MD -- Baltimore -- Walters Art Museum -- Ancient Artworks:
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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WALTAN_051203_083.JPG: Roman Funerary Practices:
Early in Rome's history, the dead were either cremated or buried. By the 2nd century B.C., cremation had become the preferred practice. The remains of the deceased were deposited in urns, which were often placed in columbariums (vaults with niches in the walls). During the 2nd century A.D., the elite began to favor burial, in imitation of Hellenistic practices. It was believed that the welfare of the deceased's souls depended on the care given to the body. By law, ceremonies had to be located outside of towns, and tombs and funerary markers often lined the roads. The very wealthy could afford elaborately carved marble sarcophagi, which were placed in family tombs. The terms sarcophagus refers to a stone coffin and literally means "flesh-eating."
In 1885, a tomb that had been used by the prominent Licinian and Calpurnian families for many generations (from about A.D. 135 to the early 3rd century) was discovered near the Via Salaria, just outside Rome. The tomb had three chambers. Portraits of family members and their distinguished relatives and connections -- including Pompey the Great, rival of Julius Caesar, and Livia, wife of the emperor Augustus -- were found in the earliest chamber along with altars. In the remaining chambers, ten sarcophagi were found, all later in date that the portraits. Seven of these exquisitely carved sarcophagi are displayed in this gallery.
The Calpurnian family belonged to a mystery-cult that worshiped the god Dionysus Sabazius, a deity who combined the characteristics of Dionysus and Sabazius. The wine-god Dionysus (generally known as Romans as Bacchus) was also a god of fruitfulness and vegetation. Sabazius, another Greek god, was often identified with Dionysus and shared his associations with nature. The decoration on the sarcophagi in this room makes symbolic reference to the god's cult and includes scenes from Greek myths, reinterpreted according to late Roman beliefs. The images were chosen to express the ideas of life and death held by the family. In general, the representations proclaim the victory of life over death.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
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I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (MD -- Baltimore -- Walters Art Museum -- Ancient Artworks) directly related to this one:
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2013_MD_Walters_Ancient: MD -- Baltimore -- Walters Art Museum -- Ancient Artworks (128 photos from 2013)
2012_MD_Walters_Ancient: MD -- Baltimore -- Walters Art Museum -- Ancient Artworks (25 photos from 2012)
2006_MD_Walters_Ancient: MD -- Baltimore -- Walters Art Museum -- Ancient Artworks (84 photos from 2006)
2005 photos: Equipment this year: I used four cameras -- two Fujifilm S7000 cameras (which were plagued by dust inside the lens), a new Fujifilm S5200 (nice but not great and I hated the proprietary xD memory chips), and a Canon PowerShot S1 IS (returned because it felt flimsy to me). I gave my Epson camera to my catsitter. Both of the S7000s were in for repairs over Christmas.
Trips this year: Florida (for Lotusphere), a driving trip down south (seeing sites in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia), Williamsburg, and Chicago.
Number of photos taken this year: 147,000.
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