Mont Allen
  • Home
  • C.V.
    • C.V.
    • Conference Sessions Organized
    • Conference Papers
    • Education
    • Fellowships
    • Invited Lectures
    • Publications
  • Teaching
  • Sarcophagus Memes
    • Sarcophagus Memes (highlights)
    • Sarcophagus Memes (all)
  • Roman Sarcophagus News (blog)
  • Classics & Art History at SIU
    • Classics at SIU
    • Art History at SIU

National Museum of Beirut reopens basement featuring 31 anthropoid sarcophagi, Icarus sarcophagus

12/6/2016

Comments

 
This is one of the most heart-warming developments that I've ever had the pleasure of blogging.

Abu Dhabi's The National reports that the National Museum of Beirut has — after 41 years of closure following the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975 — reopened its basement galleries.

Finding itself directly on the infamous Green Line that bisected Beirut during the Civil War, the museum and its objects were immediately imperiled by civil strife and looting.  Read the full report in The National of the extreme measures to which then director of antiquities Maurice Chehab went in order to safeguard the collection in the basement.  The story is astonishing.

The highlight of the collection is the world's largest series of anthropoid sarcophagi:  31 in all, all from Phoenician Sidon and carved between the 6th and 4th centuries BC.

Also figuring prominently in the reopened galleries is a fragment of a Roman sarcophagus from Beirut itself depicting Icarus standing beside the wing-crafting Daedalus, according to the Daily Mail.  The scene is fantastically rare:  I know of no other Roman sarcophagus that shows it.
Anthropoid sarcophagi in the National Museum of Beirut.  Photo Anne-Marie Afeiche.
Anthropoid sarcophagi in the National Museum of Beirut. Photo Anne-Marie Afeiche.
Comments

    Roman
    Sarcophagus
    News

    A venue for announcing all that's new and noteworthy in the burgeoning field of sarcophagus studies.

    I hope you, gentle readers, will help make this a collective endeavor.  Should you come across anything new pertaining to Roman sarcophagi — whether a recent article or book addressing them, an exhibition or website featuring them, or an excavation uncovering them — please let me know so I can share it here.


    Categories

    All
    Amazons
    Aphrodisian
    Bucolic
    Carving Technique
    Christian
    Dionysiac
    Discovered / Recovered
    Display Context
    Docimean
    Etruscan
    Gender
    Hercules
    Inscription
    Life And Death
    Lions
    Marine
    Musings On Select Pieces
    Mythology
    New - Article / Chapter
    New - Book / Diss.
    New - Exhibition
    New - Lecture / Paper
    Portraits
    Reuse
    Strigillated

    Archives

    November 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    December 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    November 2014
    October 2014
    July 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013

    Subscribe

    Picture
    via RSS Feed

    Picture
    via Email

home
curriculum vitae

          conference sessions organized
          conference papers
          education
          fellowships
          invited lectures
          publications

teaching
roman sarcophagus news (blog)
Mont Allen
Assistant Professor of Classics & Art History
Dept. of Languages, Cultures, & International Trade
1000 Faner Drive, MC 4521
Southern Illinois University
Carbondale, IL  62901
+1 (618) 303-6553

email
background:  sarcophagus showing Selene approaching the sleeping Endymion (New York, Metropolitan Museum, inv. 47.100.4a,b)