How Cat Born to the Purple Began

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HollySprig

Readers are always asking me how I get the ideas for my books, and I’m usually at a loss for answers. So with Cat Born to the Purple, I tried to notice right along how the ideas developed. Now I offer you a small window into the earliest beginnings of Purple.

When I introduced Purple’s main character, Eliana, in The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, I hadn’t planned on writing anything else about her, much less a continuing series of Yeshua’s Cats books! But I did write more books, and Eliana turned out to be one of those characters who set up shop in the back of my mind, insistently hammering at my dreams and thoughts until I allowed her to tell her story: Cat Born to the Purple is her tale.

But before I could tell her story, I had to figure out what her family history might have been, and what circumstances could possibly have left her, a young woman barely more than a child, stoned and near death in the hills of Galilee near Sepphoris. I knew that she was going to be an exceptionally fine weaver and embroiderer, which meant that she probably came from a family that worked with textiles, most likely from one of the semi-professional family workshops found in sizeable towns like Sepphoris.

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But her wrongful stoning suggested that she’d had no real family to protect her. How could that have happened? Jewish women of merchant status always had male relatives from their birth-families hovering in the background somewhere, prepared to protect them from abuse. I started reading everything I could find about the area around Sepphoris during the time of Herod the Great and his son Herod Antipas, since Eliana would have been born around 12 CE.

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Herod the Great’s port at Caesarea Maritima, 10 BCE
Reconstruction of Sepphoris Dionysos mansion
Reconstruction of Sepphoris Dionysos mansion

Scholars have been wrangling for years over whether the Sepphoris of Yeshua’s youth and adult years was primarily Jewish, Greco-Roman, or a mixture of the two. The dust is finally beginning to settle in that argument, leaving what seems to be a clear picture of Sepphoris—along with most of the rest of the Galilee—as predominantly Jewish in population and culture during the early-to-middle 1st C CE. The recently discovered Greco-Roman palaces of Sepphoris came considerably later.

 

Remains of early 1st C Sepphoris
Remains of early 1st C Sepphoris

Almost nothing remains of the mid-1st C city, which would have been almost entirely Jewish. During Yeshua’s lifetime Sepphoris was a regional market and civic center—Herod Antipas’ Galilean capital until he built a new capital at Tiberius around 20 CE. Sepphoris was a large Jewish town for its time and place, but neither Roman in culture, nor heavily gentile.

 

 

The most dramatic event in Sepphoris’ history during that early period came soon after Herod the Great’s death in 4 BCE, when a band of Jewish dissidents and townspeople overwhelmed the city guard and raided the treasury. Rome’s reprisal was swift and cruel. The rebels were crucified along the highways, and most of Sepphoris’ citizens were sold into slavery at Acco. Herod Antipas rebuilt and fortified the city to some extent before moving on to Tiberius, but he didn’t create the wealthy Greco-Roman Sepphoris whose ruins have been excavated in recent years.

Artist's Reconstruction of Tiberius
Artist’s Reconstruction of Tiberius

So with this regional history in mind, Eliana’s own family history began to fall into place for me. The timing of Eliana’s birth could easily have placed her grandparents in Sepphoris as weavers and merchants when the city’s residents were sold into slavery by the Romans in 4 BCE. Only their young daughter Sarah—Eliana’s mother—perhaps eight years old at the time, managed to escape. Terrified and confused, the homeless child was taken in by a kindly woman from Shikhin, a neighboring village of about 500 people. Archaeologists recently discovered the ruins of Shikhin only a mile northwest of Sepphoris, just off the main highway connecting Acco and Sepphoris. The Via Maris, the major Roman road that followed Israel’s coastal plain along the Mediterranean Sea, intersected the Acco-Sepphoris road nearby, placing both Sepphoris and Shikhin at a major crossroads.

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The low hills of Shikhin
Shikhin pottery fragments
Shikhin pottery fragments

Archaeologists had long searched for the location of Shikhin, known by reputation as a village that manufactured everyday pottery found in archaeological sites all across Israel. Rabbis of the early Roman period even used Shikhin storage jars as their standard for liquid measure. Shikhin’s period of greatest productivity probably began sometime in the late 1st C BCE and increased through the early Roman period. They were known for strong, fire resistant pottery made from black clay: particularly amphorae (storage jars) and small clay lamps, but also jugs, kraters, cooking pots, and bowls. Archaeologists guess that Shikhin’s potters may have made common cause with wine and oil merchants and sold their pots already filled.

 

Recent excavations at Shikhin have uncovered cisterns, pits, potters’ wheels, kilns, and large numbers of discarded pieces of pottery damaged in firing, indicating a significant manufacturing area. The site was abandoned around the time of the great earthquake of 363 CE.

Shikhin amphora, potsherds, lamps, potter's wheel fragment, juglet
Shikhin amphora, potsherds, lamps, potter’s wheel fragment, juglet

Now the story was beginning to take shape in my mind. As a refugee child in a time of chaos, Sarah’s unofficial adoption by a family working at a craft totally unlike her family’s own guaranteed her separation from any extended family who might have survived the upheavals at Sepphoris. She was simply a child working beside her adopted family making pots. Sarah eventually married the potters’ only son and taught her daughter Eliana the skills of a potter. But even though Sarah had lost her parents at a young age, I imagined that she would never have forgotten the weaving and embroidery skills she must have learned at her mother’s knee–which would probably have been valued by her adopted family. These skills she passed on to Eliana as well, along with an innate gift for working with textiles.

Sleeveband from 3rd C CE Mediterranean textile
Sleeveband from 3rd C CE Mediterranean textile
Old brick kilns in Spain
Old brick kilns in Spain

But for Eliana to be without family when Yeshua found her, both her parents must have been dead already. After learning what I could about the manufacture of ancient Palestinian pottery, I decided that her parents might have died together in a fire caused by a collapsing kiln during a minor earthquake (more on that in another post). So Eliana was indeed left alone in the world, a young bride without anyone but treacherous and greedy in-laws to care for her. The complex system of Jewish kin relationships protecting vulnerable women had failed her. Yeshua’s assumption of just such a situation led him to place Eliana with his friend Eli in Cana—which is where Cat Born to the Purple truly begins.

In the end, the unique possibilities presented by 1st C Israel’s culture came together to create the backstory of Eliana’s life, thus laying the groundwork for the rest of the book. Research can be a wonderful thing!

 

 

 

 

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A Christmas Prayer for 2016

"A Christmas Prayer," by C. L. Francisco (see at bottom for explanation)
“A Christmas Prayer,” by C. L. Francisco (see at bottom for explanation)

When I want to focus my prayer over time and through all my senses I create prayer as art–in my intent, in my  praying, and in my prayer’s final emergence into the world. So here is the embodiment of the prayers I’ve been praying during an extended retreat for the last week or so, as I’ve grieved and prayed for the healing of the inhumanity I see steadily emerging in the patterns of our nation’s new administration. I believe that the reality that is taking shape there honors neither America’s historic democracy nor the Christian faith.

“A Christmas Prayer” prays that the incomprehensible divine love we celebrate at the Christmas season will fill all our hearts, from the smallest child to the nation’s leaders, and open our eyes to the wideness of God’s mercy, which encompasses the whole of Creation.

I, too, feel the times growing harder; the American dream seems to be slipping through our fingers. But I don’t understand how so many of America’s Christians could have gotten so muddled in their distress. How could we forget that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”?

We must hold to these and other words that have shaped our faith:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.”

“Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream”!

“What does the Lord require of you but to do do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Jesus did not model the commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” by narrowing the definition of “neighbor” to those whose race, language, skin color, birth country, and beliefs were identical to his own.

I grieve for us as a nation.

“The Scapegoat,” by Wm Holman Hunt
“The Scapegoat,” by Wm Holman Hunt

We have stumbled and fallen at the 3rd temptation where Yeshua stood firm: we have grasped for temporal power. These words are from Yeshua’s Cat describing his final temptation in the wilderness:

There was silence for a time. Then ben Adamah’s eyes cleared, he saw me watching, and he smiled. Now he was looking at a definite place, somewhere to the right of where I stood (my fur was bristling, and I was ready to spring away at any moment. Did I see something moving there in the moonless dark?).

“Oh, you evil fool,” the son of Earth laughed, “you have misjudged your game tonight! I have seen too many good men corrupted by even a little of that power to fall into its snare. The power I seek is the power to heal body and soul, the power of one who walks unnoticed among many, seeking the good of all: the power that binds creation together, not a power that consumes it. Burning through my heart is a power that rejects you and all you offer. I will have none of your thrones, your palaces, or your rich robes. No man, woman, or child will ever grovel before me in fear! Get out of my sight, corrupter of innocence. You have no place here.”

The night grew quiet then, the tension vanishing on a slight breeze. Whatever had been happening was finished.

“Come, curl up beside me, little mother,” ben Adamah said softly. “My vigil is over for tonight. It’s time to sleep.”

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For those of you with a curious turn of mind, I’ll explain a bit of what’s going on in this digital mosaic. The overall pattern is based on the south rose window at Notre Dame of Paris. Literally thousands of tiny pieces of layers were combined to complete the whole.

  • At the very center is a spiral galaxy from the Hubble series, with a star superimposed, also from Hubble, and a close up of Mary and the baby Jesus from William Holman Hunt’s “The Triumph of the Innocents.”
  • Around the central image is a circle of 12 identical panels of the “Tree of Jesse” from a Chartres Cathedral window. The, tree, or root, of Jesse–Jesus’ human lineage (from the prophet Isaiah)–is often called the Tree of Life.
  • The round rose-window shapes in the next ring are 24 identical images of grape vines from another Notre Dame rose window, pieced together into rings.
  • The next circle out from the center is composed of elders from traditions all over the world, including Pope Francis, an Orthodox bishop, Rev. Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and many others from cultures great and small.
  • Behind each elder’s head is a plain aquamarine stained glass circle.
  • Above these circles are hands of different colors, each reaching out to help others and to the One in prayer.
  • Beyond the ring of hands are round stained glass windows framing the faces of ordinary people from ethnic groups around the world.
  • Interspersed between these portrait circles are small stained glass windows from Notre Dame de la Croix.
  • Around the outer edge of the circle are flowers from blossoming trees holding the faces of the world’s children, overlain with translucent spring beech leaves.
  • From behind each blossom the Bethlehem star shines out.
  • Throughout the whole circle the branches of the tree of life weave in and out of the pattern.
  • And overall, a rainbow of stained-glass light colors all the shapes beneath it, just as the One’s love embraces all Creation.

I wish you all a blessed Thanksgiving and Christmas, filled with gratitude for our many blessings, and with prayers for our leaders’ wisdom.

 

 

 

 

Royal Purple Murex Dye

 

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Before discussing the Murex dye, I’m delighted to announce the 3rd of the 3 reviews received for Cat Born to the Purple: another 5 stars  ★★★★★ — this time from Self-Publishing Review! Go here to read the entire review.

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Empress Theodora in royal purple, 6th C
Empress Theodora in royal purple, 6th C

The term “royal purple” originated in the Mediterranean and Ancient Near East,  particularly during the days of the Roman Empire, when the wearing of a specific color–royal purple–was a privilege restricted to the aristocracy, if not the emperor alone. Royal purple was not the color we think of today when we speak of purple. Apparently it was an almost black violet-red color, said to resemble the color of heart’s blood/clots of heart’s blood. The word “purple” in Greco-Roman times, however, was used to refer to a whole range of colors, from pale blue to red to violet to the true royal purple. Deciding which of these many colors was intended in a given passage can be difficult.

But historians agree that the priceless near-black “royal purple” dye was made only from a gland of the Murex trunculus (more recently called Hexaplex trunculus) sea snail. Depending on the strength of the dye, the time submerged, the dye process, and the type of fabric dyed, the Murex dye could also yield colors ranging from pale shades of blue, green, pink, and violet, as well as the deeper tones. Other varieties of the Murex, particularly brandaris, were also used for dyes, but were considered inferior.

At present a whole separate debate is ongoing among Jewish traditionalists about whether the blue (tekhelet) tassels required by the Torah on the corners of Jewish garments should be dyed using Murex trunculus. Recent archaeological discoveries of fabric remnants from Israel’s biblical period indicate that the original tekhelet dye was probably made from one of the Murex family, if not the trunculus, but since the source of the original tekhelet has been uncertain for so long, white has become the preferred color for these tassels. Ruscillo’s research (see below) found that immersing wool very briefly in a fresh, unheated Murex dye bath resulted in very attractive blues of varying intensity.

Tekhelet?
Tekhelet?

The Murex trunculus sea snail lives in the sublittoral waters of most of the Mediterranean’s coastal areas. The sublittoral zone refers to the area of relatively shallow water permanently covered by seawater that is immediately beyond the intertidal zone (the area between the high and low tidal marks, where the shore is above water at some point in the tidal cycle). The Murex must be constantly submerged to survive, but it prefers shallow water, usually no more than 20 meters deep, in sheltered coves or lagoons. Where the water is calm and protected from waves the Murex may be found at slightly greater depths. It prefers mixed sand and rocky bottoms.

Sublittoral ocean zone
Sublittoral ocean zone

hexaplexThe Murex feeds in two different ways: scavenging and predation. When there isn’t enough dead material in the water, it preys on other sea snails, mussels, barnacles, hermit crabs, etc., by drilling holes and/or chipping their shells and feeding on the living flesh through the holes. Not an appealing creature, as predators go.

 

Murex spawning
Murex spawning

The ancients didn’t dive for the purple snails during the months between early spring and the beginning of July, because that was (and is) the Murex spawning season. Murex trunculus was harvested from the Dog Star’s first rising in the dawn sky (early July) through the winter months.

 

 

Phoenician merchants
Phoenician merchants

Since the only records we have describing the collecting and processing of “purples” are the writings of Roman essayists like Pliny and Vitruvius (whose reports were often more imaginative than accurate), archaeologists have had difficulty piecing together the details of the royal purple industry. Additionally, the Phoenicians–whose Murex dyes were most highly valued in early Roman times–guarded their dyeing secrets carefully. Only in the early 20th century did scientists begin to experiment with Hexaplex trunculus to try to reproduce the ancient dyeing techniques.

Artist's Reconstruction of Tyre before Alexander's conquest
Artist’s Reconstruction of Tyre before Alexander’s conquest

Deborah Ruscillo’s experiment, “Reconstructing Murex Royal Purple and Biblical Blue in the Aegean,” is by far the cleverest, and most innovative approach to this problem that I could find. By grossly simplifying her methodology, I might summarize it like this: locate an ancient Murex dyeing site where the Hexaplex trunculus is still thriving, and duplicate the processes suggested by archeological evidence and ancient texts, using tools as close to the originals as possible; where ancient wisdom fails, experiment with reasonable alternatives.

Ruscillo's baited pot & basket
Ruscillo’s baited pot & basket

Most of Cat Born to the Purple‘s technical details of Murex dyeing came from Ruscillo’s work. For instance:

  • Neither divers nor baited baskets/pots alone could have caught enough purples to supply a dyeing workshop of any size; they must have both been used together.
  • Adding urine makes the color more vibrant, although the Murex dye is permanent without additives
  • Boiling the dye mixture ruins the dye
  • Three days is the ideal amount of time for steeping fabric in the dye
  • The stench of the Murex, swarming wasps, biting flies, and hatching larvae make the dyers’ lives a misery
  • Dye on hands and nails takes roughly 6 weeks to disappear
  • Wool is the only fiber that absorbs the dye to create a deep, dark color
  • Neither the stink nor the color is reduced by washing; perfume would have been necessary to disguise the smell, even after washing and long periods of airing.

Perhaps her most amusing and understated remark was, “Pliny never made dye himself.”

Hypobranchial gland, live Murex
photo Kirsten Benkendorff

 

The dye comes from the hypobranchial gland of the Hexaplex trunculus, which secretes mucus for its mantle. The gland itself is pale, and must be cut out of a living snail (left), since the gland shrivels and dries shortly after death.

 

 

photo by kuvmamhlubhmoob
photo by kuvmamhlubhmoo

When the live gland is pierced and exposed to air, the mucus rapidly changes from clear to yellow to yellowish green, green, and violet. The photos to the right show a fresh live trunculus gland removed. The gland itself is yellowish, but the liquid is clear.

 

The photos below show a sequence from Pourpre filmed by pygmeejones. The timing and color may not be exact, since the snail in the sequence appears to be recently dead or the gland already ruptured in opening the shell, based on the green color of the mucus when the gland is first pierced.

 

Archaeologists have discovered what appear to be holding tanks for snails along the Phoenician coast, where Murex could have been kept alive in seawater until enough snails had accumulated to brew the dye. Since thousands of Murex trunculus would have been needed to dye just one cloak to the deep blackish color of the royal purple–and twice as many if Murex brandaris snails were used–there would have been a definite need for such tanks.

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Like most Mediterranean cultures, Phoenicians trafficked in slaves, and may have made a habit  of kidnapping unwary women and children in their ports of call. The citizens of Sepphoris rounded up by the Romans after the brief rebellion following Herod the Great’s death were sold to Phoenician slavers in Acco. No doubt because of the extreme unpleasantness of the tasks involved, slaves provided most of the labor in the Phoenician Murex dye industry.

The stench of the opened snails permeated the area of the dye workshops and beyond. Contemporary accounts described Tyre and Sidon as attractive cities, but stinking of the Murex dye. In almost every case where archaeologists have found the huge piles of broken Murex shells that identify a likely dye site, the piles have been well outside the cities.

 

crushedmurex
Piles of crushed Murex shells

Finally, Ruscillo asks one question that I never saw raised anywhere else: was ancient fleece stained with Murex dye before before it was woven (dyed in the wool), or was the whole cloth dyed after the fabric was completed? Her experiment showed that dying the unwoven fleece left a powdery residue of purple dye in the wool that filtered out and left stains on workers and work areas. The residue made an extra post-dye washing essential before the wool could be spun and woven, which would have required extra time and labor. Dyeing already woven fabric left no such residue, and also eliminated the problem of different dye lots of thread creating an unevenly-colored weaving.

For more details, imaginative and historical, read Cat Born to the Purple!

 

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Making the Cloth for the Royal Purple

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Emperor Justinian I in Royal Purple
Emperor Justinian I in Royal Purple

I knew absolutely nothing about the roots of the phrase “born to the purple” when I began writing Purple. Neither had I ever heard of the Murex trunculus, a predatory sea snail found along many Mediterranean coasts, from which the royal purple dye was extracted. Even more humbling was my discovery that I understood nothing whatever about how cloth is spun and woven–now, or in the 1st Century CE. Oh, I knew the words and how to use them in sentences: warp and weft, loom and shuttle, spindle and bobbin . . . but I soon realized that I didn’t have a clue what any of those objects actually did in the process of transforming raw material–wool in particular–into cloth.

Textile manufacture was one of a very few areas where a women might succeed in business in New Testament times. The reference in Acts 16:14, to “Lydia, a dealer in purple fabric,” was one obvious instance. And if I did decide to write about a woman skilled in weaving, I needed to understand what was involved in that skill. So I checked out every book I could find in local public libraries about weaving wool, from raising the sheep to selling the finished textiles–and I hardly understood a word. Every book, no matter how simple, either assumed I already knew what weaving terms meant, or explained the meanings so superficially that they might as well have been speaking a foreign language–which is what the specialist terms of any discipline are to outsiders.

I tried websites, and YouTube, and eventually went to the library at Bard College where I finally discovered THE reigning expert in ancient textile studies–who understood the necessity of defining every single term before starting to use it, no matter how obvious it might seem to her. Her name is Elizabeth Wayland Barber, and she is the author of a highly entertaining and groundbreaking scholarly survey called Prehistoric Textiles (1991), and a more popular adaptation, entitled Women’s Work: The first 20,000 years (1994). I could never have written the book without her!

barber

So, as a gesture of appreciation to her for her blessed clarity and thoroughness, I will try to explain the basics of early 1st C wool manufacture in Israel. I speak of wool particularly, because Murex dye only stains animal fiber successfully, and only wool absorbs the color thoroughly enough to create the deep blackish red-violet hue that royalty prized.

Sheep were raised in hilly and mountainous areas throughout the Ancient Near East. In most instances they  were sheared and the wool cleaned and processed wherever the sheep were raised. Often a cottage industry grew up among local women for the spinning of the thread, so that urban weavers never worked with the fleece at all. But I’ve already begun to use words without defining them, so I’ll pause and look more closely at this first stage.

Preparing the fleece

By the 1st C, sheep had been selectively bred for thick, long fleece of various colors. Each spring the sheep were sheared with large iron shears. In the eastern Mediterranean, the first task after shearing was removing the larger problem areas from the fleece: dung tags, short, poor quality wool, matted wool, hardened grease. The fleece was then laid out on a rack and beaten with flexible rods to remove dust and seeds.

unwashed & washed fleece
unwashed & washed fleece

Then the fleece was washed with some sort of solvent, in order to remove the grease–otherwise dye wouldwashing-fleece not take. Roughly twenty gallons of hot liquid was needed to wash two whole fleeces. In Israel, typically 3 parts hot water and 1 part urine were combined for the wash. The wool pelts were carefully teased apart and gently submerged in the washing vat, where they remained overnight. The washers took extreme care not to stir the wool in the bath, especially when the water was still hot,  since that could cause it to “felt”, or stick together in a mat that couldn’t be spun or woven, although lesser quality wool was often “felted” intentionally. After soaking, the wool was carefully and thoroughly rinsed. In Israel the washed wool was either spread over bushes or put into light bags, swung around in circles, and then spread out to dry.

Neolithic "card" for flax
Neolithic “card” for flax

Once the fleece dried, it was gently pulled apart into separate strands, and shaken to remove any remaining seeds. By the 1st C, the different lengths of wool fibers weren’t separated unless the women doing the spinning intended to make the hard strong thread called worsted, which required long fibers laid out straight alongside each other. “Carding” was the most common method of preparing fleece for spinning by the 1st C. It involved lightly brushing or fluffing the wool fibers between two “cards” with protruding teeth–a bit like teasing hair. It resulted in a mass of fluffy fiber, evenly combed and separated, that could be pulled out in a steady thin stream for spinning.

woolcarders
Modern wool carders & fleece ready to spin

Spinning

Ancient ingenuity gradually produced simple tools to make the intensely frustrating process of early spinning relatively easy. Barber put it something like this. Hand-spinning involved 3 processes–thinning and lengthening, twisting, and winding the thread onto a holder. But to do this, a woman really needed 4 hands:

  • 1 hand to hold the prepared fluff of wool fibers
  • 1 hand to pull thinned fibers out of the fluff and attach them to the emerging thread
  • 1 hand to keep twisting the thread
  • and 1 hand to hold finished thread, lest it ball up like angry rubber band
Greek woman spinning, 500 BCE
Greek woman spinning, 500 BCE

The distaff (“fuzz-stick”) was developed to hold a large mass of prepared fuzzy fleece; often it was no more than a forked stick held by the weaver. She pulled a steady stream of fuzz off the distaff, attaching it to the emerging thread. The “spindle” solved two problems at one time: how to twist the emerging length of fluff, and how to anchor the spun thread so that it wouldn’t recoil on itself. A spindle is basically a smooth stick of wood about a foot long, with a hook or groove for attaching thread, and a “whorl,” a roughly cylindrical object with a centered hole, attached to the shaft of the spindle, to reduce wobble. The thread is attached to the spindle, the spindle is set spinning, dropped, and spins the thread on its own like a top as the spinner uses her 2nd hand to pull and secure the fibers. When the spindle slows and stops, the spinner winds the accumulated thread around the spindle and sets it spinning again. Skilled spinners hardly pause at all between one spin and the next, and maneuver the spindle to wind the finished thread almost without guidance.

spindleduplex

The last step in spinning is “plying.” When the twisted thread is removed from the spindle if it is not “plied,” it will simply unravel. So 2 threads are twisted together in the opposite direction to their original spin (plied), resulting in a length of thread that is not only twice as thick, but doesn’t unravel, either.

Weaving

In Barber’s words, “Weaving involves two sets of strings: a fixed set, the warp, and a second set, the weft, interlaced into the warp. But the flexibility of string makes interlacing terribly difficult without a way to hold some of the strings in place—a frame to provide tension. That frame is called a loom. Discovering how to provide tension made true weaving possible” (Prehistoric Textiles, p. 80).

From about the year 2000 BCE until the time of Christ, women in Palestine did most of their weaving on warp-weighted looms–vertical looms that leaned against walls. Women stood to weave and the finished cloth accumulated at the top. Warp-weighted looms were called by this name because the warp threads–the strong vertical threads through which the woof or weft threads were woven, were held in place by weights attached at the bottom. A famous Greek urn from around 600 BCE shows one such loom (below). Several threads secured on the top beam are weighed down together in straight lines by clay, stone or other types of weights at the bottom. The woman on the left is beating, or pushing, the most recent weft threads up tightly into the finished cloth rolled onto the top beam. The woman on the right is weaving the horizontal weft thread between the vertical warp threads.

The size of the loom depended partly on the type of fiber being woven. Estimates based on loom weights and surviving fragments of cloth suggest that the width of woven wool varied between 33-78 cm. Light fibers like linen and hemp were often wider.

greekloomvase600

Here are some basic weaving terms:

Loom = frame holding thread for weaving

Loom weights = stones, etc., attached to bottom of warp threads/groups of threads

Warp = the vertical weighted threads

Weft (old past tense of weave) = horizontal threads added in between warp threads

Plain weave = one thread of warp over/under one of weft, etc. This was the simplest weave, still seen today in sheets and pillowcases. Pattern was added by taking the weft over and under different numbers of warp threads

Starting border = a narrow woven band attached to upper beam to keep warp threads separate and spaced evenly

Heddle rod = movable rod that leans against front of loom, either resting against loom itself, or lifted up and away and resting on supports.

Heddles = small loops w/strings attached to the heddle rod, through which alternating warp threads pass (1 string/group of strings thru each heddle). Heddle loops are each tied to the heddle rod. When the heddle rod is lifted up onto its supports, it creates a gap (shed) between warp threads attached to it (and now raised) and the warp threads below not attached to heddles.

Shed rod = moveable rod at base of loom above loom weights over which the alternate warp threads not tied to heddles are hung. When heddle rod is lowered from its supports, the shed rod holds its threads above the others (the lower threads above the heddle threads), creating a second shed through which to pass a weft thread.

Shed = the gap between alternating layers of warp threads through which weft is pulled. The whole line of weft is passed through this passageway/gap with a shuttle

A drawing from Barber’s Prehistoric Textiles (below) may help these terms make sense. This drawing shows a simple kind of warp-weighted loom probably found in Palestinian homes in the early 1st C CE (I used her drawing as the model for the one in Purple):barberancgrkloom

So here’s the process, vastly simplified:

  • Tie the warp threads to top of loom, draping all warp threads over frame
  • Attach starting border to upper beam, woven of cord, to keep warp cords evenly spaced and not crowded
  • Thread alternate warp threads into consecutive heddle loops attached to heddle rod toward top of loom, letting ends hang down toward floor
  • The lower (unattached to heddles) warp threads remain over shed rod at bottom, so that they hang straight from woven fabric at top to rod at base
  • Attach weights to all warp threads/groups by small cords
  • Lift heddle rod up on to supports to create shed between lower warp and heddled warp threads
  • Send weft through the shed
  • Beat up toward top tightly
  • Lower heddle rod from supports to loom frame; the heddled warp threads will hang below loom frame from heddles, toward floor
  • Alternate warp threads draped over shed rod will now be higher, creating a shed between lower and upper warp threads
  • Send weft through 2nd shed, beat up, and repeat.
  • Finished cloth rolled up on top beam
Double-beam Loom
Double-beam Loom

 

Then sometime in the mid-to-late 1st C CE all this changed with the introduction of the upright two-beam loom,  developed somewhere in the Levant and/or Syria and spread by the Romans throughout the rest of the empire. The weights were replaced by a second horizontal beam at the bottom, and the weaving went from top to bottom, which meant that the weaver could sit while weaving.

 

 

The main problem scholars have had in understanding early weaving techniques has been that neither wooden looms nor textiles often survive over time, although the clay, stone, and bone tools often do. The sudden disappearance of loom weights from archaeological sites dating to the beginning of the 2nd century CE was the most obvious indication of the change in weaving technology.

weavingtoolsgezer
Weaving tools from ancient Gezer in Judea. Photo by Ferrel Jenkins. Most of the tools pictured are loom weights and spindle whorls.

One last interesting observation on cloth made in the first century is the time involved. A simple garment of a plain weave used approximately 1.5 x 5 meters of cloth. The spinning of the thread alone took approximately 120 hours. Setting up the loom with the border and warp threads took about 50 hours, with another 50-60 hours for the weaving itself. By the time you added in the sewing and finishing, the total time invested in one simple garment would be over 250 hours!

 

 

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Paul and the Damascus Wall

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Doing the research for The Cats of Rekem was a long and fascinating process. Perhaps the most surprising part of it was discovering how little we really know about those first days after Paul’s vision on the Damascus road. Here are the only biblical verses (from The New English translation) that describe those days:

Acts 9:19-25–[immediately after his conversion] “He spent some time with the disciples in Damascus. Soon he was proclaiming Jesus publicly in the synagogues. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is the Son of God.’  All who heard were astounded. ‘Is not this the man,’ they said, ‘who was in Jerusalem trying to destroy those who invoke this name? Did he not come here for the sole purpose of arresting them and taking them to the chief priests?’ But Saul grew more and more forceful and silenced the Jews of Damascus with his cogent proofs that Jesus was the Messiah. As the days mounted up, the Jews hatched a plot against his life; but their plans became known to Saul. They kept close watch on the city gates day and night so that they might murder him; but his converts took him one night and let him down by the wall, lowering him in a basket.”

2 Corinthians 11:32-33–“When I was in Damascus, the commissioner of King Aretas kept the city under observation so as to have me arrested; and I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and so escaped his clutches.”

Galatians 1:16-20–“When that happened [his conversion], without consulting any human being, without going up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before me, I went off at once to Arabia, and afterwards returned to Damascus. Three years later I did go up to Jerusalem to get to know Cephas. I stayed with him for a fortnight, without seeing any other of the apostles, except James, the Lord’s brother. What I write is plain truth; before God I am not lying.”

In the Acts account, in the paragraph following the one above describing Paul’s escape from Damascus, Luke speaks of Paul’s trip to Jerusalem, where he met all the disciples. In light of Paul’s own words in his letter to the Galatians above, I believe Luke must have been describing a later trip to Jerusalem. Paul states clearly that he went immediately to Arabia from Damascus. The three passages above, then, are our only sources for Paul’s departure from Damascus.

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So what do we know about Paul’s night at the wall?  Let’s look first at the wall itself.

The biblical text in Galatians uses the word θυρίς, thuris, which means a small opening or window. The text in Acts merely says Paul was lowered through the wall; no opening is specified. So, perhaps the word need not be translated “window.”

I had some difficulty imagining a window in the middle of a Decapolis city wall, so I started researching 1st C CE city walls in Roman Syria, specifically at Damascus. I discovered that not much more than a few foundation stones are visible in Damascus, underneath later walls dating mostly to the Middle Ages. But I did discover that Damascus was transformed by its Seleucid (Greek) conquerors somewhere around the 3rd C BCE. The city was then rebuilt along N/S and E/W axes, in much the same pattern that remains today. The city walls were rebuilt as well. When the Romans took over Damascus in the mid-1st C BCE, they set to work rebuilding much of the city again, adding their typical monumental touches. They also strengthened the walls and extended them outward to include an area larger than the earlier Greek walls. The Roman walls stood approximately where the walls stand today.

In the pictures below you can see a reconstruction of the east gate in the Roman wall surrounding the Decapolis city of Hippos, and a model of the Decapolis city of Scythopolis (Bet She’an), with the city wall around it. Notice in both that the only openings/windows are in the actual gate towers, which are guard quarters. The walls themselves are high and smooth, without openings, although the spaces in the crenelations might be called “openings.”

Hippos East Gate
Hippos East Gate
Model of Scythopolis
Model of Scythopolis

But what exactly did Roman walls look like? How were they constructed? I discovered that there is an amazing amount of research dedicated to the study of Roman walls. As a result we know quite a lot about their internal structure and appearance. By the time of the Roman building projects in Damascus (which were approaching their peak when Paul visited there), Roman walls were often being constructed with a rubble core faced with concrete and tiles. The huge quarried stones of earlier walls were being used only for the foundations.

Structure of a Roman Wall/Arch
Structure of a Roman Wall/Arch

Hadrian’s Wall is a good example of this style of wall, and has survived well enough to be studied thoroughly. The pictures below are artist’s reconstructions of Hadrian’s Wall.

This rubble-core style of wall-building is described in The Cats of Rekem. Such walls would lend themselves even less easily than ashlar walls to openings/windows, even if windows were considered desirable in defensive walls. Nowhere did I find Roman walls like the early ones pictured in childhood Bible studies, where city walls were made up of the walls of houses haphazardly connected together. So, how could there be an “opening” in the Damascus wall, “through” which Paul might be lowered in a basket? I decided that a collapsed rubble wall might serve the purpose: perhaps poorly made, weakened by earthquake, attack, or collapse of subterranean chamber–any of those would do. The result would be a breach in the wall that might be described as an opening. There you have the basis of Paul’s adventure as I described it in The Cats of Rekem.

Bab Kisan, traditional site of Paul's escape
Bab Kisan, traditional site of Paul’s escape, mainly medieval stonework

I also moved Paul’s escape route to a different part of the wall from the one that Church tradition identifies,  in the photo above. I agree with Ross Burns, in his excellent book, Damascus: A History, that a location right over a Roman gate–and in the Jewish quarter, was an unlikely place for a successful escape. You can see that the traditional gate above, Bab Kisan, is #3 on the map of Old Damascus as it is known today (above). That same gate is on the map of Roman Damascus (also above), and located on the south side, near the eastern corner: at the major market thoroughfare and adjoining the Jewish quarter. Paul’s escape in The Cats of Rekem is marked by the words “broken wall,” just north of the gate under construction on the eastern wall.

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The Acts of John, a Gnostic gospel

 

“Grace dances . . . dance, all of you!”
The Acts of John

Heresy vs orthodoxy is the stuff that breeds wars, and Church history is full of it. Without getting into a discussion of Church councils and the creation of the Christian canon, I’d like to look at a 2nd C gnostic gospel that was pronounced heretical—and see what it might say to us today.

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St Ignatius of Antioch, Enemy of Docetism
St Ignatius of Antioch, Enemy of Docetism

The Acts of John was condemned by Church fathers as docetic (docetism is the belief that Jesus’ humanity and physical body were an illusion). To modern eyes John can be a peculiar book, full of bizarre notions and unappealing ideas—particularly its contention that the spirit of Christ abandoned the man Jesus to suffer on the cross alone, while the divine essence stood apart, untouched by pain.

But if you can set that notion aside, The Acts of John offers a number of intriguing thoughts. Perhaps most familiar is a lovely passage known as “The Circle Dance of the Cross,” in which, the night before his death, Jesus invites all his disciples to form a circle and dance around him. Those of you who have read Yeshua’s Cat may recognize the last four lines of the quote below as part of Yeshua’s conversation with his mother before he left Nazareth for the last time.

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Here is an edited version of the original text:

[Jesus] stood in the circle’s center and said, “Answer ‘Amen’ to everything I say.” Then he began to sing a hymn, saying:
“Glory be to you, Father.”
And we, moving around him in a ring, answered him: “Amen.”
“We praise you, O Father; we give thanks to you, O Light where darkness cannot dwell.”
“Amen.”
“I would be saved, and I would save.”
“Amen.”
“I would be freed, and I would free.”
“Amen.”
“I would be wounded, and I would wound.”
“Amen.”
“I would be born, and I would give birth.”
“Amen.”
“I would eat, and I would be eaten.”
“Amen.”
“I would hear, and I would be heard.”
“Amen.”
“I would be thought of, being wholly thought.”
“Amen.”
“I would be washed, and I would wash.”
“Amen.”
“Grace dances. I would pipe; dance, all of you.”
“Amen.”
“I would mourn: lament, all of you.”
“Amen . . .”
“The Whole on high takes part in our dancing.”
“Amen.”
“Whoever does not dance cannot understand what is coming to pass.”
“Amen.”
“I would flee, and I would stay.”
“Amen.”
“I would adorn, and I would be adorned.”
“Amen.”
“I would be united, and I would unite.”
“Amen . . .”
“A lamp am I to you who behold me.”
“Amen.”
“A mirror am I to you who perceive me.”
“Amen.”
“A door am I to you who knock at me.”
“Amen.”
“A way am I to you a wanderer . . . “

Picasso, "Dance of Youth"
Picasso, “Dance of Youth”

Christian mystics down through the centuries have used the metaphor of dance to describe the human relationship to God, and I found John’s Circle Dance delightful.

Well, I mused, if The Acts of John can include the Circle Dance, what else might I find? So I examined the book more closely. Another idea present throughout the book is that Jesus appeared in many different guises while he walked the earth. I must admit that John’s list allows for a few more possibilities than the canonical gospels: a child, a young handsome man, a youth just bearding, a middle-aged balding man, a small ugly man, a huge heavenly man, a being of whiteness and light, a man with a soft yielding body, a man whose body was hard as stone, a body firm to the touch, and a body with no physical solidity at all. John describes the significance of these guises with the words, “. . . his great grace, his unity that had many faces . . . “

Those words reminded me of recent critics in the search for the historical Jesus who point out that people of every age have tried to mold Jesus into their own ideal of who he should be—thus hopelessly muddying the waters for anyone trying to discern the true historical person.

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But here’s my thought: what if Jesus’ message right from the beginning was intended to be a message for all ages and all people? What if his message always had access points that could lead people along diverse paths to the One through him? What if he included embryonic possibilities in his teaching that could support every positive interpretation ever put on his original message? Everything from human rights, the light within, and justice—to caring for the environment and liberation theology? What if most Christian heresies, while diverging from the mainstream, have a unique glimmer of this truth?

Unfortunately, we as humans too often seize on glimmers of truth as if they were the final and complete word of God rather than single facets. Just so the Church has long been at fault for trying to narrow Jesus’ message to fit their limited understanding, enclosing it within a box made to their order. In the hands of the Church, too often the multifaceted diamond of Jesus’ message has been transformed into a stony concretion in crumbling stone—frozen and trapped beneath masses of accumulated tradition.

“His unity that had many faces . . .” is one insight from The Acts of John that we might wish to heed. What if one of Jesus’ primary goals—long obscured by human ignorance—was to bring healing to the shattered images of the One, fragmented for so long among human cultures? What if he offered freedom, and the brilliant unity of God’s countenance, to all people—and we have warped them instead into shadow and condemnation?

Just a thought.

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Photo from thefreedomexperiment.com

 

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Yeshua and the Mystery Religions

Anyone who has studied the history of religions is aware of the shift in human consciousness that began sometime in the last millennium BCE and lasted into the early centuries of the Common Era. During those years human religious practice moved dramatically away from old communal forms and took on more personal expression. Individual human beings began to approach their gods in increasingly distinctive ways, and more and more spiritual teachers emphasized the value of individual human lives. Even C. G. Jung tried to explain the phenomenon in his Psychology and Religion West and East.

Ancient Sumerian gods
Ancient Sumerian gods

 

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Buddha
Zarathustra
Zarathustra

In India the sage Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha, offered seekers a Middle Way to enlightenment between the extremes of asceticism and worldly sensuality. In Persia Zarathustra introduced the idea of the freedom of individual human beings and the importance of their choosing to labor with the God of Light, Ahura Mazda, against the forces of darkness and ignorance.

 

 

Prophet Hosea
Prophet Hosea

In Israel the prophets emerged, offering ethical virtues such as compassion and mercy as alternatives to the old sacrificial system; Hillel the Elder followed in the 1st C BCE with his Golden Rule, and his famous statement that “whosoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world, and whosoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”

 

Jesus of Nazareth, born around 4 BCE, brought a unique gospel of love and life to humankind, known for two millennia as Christianity.

Early catacomb images of Jesus performing miracles
Early catacomb images of Jesus performing miracles

All around Jesus, throughout the ever-spreading Roman Empire, Mystery Religions were attracting followers by the tens of thousands. In each of these Mysteries, individual men and women found hope of eternal life through initiation into secret knowledge unavailable to those outside their communities. Dionysian, Eleusinian, Cybeline, Isaic, Mithraic, and Orphic mysteries were but some of them. In many instances the secret knowledge was imparted through the initiate’s participatory experience in the death and rebirth of the god or goddess.

Serapis-Osiris,Persephone and Hades, Mithras, Dionysus
Serapis-Osiris,Persephone and Hades, Mithras, Dionysus

In the process of writing The Cats of Rekem, the third volume in the Yeshua’s Cats series, I wandered into the jungle of Greco-Roman Mystery Religions. I won’t try to offer an explanation of why they exploded into the ancient world, but they were spreading like wildfire across the Mediterranean basin in the years before and after Yeshua’s life. Early Christians were well acquainted with these religions, and in many cases they came to the Church from them.

Dionysian and Eleusinian Mysteries
Dionysian and Eleusinian Mysteries

Numbers of people have written countless volumes of material about the relationship between early Christianity and Mystery Religions, some scholarly and accurate, many biased and inflammatory. As a writer of historical fiction whose characters are rooted in the beliefs of their day, I came up against the question of Mystery Religions in a very personal way. In particular, I found myself needing to understand exactly how Yeshua’s original message differed from the message of the Mysteries. And I didn‘t want to expound the same old Christian apologetics and bland assurances that no overlap ever existed. It obviously did.

Christ as Sol Invictus, mosaic from 3rd C Vatican grottoes
Christ as Sol Invictus (unconquered sun), mosaic from 3rd C Vatican grottoes

So I dusted off my books on Greco-Roman culture and began to refresh my memory. I took notes, and made charts. I even drew up a spreadsheet. I concluded that there were many, many apparent similarities between the practices of the early Church and the Mystery Religions; in fact, there were far more similarities than differences—baptism, equality of men and women, depictions of mother and child, separation of the community from the wider society, hope of immortality through the death and resurrection of a god or founder, ritual commemoration of that same founder’s death and resurrection. The list goes on and on.

But this left me with two troublesome questions. First, did these obvious similarities in the early Church really reflect Yeshua’s message? And second, allowing for the possibility that they might not, how did Yeshua’s message itself differ from the Mysteries? I even went so far as to wonder what he might have said to one of the Mystery devotees that surely crossed his path.

"Christ and the Adulteress," Cranach the Elder
“Christ and the Adulteress,” Cranach the Elder

In the end I isolated several radically new ideas in Jesus’ message that found no parallels in the other religions of his day. In some cases these ideas didn’t survive very long in the young Church. Here they are, as I see them:

  • He preached a loving God who sought reconciliation with humanity—not justice, or retribution, or punishment
  • He brought this God into direct relationship with human beings, without priests or organized religions between them and the Deity who loved them
  • He offered his listeners a simple choice: accept God’s love and embrace the freedom growing out of that love, or turn their backs and lose themselves in their own darkness
  • He preached a peaceful, non-violent approach to life
  • He didn’t call for a system of initiates vs outsiders: the thrust of his message was always of mysteries revealed, hardened hearts opening to understanding, and truths simple enough for a child to grasp
  • Perhaps in contrast to the Mysteries, (which were celebrated in darkness) he characterized his message as one of light, revealed in the light of day for all to see
  • Rather than the emotional frenzy common to the Mysteries, where initiates agonized and suffered, imagining themselves suffering with their dying and rising god, he offered his followers a death accomplished, and new life freely given: where such participatory agonies have entered the Church, I suspect they may have come by way of the Mystery Religions, not Yeshua’s words

The first two hundred years of the Church were violent and chaotic, and the records are conflicting. Many stories lie outside the scope of the Bible. I believe that there’s room to question traditional understandings of the Church’s message–and to question the way the Church has interpreted the words of Christ.

But don’t take my word for it: look for yourself! If there’s a mystery, it’s hiding in plain sight.

 

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A Christmas Greeting from Yeshua’s Cats

Last year after publishing The Gospel According to Yeshua’s Cat, I wrote an additional piece of the story that I sent out in my Christmas newsletter. Here it is again, for the first time in a public posting.

For those of you who have the paperback edition of TGATYC, this new piece would be inserted at the top of page 124, just after “. . . filled with laughter.”  For those of you with the Kindle edition, it’s in Chapter 15, Magdala, just after Mari muses about the nature of the festival of lights, and before Yeshua starts speaking on the last night of the feast.

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“Night Sky Christmas,” C. L. Francisco

One night after everyone had gone to bed I finally asked him. “Are your people celebrating the return of the sun’s warmth when they celebrate their festival of lights, son of Earth?”

            “Yes and no, little mother,” he replied, turning his head and smiling as he opened his eyes. “We measure the years by the seasons of the moon, not by the sun’s path, so none of our holy days takes note of the sun’s movement, not even this one. No, this week we rejoice in events almost 200 years past, when a great man named Judas Maccabeus cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem from the pollution of a pagan altar put there by foreign conquerors. Our many lamps call us to remember that the One’s light can dispel even the deepest darkness.”

            He rose to his feet and reached out his arm in invitation, so I leapt to his shoulder, wrapping my tail around his neck. Together we walked out under the winter sky and stood on the hill, watching the stars touch the great sea with their cold fire.

            “Yet, little leopard,” he continued as if he had never paused, “you are right when you wonder if we are also welcoming the sun’s return. Just as stars grow brighter in the long nights, each light that burns in winter’s darkness whispers of that hope. Together with all Earth’s children, our hearts grow full when we see the sun begin its long journey back to the heights of heaven. This too reminds us of the One’s faithfulness.”

            I curled around his neck more closely to dispel the night’s chill, but I said nothing. I only purred with pleasure at his closeness. I sensed that words still lay unspoken in his heart.

            “Sweet Mari, my mother told me that I was born on a night like this, when the stars danced in a black sky, and the breath of humans and beasts alike clouded vision with their brief mist. Joy filled the night and sang in the heavens at the wonder of my coming into the world. All things were made new under that sky, she said.”

            I rubbed my whiskers against his cheek, and he continued.

            “I can almost hear the heavens singing on such nights. The One’s face shimmers behind the host of stars like a distant oasis in the heat of a desert’s summer day. And yet the chill of a winter night and the searing heat of the desert’s noon both lie quiet in the hollow of his hand.

“As do you and I.”

 

"Shepherds' Star," C. L. Francisco
“Shepherds’ Star,” C. L. Francisco

 

May you all have a blessed Christmas!

 

Cat Mummies of Ancient Egypt

In a A Cat Out of Egypt, Miw, the Egyptian temple cat who narrates the story, is in danger of becoming a cat mummy–and not as a result of a natural death. Several readers have asked whether such a thing could have been based in reality. This week’s blog is my answer.

How were cat mummies created in ancient Egypt? What significance did they have? What kind of process led to the creation of the vast cat cemeteries that archaeologists have discovered among Egyptian ruins? As with most historical questions, the answers are complex.

Cat Mummies as Votive Offerings

Cat mummies discovered in early excavations at Bubastis were probably the first to be seen by Western explorers/archaeologists, but the cat cemetery unearthed at Beni Hasan (a site roughly 100 miles south of Cairo and known for its beautiful tombs), was carefully described by a Western observer. In 1888, near the rock-cut temple dedicated to the lion goddess Pakhet, a huge cat cemetery was discovered. A lengthy description of the discovery follows, as recorded by British professor W. M Conway:

cat-mummies
A common cat mummy

An Egyptian fellah from a neighboring village . . . dug a hole, somewhere in the level floor of the desert, and struck–cats! Not one or two, here and there, but dozens, hundreds, hundreds of thousands, a layer of them, a stratum thicker than most coal seams, ten to twenty cats deep, mummy squeezed against mummy tight as herrings in a barrel . . . A systematic exploration of the seam was undertaken. The surface sand was stripped off and the cats laid bare. All sorts and conditions of them appeared–the commoner sort caked together in black lumps, out of which here a grinning face, there a furry paw, there a backbone or row of ribs of some ancient puss, stood prominently forth. The better cats and kittens appeared in astonishing numbers, with all their wrappings as fresh as if they had been put into the ground a week, and not 30 centuries, before. Now and again an elaborately plaited mummy turned up; still more rarely one with a gilded face . . . only three cat statues have as yet been found. Two are small bronze figures. The third is a life-size bronze, a hollow casting, inside which the actual cat was buried . . . The plundering of the site was a sight to see, but one had to stand well to windward. All of the village children came and provided themselves with the most attractive mummies they could find. These they took down to the river to sell for the smallest coin . . .  The path became strewn with mummy cloth and bits of cats’ skulls and bones and fur in horrid profusion, and the wind blew the fragments about and carried the stink afar . . . .

But most of the Egyptian cat mummies discovered in this and other such cemeteries in the late 19th century–nineteen tons of them–were bought in bulk and shipped to Europe to be sold at auction as fertilizer.

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Who were these cats, and where did they come from? How did such huge numbers come to be packed into common graves–and sometimes even burned? Contemporary scholars agree that these cemeteries, always found in the immediate area of a temple dedicated to one of Egypt’s feline goddesses (such as Pahket at Beni Hasan, Bast at Bubastis, and numerous other sites as well), were filled with the mummies of cats purchased by pilgrims and given as votive gifts to the goddess. They had to be put somewhere.

Temple at Beni Hasan
Temple at Beni Hasan

The cats discovered inside these mummy wrappings were the ancestors of today’s Egyptian Mau cats. Some are clearly identifiable as one of the two wildcat sub-species thought to have interbred to eventually produce Egypt’s domestic cats: the jungle cat, Felis chaus, and the African wild cat, Felis silvestris libyca.

What is a votive gift? We don’t see them much in Western Christianity today. The candles bought and lit alongside the altars in some churches are as close as most of us ever come to this ancient practice. The word “votive” here refers to something given or dedicated as an expression of a wish or desire. In Roman Egypt (which is when ACOOE takes place) the people believed that if they bought a mummified cat and presented it to the temple of a goddess like Bast/Bastet, or Pakhet, the cat’s spirit would join the goddess in the afterlife, where it would continually urge her to bless the giver and answer their prayer, whatever it might be. Of course millions of other animal mummies were given in the same way to their respective gods–snakes, fish, mice, gazelles, ibis, crocodiles, sheep, cattle, falcons, dogs, and even beetles.

Snakes in an ibis mummy
Snakes in an ibis mummy

Recent research has shown that the popularity of votive mummies increased dramatically after 1000 BCE, when temples’ strict formality relaxed, and common people began to express  their own personal piety. As the demand for votive mummies increased, priestly corruption and greed set in, resulting in “mummies” containing no animal at all, only a few bones, or parts of common animals substituted for the bodies of rare ones. In time, some animals came to be bred solely for the mummy trade.

 

 

X-ray of kitten mummy inside votive cat figure
X-ray of kitten mummy inside votive cat figure

Particularly among the cat mummies from Bubastis, archaeologists have discovered a large proportion of young kittens, strangled or with broken necks, placed in adult-size wrappings. Cat remains from Bubastis that were apparently burned rather than mummified are still a mystery. (One tidbit of feline tradition in A Cat Out of Egypt explains such a fictional burning at Leontopolis).

As the description of Beni Hasan makes clear, the mummies in these cemeteries ranged from the ornate and artistically sophisticated to the very simple and carelessly made. The odor described at Beni Hasan certainly would have come from the less carefully-made mummies. Animals mummified as carefully as wealthy humans would have had little or no such odor. (In A Cat Out of Egypt, reference is made to the slip-shod embalming methods used in the production of some votive mummies)

A number of the mummies found in Egypt’s cat cemeteries were more carefully constructed. Many were beautifully painted and expensively wrapped. Some were enclosed in wooden caskets, often shaped as cats. Others were placed inside hollow-cast bronze cat figures. With these more complex figures we may  be straying into the category of household pets embalmed and presented to the temple as votive offerings by their owners after death, although the presence of kitten mummies in some of these bronze figures (see above) may indicate their origin in the cat mummy trade. So in conclusion, we need to examine the different relationships that existed between cats and humans in early Roman Egypt, and how cat burials reflected those relationships.

Cats and their Egyptian Humans

Two early Greek historians are often quoted in discussions of ancient Egyptian cats: Herodotus (484-425 BCE) and Diodorus Siculus (1st C BCE), although their accounts should probably be approached with some caution. For instance, Herodotus states that it was the established habit of Egyptian cats to run into burning buildings; clearly his reports were not entirely accurate. Similar questions remain in his report of the battle of Pelusium, which, according to Herodotus, the Egyptians conceded to the Persians rather than risk killing the animals the Persians had staked out in their front ranks. How can the contradiction between the respect for ancient cats that both men reported, and the evidence of large-scale cat slaughter in the votive mummy industry be resolved?

Editorial cartoon based on the Battle of Pelusium
Editorial cartoon based on the Battle of Pelusium

Perhaps this discrepancy can be explained by suggesting a kind of class distinction among Egyptian cats, at least as far as humans perceived them. The wild or feral cats who lived on the fringes of society would have been lowest in this order, little different from any other wild or domestic animal routinely hunted or raised for food, and probably bred for use in mummies. Second would have been the domestic cats kept as pets and mousers and generally respected as members of a species ennobled by the gods. Third were the sacred cats, whose status might have been determined either by specific markings–as in the case of the Apis bulls–or by their temple lineage. These cats were not worshiped, but held as sacred because in some way they were embodiments of the goddess. However they were identified, it was probably these cats who were so highly respected in Egypt that, according to Diodorus, a visiting Roman was lynched after accidentally killing a cat. Questions remain as to whether temple priests were permitted to kill cats considered to be sacred. Whatever the truth may be, Weguelin’s “Obsequies of an Egyptian Cat” (below) is likely to be a romantic over-statement.

John Reinhard Weguelin, "The Obsequies of an Egyptian Cat," 1886
John Reinhard Weguelin, “The Obsequies of an Egyptian Cat,” 1886
"Little Mewer's" sarcophagus
“Little Mewer’s” sarcophagus

We do know that cats were treasured pets among the ancient Egyptians, and were frequently depicted in their owners’ tombs, as well as being buried with them. They were grieved by their humans as family members when they died. Perhaps the best known of all Egyptian pet cats is Tai Miuwette, “Little Mewer,” the cat beloved of crown prince Thutmose, brother of Akhenaten, whose stone sarcophagus has come down to us. We also know that sometimes these treasured pets were brought to the temples to be embalmed, and sometimes left as votive offerings–but only after natural deaths following long and pampered lives.

 

 

 

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The Temple of Bast at Bubastis

A number of early readers of A Cat Out of Egypt have expressed an interest in learning more about the ancient temple of Bast/Bastet at Bubastis. These are readers after my own heart! If you don’t try to understand the world a character lives in, you have little chance of understanding who that person is. Ancient Egypt is a truly an alien land for English-speaking people of the contemporary Western world, even moreso than ancient Israel–thus ACOOE’s many detailed descriptions of ancient Egyptian customs. I hope you’ll find their culture as fascinating as I did.

EgyptDeltaMapWhen I decided to feature an Egyptian temple cat as Yeshua’s childhood companion, I chose Bubastis for three reasons: first, because it was a temple dedicated to the cat goddess Bast/Bastet; second, because descriptions of the temple in the mid 5th C BCE have come down to us in the writings of the historian Herodotus; and third, because Bubastis lies in the general area of the Nile delta where many Jewish settlements existed in the 1st C CE, which made it a likely location for Yeshua’s family.

Bast relief from Bubastis
Bast relief from Bubastis

I decided to refer to the Egyptian goddess Bast/Bastet as “Bast,” rather than “Bastet,” because I wanted to call to mind her earlier persona as a lion goddess. She was usually called “Bastet” by Yeshua’s time, a diminutive form of her original name “Bast,” emphasizing her less threatening aspect as a domestic cat. But she never lost the connection to her earlier self–a self capable of terrifying rage, who stood between the forces of chaos and the sun’s daily rising, as well representing the more fertile and nurturing aspects of a lioness.

The major construction periods archaeologists have been able to identify at Bubastis begin in the Middle Kingdom (roughly 2000 BCE) and continue through the Hyksos dynasty in the mid-to-late second millennium BCE. The entrance hall, festival hall, and hypostyle hall were all likely to have been built during those years, although they probably replaced earlier structures which can’t be identified. Invading Persian forces in the 6th C BCE inflicted heavy damage on many Egyptian temples, including Bubastis. The repairs and new construction undertaken during the 30th Dynasty (Nectanebo and others, 4th C BCE) were probably made necessary by this period of warfare.

David_Roberts_The_Temple_Of_Kom_Ombo_
“Kom Ombo,” Roberts

Here is a passage describing the temple at Bubastis as Herodotus experienced it around 450 BCE, a hundred years before the addition of the sanctuary hall by Pharaoh Nectanebo:

HolyTreeEdit2
“Holy Tree,” David Roberts

Save for the entrance, it stands on an island; two separate channels approach it from the Nile, running in contrary directions as far as the entry of the temple; each of them is a hundred feet wide and overshadowed by trees.

The outer court has a height of 60 feet, and is adorned with notable tall figures. The temple is in the midst of the city, the whole circuit of which commands a view down into it; for the city’s level has been raised, but that of the temple has been left as it was, so that it can be seen into from without.

A stone wall runs around it; within it is a grove of very tall trees growing around a great shrine wherein is the image of the goddess; the temple is a square, each side measuring an eighth of a mile. A paved road of almost a half mile’s length leads to the entrance, running eastwards toward the marketplace; this road is about 400 feet wide, and bordered by trees reaching to heaven.

Below you can see a 19th C artist’s rendition of the hypostyle hall at the temple of Hathor at Dendera, which was roughly contemporary with Bubastis.

Temple_Dendera
Like many 19th C efforts, the first major excavation at Bubastis by Edouard Naville was not systematically done–although even then the temple was little more than a field of uneven ground, suggesting the scattered and fallen remains buried beneath the surface. In the photo below you can see clearly the raised ground of the city surrounding the temple area, just as Herodotus described it. The people of the Nile delta made a habit of building up the mounds upon which their towns and cities were built to keep them above the level of the Nile floods, but the monumental nature of their stone temples made such mound-building nearly impossible for them.

Naville's Excavation, 1887-1889
Naville’s Excavation, 1887-1889

Unfortunately, major artifacts from Bubastis were carried away to Western museums with little regard for their original placement, although, as ongoing arguments continue to point out, their removal may have preserved them from exposure and vandalism. Many lesser objects were simply cast aside, leaving them vulnerable to theft and weathering. Recent scholars have struggled to piece together the temple’s appearance, both before and after Nectanebo’s changes (350 BCE). Most agree that his major contribution was a new sanctuary area, probably replacing an old one, at the western end of the temple.

The map below reflects a possible plan of the temple area at the time of the Roman conquest of Egypt (30 BCE):

Temple of Bast at Bubastis, map by C.L. Francisco
Temple of Bast at Bubastis, map by C.L. Francisco

The festival road, probably lined with sphinxes, approached the temple from east, where it entered the towering pylons that formed the temple’s main gate.

Similar pylons at temple of Isis, Philae
Similar pylons at temple of Isis, Philae

In front of the pylons, two matching granite statues of a Hyksos king (1500 BCE, below) guarded the approach to the temple. Two columns with palm-leaf capitals stood within the gate, which opened into the entrance hall. The entrance hall itself apparently had no columns, much of its space being filled with statues of various pharaohs, including two monumental statues of Ramesses II standing against the inner wall of the pylons. Both the entrance hall, and the festival hall, an enclosure honoring Osorkon II (9th C BCE), were probably built by Osorkon I and/or Osorkon II.

Beyond the festival hall was the great hall of columns, or hypostyle hall. The hypostyle hall may have been partially divided into two different segments, but the chaos of the fallen columns makes it difficult to say with any certainty.

Fallen columns at Bubastis
Fallen columns at Bubastis

Scholars also disagree as to whether the hall of columns had a ceiling or only epistyles connecting and securing the columns along their tops. There were certainly two types of granite columns discovered–a smaller set with Hathor-head capitals, and a larger set with palm leaf and lotus bud/papyrus capitals. You can see both types of shattered capitals in Naville’s photo above. Below are two intact capitals now in museums.

At the very western end of the temple stood Nectanebo’s 4th C BCE sanctuary hall, entered through a second pair of pylons. The sanctuary hall contained the large central shrine of the goddess Bastet, as well as 7 – 12 smaller shrines along the side and back walls, dedicated to other deities. Most of the sanctuary hall was built of red granite, with floors of basalt. The walls, doors, and ceilings were ornately carved, as was the shrine of the goddess. Stars covered the ceilings.

Starry sky, Hathor temple ceiling, Dendera
Starry sky, Hathor temple ceiling, Dendera

The goddess’ shrine, or naos, was carved from a single piece of red granite, approximately 12 feet high and 5 feet wide, with gilded wooden doors opening inward. Based on its available interior space, the goddess’ statue within the naos would have been 4 – 4 ½ feet high. The image would certainly have been overlaid with gold, if not cast of solid gold, and decorated with precious stones, turquoise, and lapis lazuli. Priests dressed her daily in rich clothing.

 

Bast ointment jar
Bast ointment jar

Since the temple map above was created to illustrate the temple as it is described in A Cat Out of Egypt, the chamber of the Great Cat is shown on the map. In reality, there was no such chamber, so far as anyone knows, just as there was probably no Great Cat. But there was a House of Life, as well as gardens, pools, and probably small free-standing temple buildings. Every temple also had its practical buildings, including housing, kitchens, laundries, animal areas, and temple workshops. Bubastis was known for the ointments and perfumes created by its staff as an expression of the goddess’ reputation as Lady of the Ointment Jar, and Mistress of the Embalming House, as well as being renowned for its oracle. There was also an apparently thriving trade in cat mummies at the time ACOOE took place.

"Ezekiel's Vision," Raphael
“Ezekiel’s Vision”

Bubastis even appears in the writings of the Prophet Ezekiel (Ezek 30:17), when he warns various nations of the wrath to come : “The young men of On and Pi-beseth (Bubastis) shall fall by the sword, and the cities themselves shall go into captivity.” Scholars have speculated that the revels accompanying the annual temple festival at Bubastis may have been responsible for Bubastis’ licentious reputation. Herodotus describes the festival briefly below:

The manner observed in the festival of Bubastis is this: men and women embark promiscuously in great numbers, and during the voyage, some of the women beat upon a tabor, while part of the men play on the pipe, the rest of both sexes singing and striking their hands together at the same time.  At every city they find in their passage they bring the boat to land, and some of the women continue their music, but some of the others either provoke the women of the place with opprobrious language, or dance, or draw up their garments; and they do this at every town that stands by the shore. When they arrive at Bubastis, they celebrate the festival with numerous sacrifices, and consume more wine than in all the rest of the year. For the inhabitants say this assembly usually consists of about 700,000 men and women, besides children.

 The feline narrator of A Cat Out of Egypt has her own ideas about the festival.

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To get a more detailed–and accurate–view of the discoveries at Bubastis, I recommend the ongoing blog of the Tell Basta excavation team.

Click on the following link for a downloadable pdf of the British Museum’s publication, A Naos of Nekhthorheb from Bubastis.

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