Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2019 i National Geographic History

Pilgrimage, taking a journey to be close to the sacred, is a very old tradition that still thrives today in many of the world’s faiths. Buddhists visit Lumbini in Nepal to pay homage at the birthplace of Buddha. The holiest city of Islam—Mecca, Saudi Arabia—is the goal for Muslim pilgrims embarking on the annual hajj. Millions of devout Hindus bathe in river waters considered holy during the Kumbh Mela, a festival often held on the banks of the Ganges. In the Middle Ages Christian pilgrims in Europe crisscrossed the continent to visit holy sites. Chief among them was Santiago de Compostela, the Romanesque cathedral where the bones of St. James were kept, according to tradition. Several different routes, all dubbed the “Way of St. James,” led pilgrims to northwest Spain,…

Publius Ovidius Naso—the poet known today as Ovid—tried to write his own epitaph. In a series of poems composed near the end of his life, he asked for these lines to mark his final resting place: I who lie here was a writerOf tales of tender loveNaso the poet, done in by myOwn ingenuity.You who pass by, should you beA lover, may youTrouble yourself to say that Naso’sbonesMay rest softly. Recognized today for the Metamorphoses, his dazzling reworking of Greek and Latin myths, Ovid was known during his time for vibrant, controversial love poetry, including the Amores (The Loves) and the Ars amatoria (The Art of Love). These frank poetic reflections on Roman sexual customs brought him fame but also played a role in his downfall. After publishing his magnum…

IN HIS LETTERS, Ovid complains bitterly about his conditions in exile in Tomis: “I live in the midst of foes and among dangers; as though together with my country, peace had been torn from me.” Knowing that he may never return home, the poet gives vent to despair: “My mind wasting away, melts like the water that trickles from the snow. It is consumed like a ship infected with the hidden wood-worm; and as the wave of the salt sea hollows out the rocks; as the iron when thrown by, is corroded by the scaly rust; as the book that has been shut up is gnawed by the bite of the moth; so does my heart feel the eternal remorse of its cares, to be everlastingly affected thereby.”…

Gaius Mucius Scaevola was a legendary Roman hero, who attempted to assassinate the enemy Etruscan king Lars Porsena in the sixth-century B.C. When Scaevola failed to kill the king, he was captured and brought before Lars. But instead of pleading for clemency, Scaevola declared boldly: Romanus sum—I am a Roman, before delivering a stirring speech on the bravery of his people. The king was so impressed that, the story goes, he let Scaevola go. Later in Roman history, Romans could declare pride in their state by using a slightly different formulation: Civis Romanus Sum which means “I am a Roman citizen.” This phrase was not only an expression of deeply felt national pride, but also a declaration that an individual had special status within the world and was a recipient…

IN THE DECADES BEFORE the Civil War, the Southern economy centered around growing cotton. The dominant cash crop fed the textile industries in Great Britain and the northern United States. Pro-slavery Southern planters and politicians argued that cotton was so important, that everything would collapse without it, making their stance on slavery impermeable. The most famous proclamation of this attitude came in March 1858 when Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina, a planter and owner of about 300 enslaved people, arrogantly proclaimed, “[W]ould any sane nation make war on cotton? Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us we could bring the whole world to our feet. What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? … [T]his is certain: England…

THE LAWS MAY HAVE been strengthened against illegally smuggling in slaves, but in the 45-year span between the Piracy Act in 1820 and the end of slavery in 1865, only one smuggler, Captain Nathaniel Gordon, was caught, successfully prosecuted, convicted, and hanged as a pirate engaged in illegal importation of African captives. In August 1860 Captain Gordon’s ship, the Erie, was transporting 897 African captives in her hold when she was overhauled by U.S. naval authorities, just off the West African coast. Naval officers libeled and condemned the Erie; the captives were taken to Liberia, while Captain Gordon was taken to New York to be tried as a pirate. Gordon knew he had been caught and knew that he was unlikely to get away with his crimes. He was tried,…

FOR MORE THAN A CENTURY, historians have been researching the stories of the people who came to Alabama aboard the Clotilda. One of the richest accounts is that of Cudjo Kossula Lewis, who was interviewed in the late 1920s by anthropologist and author Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston’s research would serve as a foundation for future efforts to tell the full story of the Clotilda. Providing moving personal insight into the horrifying experiences of war, the Middle Passage, and slavery, her work recorded Lewis’s stories in his own words—allowing his voice to tell firsthand accounts of terror and grief. Born around 1841 in what is now Oyo, Lewis was given many names, including Kossula. In April 1860 the warriors of Dahomey attacked Kossula’s farmstead, killing their leaders and taking the townspeople…

43 B.C. Publius Ovidius Naso is born in Sulmo (in eastern Italy), into a well-off family of the equestrian class. 16 B.C. After studying in Athens, Ovid settles in Rome where he publishes his love poetry, Amores (The Loves), to great acclaim. A.D. 2 Ovid’s publication of the Ars amatoria (The Art of Love), a “self-help” work on romance, causes a sensation in Rome. A.D. 8 Ovid completes his masterwork, Metamorphoses. In the same year he is exiled from Rome by Augustus. A.D. 17 Having written the Tristia (Lamentations), and after years of trying unsuccessfully to return to Rome, Ovid dies in exile.…

EDWARD BURNE-JONES was one of England’s leading Pre-Raphaelite artists in the Victorian age. Like many of his contemporaries he painted scenes inspired by mythology, folklore, and the ancient world. In his memoirs, Rudyard Kipling (Burne-Jones’s nephew) recalled how fellow painter Lawrence Alma-Tadema shocked Burne-Jones when he told him that mummy brown was made from real mummies. Burne-Jones was skeptical at first but then grew horrified at the idea. His widow, Georgina, wrote in her biography of her husband’s reaction: “When assured that it was actually compounded of real mummy, he left us at once, hastened to the studio, and returning with the only tube he had, insisted on our giving it decent burial there and then.”…

Olympias, wife of Philip II, king of Macedonia, and mother of Alexander the Great, conqueror of the Persian Empire, was the first woman to participate actively in the political events of the Greek peninsula. Olympias was murderous, vengeful, and brave—much like her male kin—but history has not treated her as grandly. The violence of her husband and son, both responsible for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of deaths, tends to be taken for granted—even celebrated—whereas both ancient and modern authors often fault Olympias, for not being nice. She wasn’t. But neither was Philip or Alexander. Most of the sources about Olympias, written many centuries after her death, treat her hostilely because she transgressed Greek expectations about women: They were supposed to be quiet, passive, stay out of public life, and…

90 B.C. The lex Iulia de civitate Latinis et sociis danda, grants qualified Roman citizenship to the cities that remained faithful to Rome during the so-called Social War (90-89 BC). 89 B.C. Another consequence of the Social War, the lex Plautia Papiria grants qualified citizenship—dependent on strict conditions—to towns that had rebelled against Roman rule. 49 B.C. At the beginning of the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey, Caesar promotes the lex Roscia, by which Roman citizenship is granted to the inhabitants of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy). A.D. 212 An edict known as the Constitutio Antoniniana de Civitate is issued by the Emperor Caracalla granting Roman citizenship to all free men who live within the Roman Empire…

THE FESTIVAL OF the Liberalia was celebrated in Rome on March 17 every year in honor of Liber Pater, the god associated with wine and the cult of Bacchus. On this day, freeborn citizen boys (age anywhere between 14 and 17) marked their passage from childhood to manhood, the point in life when they formally took up their citizenship. At home, the bulla (amulet) that had been worn by boys since babyhood was offered to the Lares (the protective deities of the house). The boy then undressed in front of his family to demonstrate that he had reached puberty. Next, his father gave him the white toga virilis that defined him as an adult citizen. From this day on, he could participate in his civic duties and privileges.…

THE “SLAVE COAST” was the European name coined for a portion of West Africa that became a primary supplier of enslaved labor between the 17th and 19th centuries. One of the main ports was the city of Ouidah (Whydah), part of the kingdom of Dahomey after 1727. The leaders of Dahomey would conduct campaigns to seize people from other African states. These captives would be sold as slaves to Portuguese, French, and British merchants, who shipped them to nations in the Americas, particularly Brazil. The Clotilda’s captives in 1860 began the Middle Passage in Ouidah. Historians estimate that more than one million people were trafficked through this city alone before the trans-Atlantic slave trade ended in the late 19th century.…

AFTER THE UNION VICTORY in the Civil War, slavery came to an end in the United States, and the captives of the Clotilda were free. More than 30 of them who had lived and worked near Mobile, Alabama, purchased their own tracts of land in an area north of the city. Several communities developed: Plateau, Lewis Quarters, Magazine, Prichard, Happy Hills, and Kelly Hills, which became collectively known as Africatown. Drawing on their African heritage, residents built homes and businesses, grew crops and tended livestock, and founded churches and schools. Africatown flourished, reaching a population of 12,000 in the 1960s. Industrialization and blight have since hurt the community, whose population has dropped to fewer than 2,000. The wreck of the Clotilda has become a beacon of hope for Africatown. Not…

In 1976 a group of Colombian archaeologists and their guides embarked on a grueling mission to save an ancient site from looters. Swinging machetes, they inched their way over the thick, jungled foothills of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta near Colombia’s Caribbean coast. The area had once been inhabited by the Tairona, a pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the centuries before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Their remarkable, interconnected settlements were being slowly rediscovered, excavated, documented, and studied. Days into the trek, the archaeologists, all members of Colombia’s Institute of Anthropology, were feeling the strain. The long hike through the dense jungle was exacerbated by the searing heat, torrential rain, and biting insects. Their mission was urgent: Authorities had been tipped off that a major archaeological site…

DUCHESS, QUEEN, AND DOWAGER, Eleanor of Aquitaine was the most influential woman of the 12th century, wielding power over politics and culture alike. Daughter and heir of the Duke of Aquitaine, she first married Louis VII and became queen of France. The pair led the unsuccessful Second Crusade, after which they annulled their marriage. Retaining control of her family lands in France, she wed the future Henry II of England and had eight children, including the English kings Richard the Lionheart and John. Vying with Henry and her sons for control of the throne, Eleanor displayed her savvy and strength. Miracle at Marathon In 490 B.C. a few thousand Greek hoplites on the plain of Marathon seemed a poor match for the might of Persia. Their shocking victory over the…

EGYPTIAN CHRONICLES relate the destruction wrought by warlike mariners who attempted to settle parts of Egypt, and toppled the Hittite Empire centered in modern-day Turkey. When these accounts were written in the 13th and 12th centuries B.C. (a period of upheaval between the Bronze and Iron Ages), these “Sea Peoples” (a 19th-century term) were at their most destructive. One of the tribes named is the Peleset, identified by some historians as the Philistines. A relief at Ramses III’s mortuary temple shows Peleset captives defeated by Ramses in the first part of the 12th century B.C. If these Peleset are indeed the Philistines, they would have already started to have settled in Ashkelon at this time.…

IN THE AMORES, written when he was in his 20s, Ovid narrates the different phases of the poet’s love for Corinna: an initial spark, followed by passion, jealousy, reproach, and finally hatred. It is thought that Corinna was an invented character, perhaps a composite of various real lovers. Later in life, Ovid would experience a more mature love, based on mutual respect, with his third wife, Fabia, who supported him through his traumatic exile. In the Tristia, the poems written during his last years in Tomis, he likens Fabia to Odysseus’ Penelope, faithfully awaiting his return.…

BENOÎT DE MAILLET, the French consul in Egypt between 1692 and 1708, was the first European to stage a mummy unwrapping in front of an audience. The event took place in Cairo in September 1698. Maillet did not take notes of his process or methods, but he did detail some of the amulets and objects found among the wrappings. A drawing of this mummy appears in Description de l’Égypte, a work published in 1735.…

370s B.C. Olympias is born, the daughter of the ruler of the northern Greek state of Molossia. Like its neighbor Macedonia, Molossia is a hereditary kingdom. 357 B.C. Olympias becomes a wife of the polygamous Philip II, king of Macedonia. A year later, she bears his son, the future Alexander the Great. 337 B.C. Philip takes a new bride, Cleopatra Eurydice, who is Macedonian. At the wedding, Alexander’s honor is insulted by Attalus, uncle of the bride. 336 B.C. Philip is killed in a brawl at a feast. Alexander becomes king, and has Attalus executed. Olympias has Cleopatra Eurydice and her child killed. 330 B.C. Alexander topples the Persian emperor. In Macedonia, tension between Olympias and Alexander’s regent, Antipater, forces her to return to Molossia. 317 B.C. Six years after…

800S As Christians begin to drive Muslim forces from northern Spain, a hermit’s vision of St. James’s grave is the basis of a new shrine at Santiago de Compostela. 1040S The Romanesque style crystallizes in the Church of Sainte-Foy at Conques on the French pilgrimage route to Santiago. 1070S Work begins on the Basilica of Saint Sernin, Toulouse, and the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. 1100 Key monuments of Norman Romanesque architecture are completed in England and Sicily. 1150S The pointed arch and rib vault, characteristic of the new Gothic style, begin to replace the Romanesque. 1160S Master Mateo works on the sculptures on the Portico of Glory of Santiago de Compostela Cathedral.…

PRIOR TO 1808 slave importation was legal in South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, but the Act to Prohibit Importation of Slaves changed that in 1808. Smugglers continued to illegally import Africans for slave labor. Congress passed several acts to sharpen the teeth of the act, but none so much as the Act of 1820 “to… punish the crime of piracy.” In it, legislators proclaimed that anyone participating in the international slave trade—financiers, captains, or sailors—would be committing piracy, a crime punishable by heavy fines and death. Smuggling of Africans did continue in violation of the Piracy Act. According to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, about 100,000 people were forcibly brought into the country between 1800 and 1807. After 1820, they estimate that 10,000 people or fewer were…