St. Paul stares back

Beneath an ugly office building (photo here) lies a Roman time capsule. The catacombs of St. Tecla contain a tiny basilica where early Christians would celebrate Mass, corridors lined with niches for simple burials, and cubicles where the families of the wealthy were interred. One of these last is the frescoed tomb of a noblewoman now known as the "Cubicle of the Apostles," which has just been restored and represents some of the earliest evidence of devotion to the Apostles in early Christianity.

Outside, not far from the catacombs, is the Basilica of St. Paul's Outside the Walls, where the bones of the apostle are entombed. Inside the catacombs are the earliest known images of Saints Paul, Peter, Andrew, and John - icons 50cm in diameter dating to the 4th c. St Paul's wrinkled and elongated forehead, balding head, and pointy beard (1st image), indicate that these portraits may have set the standard for later artists' depictions.

During the 2-year restoration, technicians used a laser as an "optical scalpel" to detach a thick patina of powdery calcium carbonate caused by extreme humidity and lack of air circulation (3rd image). The images that were blurry and opaque were revealed with stunning clarity. "As far as paintings inside catacombs go, we are used to very faint paintings, usually white, with few colors. In the case of the St Tecla catacombs, the great surprise was the extraordinary colors. The more we went forward, the more surprises we found," said Barbara Mazzei, who headed the project. She explains that the white crust of the calcium carbonate was in some places 4-5cm thick when they began their work in 2008, but they knew from 19th c. watercolors and diary entries that there were paintings underneath.

The restored paintings were shown off to journalists in June by Fabrizio Bisconti (2nd image), who says they show "the genesis, the seeds of Christian iconography." Bisconti is the superintendent of the catacombs for the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, and notes that the Vatican has no plans to open up these catacombs to the public.

We've been had!

After I posted on Wednesday about the community service of cleaning the Paris catacombs, I sent the link to French-Word-A-Day blogger Kristin Espinasse. Here is her reply:

Thank you for posting about my catacombs story! I'm sorry to say...it was an April fool's story that I made up! It was fun writing it and learning more about the catacombs. Did you know there is a name for people who love and are obsessed with the catacombs? They are called "cataphiles". And the police that have to chase them out of the underground "city" are called "cataflics" -- after "flic" (which is "police" in French). I thought you might enjoy that. After reading your blog and enjoying my visit (love your Halloween costumes!), I wanted to share that back!

And this just as I was bemoaning to a friend that I was out of practice, because I hadn't played any April fools tricks this year! A comment on Facebook should have clued me in: Laura writes, "What a strange punishment. I never heard of that and I have lived in France for 20 years." In fact, the catacombs were recently restored, but not by civilians. Over several months 2005, lighting was updated, arches were consolidated, and the walls of bones were reinstalled. By the way, I chose this image as an illustration because Flickr photographer MsAnthea said she rubbed one skull for good luck.

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Nadar and the Paris Catacombs

In the research paper for Jim Schaefer's photography class (see below), I wrote about the depiction of hermaphrodites by 19th-century French photographer Gaspard-Félix Tournachon Nadar and contemporary American photographer Joel-Peter Witkin. I first learned of Nadar when seeking out information about the Paris catacombs. In 1861-2, he took a series of 100 photographs of the ossuary, and in doing so was one of the first photographers to use artificial light. (I later learned that he also pioneered aerial photography, taking pictures of Paris from his balloon.)

In 1999, my friend Cris Hastings and I went to Paris, first and foremost to tour the catacombs--a self-guided tour through a mile of galleries that begins and ends with an intimidating spiral staircase. This was the swansong of my walking ability (you can see the cane in the photo of me) and I was thrilled to have seen the catacombs in person (you can also see the smile on my face), even though Cris had to haul me up that last staircase by my belt loops!

Cat in the catacombs

The catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter in Rome, which has been the subject of an excavation project ongoing since 2005 and undertaken collaboratively by the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology, Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique , the Ecole française of Rome, the Institut national de recherches archéologiques préventives, and the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme of Aquitaine. 

Rome resident Mirko Curti's cat ran off on Tuesday and it made international news. Why? Because it led to the discovery of another set of the eternal city's subterranean burial chambers. Curti describes what he found after following the meows of his pet as "the most incredible experience" of his life. There in the cliffs near Via di Pietralata where he lives were catacombs dating from the 1st-2nd c. B.C.E. In the walls were the niches used to hold funeral urns. On the floor were bones, which may have fallen from a chamber further up in the tufa. Unlike Graeme Riley, Ace of Cats, this kitty - though getting plenty of press - is neither named nor pictured...

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Descend:

The Empire of Death

Nadar and the Paris catacombs

Wherefore art thou, Dario?

St. Paul stares back

Dog mummies

Some of my readers seem to be put off by pictures of dead dogs, whether put aside for consumption or preserved in Pompeii, so to you I apologize. But the rest of you please follow as I lead you into the Dog Catacombs. Dogs, cats, and other creatures have been mummified accidentally or deliberately in other cultures, but the ancient Egyptians are best known for their shrines to deities filled with preserved animal offerings. In a labyrinth of chambers and passages underneath the ancient royal burial ground of Saqqara, between the 6th and 1st centuries B.C.E., they deposited millions of mummified puppies as offerings to Anubis, their jackal-headed god of the dead (VIDEO HERE). The Dog Catacombs were first documented in 1897 by French Egyptologist Jacques De Morgan, but were never fully studied. The task, funded by National Geographic, was taken on in 2009 by an excavation team led by Salima Ikram of The American University in Cairo and a research team led by Paul Nicholson of Cardiff University. Iran is an expert on mummification with a specialization in archaeozoology, the study of animal mummies. She hopes to be able to identify the breeds of the estimated 8 million canids piled over 3' (1m) high in the tunnels, but also wants to put the practice within the context of ancient Egyptian spirituality: “We are trying to understand how this fits religiously with the cult of Anubis, to whom the catacomb is dedicated....[I]n some churches people light a candle, and their prayer is taken directly up to God in that smoke. In the same way, a mummified dog's spirit would carry a person's prayer to the afterlife."

 

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Cleaning the catacombs

My friend and former colleague Gail, who once gave me the greatest compliment ever, sent me a link to an interesting blogpost. Kristin Espinasse, an American who married a Frenchman and is raising their 2 kids in France, offers French Word-A-Day, which she has also turned into a book. In her April 1st post, she discusses having to complete 3 days of community service because of a complaint by a local sheep farmer that his flock had gotten sick after grazing in her pasture. The assigned task was "le nettoyage de l'ossuaire municipal" - cleaning the municipal ossuary, in other words the Paris catacombs! The state paid for her train ticket, but Espinasse was required to bring her own small scrub brush and some olive oil – "une goutte par tête" (one drop per head)– although she was unsure if this was meant to serve as a detergent or a polish...

PLEASE SEE FOLLOW-UP!

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Animal mummies

Researchers may have uncovered a 5th reason that ancient Egyptians mummified and entombed animals. Until now, animal mummies have fallen into 4 categories:

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Beloved pets, like the monkey pictured above, were carefully prepared after a natural death by their grieving owners and later entombed with them. It is also possible that some pets were sacrificed when their owners died so they could be buried with them. Cats (mentioned in a previous post) and dogs were assumed to be mummified pets when entombed with their owners, but when buried separately were likely symbols of the gods Bastet and Anubis.

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Sacred animals, like the birds in the middle image, were worshipped in animal cults as incarnations of deities and carefully mummified after death. The falcons in the photo represented Horus and the ibis represented Thoth. The most cumbersome sacred animal to mummify was the Apis bull, an incarnation of Ptah, creator of the universe.

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Votive offerings, like the fish in the top image, were purchased by pilgrims to the various animal cult centers and placed in catacombs as gifts to the particular gods. The fish were most often Nile perch, of a species that no longer exists. Ibis, sacred to Thoth (see above), filled two catacombs as votive offerings - one in Tuna el-Gebel and the other in Abydos.
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Food for the dead, often consisting of butchered meat but sometimes entire fowl, were placed in tombs so that the deceased would be well-fed in the afterlife. The animals were preserved, wrapped in linen, and placed in "coffinets" made of sycamore wood.

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In 2001, the unique discovery of a lion in the tomb of Maia, King Tutankhamun's wet-nurse, did not seem to fit into any of these categories. The male lion was found, along with some cat mummies, in an area of the tomb sacred to the female cat deity Bastet, and may have been considered an incarnation of the son of the related lion goddess Sekhmet. The remains were thought to have been mummified, but no linen wrappings were discovered. It was evident from the skeleton and teeth that the lion had reached a great age and had been kept in captivity, but it had been placed in the tomb long after Maia's death. "Maybe this lion's importance is as a family pet rather than as a representative of a god. The context doesn't seem to fit," says anthropologist Robert Pickering.
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Earlier this month, it was reported in National Geographic that the site director of Hierakonpolis, Egypt's oldest city, has found evidence that a number of large animals buried at the edge of a cemetery belonged to the city ruler's menagerie. A 3,500-year-old baboon and fellow creatures are the earliest evidence of a practice that later spread through the country. So category 5 appears to be zoo animals!

Follow-ups

Creative cremains The company that makes diamonds out of human cremains can also make them out of human hair, and has announced plans to produce and sell diamonds from a lock of hair that belonged to the recently deceased Michael Jackson.

Maps featured in paintings I received an e-mail reply from Jonathan Janson after featuring his site in this post. He thanked me for the citation and words of enthusiasm, and mentioned that his own work will be in a show at the O.K. Harris Gallery in New York in October. In other map news, Danish experts have declared that the Vinland Map , the first known map to show part of America before Italian explorer Christopher Colombus (c. 1451-1506) landed on the continent, is genuine.

Steampunk design Follower Carrie Hoggan loved this post and was pleased to link me to this site by a man who does impressive steampunk modifications and breeds cuttlefish! (Like the octopus, the cuttlefish is a cephalopod.)

Pangolins Reader Kathleen Kotcher visited China in 2008 and reports that she did not see anyone eating a pangolin. She sent along this photo and writes, "It would be difficult to eat this pangolin...but I too share the love."

Oscar Mayer dies In a follow-up to this post, I noted that the wienermobile had been in an accident. Less than a month later, Oscar Mayer has made the news 3 more times! The company violated a state ban on vehicular advertising when they sent the wienermobile to Hawaii for 2 weeks. They were named in a lawsuit by the Cancer Project, a vegan advocacy group that wants warning labels placed on hot dogs. And they have received a letter from PETA encouraging them to bury the wienermobile with Mr. Mayer...

Madame Tussaud Members of the African-American sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha are suing to oust their president Barbara McKinzie for misappropriating funds, including commissioning a $900,ooo wax figure of herself. This amount seemed excessive to me, and I was right - Madame Tussaud's wax figures cost between $200,000 and $300,000 each to produce.

Believe It or Not! Readers may not be aware that there is an on-line contest called You Bet Their Life, in which participants win a share of a cash prize based on the celebrities they correctly guess will die during the coming year.

Happy Father's Day! Since hanging up the birdfeeder I sent my Dad for Father's Day, he hasn't seen any finches. He references this story about the bust of a finch-fighting ring and the siezure of as many as 150 birds, and asks, "Maybe that's where my finches are?"

OldtimerHenry Allingham, featured in this post, passed on his title of "World's Oldest Man" when he died earlier this month. The honor now goes to Montana resident Walter Breuning, age 112.

Elusive animals The New York Times reports that although humans are the cause of mass extinctions, we are also in the middle of the age of discovery for mammals, with 400 or so new species described and added to the list just since 2005.

Clown's funeral Members of the San Francisco Clown Conservatory have posed in the nude for a calendar that is being sold to help fight Multiple Sclerosis (the disease that I have). They hope to raise $1 million.

Whales, articulated and dismantled This story of a cruise ship docking in Canada with a dead whale pinned to the bow was all over the weird news last Sunday, but I have found 2 other incidences in Alaska - one a cruise ship and the other an oil tanker - plus the statistics of whales being struck by ships.

Scrabble creator When I was looking at these creative gravestones, I thought that a similar Scrabble marker (pictured) ought to mark the grave of the game's inventor, Alfred Butts (1899-1993). Note that there is also a gravestone with a crossword puzzle theme.

Chihuahuas in the weird news Yet more chihuahua news to report... "Gidget," who became famous for her appearance in a series of Taco Bell commercials, has died at the age of 15. Her trainer said, "She always knew where the camera was." And in Dearborn, Michigan, 112 live chihuahuas were rescued from the home of a hoarder, who had 150 dogs in his freezer.

Accidental fossil discoveries A flurry of fossil news: Researchers have identified a 260 million-year-old fossil found in Russia in 1994 (pictured) as the earliest tree-dwelling creature. Scientists studying the Yangtze Gorge in China have determined that the oldest fossils are found in lakes, rather than oceans - where lifeforms were believed to have evolved. Fishermen trawling off the coast of the Netherlands hooked a bone that came from the forehead of a caveman. And the fossils of extinct birds have been found in Hawaii.

Animals and lightning I received a viral video of a group of musicians simulating a thunderstorm and was very impressed, but the performance was not identified in any way. I managed to find the entire video and information about the choir, Perpetuum Jazzile, which is from Slovenia.

Robo-animals An orphaned baby Asian elephant named "Chhouk," crippled by a poacher's snare, has been outfitted with a prosthetic foot and can now walk again because of his discovery and care by a Cambodian rescue center.

Big fish, big snake A snake named "Ann" - who was fed a whole hog every 2 or 3 months - has died at the Memphis Zoo. Her feedings drew many visitors during her 10-year tenure. Ann was a reticulated python captured in Indonesia.

Stonework I love environmental art like that of American artist Andy Goldsworthy. Here are some beautiful works created at the beach in San Francisco by another American artist Andres Amador.

Disturbing decapitations It was reported earlier this month that the Dutch have repatriated the severed head of a Ghanaian chief. Leader of the Ahanta tribe, King Bada Bonsu II had been decapitated 171 years ago by Maj. Gen. Jan Verveer in retaliation for the killing of 2 Dutch emmissaries.

Auroras Norwegian researchers have proved by examining NASA images that the Aurora Borealis and the Aurora Australis, which were thought to be mirror images of one another, can be completely assymmetrical.

Birds and dogs Joggers on holiday in Helmsford, Cornwall, U.K. - 36-year-old Stuart Urquhart (pictured) and 19-year-old Eleanor Dennis - have been attacked by a buzzard while on their runs. In other big bird news, India has become the first country to successfully breed the endangered slender-billed vulture in captivity.

Happy Thanksgiving! The look of this rare albino turtle found on the shore of China's Yellow River has been compared to a plucked turkey. Unlike in parts of Africa superstitious and discriminatory toward albinos, they have a special place in Chinese culture. Meanwhile, some of the albino-murderers in Burundi have received prison time.

Italy itinerary If you follow the link to La Specola on this post, you will see the most famous collection of anatomical waxes. In this audio slideshow, you will see and hear about the anatomical wax models and moulages in the Wellcome Collection in London.

The Raft of the Medusa If you have a weak stomach, read no further. Cannibalism is supposedly the newest trend to sweep across Japan. This goes beyond shaping food into a body that can then be eaten and involves preparing meals that include human tissue obtained - with the government's stamp of approval - from hospitals.

Nadar and the Paris Catacombs The Exeter City Council in Devon, U.K., identified the catacombs at St. Bartholomew's Cemetery - a popular tourist attraction - as a potential temporary mortuary for victims of the H1N1 virus should the need arise.

Skellies

A few months ago, I was contacted by a researcher named Paul who was heading to Peru. Despite the fact that I was unable to provide any information about the catacombs he hoped to visit, he kindly followed up with the above photographs of a rather unusual tomb he toured while he was in Lampa. He writes, "Honestly, this is the strangest tomb I have ever encountered, and the only instance I know of in which an entire ossuary was constructed to celebrate the tomb of a single individual." Also unusual is the way each full skeleton is topped by two skulls.

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The bones of the tiny foot are part of the adult skeleton of a previously unknown hominid species, Homo floresiensis, excavated in Indonesia. The 2003 discovery of the remains of a single skull and several skeletons - nicknamed "hobbits" because they measured only 3' tall - has prompted debate among evolutionists about their relationship to Homo erectus. Many of the scientists discount the idea that the hobbits were dwarfs, and yet they are unlike any modern pygmies.

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The skeleton in the bottom photo belonged to Harry Eastlack, Jr., (1930-1973) and shows the damage to his bones and connective tissue by the genetic disorder Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. Eastlack's body began to ossify when he was ten; later, he could move only his lips and survived on a liquid diet. Before he died of pneumonia, he requested that his body be donated to science. His skeleton is displayed at the Mütter Museum, covered in my book, and mentioned in this article.

Wish You Were Here

My friend Loren Rhoads (IMAGE ABOVE) has published a book entitled Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel. "It's good to be a card-carrying member of the Association for Gravestone Studies," she writes, having used hers to gain entry to the pioneer cemetery at Yosemite National Park in California, U.S. I agree, having flashed mine to get into Brooklyn, New York's famous Green-Wood Cemetery. At the age of 4, a family vacation took her to Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, US; At the age of 12, she was biking to the cemetery with her family to do tombstone rubbings. She didn't make it to the Paris Catacombs until she was an adult and accompanied by her husband Mason, who asked, "Imagine the dreams you would have if your parents brought you here as a child."

After half a lifetime of guided and self-guided tours, Loren observes, "Cold, hard, unfeeling stone strives for immortality by its presence. In truth, what I've learned from cemeteries is that limestone melts, marble breaks, slate slivers, and sandstone cracks." But that is part of what draws some of us to graveyards. I know exactly what Mason means when he hopes that the then recently launched maintenance of Highgate Cemetery in London hasn't completely ruined the ambience, I have been on tours myself during which I had to hurry to photograph gravestones before others plucked off clinging ivy. And neither Loren nor I are admirers of those bronze grave markers set flush to the ground to facilitate mowing, aomething standardized by the designer of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, U.S.

Loren has also visited memorials throughout the world, from Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, U.S., to Hiroshima in Japan. She has seen her share of cenotaphs, including markers for men lost at sea, and observes, "I feel that the spirit of the person enlivens the grave. An empty tomb has lost something that a rock never owned." She has researched and seen grave sculptures across the globe, and has noted international influences in American cemeteries. She was amused at Metairie Cemetery by "the juxtaposition of the German drug magnate retiring into eternity with a Greek maiden inside an Egyptian Revival tomb decorated with a Roman urn beneath the humid Louisiana sky."

After years of morbid study, Loren has decided she wants to be cremated. So did I, until I learned how many greenhouse gases it adds to the atmosphere. Maybe her next book will be about green burial.

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Museum behind the scenes

On the day I found the turn-of-the-century photograph of the 2 men making a death mask, I also found these historical images of staff working to put together displays at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. The photos above link to further information about each one, but the treasure trove is here. Between prints, negatives, and lantern slides, the AMNH holds over 1 million images in their photographic archives, so they call this on-line exhibit "small" and promise to add the entire collection to it.

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I first heard of the AMNH "Picturing the Museum" exhibit on one of my favorite websites Curious Expeditions. One of the writers of that site, Dylan Thuras, has teamed up with the founder of the Athanasius Kircher Society, Joshua Foer, to launch an incredible new website Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities & Esoterica. The Atlas Obscura includes many of the places I have blogged about, including the Paris Catacombs, the Mutter Museum, and the Sedlec Ossuary. Since many of my readers have been to or know about equally strange and wondrous places, I encourage you - as they have encouraged me - to visit, comment, and contribute!

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I've been on "behind the scenes" visits to several museums, some of which have entries in the Atlas Obscura - the National Museum of Health and Medicine, the Mutter Museum, the San Diego Museum of Man, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History - and can personally vouch for the fact that that they are even more fascinating from the back side than the front. Did you know that most museums only have room to display about 10% of their collections?