 near Robinson's Arch, indicating the existence of a densely built-up quarter across the area west of the Temple Mount during the Kingdom of Judah.

 

When the Assyrians conquered the Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, Jerusalem was strengthened by a great influx of refugees from the northern kingdom. When Hezekiah ruled, Jerusalem had no fewer than 25,000 inhabitants and covered 25 acres (10 hectares).

 

In 587–586 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire conquered Jerusalem after a prolonged siege, and then systematically destroyed the city, including Solomon's Temple. The Kingdom of Judah was abolished and many were exiled to Babylon. These events mark the end of the First Temple period.

 

Biblical account

This period, when Canaan formed part of the Egyptian empire, corresponds in biblical accounts to Joshua's invasion, but almost all scholars agree that the Book of Joshua holds little historical value for early Israel.

 

In the Bible, Jerusalem is defined as lying within territory allocated to the tribe of Benjamin though still inhabited by Jebusites. David is said to have conquered these in the siege of Jebus, and transferred his capital from Hebron to Jerusalem which then became the capital of a United Kingdom of Israel, and one of its several religious centres. The choice was perhaps dictated by the fact that Jerusalem did not form part of Israel's tribal system, and was thus suited to serve as the centre of its confederation. Opinion is divided over whether the so-called Large Stone Structure and the nearby Stepped Stone Structure may be identified with King David's palace, or dates to a later period.

 

According to the Bible, King David reigned for 40 years and was succeeded by his son Solomon, who built the Holy Temple on Mount Moriah. Solomon's Temple (later known as the First Temple), went on to play a pivotal role in Jewish religion as the repository of the Ark of the Covenant. On Solomon's death, ten of the northern tribes of Israel broke with the United Monarchy to form their own nation, with its kings, prophets, priests, traditions relating to religion, capitals and temples in northern Israel. The southern tribes, together with the Aaronid priesthood, remained in Jerusalem, with the city becoming the capital of the Kingdom of Judah.

 

Classical antiquity

In 538 BCE, the Achaemenid King Cyrus the Great invited the Jews of Babylon to return to Judah to rebuild the Temple. Construction of the Second Temple was completed in 516 BCE, during the reign of Darius the Great, 70 years after the destruction of the First Temple.

 

Sometime soon after 485 BCE Jerusalem was besieged, conquered and largely destroyed by a coalition of neighbouring states. In about 445 BCE, King Artaxerxes I of Persia issued a decree allowing the city (including its walls) to be rebuilt. Jerusalem resumed its role as capital of Judah and centre of Jewish worship.

 

Many Jewish tombs from the Second Temple period have been unearthed in Jerusalem. One example, discovered north of the Old City, contains human remains in a 1st-century CE ossuary decorated with the Aramaic inscription "Simon the Temple Builder". The Tomb of Abba, also located north of the Old City, bears an Aramaic inscription with Paleo-Hebrew letters reading: "I, Abba, son of the priest Eleaz(ar), son of Aaron the high (priest), Abba, the oppressed and the persecuted, who was born in Jerusalem, and went into exile into Babylonia and brought (back to Jerusalem) Mattathi(ah), son of Jud(ah), and buried him in a cave which I bought by deed." The Tomb of Benei Hezir located in Kidron Valley is decorated by monumental Doric columns and Hebrew inscription, identifying it as the burial site of Second Temple priests. The Tombs of the Sanhedrin, an underground complex of 63 rock-cut tombs, is located in a public park in the northern Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sanhedria. These tombs, probably reserved for members of the Sanhedrin and inscribed by ancient Hebrew and Aramaic writings, are dated to between 100 BCE and 100 CE.

 

When Alexander the Great conquered the Achaemenid Empire, Jerusalem and Judea came under Macedonian control, eventually falling to the Ptolemaic dynasty under Ptolemy I. In 198 BCE, Ptolemy V Epiphanes lost Jerusalem and Judea to the Seleucids under Antiochus III. The Seleucid attempt to recast Jerusalem as a Hellenized city-state came to a head in 168 BCE with the successful Maccabean revolt of Mattathias and his five sons against Antiochus IV Epiphanes, and their establishment of the Hasmonean Kingdom in 152 BCE with Jerusalem as its capital.

 

In 63 BCE, Pompey the Great intervened in a struggle for the Hasmonean throne and captured Jerusalem, extending the influence of the Roman Republic over Judea. Following a short invasion by Parthians, backing the rival Hasmonean rulers, Judea became a scene of struggle between pro-Roman and pro-Parthian forces, eventually leading to the emergence of an Edomite named Herod. As Rome became stronger, it installed Herod as a client king of the Jews. Herod the Great, as he was known, devoted himself to developing and beautifying the city. He built walls, towers and palaces, and expanded the Temple Mount, buttressing the courtyard with blocks of stone weighing up to 100 tons. Under Herod, the area of the Temple Mount doubled in size. Shortly after Herod's death, in 6 CE Judea came under direct Roman rule as the Iudaea Province, although the Herodian dynasty through Agrippa II remained client kings of neighbouring territories until 96 CE.

 

Roman rule over Jerusalem and Judea was challenged in the First Jewish–Roman War (66–73 CE), which ended with a Roman victory. Early on, the city was devastated by a brutal civil war between several Jewish factions fighting for control of the city. In 70 CE, the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple. The contemporary Jewish historian Josephus wrote that the city "was so thoroughly razed to the ground by those that demolished it to its foundations, that nothing was left that could ever persuade visitors that it had once been a place of habitation." Of the 600,000 (Tacitus) or 1,000,000 (Josephus) Jews of Jerusalem, all of them either died of starvation, were killed or were sold into slavery. Roman rule was again challenged during the Bar Kokhba revolt, beginning in 132 CE and suppressed by the Romans in 135 CE. More recent research indicates that the Romans had founded Aelia Capitolina before the outbreak of the revolt, and found no evidence for Bar Kokhba ever managing to hold the city.

 

Jerusalem reached a peak in size and population at the end of the Second Temple Period, when the city covered two km2 (3⁄4 sq mi) and had a population of 200,000.

 

Late Antiquity

Following the Bar Kokhba revolt, Emperor Hadrian combined Iudaea Province with neighbouring provinces under the new name of Syria Palaestina, replacing the name of Judea. The city was renamed Aelia Capitolina, and rebuilt it in the style of a typical Roman town. Jews were prohibited from entering the city on pain of death, except for one day each year, during the holiday of Tisha B'Av. Taken together, these measures (which also affected Jewish Christians) essentially "secularized" the city. Historical sources and archaeological evidence indicate that the rebuilt city was now inhabited by veterans of the Roman military and immigrants from the western parts of the empire.

 

The ban against Jews was maintained until the 7th century, though Christians would soon be granted an exemption: during the 4th century, the Roman emperor Constantine I ordered the construction of Christian holy sites in the city, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Burial remains from the Byzantine period are exclusively Christian, suggesting that the population of Jerusalem in Byzantine times probably consisted only of Christians.

 

Jerusalem.

In the 5th century, the eastern continuation of the Roman Empire, ruled from the recently renamed Constantinople, maintained control of the city. Within the span of a few decades, Jerusalem shifted from Byzantine to Persian rule, then back to Roman-Byzantine dominion. Following Sassanid Khosrau II's early 7th century push through Syria, his generals Shahrbaraz and Shahin attacked Jerusalem (Persian: Dej Houdkh) aided by the Jews of Palaestina Prima, who had risen up against the Byzantines.

 

In the Siege of Jerusalem of 614, after 21 days of relentless siege warfare, Jerusalem was captured. Byzantine chronicles relate that the Sassanids and Jews slaughtered tens of thousands of Christians in the city, many at the Mamilla Pool, and destroyed their monuments and churches, including the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This episode has been the subject of much debate between historians. The conquered city would remain in Sassanid hands for some fifteen years until the Byzantine emperor Heraclius reconquered it in 629.

 

Middle Ages

After the Muslim conquest of the Levant, Byzantine Jerusalem was taken by Umar ibn al-Khattab in 638 CE. Among the first Muslims, it was referred to as Madinat bayt al-Maqdis ("City of the Temple"), a name restricted to the Temple Mount. The rest of the city "was called Iliya, reflecting the Roman name given the city following the destruction of 70 CE: Aelia Capitolina". Later the Temple Mount became known as al-Haram al-Sharif, "The Noble Sanctuary", while the city around it became known as Bayt al-Maqdis, and later still, al-Quds al-Sharif "The Holy, Noble". The Islamization of Jerusalem began in the first year A.H. (623 CE), when Muslims were instructed to face the city while performing their daily prostrations and, according to Muslim religious tradition, Muhammad's night journey and ascension to heaven took place. After 13 years, the direction of prayer was changed to Mecca. In 638 CE the Islamic Caliphate extended its dominion to Jerusalem. With the Muslim conquest, Jews were allowed back into the city. The Rashidun caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab signed a treaty with Christian Patriarch of Jerusalem Sophronius, assuring him that Jerusalem's Christian holy places and population would be protected under Muslim rule. Christian-Arab tradition records that, when led to pray at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the holiest sites for Christians, the caliph Umar refused to pray in the church so that Muslims would not request conversion of the church to a mosque. He prayed outside the church, where the Mosque of Umar (Omar) stands to this day, opposite the entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. According to the Gaullic bishop Arculf, who lived in Jerusalem from 679 to 688, the Mosque of Umar was a rectangular wooden structure built over ruins which could accommodate 3,000 worshipers.

 

When the Arab armies under Umar went to Bayt Al-Maq

IM SERIOUS.

The 22 bronze figures, representing the eleven branches of the Canadian forces engaged in the First World War

 

The National War Memorial (titled The Response) is a tall, granite memorial arch with accreted bronze sculptures in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, designed by Vernon March and first dedicated by King George VI in 1939. Originally built to commemorate the Canadians who died in the First World War, it was in 1982 rededicated to also include those killed in the Second World War and Korean War and again in 2014 to add the dead from the Second Boer War and War in Afghanistan, as well as all Canadians killed in all conflicts past and future. It now serves as the pre-eminent war memorial of 76 cenotaphs in Canada. In 2000, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was added in front of the memorial and symbolizes the sacrifices made by all Canadians who have died or may yet die for their country.

Hemlock Creek Trail, Umpqua National Forest, Oregon, USA

Representing 1/3 of the remaining operation AEM-7 fleet, #946 rolls under the Pennsy signals at Levittown, PA. After logging millions of miles up and down the Northeast Corridor, this motor's days are rapidly coming to an end, and could very possible be in the single digits.

www.myspace.com/represent952

Despite the popular belief that most naturists are generously proportioned Germans we had very few guests from Germany last year so we were pleased to welcome Sylvie & Susanne who clearly break the urban myth. They were great company and really helped contribute to the community spirit on-site by helping out with many of the daily meal time chores. Perhaps we should have given them a discount ;-)

Grangemouth represents INEOS’ largest manufacturing site by volume of products. It is also home to Petroineos, Scotland’s only crude oil refinery and produces the bulk of fuels used in Scotland. products are used extensively in the petrochemical industry and transformed into bottles and pipes, cabling and insulation, food packaging and are used in the pharmaceutical industry

Artiste Igor Mitoraj

Date 1987

Type Bronze

L'œuvre est située dans le quartier du Faubourg de l'Arche. La sculpture en bronze représente une statue ailée sans tête ; une main retenant son pied droit semble l'empêcher de prendre son envol.

Represented by SL Talent.

 

© Copyright 2017 Barrie Spence. All rights reserved and moral rights asserted. Theses images are not in the public domain and may not be used without licence.

 

Comments are very welcome and very much appreciated, but any with linked/embedded images will be removed.

An infrared view of a laser-based test campaign – taking place at Redwire Space in Kruibeke, Belgium – which represents crucial preparation for ESA’s precision formation flying mission, Proba-3.

 

Later this year, two satellites will be launched together into orbit to maintain formation relative to each other down to a few millimetres, creating an artificial solar eclipse in space. Proba-3’s ‘Occulter’ spacecraft will cast a shadow onto the other ‘Coronagraph’ spacecraft to block out the fiery face of the Sun and make the ghostly solar corona available for sustained observation for up to six hours per 19.5 hour orbit.

 

However to maintain the position of a shadow just a few centimetres across on the Coronagraph satellite from the Occulter satellite around 150 m away, the two satellites rely on a suite of sensors, including intersatellite radio links, GNSS, visual imaging and – for the most precise positioning at closest range – a laser metrology (or ‘measurement of measurement’) system. This system will shoot a laser from the Occulter spacecraft toward a corner cube retroreflector placed on the face of the Coronagraph spacecraft for tracking of relative position and attitude (pointing direction), achieving millimetre precision.

 

“To calibrate Proba-3’s laser metrology system, its performance was tested within the 60-m long Redwire cleanroom,” explains Damien Galano, Proba-3’s mission manager. “The Coronagraph’s laser was reflected off a retroreflector and the resulting positioning measurements checked against absolute ‘ground truth’ using a separate laser tracking system.”

 

This mission is being put together for ESA by a consortium led by Spain’s Sener, with participation by more than 29 companies from 14 countries. The Proba-3 platforms have been designed by Airbus Defence and Space in Spain and satellite integration by Redwire in Belgium. GMV in Spain is responsible for Proba-3’s formation flying subsystem while its main coronagraph instrument comes from Belgium’s Centre Spatial de Liège, CSL. Proba-3 is due to be launched by PSLV-XL launcher from India in September.

 

Credits: ESA - M. Pédoussaut

Christmas Eve represents the preparation for marking the happiest Orthodox holiday, Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ. Most of the customs in Serbia are related to the Christmas Eve and Christmas, which depict the event of the birth in Bethlehem.

 

At dawn, on the day of Christmas Eve, men from the house go to “badnjaks”. Badnjak is the young oak tree and it represents a symbol of the tree which was, according to the stories, brought to Joseph and Mary by the shepherds, to start the fire and heat the cave in which Jesus was born.

 

According to the custom, badnjak is lit just before the holiday and it burns until Christmas, when the joy of Christ’s birth is announced. After burning badnjak is a symbol of separation with the ancient beliefs and acceptation of the new light which comes with the faith in newly born Christ.

 

Liturgies and burning of badnjak are organized around Serbia on the Christmas Eve in front of numerous temples. The largest number of people is traditionally gathered in front of the St Sava Church in Vračar, where a number of believers merrily await for the happiest Orthodox holiday.

 

All the customs have the meaning of Orthodox togetherness, so it is considered that people gathered around badnjak get warm by the love and concord, and they enter its light to the darkness of ignorance and superstition.

Metamorphoses Book I: Zeus and Io

 

The painting represents the themes of the imprisonment and the liberation of Io. The young woman is represented on the left, seated on a stool. Her face is characterized by two small horns on the forehead: they identify Io metamorphosed in a heifer. Even the cow painted behind her confirms her identity. Hermes is standing in the middle of the scene, with his left foot resting on a rock. The god is portrayed in the act of offering a "syrinx" - panpipes - to Argos. Here the naked giant is seated and holds a “pedum”. This attribute characterizes Argos as a shepherd.

Hermes, disguised as a shepherd, complete with panpipes, strikes up a conversation with Argus and entertains him with stories, during which more and more of the guard ’ s eyes close in sleepiness. When Argos wants to know the origin of the panpipes, Mercury starts to tell the story of Syrinx and her metamorphosis into reeds – halfway through which Argus falls asleep completely and has his head cut off by Mercury. In Ovid's account Ovid, Met. I, 713-722, the syrinx is the fulcrum of the narration because, this musical instrument is used by Hermes to sent to sleep and then behead the guardian of Io. Hera transferred Argos’s eyes to the tail of the peacock, her favorite bird.

  

… talia dicturus vidit Cyllenius omnes

subcubuisse oculos adopertaque lumina somno ;

supprimit extemplo vocem firmatque soporem 715

languida permuleens medieata lumina virga.

nee mora, faleato nutantem vulnerat ense,

qua collo est confine caput, saxoque cruentum

deieit et maculat praeruptam sanguine rupem.

Arge, iaees, quodque in tot lumina lumen habebas, 720

exstinetum est, centumque oculos nox occupat una.

Excipit hos volucrisque suae Saturnia pennis

collocat et gemmis caudam stellantibus inplet.

 

“When Hermes was going on to tell this story, he saw that all those eyes had yielded and were closed in sleep. Straightway he checks his words, and deepens Argos’ slumber by passing his magic wand over those sleep-faint eyes. And forthwith he smites with his hooked sword the nodding head just where it joins the neck, and sends it bleeding down the rocks, defiling the rugged cliff with blood. Argus, thou liest low; the light which thou hadst within thy many fires is all put out ; and one darkness fills thy hundred eyes.

Saturnia [Hera] took these eyes and set them on the feathers of her bird, filling his tail with star-like jewels.”

 

Translation: Frank Justus Miller, “Ovid - Metamorphoses”

Source: exhibition note

 

Fresco From Pompeii, Isis Temple

AD 60 – 79 (4th style)

Naples, “Museo Archeologico Nazionale”

Exhibition: “Ovidio: Loves, Myths & Other Stories”

Scuderie del Quirinale, Rome

 

Esta mujer Tauro está representada por las astas del toro.Su pecho y el cuerpo lo forman las astas y se corona con otra.Tauro simboliza el empuje,arranque y decisión,por eso no se me ocurría mejor modo de señalarlo que de esta manera.

Esta mujer Tauro está representada por las astas del toro.Su pecho y el cuerpo lo forman las astas y se corona con otra.Tauro simboliza el empuje,arranque y decisión,por eso no se me ocurrría mejor modo de señalarlo que de esta manera.

Características de Tauro

Fechas Tauro 21/4 - 21/5

Cómo es un Tauro

Un tauro es paciente, persistente, decidido y fiable. A un tauro le encanta sentirse seguro, tiene buen corazón y es muy cariñoso. Les gusta la estabilidad, las cosas naturales, el placer y la comodidad. Los tauro disfrutan con tiempo para reflexionar y les encanta sentirse atraído hacía alguien.

 

Características de Tauro

 

Tauro puede ser celoso y posesivo y tiene tendencia a ser inflexible y resentido. A veces los Tauro pecan de ser codiciosos y de permitírselo todo. No les gustan las interrupciones ni las prisas. Tampoco les gustan las cosas sintéticas o falsas. No les gusta sentirse presionados y no soportan estar demasiado tiempo en casa.

Descripción de Tauro

Un Tauro suele ser práctico, decidido y tener una gran fuerza de voluntad. Los tauro son personas estables y conservadores, y seguirán de forma leal un líder en el que tienen confianza. Les encanta la paz y tranquilidad y son muy respetuosos con las leyes y las reglas. Respetan los valores materiales y evitan las deudas. Son un poco reacios al cambio.

    

Son más prácticos que intelectuales, y como les gusta la continuidad y la rutina, suelen ser de ideas fijas. Los Tauro son prudentes, estables y tienen un gran sentido de la justicia. No suelen hundirse ante las dificultades sino que siguen adelante hasta salir.

 

A veces los Tauro pueden ser demasiado rígidos, argumentativos, egocentrísticos y tercos.

 

A los tauros les gustan las cosas bellas y suelen ser aficionados al arte y la música. Algunos tauros tienen una fe religiosa poco convencional y muy fuerte. Les encantan los placeres de la vida, el lujo y la buena comida y bebida. De hecho los tauro deben esforzarse para no dejarse llevar por la tentación de satisfacer en exceso estos gustos.

 

Tauro en el amor y las relaciones personales

Los tauro son amigos fieles y generosos. Tienen una gran capacidad para ser cariñosos aunque rara vez hagan amigos con personas fuera de su entorno social. Evitan los conflictos y los disgustos y prefieren el buen humor y la estabilidad. No obstante, si pierden los nervios son capaces de tener un genio tan furioso que sorprende a todos.

 

Los tauro son sensuales pero prácticos, y en este sentido son parejas fieles y considerados. Son buenos padres y no existen demasiado de su pareja ni tampoco de sus hijos. Tienen bastante amor propio y tienden a ser posesivos pero si su pareja intenta hacer las paces y comprenderles, hacen un esfuerzo para olvidar su enfado.

  

En el trabajo los tauros son trabajadores y no se les caen los anillos con ningún tipo de trabajo manual. Son fiables, prácticos, metódicos y ambiciosos. Asumen autoridad sobre los demás, y rinden más en puestos rutinarios de confianza y responsabilidad.

 

Son creativos y emprendedores. Pueden triunfar en profesiones como la banca, la arquitectura, la construcción, la administración, la agricultura, la medicina, la química y la industria.

 

También triunfan en la educación, las artes y la cocina. Pueden ser excelentes músicos y artistas.

Represent tangible

Abstract philosophy

Cordial appreciation

 

curawyllahs con class

Montage représentant quatre dinosaures centrosaurinés qui vivaient ensemble.

 

***************************************************************

 

Lokiceratops rangiformis était une bête massive qui a vécu sur Terre il y a environ 78 millions d'années.

 

Mesurant 6,7 mètres de long et pesant 5 000 kilos, ce dinosaure marchait sur quatre pattes. Son régime alimentaire était à base de plantes. En tant que cératopside, un type de dinosaure à cornes, son crâne témoigne de sa structure crânienne unique. Il possède deux cornes « régulières » sur son front.

 

Au-dessus se trouve une grande collerette osseuse qui s'étend derrière la tête. Au-dessus de cette collerette se trouvent deux cornes enroulées uniques avec de minuscules pointes adjacentes, l'une plus petite que l'autre.

 

D'où le nom donné à la nouvelle espèce, qui rend hommage au casque à cornes du dieu nordique et à la nature inégale des bois de caribou.

 

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

 

Lokiceratops rangiformis was a massive beast that roamed Earth about 78 million years ago. Stretching 22 feet long and weighing 11,000 pounds, the dinosaur walked on four legs. It had a plant-based diet.

 

As a ceratopsid, a type of horned dinosaur, its skull evidences its unique cranial structure. It boasts two “regular” horns on its forehead. Above that is a large bone frill that fans out behind the head. Atop this frill are two unique curling horns with tiny adjoining points, one smaller than the other.

 

Hence the name given the new species, which honors the Norse god's horned helmet and the uneven nature of caribou antlers.

 

Crédit : Fabrizio Lavezzi ©

  

_____________________________________________________PdF________________

From left:

 

- Amulet of Harpocrates

Faience

Provenance unknown

BAAM 0155

 

- Amulet representing Harpocrates, wearing a side lock and standing with finger to the lips

Faience

Graeco-Roman Period, the second century BC

Provenance: Lower Egypt, Alexandria, El-Hadara, Antoniades tombs

BAAM 0151

 

- Amulet of Harpocrates

Faience

Provenance unknown

BAAM 0156

 

Antiquities Museum of Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Red represents joy and festivity...

But sometimes, red can evoke sadness.

Because it was the color of blood shed for my mother's tongue.

 

Victory can make us happy.

But it is painful, too.

Because it took away so many of our lives as the price.

 

Captured on International Mother Language Day, 2008 from "Shaheed Minar". A child with a bouquet in front of the sea of flowers dedicated to the martyrs of 21st February, 1952.

“The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it's all that matters.”

― Audrey Hepburn

 

112 Pictures in 2012~ #69 ~ Represent the title of a film in your image

 

Explored~ thanks you to all who visit xx

 

okay I know happiness is spelled wrong and it's driving me crazy~ but that's the name of the movie

Taxonomía: El bigotudo (Panurus biarmicus) es el único representante en nuestro país de la familia Timaliidae. Su nombre común es consecuencia de la peculiar coloración facial de esta especie.

 

Identificación: Esta especie suele medir unos 16 cm y puede pesar hasta 15 gramos.

Es fácilmente identificable por su larga cola y por el curioso diseño de sus alas. Los machos adultos presentan una cabeza y parte del pecho de tonos grisáceos, con dos grandes rayas triangulares que empiezan entre el ojo y el pico y bajan hasta ambos lados de la barbilla. Su cuerpo es de color canela con tonos naranjas, y en las coberteras primarias observamos dibujos negros con bordes blancos. Las infracoberteras caudales en los machos también son negras. Su pico es de tonos naranjas, y el iris amarillento.

Las hembras son más discretas, sin bigotes negros, la cabeza tiene también tonos marrones y puede tener algunas manchas oscuras en el píleo. El iris suele ser amarillento.

Los juveniles tienen una coloración general es más amarillenta, y en el dorso se pueden observar también algunas franjas oscuras (sus alas son también más negras). No presentan bigotes.

En ambos sexos las patas son oscuras, prácticamente negras. Su cola es proporcionalmente larga.

Plumaje: 10 primarias, 6 secundarias, 3 terciarias y 12 rectrices. Realiza una muda posnupcial completa.

 

Variaciones geográficas: En España encontramos la subespecie Panurus biarmicus biarmicus.

 

Especies similares: Es una especie muy particular, por lo que no existen en nuestro país otras especies similares.

 

Lara Almarcegui represents spain at the 55th international art exhibition in venice. a present-day archeologist, her practice is derived from a heightened awareness of the city, investigating urban transformation, and the social, economic and political networks which effect it. in particular, she focuses on studying the often overlooked elements which make up a place–the modern ruins and urban wastelands which comprise them;she uncovers relationships between the sites she excavates and investigates with their past, and evaluates their possible future.

 

Curated by octavio zaya, almarcegui’s work for the spanish pavilion is composed of two parts. her installation at the giardini venue, speaks directly to the 1922 building constructed by javier de luque; it is an intervention which occupies its entire interior. one is met by overwhelming, towering mountains of various construction materials–cement rubble, roofing tiles and bricks smashed to gravel–paralleling the type and quantity used by workers to construct the venue, making it virtually impossible for one to enter directly. throughout the other side rooms, smaller, less hefty mounds, are found each divided according to material (sawdust, glass and a blend of iron slag and ashes).

 

‘The materials are the rubble from demolitions, after being recycled, have been transformed into gravel by means of the treatment process currently used in venice,’ says the artist. (designboom)

Representing BR’s smart and business-like Inter-City brand of the 1970s and ‘80s, Gateshead-allocated 47518 was captured speeding south along the East Coast Main Line between Brookman’s Park and Potter's Bar in the summer of 1979. The passenger accommodation is all air-conditioned Mk 2s apart from a pair of Mk 1 catering vehicles near the centre. New to York Depot as D1101 in 1966, the locomotive worked mainly from Eastern and North Eastern Region sheds before a spell in Scotland from 1988 to 1991, prior to withdrawal at the end of that year. It was scrapped in 1994.

Daffodils represent beauty and could apply to unanswered love or of dedication to just one person. To the rest of us in means spring has awakened.

 

Their botanical name is narcissus from an ancient Greek tale. A man called Narcissus who loved to look at himself in a pool of water fell in and drowned. From his grave supposed a flower grew and it was Narcissus more commonly known as daffodil.

 

Thank you for comments, fav's and visitations. It's genuinely appreciated.

 

Land upon which the Catholic Church has established the buildings that represent the hub for the local Catholic community was originally part of 13½ acres purchased by William Robinson in 1864. After the land passed to his widow in 1884, James Robinson acquired title to the property in 1892. This farmer of Dingo Head, Teleman Crossing Upper Logan, retained the property until it was transferred to the War Service Homes Commission in the late 1920s.

 

At this time Gaythorne / Mitchelton was beginning to become more densely settled. The train line to Enoggera had been operating since 1899 and extended to Gaythorne (initially Rifle Range) in 1916 and Mitchelton in 1918. The Rifle Range, from which originated Gallipoli Barracks, was officially established in 1908. With the advent of World War One (1914 - 1918) the Range became a recruit training area as well as a staging camp. Military personnel and their families contributed to the population growth in the adjoining suburbs. Residential estates such as Lade’s Paddock, the Brookside estate and Oxford Park estate were offered for sale in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Population growth in the area warranted the establishment of the Enoggera (originally called Grovely) State School in 1916.

 

At this time Catholics in the developing local community travelled mostly to Alderley to the first St John the Baptist church (built 1908) to receive the sacraments, and during the 1920s also worshipped at the chapel of the Redemptorist Order of monks in Church Road. James Duhig, Catholic Archbishop of Brisbane bought the 3 subdivisions on the corner of Samford Road and Suez Street from the War Service Homes Commission in May 1928. The first Church of Our Lady of Dolours was produced by transforming the house on the corner of the site when it was purchased. At the opening ceremony on Easter Sunday, the 19th of April 1930, Archbishop Duhig commented that the drive to Mitchelton had become familiar “during the sad days of the Great War … when our soldiers were being trained for overseas in that big area that surrounded the White City”. From being “scarcely more than a name” Mitchelton then was becoming “one of our most rapidly growing suburbs” with “its picturesque slopes and hill-tops now being covered with beautiful villas”. By June 1941, when the Mitchelton Presbytery was completed and blessed, there were about 140 Catholics in the parish. During World War II the Mitchelton parish priest ministered to the needs of the parish as well as carrying out duties as an Army chaplain and chaplain to the nearby Good Shepherd Convent.

 

The parish priest of the time (1960s), Father Nugent, had travelled overseas and did extensive research to try to ascertain what the changes might be. He told the architect that he wanted a “church that could be seen from all over the parish” and had “the congregation … as close as possible to the altar”. The accepted design produced by Hargraves had the altar sited so the priest could stand either in front or behind it. The new church, designed by architectural firm Cullen, Fagg, Hargraves and Mooney, opened in 1964.

 

The church received a commendation in the ‘Building of the Year’ category of the 1966 Royal Australian Institute of Architects awards for Meritorious Architecture. It was built at a time of significant changes to liturgical practices introduced by the Vatican Council in Rome and may have been one of the first churches in Australia to have a free-standing altar. Our Lady of Dolours was certainly the first church built in Brisbane and probably Queensland to provide for changes in the liturgy and is one of the earliest churches in Brisbane to have the congregation’s pews arrayed around the altar. The church is also a War Memorial “commemorating all Australian Servicemen … fallen in the war”.

 

Source: Brisbane City Council Heritage Register.

Esta escultura representa una gaviota, está ubicada en el Ayuntamiento de Castelló d'Empuries en la plaza Joan Alsina realizada por el escultor Narcis Costa Bofill en el año 1997 y quiere ser un homenaje al joven sacerdote (Joan Alsina) asesinado por la dictadura chilena en 1973 cuando solo tenía 31 años

Sheldon Jackson Museum, Sitka, Alaska

 

I think the design on the wooden object is a whale. The notch behind the head represents the blow hole. The whale's lower jaw is apparent just below the whale's nose, as it were.

 

I wish I knew what the beaded design represents. I will resist the temptation to call the appendages at the top of the head horns unless I find a credible source that supports the idea.

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This is a wonderful and rare opportunity to enjoy art for art's sake here. The overwhelming number of objects at the Sheldon Jackson Museum, my excitement at seeing them and our limited time made me forget all about my practice of photographing the label of every item after taking a photo of it.

 

Unfortunately, Alaska State Museum's online object catalog is not working. It's possible that some of the objects I photographed were featured as one of the museum's artifacts of the month, in which case I might be able to retrieve information about the piece from that section of the museum's web site. I might also be able to retrieve general information about the object type to which the piece pertains.

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The Sheldon Jackson Museum collections include objects from each of the Native groups in Alaska: Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Aleut, Alutiiq, Yup’ik, Inupiat and Athabascan.

 

The collections strongly reflect the collecting done by founder, Sheldon Jackson, from 1887 through about 1898 during his tenure as General Agent of Education for Alaska.

 

Other objects were subsequently added to the collection, but in 1984 when the museum was purchased by the State of Alaska, the decision was made to add only Alaska Native materials made prior to the early 1930s.

 

The Yup’ik and Inupiat objects are the most widely represented and have the broadest selection of materials but in no way provide a comprehensive picture of the cultures.

 

The collection of objects from Southeast Alaska is rich in objects made for sale around the late 1800s and into the early 1900s. Spruce root baskets, engraved silver objects, and bead work are important representatives of traditional skills and materials being used to make items for sale.

 

However, there is only a smattering of stone tools, fishing and hunting equipment and clothing in the collection. Many everyday utilitarian objects are missing.

 

Sheldon Jackson only traveled deep into the interior once in his career in Alaska. He or his representative collected only a dozen Athabascan objects during that time. Athabascan objects have been added but well over half of the 106 Athabascan objects came to the museum after 1960.

 

Aleut and Alutiiq materials are even more rare. By the time Jackson and his teachers began collecting in the Aleutian Islands and Prince William Sound, those cultures had been impacted by Western cultures for nearly 150 years.

 

Museums in St. Petersburg, Russia and Finland are rich in material culture from those areas. Jackson was able to purchase made-for-sale grass baskets, gut bags and model baidarkas, but little else in the way of materials representing the people of the Aleutians.

 

To better represent the cultures of Alaska, the Museum is seeking items relating to certain areas and subjects. The following is a partial list:

 

Tlingit spoon bag, spoon mold, digging stick, bentwood box with woven cover and other utilitarian objects.

 

Aleut/Alutiiq clothing, kayak bailer, wood carvings and utilitarian objects.

 

Athabascan masks and utilitarian objects.

 

Any objects collected by Sheldon Jackson.

 

museums.alaska.gov/collections-about.html

Sometimes you get walked all over when you are in love...