 Welcome. My name is Maurice Rose. I'm chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts where I teach art history and visual culture. I welcome you to the second day of our symposium, The View from Africa, Greco-Roman Antiquity Through an African Lens. This is the second event sponsored by the Vincent Shea Rosevac Lecture Series in Ancient Mediterranean Studies in honor of the memory of our late colleague Vin Rosevac. We are grateful to his family for making this possible. We are also grateful to Dr. Catherine Schwab for her vision for the symposium and her organizational brilliance. Dr. Ruffini and I helped, but this event would not be running smoothly or at all without her. Can we give a round of applause to Dr. Schwab? I'd also like to acknowledge our co-sponsors, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Program in Art History and Visual Culture, of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, and the Fairfield University Art Museum. Please visit Egyptian Objects on Display, among other fabulous things, downstairs in the museum during the break or afterward. Also helping us were Melissa Roberto, Program Coordinator for Classical Studies, Francis Yadre, Assistant to the Dean, Tess Long, Senior Manager of Integrated Marketing, and the Media Center. The symposium's description states, Modern scholars focused for too long on the Greco-Roman vision of Africa or on Africa's passive reception of classical antiquity. Now we are starting to put these civilizations at the center of the story to learn about their place in the ancient world and understand their role as active agents in a constant exchange of goods and ideas within the ancient Mediterranean. Last night we heard a wonderfully thought provoking keynote by Dr. Roger Bagnell and we have a terrific program for you today as well. This morning there will be two presentations, each 20 minutes long, followed by discussion. So please save questions on the first paper until after the second and we welcome your questions. We will then pause for a 15 minute break. Two presentations will follow that and then another Q&A. The program will conclude at 12.30 and Lynch will be served for those of you who are still here. I'm happy to welcome our first presenter, Dr. Andrea Achi. Dr. Achi is an assistant curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the Department of Medieval Art. Dr. Achi's scholarship focuses on late antique and Byzantine art of the Mediterranean basin and Northeast Africa. She specializes in manuscripts and artifacts from Christian Egypt and Nubia. She has brought this expertise to bear on exhibitions at the Met including Art and Peoples of the Cargo Oasis in 2017 and The Good Life in 2021 as well as in presentations and publications. She is currently curating a major international loan exhibition at the Met. Dr. Achi received her BA from Barnard College and a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University. Join me in welcoming Dr. Achi. First, thank you to the organizers for inviting me to speak at this symposium with this timely topic. I wanted to be here and it's lovely to be able to give a presentation in person. A fifth century chess from Nubia shifts perceptions about Byzantine art production and sources. Assuming the form of a multi-story mahogany house, the chess 21 ivory panels depict the gods Bess, Dionysus, Zuzaman, Perseus and features the goddess Aphrodite with sirens and sadders. Generally, ivory and bone inlays decorate the couches, chests and other furniture. Some were carved in relief. Others were carved with incised designs often filled with colored wax paste. Both styles could be used on the same object. These minor arts decorated late antique domestic spaces throughout North Africa and the Mediterranean basin, yet intact wooden ivory furniture from archaeological contacts are quite rare. The focus of this presentation is the object on the screen. A nearly complete chess discovered at a royal cemetery in a region we now call Nubia. The chess motifs relate to late antique ideas of fertility and prosperity. The Nubian chess is often described as a bridal chest and also an imported object from Byzantine Egypt. To explain this link, our first reviewer is small corpus of late antique Egyptian bone, ivory and wood boxes from Alexandria in light of previous research. Then this contribution considers the context in which the Nubian chess was made, used and buried through a re-analysis of 20th century archaeological and conservation reports from Nubian sites. Ultimately, I argue that the chess was indeed produced in Nubia, a region where skilled craftsmen and artisans created masterful works of art out of wood, ivory and metal. In the early Byzantine period, so around 4th to 7th century AD, the presence of mythological figures on everyday objects was not a reflection of the owner's religious backgrounds. Instead, the allegorical meanings represented an appreciation of classical ideals that persisted in late antiquity. And these motifs appeared on objects on the eastern and western Mediterranean but they're closely associated with Alexandria. Alexandria in late antiquity was a cosmopolitan town, it was a center, an intellectual, economic and religious center, kind of like New York or Paris today. Documentary sources indicated that Alexandria had a vast ivory industry from the ancient medieval periods and that ivory was a major export from the Axiomite kingdom, so Ethiopia, from the 1st century. As supplies to the Mediterranean increased, we see a fall in the value of ivory and the diacletian price control eda. Ivories usually associated with elephant upper incisors, but many animals grow ivory, including hippopotamus and white rhinos. And after the 3rd century extinction of the North African elephant, the Indian Ocean and Red Sea trade routes were the sources of these ivories with expeditions that went to Central and Southern Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia and India. Professor Bagnall talked about these trade routes yesterday. Carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis on traces of collagen in ivory objects has helped scholars identify the sources of these elephants. Between 1992 and 2004, French excavation teams working in Alexandria discovered thousands of carved bone and ivory at 11 separately excavated sites. The excavations establish a framework of chronological data that has allowed art historians to estimate the date's comparable fragments and public and private collections. The French also discovered furniture workshop sites and these sites of rubbish pits located inside the city walls and near the city center allows us to understand the making of these important luxury materials. For example, through excavations, we now assume that the production of bone and ivory plaques might also be related to carpenters and woodcarvers. These plaques made their ways into museums, primarily as bits and pieces, but somewhere attached to wood. Others connected to boxes reconstructed on the art market. And most do not have provinces, but the materials generally thought to be from Egypt based on the archaeological data from Alexandria. And many bone and ivory plaques from Alexandria were used as overlays of wooden caskets. And the boxes or caskets associated with Alexandria have pyramid shaped lids. And many scholars believe that these particular boxes function in antiquity as wedding gifts. These boxes apparently were a part of a woman's dowry and represented essential furniture elements in ancient houses as jewelry storage. However, I haven't found many primary sources that describes these types of boxes as wedding gifts or dowries. So if anyone knows of a lot of primary sources of document evidence for this practice, please let me know. Almost all of the plaques in museum collections have mythological or nihilistic scenes painted with red, black, green, blue, and yellow color paste. For example, these plaques in the Coptic museums are well preserved and enter the museum with these wooden supports. One of the best preserved examples of this type of wooden box and laid with both bone and ivory panels decorated with birds and mythological figures relates to themes of prosperity and good fortune. And the plaques are mostly in size with red and black wax. And two different styles are used on the box, which indicates that the variety of plaques found at archeological sites could be used on one object. The conservators at the British Museum have not attempted to open the box. In fact, they call this a Pandora box. But they did do an X-ray analysis on the object and discovered this box was lined with a textile. And this appears to be glued shut with a strong adhesive. The box is empty. Another example of a wooden and bone box associated with Alexander is a box now in the Walters Museum. Again, two different techniques were used to create the bone plaques on the side and on the top. The carver scraped away the background leaving the figures in raised relief. And on others, deep, fine lines were carved first and filled with colored wax. So I share these examples just to adjust your eyes to the styles and techniques and motifs used on plaques found in Alexandria and then boxes associated with the city. Let's turn to Nubia on late antiquity. After the fall of Meroy, sometime in the 4th century, the region we now call Nubia was divided into three zones. In general, Ephesus described the late antiquity territory between the first cataract and the region of modern canton as three separate and independent kingdoms. And different chronologies of these states developed separately for Nubatia, Makara, and Alwa. And luxury products such as ivories were the mainstay of the kingdom's trade relations with the Mediterranean. Out of the 398 archeological settlements dating from the Maro-Redic to the Christian periods, most were connected to the burial of the dead. And because of this, our understanding of late antiquity Nubia is skewed to what was discovered in the tombs of two sites, Balaana and Kastun, the Nubatia region. The twin cemeteries of Balaana and Kastun stood directly opposite on the west and east banks of the Nile. Low, domed mounds of each site are visible here. The rulers of the region would trade partners with Egypt. And the sample of grave goods that have been discovered at the sites have been described as the results of these strong partnerships. So apparently, elites in Nubatia accumulated wealth, gathered knowledge, and extended the sphere of influence onto the rest of the population. The site of Kastun is likely older than Balaana, with the graves dating to the fourth century to the fifth century, late fifth century, representing four royal generations. And the tombs contain a variety of materials. Jewelry, weapons, horse equipment, civil vessels, iron caskets, bronze vessels, games, tables, tripods, lamps, incense burners, leatherwork, textiles, and pottery. And I want to reiterate the abundance of metal found here because hundreds of metal vessels were discovered. Our Nubian chest was found in tomb Q14 in Kastun, which was excavated in 1930s. And tomb Q14 was probably the grave of non-moral. The grave was likely pondered shortly after it was buried. And a female skeleton was found at the front of the grave with a neck slit. But next to her was a bag of jewelry and a leather bag and also precious items wrapped in bundles of linen. For the grave goods, there were more leather bags of jewels and metal spheres, pottery, bracelets made out of silver and coral, metal plaques decorated with amethyst, and a bronze hanging lamp in the form of a dove. So until the late 1970s, most assumed that most of all of the luxury goods in the Kastun graves were imported from Egypt, specifically Alexandria, as these imports probably represented status symbols. The large rectangular wooden chest with four legs was discovered just outside the forecourt, as you saw previously, under the debris of the burial. Archaeological reports describe the chest as being forest-open and its contents stolen. It was found lying on its side with this lit toinoff, and the only contents were a few coral and glass beads. The front is elaborately inlaid with ivory decoration and the panels with red and green wax. The two sides in the back are plain. The hinges of the back are iron. And two bronze claps are buttressed by seated lions, which is hard to see and was difficult to photograph. The lock is elaborately engraved with fine patterns and circles. And the two lions attached to a rectangular bronze lock with a loop handle below it. And since the wood was so fragile, the archaeologists found it impossible to remove the lock to understand how it worked. So the robbers actually cut through the caps, so you can see the cuts. The body and the chest are arranged in four registers and are surrounded by vine tendrils and circular motifs. The painted ivory panels are stylistically different, but most of the Alexandrian bone panels I discussed earlier. The plaques are arranged, as I mentioned, in four registers, but the images are between columns and niches and arches. And the columns and niches may refer to the facade of a multi-storey, late antique building or perhaps the theater. It is of note that the chest is made with ivory, mahogany, and acacia wood. The incised figures represent the household gods, Bess and his attendants, sirens and sadders, killing mythological enemies. We also see a representation of an aphrodite like goddess. This female figure is shown with a mirror or a patra in her hand. These figures certainly parallel the iconographic repertory of late antique boxes, but the addition of the Egyptian Bess here is interesting as we do not see the Bess and Alexandrian boxes. Like the Byzantine Egyptian boxes, the motifs relate to fertility and the aspects of the good life. The prominent scholar of late antique, Egypt and Nubia, Lausotoric, described this casket as a bridal chest because of the ethnography of the decoration's representations was meant to hint at the religious aspects of marriage. When the chest was discovered, another scholar, Von Bessing, believed that the chest was made in Alexandria because of the use of quote-unquote classicizing motifs and styles. But terms such as classicizing and Egyptian sizing styles are often described, are used to describe this box and other examples found in other late antique Nubian sites. But I would suggest we shift focus and shift our focus on what is specifically Nubian about this chest, its materials and its functions. For example, this box was excavated in 1908 by the University of Pennsylvania's Museums Archaeologist, Wally and Wanda McClure at Karanang, the provincial capital of Mary. The excavated area included a town with both elites and middle-class houses and a cemetery with numerous grave goods, including this box from Grave 45. The box was decorated with inlay divine figures represented in niche and archaic architecture. Line motifs are also represented on the box. Notice the void right here. It originally had a bronze lock, which was removed for conservation reasons. Then we have another box from Jebel Adda, which was also in the Nubia region. In Cemetery III, it's fascinating because of the discovery, abundance of wood and ivory boxes such as this. But also for the burials of blacksmiths, whose graves included tongs, hammers and trimming files. So in addition to inlay boxes, the archaeologists found leather, pottery, jewelry and textiles and a significant amount of glass that was also found on the site. Although the archaeological reports assume that these boxes were made in quote-unquote Byzantine Egypt, almost all of the other grave goods were clearly locally produced. So I'm still trying to track down this box, which was deposited in the Egyptian museum after the excavation. And the archaeological reports do not describe the colors on the box. But even with the grainy image, we can see on the lower register, Aphrodite, blinked by her hypocrites, you can see with his finger touching his mouth, associating her with ices and hathor. The themes of the box hint towards female fertility. Also notice the lock and metal clasp. The archaeological report explains that the lock appeared to have been forced open in antiquity. The contents were removed, but the fragments of beef bracelets remain. As far as I know, no boxes of this type have been found in archaeological contexts from late Roman or Byzantine Egypt. However, a wooden box now in the British museum slightly complicates the issue of attribution. The box has bronze handles and a lock and laid ivory figures at the front. The museum purchased a box in 1912 from the Egyptian antiquities dealer, Mohammed Baksib, who was born and raised in Luxor. Baksib told the museum that the chest was from Egypt. Because of this Egyptian provenance given by the dealer, almost all similar boxes or chests excavated from Nubia were compared to this box and were deemed to be Byzantine Egyptian imports. So this is problematic for several reasons, mainly because we now put more faith in archaeological reports than reports from the art market. But the antiquities dealer was likely telling the truth. The Egyptians annexed the territory in Sudan in the 19th century. And on its greatest extent, Egypt included modern-day Chad, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia. In 1912, Balaana and Castile were within the colonial borders of Egypt. What is today, Sudan was called Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. Sudan did not gain independence from Egypt and the United Kingdom until 1956. So but in the late antique period, it's possible that this British museum box in 1912 was in Egypt, but a late antique period was made in the kingdom of Nubia. Describing the art of late antique Nubia, Tariq notes that despite the predominance of Hellenistic and Byzantine influence and the art and abundance of Byzantine Egyptian imports, a few of the items found at Balaana and Castile followed the artistic ideological tradition of Meridotic and Pharaonic times, notably the crowns that were founded in graves. The crowns are barred circles of beaten silver. They are richly encrusted with various gems, a dorn of royal and divine insignia. The divine motifs included representation of horus, iris, and a ram's head, symbolizing a syncretic amoon and the old Nubian god, Khun. Some crowns have human figures with a plumed, a teeth crown. One of the traditional symbols of Pharaonic authority. The crowns were often in the same graves as the wood and ivory chest and boxes. And the similich together placed the boxes within the indigenous context. The crowns were found on or near the heads of skeletons in the burials. As I mentioned above, hundreds of bronze and iron and steel spears, axes and chisels and hammers were uncovered from Volana and Castile. And graves of blacksmiths were also discovered in this period. Recent research on mining in Sudan has shown extensive iron mines in the region until the 6th century. Archeologists have found large slag mounds and Gene Humphrey's recently published research on where the iron mines were located and the mining techniques that were practiced in the region. And as a result of this research, they have been established that metalworking was an indigenous trade. Let's go back to the box. The box with the chest was discovered. The metal has already been plowed open. The archaeologists tried to open the lock but could not because of the lock's structure. It was so intricate. Although no scientific analysis has been done on this particular chest, the consensus is from the archaeological reports and recent conservation reports that the metal appears to be the same as those used on other objects in the graves, particularly the swords that were found in the graves. All of the chests found in Nubia have these metal clasps and locks, unlike the ones in Alexandria which have the pyramid-shaped tops. I believe that the flat top with the lock is a defining feature of the Nubian boxes. Overall, the archaeological assemblages point to most grave goods not being imported. Instead, there were luxury goods made in the region by regional artisans. Thus, the material, style, and iconography suggest that these boxes were not imported from Egypt but made in Nubia and represent a visual conversation between late antique Egyptian and Nubian art. Before I conclude, I want to share an anecdote about methodology and why it's essential to not immediately assume that the good, beautiful things found in Nubia are foreign imports. When many Western medievalists see the costual box, they immediately make a formal connection to the throne of St. Peter. If one of this throne is made with three registers of ivory plaques with trials of Hercules and its cosmopolitanum and compact themes, Kate Bitesman notably tried to parse the issues of the plaques' productions and functions, and Lauren Niece states this box to the 9th century and suggests that it was creating a connection to the Charles de Balde. I'm not showing this chair to indicate a connection to the Nubian chess, but I end with it to highlight the classical motifs on bones and ivories persisted in the East and West and South in different contexts for different uses. Yet when most scholars study an object like this in the West, their first reaction is not immediately to turn to Alexandria, a synonym for producing materials in similar media and themes. Following this approach, I ask us not to immediately assume that luxury materials found in late antique Nubia are imports. The bottle chest I discussed today is part of a long legacy of wood, bone, and ivory boxes made in use in sites in present-day Sudan. At the same time, a part of a broader artistic tradition of making ivory gods in the Byzantine and medieval worlds. In my introduction, I suggested that the understanding of the chest might allow us to glean a bit about the antique Nubian identity. There's much about this topic that we do not know. For example, we can't be confident that the populations in these regions in Nubia would have considered themselves as having a unified identity, despite perhaps some sharing religious, linguistic, and some social-cultural similarities. And of course it is challenging to discern identity based on elite funerary material alone. However, I contend that most of the luxury products found in the elite burials of Castile and Balana are indigenous products and not imports from Byzantine Egypt. Billings one's tombs with imported goods versus indigenous works made by indigenous artisans suggest a particular type of value system. As such, my contribution helps us point to understanding one facet of late antique Nubian society, but still much more work needs to be done. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dr. Archie. And now we have time for questions. Thank you so much. Two questions, actually. One is whether, I found your argument so convincing and big picture and really exciting. I wonder if there's any evidence from these boxes that can be believed about provenance from preservation rates. Would we expect a written text from Alexandria to preserve as well as the examples from Nubia that you cited, and can that be a mechanism for speaking to provenance in art market objects? Do you mean the conservation from Alexandria would be able to understand provenance more with those types of reports? From preservation of the object itself. Yeah. I would imagine Alexandria would just preserve a wooden object at the same rate as the Nubian examples from Braves. Is that an invert for thinking about provenance? Yeah. So, you're right. I just say that there's no archaeological boxes in the moment sites. And conservation is a big issue. And so, I mean, that's a really good point. But we do see the boxes, the ivory plaques on some wooden supports that have been preserved. And especially the Coptic Museum one that has that pyramid shape. I just think the way that the sources that we do have looks, it seems that the conservation that we see in Alexandria don't really relate to the Nubian sites, if that makes sense. I'm just wondering if you know enough about Nubian the antique domestic architecture to know if it's actually a model of a real Nubian house. Right. That's a really great question. And the Penns Museum, they have models of two or three story houses that have these arches. And so that's one of the reasons why people talk about it as a house. Here they said that model is Alexandria in architecture, which I think is a little bit problematic. But we have archaeological evidence of late antique Nubian houses from Gepelata and those regions that are multi-sturied with those types of windows. But it could also be a theater. Like there's a lot of other late antique architectural structures beyond the domestic spaces that could emulate. I think the next step in this research is really thinking about what might be Nubian about Byzantine Egyptian art or what like late-woman Mediterranean art. And the question is how to do that, right? And I think the conservation reports are archaeological. I mean, scientific and analysis of the Nubian architecture and the Nubian architecture and the Nubian architecture so I mean, scientific and analyses might help thinking about where ivories were made and there's just so much more work to be done when I think the first part is kind of parsing out the fact that these objects in Nubia were made there and then we can go from there. Thank you so much, Dr. Archie.