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From the Ancient Near East to Christian Byzantium From the Ancient Near East to Christian Byzantium From the Ancient Near East to Christian Byzantium: Kings, Symbols, and Cities By Mario Baghos From the Ancient Near East to Christian Byzantium: Kings, Symbols, and Cities By Mario Baghos This book first published 2021 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2021 by Mario Baghos All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-6627-7 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-6627-9 Cover photo: Byzantine mosaic entitled ‘Deposition of the Relics’ from a lunette on the façade of St Mark’s Basilica, Venice (13th century). St Mark’s was modelled on Constantinople’s mausoleum church of the Holy Apostles, which is no longer extant. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures........................................................................................... vii Preface ....................................................................................................... ix Introduction .............................................................................................. xii Definitions ............................................................................................. xxiv Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1 Mesopotamia Sumerian Civilisation: The First Cities and their Rulers The Akkadian Period: Sargon, Naram-Sin, and the Rise of the Ruler Cult Babylon and the Ecosystemic Paradigm Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 18 Egypt The Cosmogony and the City in Ancient Egypt The Pharaoh as an Ecosystemic Agent The Pharaoh as a Ruler in Death Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 36 Greece Hesiod’s Cosmogony and the Imagines et Axes Mundi Symbolism in Minoan and Mycenaean Civilisation Troy and Delphi as Paradigmatic Axes Mundi The Rise of the Polis and Plato’s Response: The ‘Philosopher-King’ as Ecosystemic Agent Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 60 Rome Laying the Foundations for the ‘Eternal City’: Evidence from the Roman Forum Augustan Rome: The Myth of the City and the Myth of the Emperor Concordia, Invidia, and the Augustan Legacy vi Table of Contents Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 91 Israel Imagines et Axes Mundi Symbolism in the Pentateuch The Temple and the City: Jerusalem as an Imago et Axis Mundi Son of David, Son of Man: The Ecosystemic Messiah and the Eschaton Chapter Six ............................................................................................. 119 Christianity Jesus Christ as Axis Mundi and Personal Ecosystemic Agent Church and Empire in the Book of Revelation: Christ’s Ecosystemic Agency and the Eschaton The Cosmic-Personal Ecosystemic Agency of Christ and his Saints Chapter Seven ......................................................................................... 167 Christianity and Rome Christianity and Cities The Earliest Historical Images of Christ in Rome Church and Empire: The Shift of Emphasis from Rulers to Christ and His Saints Saints as Protectors of Cities: The Mother of God and Rome Chapter Eight .......................................................................................... 200 Christian Constantinople The Founding of Constantinople as an Imago et Axis Mundi Christian Constantinople and the Rise of the Pantokrator Conclusion .............................................................................................. 228 Bibliography ........................................................................................... 236 LIST OF FIGURES 2-1 The Great Obelisk at the temple of Karnak. Photo by Harry Mavrolefteros (used with permission) ...................................................... 31 2-2 The Great Pyramid of Khufu. Photo by Harry Mavrolefteros (used with permission).............................................................................. 33 3 The Parthenon on the hill of the Acropolis, Athens. Photo by author (2005) ....................................................................................................... 54 4-1 The remains of the umbilicus urbis Romae with its entrance into the mundus. Photo by author (2011) ............................................................... 67 4-2 The circular remains of the Temple of Vesta. Photo by author (2016) ....................................................................................................... 69 7-1 The colossal bust of St Constantine the Great, Capitoline Museums, Rome. Photo by author (2016)................................................................ 182 7-2 Apse mosaic of the Mother of God being crowned by Christ in Santa Maria Maggiore. Photo by author (2016) ............................................... 193 7-3 Apse mosaic of the Mother of God being acclaimed by Christ in Santa Maria in Trastevere. Photo by author (2016) .......................................... 195 7-4 The Mother of God as ‘Wider than the Heavens’ in the apse of Saints Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church, Sydney. Photo by author (2018) .......................................................................................... 197 7-5 The mosaic in the apse of San Clemente. Photo by author (2016) ... 198 8-1 The remains of Constantine’s porphyry column, Istanbul (formerly Constantinople). Photo by author (2011) ................................................ 203 viii List of Figures 8-2 Ninth century mosaic of the Mother of God cradling the Christ-child in the apse of the church of Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), Constantinople. Photo by author (2011) ........................................................................... 212 8-3 Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia), Constantinople. The minarets and mausoleums (grey and in the foreground and background) are additions made after the church was converted into a mosque in 1453, when the city was captured by the Ottoman Turks. It has recently been converted from a museum into a mosque. Photo by author (2011) .................................... 215 8-4 Mosaic of Christ Pantokrator enlightening the Old Testament prophets in a dome of the church of Holy Saviour, Chora. Photo by Nicholas Sen (2012) ..................................................................................................... 221 8-5 Christ Pantokrator in the dome of the church of Theotokos Pammakaristos, Constantinople. Photo by author (2011) ....................... 221 8-6 A Byzantine mosaic of Christ Pantokrator giving the blessing of peace in the circular dome of the Cappella Palatina, Palermo, Sicily. Photo by author (2016) .......................................................................................... 222 PREFACE In a broad sense, this book constitutes a history of civilisations. In a narrower sense, it addresses specific ancient cities from the dawn of the civic enterprise to the rise of Byzantine Christendom in order to delineate that religiosity was inherent to city building from the outset. This book also demonstrates that what transpired in the evolution from the first cities in Mesopotamia to Byzantine Christendom—or, as I prefer to describe it, Christian Byzantium—is the gradual replacement of the pagan ruler cult, with the ruler becoming subordinate to Jesus Christ as manifested in representations of Christ as ‘Master of All’ (Pantokrator), that is, the entire cosmos and everything it contains. This book identifies the main religious trends that conditioned ancient cities in certain cultures: Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Israelite, and two major cities within the Byzantine empire, Rome and Constantinople. These trends included the symbolic perception, reflected in art, architecture, and the relevant primary texts, that cities constituted the intersection of heaven, earth, and the underworld; thereby ensconcing their inhabitants in visions of the cosmos through which the sacred was revealed. Cities were therefore imagines mundi (images of the world) and axes mundi (centres of the world) that were constituted as such by their rulers, usually kings, who, because of their perceived relationship with the sacred, were considered gods or representatives of the gods; world-shapers (or ecosystemic agents) who undertook this activity from their respective capitals. The present work also grapples with the following paradox: that while ancient pagan religious perceptions of the city space were indeed holistic, they nevertheless lapsed into an idolatry of the ruler or king that, this book argues, was only displaced with the advent of Christianity. Indeed, Christianity’s emphasis—not on any worldly ruler—but on “the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Revelation 1.5), Jesus Christ, as anterior to the cosmos as its creator and the source of sacredness, divested rulers from, at the very least, the abiding perception that they were gods on earth. Moreover, the Orthodox Church’s insistence on the heavenly Jerusalem, or God’s kingdom, as the ultimate destination
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