IRAN publicly
executed two teenage boys on July 19th, 2005, in the city of Mashad.
Their names were Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, one 18 and the other
17 or 16 years old.
They were accused of raping a 13-year-old boy, but it has been
established that the authorities invented the charge of rape in order to
prevent public sympathy for the true reason for their execution, that
they were Homosexuals.
After their arrest the two boys endured a year of imprisonment and
torture before the high court of Iran upheld their sentence and their
execution by hanging was carried out in a public square in the city of
Mashad.
International outrage was met with arrogance and impunity by the
religious and conservative Iranian government, and a systematic
persecution soon began against homosexuals, which has led to an unabated
spate of sporadic executions over the years, and untold numbers of
arrests and torture.
These events indicate that the worldwide struggle for Gay Freedom has not decreased but has become more violent and inhumane.
The photograph at left of the Martyrs just before their death is one
of the first depictions ever photographed of anti-homosexual violence in
action.
For their suffering, we proclaim Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni and
all of the unnamed gay victims of Iranian persecution, Saints and
Innocent Martyrs of the Religion of Antinous.
May all those who see this image of violence rise up for the cause of Gay Freedom, and remember those who suffer in Iran.
ON JULY 18th the Religion of Antinous honors Saint Caravaggio.
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who died under suspicious
circumstances on this day in 1610, was an extraordinary painter whose
homoerotic images of young men have caused art historians to call him
the first modern painter.
St. Caravaggio is the Patron of Gifted Bad Boys — Gay Boys who are
blessed with incredible talents but who are too impatient and too
rebellious to abide by the rules of society.
St. Caravaggio was always in trouble. In 1592, when he was not yet 20
years old, he fled Milan after a series of brawls and the wounding of a
police officer. He went to Rome and was there, for the most part, until
1606, when he again had to flee. His life in Rome was of growing
financial and professional success, but it was also punctuated with
crime.
In the years 1600-1606 alone, he was brought to trial no less than
eleven times. The charges covered a variety of offenses, most involved
violence. It is significant that, despite his reputation for
homosexuality, and his endless brushes with the police, he was never
charged with sodomy, then a capital offense.
But he was charged with murder. On 29 May 1606 he killed one
Tommasoni in a brawl after a disputed game of royal tennis, and had to
flee to escape execution. He went first to Naples, then to Malta, where
he was feted and made a Knight of St John.
Then, after "an ill considered quarrel" with a senior knight, he was
on the run once more, all around Sicily, then on to Naples again.
But this time there was no hiding place. The knights, known for their
relentlessness, pursued him, and Caravaggio, now 39 nine, in an attempt
to seek forgiveness and refuge in Rome, tried to get there, but died at
Porto Ercole, apparently of a fever, though the circumstances are
highly suspicious.
Despite his hunted and, in the end, desperate life, he always managed
to go on painting, often without a proper workshop of any kind. He was
variously described, even by admirers, as a man of "stravaganze" as "uno cervello stravagantissimo" (exceptionally odd) and a "cervello stravolto".
His father died when he was six, his mother when he was 18, which may
help to explain his anger at the world. His paintings show that he was a
man of the most profound religious convictions, of a humble and
contrite heart, and with a fanatical devotion to his art.
His fundamental ideas were always absolutely clear, though he
continually changed and improved his techniques. He believed in total
realism, and he always painted from life, dragging poor people in from
the street if need be.
He became a great realist by painting flowers and fruit, in a variety
of lights, sometimes pure still lifes, sometimes with street boys, such
as the model for Bacchus (above).
To achieve realism, he liked to pull his subject out of surrounding
darkness into strong lateral or overhead light, as close to the viewer
as possible.
This was a new kind of art, which was to have momentous consequences.
It has led some modern writers to speculate that, born into the 20th or
21st Century, Caravaggio would have been a photographer or a filmmaker.
But that is nonsense. Caravaggio, it is clear, adored the feel and
line of a brush on a slightly springy surface, prepared with grey (as a
rule), and the sheer creative excitement of using the brush to bring the
real world out of the darkness of the canvas.
For the first time in the history of art, Caravaggio eliminated the
space between the event in the painting and the people looking at it. He
created a kind of virtual reality to give you a feeling as though you
are right there inside the painting.
Even we, whose vision and sense of reality has been blunted and
distorted by television and the cinema, still get tremendous impressions
of participating when we see his great canvases close up. What then
must it have been like in the early seventeenth century, for people who
had never come across anything approaching this blast of actuality, to
be brought face-to-face with a reenactment of sacred events in two
dimensions, such as St. Francis of Asisi in Ecstasy?
Artists were particularly struck, or perhaps shocked is a better
word, but horribly stimulated too, and stirred to find out exactly how
the man did it.
Caravaggio, despite all his difficulties, always finished each piece
of work if he possibly could, then went directly on to another, with
fresh ideas and new experiments.
He was a Bad Boy. But he was a gifted genius. The Religion of
Antinous honors this Patron of Gifted Bad Gay Boys as an exemplar and
saint. Let us lift our glasses to St. Caravaggio.
A treasure trove of Greek graffiti from the sublime to the sleazy has been found in the İzmir agora during excavation work in that city in Turkey. The graffiti shows daily life in the Hellenistic and Roman periods in the birth land of Antinous.
The graffiti is estimated to date back to the 2nd Century AD. Experts have said it constitutes the richest single find of Greek graffiti in the world.
Besides writing and paintings done with paint, there are also dozens of often lurid carvings on the wall.
The graffiti shows that İzmir was very tolerant even in ancient times. The scrawled doodles on the walls along the lines of "Greetings from ..." mention the names of many cities, showing visitors came from a wide range of other cultures.
A vast panoply of figures was drawn, from trade ships to gladiators.
There are also confessions and statements on life. One reads, "I love someone who does not love me."
Another says, "The gods healed my eyes, this is why I dedicate an oil lamp to the gods."
Another piece of graffiti reads, "The one who ensouls," a reference to a deity such as Dionysus or Antinous who holds out the promise of life after death ... or it possibly referred to the upstart religion of Christianity.
There are also riddles that have not yet been solved on the walls.
Professor Cumhur Tanrıver said İzmir has the most Greek graffiti in the world.
"There are some examples of graffiti under the plaster as well that we cannot prepare yet," he said. "We are having talks with Swiss experts to uncover them without damaging the ones on the top layer."
A stone age solar and lunar calendar has been discovered in a dozen pits in northern Scotland ... meaning that humans had a sophisticated calendrical system thousands of years earlier than previously thought, according to new research.
The discovery is based on a detailed analysis of data from an archaeological site in northern Scotland – a row of ancient pits which archaeologists believe is the world's oldest calendar. It is almost 5,000 years older than its nearest rival – an ancient calendar from Bronze Age Mesopotamia.
Created by Stone Age Britons some 10,000 years ago, the complex of pits was designed to represent the months of the year and the lunar phases of the month, archaeologists believe. They believe it also allowed the observation of the mid-winter sunrise – in effect the birth of the new year – so that the lunar calendar could be annually re-calibrated to bring it back into line with the solar year.
Remarkably the monument was in use for some 4,000 years – from around 8,000BC (the early Mesolithic period) to around 4,000BC (the early Neolithic).
Besides being a solar calendar, the 12 pits may also have played a second role by representing the lunar month. Mirroring the phases of the moon, the waxing and the waning of which takes 29 and half days, the succession of pits, arranged in a shallow arc (perhaps symbolizing the movement of the moon across the sky), starts small and shallow at one end, grows in diameter and depth towards the middle of the arc and then wanes in size at the other end.
The site – at Warren Field, Crathes, Aberdeenshire – was excavated in 2004 by the National Trust for Scotland, but the data was only analysed in detail over the past six months using the specially written software which permitted an interactive exploration of the relationship between the 12 pits, the local topography and the movements of the moon and the sun.
WE have seen every sort of Antinous collectible ... jewelry, coffee mugs, T-shirts, amulets, posters ... but even the most avid collectors were surprised (and envious) to learn of the existence of an Antinous coloring book.
Thirty years ago there was a spate of paper-doll cutout books and coloring books for adults. Paper dolls of Joan Crawford and Mae West, for example.
These "children's" books were targeted at adult specialty genre collectors.
Some were published as refrigerator magnets ... the most famous being Michelangelo's "David" with a wardrobe of magnetic fashion accessories.
By and large, these books were gimmicky and often campy. But some took on serious highlights from art history ... offering coloring books which gave collectors a tongue-in-cheek gallery of famous works of art. There were coloring books of all sorts of things, including ancient civilizations.
But we had never heard of a coloring book featuring Antinous ... until now ....
One of our far-flung correspondents literally stumbled upon it ... here is what he says:
"I am always on the look out for Antinous finds. You know that feeling when you come face to face with our Beloved. You blink once, twice. Is that him? Then in your heart you know.
"Sharing my first find is a coloring book titled: 'Liber Romanus Pingendus A Coloring Book of Rome'. I found this in a used book store. You know the kind. The books are stacked floor to ceiling. They all have dust and that smell of old. I know it's weird but, I like that smell, the smell of history. Here are some pages that I know you will like."
Yes indeed ... we certainly like them. And we know you will too. The coloring book includes detailed plates showing Emperor Hadrian, his hand-picked heir Lucius Verus (hand-picked by Hadrian to be co-emperor with Marcus Aurelius), as well as a depiction of the Assumption of Antoninus Pius (Hadrian's immediate successor) ... and two pages devoted to Antinous himself.
Above is Antinous as Phanes encircled by astrological signs and enwrapped by a serpent.
At right is a line drawing of the famous Lanuvium bas-relief showing Antinous as the rustic deity Sylvanus/Aristaeus harvesting grapes with a dog looking up at him adoringly.
Get out your crayons!
AN EGYPTIAN priest living in the heyday of the city of ANTINOOPOLIS wrote a steamy fictional story of priestly sex, according to a recently deciphered papyrus text.
The crumbling papyrus was found at the famed Tebtunis Library — a cache of thousands of papyrus scrolls at a temple complex in the Fayoum Oasis not far from Antinoopolis.
The
papyrus is believed to be 1,900 years old, which would make the author a
contemporary of the nearby Priests of Antinous at Antinoopolis, only a
short boat ride up the Nile from Tebtunis.
Thousands of scrolls were found at Tebtunis, few of which
have been translated. This scroll is currently in Florence, Italy, in
the Istituto Papirologico "G. Vitelli."
The newly deciphered tale
refers several times to priests dressing up, wearing makeup, partying
and having sex. At one point a speaker implores a person to "drink
truly. Eat truly. Sing" and to "don clothing, anoint (yourself), adorn
the eyes, and enjoy sexual bliss."
The narrator of the story
adds that the chief deity of his temple, the vulture goddess Mut, will
not let you "be distant from drunkenness on any day. She will not allow
you to be lacking in any (manner)."
The narrator defends his views by saying, "As for those who have called me evil, Mut will 'call' them evil."
Christian
writers at the time harshly condemned Egyptian priests in general, and
the Priests of Antinous in particular, for engaging in what they called
"debaucheries" and "wanton sexual perversities" in the name of religious
ecstasy.
So it is possible this story was a reaction to the
prudishness of the fanatical Christians, who insisted that Jesus was
virginal and sexually abstinent, as were his priests.
Researchers
know the story is fictional because it employs an Egyptian noun used
only in fiction to mark separate sections of a story. They know when it
was written because the priest wrote in DEMOTIC, which was the Egyptian script used during the Roman occupation of Egypt.
Reconstructing
the overall plot narrative of the papyrus is tricky. The text is
fragmentary, and researchers cannot be certain how the full story
unfolded since there are large "lacunae" or gaps where bugs have eaten
away sections of the text.
"Conceivably, we have here the remains
of an account of how an adherent of the goddess Mut persuaded another
individual to devote himself to her worship or join in her rites,"
according to the researchers, professors Richard Jasnow and Mark Smith,
who published their translation and analysis of the papyrus in the most
recent edition of the journal Enchoria.
Jasnow, from Johns
Hopkins University, and Smith, from Oxford, write that evidence of
ritual sex is rare in ancient Egypt and the act probably would have
been controversial in earlier ages.
"There is surprisingly
little unequivocal Egyptian evidence for the performance of the sex act
as such in ritual contexts," Jasnow and Smith write.
Thus it is
possible that the ancient priest was writing a tongue-in-cheek satire
lampooning the prudishness of contemporary Christian writers who accused
Egyptian pagans of lasciviousness in their temples.
THE Colosseum, Pompeii and other ancient monuments in Italy are crumbling due to budget cutbacks caused by the country's financial crisis, the UNESCO warns in an urgent appeal.
The lack of funds is having a disastrous affect on the country's archaeological treasures, with many sites closed due to fears of rock collapses and others sporadically shut by protests and strikes.
Giovanni Puglisi, head of the UNESCO National Commission in Italy, warns the government to act fast to adopt suitable measures for Pompeii, which has long been a sponge for funds then used poorly or syphoned off by criminal organisations.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization documented structural shortcomings and light damage at the 44-hectare (110-acre) site in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, where collapsing walls and houses have sparked international concern.
The giant eruption devastated Pompeii nearly 2,000 years ago in 79 AD but the ash and rock helped preserve many buildings almost in their original state, as well as the curled-up corpses of victims.
The hugely popular site near Naples has come to symbolise decades of mismanagement of many of Italy's cultural treasures, as well as the fallout from austerity cuts in the recession-hit country.
Puglisi warned of "irregular buildings not included in the previous plan and a lack of personnel" at Pompeii and called for "a new observance zone" around the site to protect it from illegal construction encroaching upon the area.
Italy, which is relying heavily on tourism to help boost the economy, moved quickly to reassure UNESCO it was doing its utmost to get the repairs made.
"Over the last five years, the culture budget has been reduced by two thirds," Culture Minister Massimo Bray complained in an interview in Italian newspapers.
Italy is now lagging well behind its European counterparts: the country allocates just 1.1 percent of its budget to culture, compared to 7.4 percent in Ireland, 3.3 percent in Spain and 2.5 percent in France.
"Our highly symbolic monuments are our best calling cards throughout the world," Bray said.
"Pompeii is a symbol for our country. UNESCO's reprimand is an alarm which I take very seriously and we are already working to overcome the site's urgent problems."
Twice in the past year, torrential rains have caused irreplaceable walls at Pompeii to collapse (photo right) because there was no money to shore them up.
As well as problems with upkeep, however, a lack of staff at the sites has sparked trade union strikes.
Tourists eager to visit Rome's Colosseum, Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the Last Supper in Milan or the Uffizi Gallery in Florence last week were met with closed doors.
"Heritage management is in a comatose state," archaeologist Salvatore Settis told La Repubblica daily.
"We are paying the price of disastrous policies over the last few years," he said.
The number of visitors to the Colosseum, the biggest Roman amphitheatre ever built, has increased from a million to around six million a year over the past decade or so thanks mainly to the 2000 blockbuster film "Gladiator".
But it has also fallen into disrepair in recent years: bits of stone, blackened by pollution, have fallen off and some experts have voiced concern that the foundations are sinking, giving the amphitheatre a lean.
Long-delayed repairs to the 2,000-year-old monument, funded by Italian billionaire Diego Della Valle, are in the pipeline -- but problems with red tape mean they have yet to get off the ground.
In the case of Pompeii, Italy is relying on additional funding from the EU.
Conservation experts began a 105-million euro ($136-million) makeover of the site in February -- funded to the tune of 41.8 million euros from the EU -- to be completed by 2015.
The repairs are aimed at reducing the risk of exposure to the elements, reinforcing the ancient Roman buildings, restoring Pompeii's famous frescoes and increasing video surveillance at the site where security is often lax.
The "Grand Pompeii Project", as it is known, aims to improve facilities for visitors and the European Commission estimates tourist numbers could increase from around 2.3 million a year to 2.6 million by 2017.
IRAN publicly
executed two teenage boys on July 19th, 2005, in the city of Mashad.
