"SYSTEMATIC" LOOTING AT ANTINOOPOLIS

HAS BEEN GOING ON FOR MONTHS

LOOTING has been going on for months at ANTINOOPOLIS, one of Egypt's largest archaeological sites, according to an independent archaeologist who says the site is "being destroyed systematically" by residents amid a complete failure from the government to protect the site.

This blog broke the news on Friday of WIDESPREAD PLUNDERING AT ANTINOOPOLIS.

Experts say Antinoopolis is the latest example of a widespread LOOTING EPIDEMIC that is sweeping Egypt all up and down the Nile Valley. Under the guise of "clearing farm land" or "expanding cemeteries" villagers are in fact plundering archaeological sites.

Looting has been going on at Antinoopolis since at least December, according to Monica Hanna, a researcher with the University of Humboldt in Berlin.

She told "Egypt Independent" online that she received that information from archaeologists who work at the site of the ancient Antinopolis, saying the site faces grave danger.

Hanna's appeal came after an Egyptian archaeologist, Dr Salima Ikram, issued an alert via Facebook last week that the archaeological site adjacent to the village of Sheikh Abada was being plundered and plowed under.

"Sheikh Abada, ancient Roman Antinoopolis, south of Malawi, in Middle Egypt, is being destroyed systematically," Dr. Ikram said in a frantic appeal for help on Facebook.

"The hippodrome, as large as the Circus Maximus in Rome, has been flattened and laid out with cemeteries," she added.

"The northwestern corner of the walled city has been bulldozed for agriculture, and the area near the Ramesses II temple has been bulldozed and levelled as the town is expanding there," she said in an urgent appeal to archaeologists around the world.

"We need to stop this. Archaeologists are meeting with the Ministry of State for Antiquities," to see how to restore order in that part of Upper Egypt.

The case of Antinoopolis was brought to light last December when some media outlets reported that the site was witnessing fierce excavation and demolition campaigns in an attempt to reclaim the land for agricultural use.

Some residents reportedly demolished a large area of ​​archaeological ruins and crypts made of mud-bricks in the Roman necropolis and prepared the area for planting after looting the site.

Hanna, however, told Egypt Independent in a phone call that the situation is getting worse, similar to what has happened to the archaeological site of Dahshur. In January, residents began digging a cemetery on a piece of land in the vicinity of the Temple Valley in Dahshur, an area that has been a UNESCO world heritage site since 1994.

"There is a systematic construction of cemeteries on archaeological sites and the scenario is repeated everywhere," she said, adding that neither the state nor the police are protecting such areas.

She also said that the construction of cemeteries is often a cover to dig up antiquities.

"We are losing the archaeological sites forever. If a home is built, the state can later remove it and retrieve the land. But once the dead are buried, it is impossible to do so," explained Hanna.

Hanna launched a "Save Antinoopolis" campaign in order to shed light on the crisis facing the important archaeological site.

Moreover, she said that Ministry of Antiquities has been unable to confront the destruction of Antinoopolis, which includes archeological finds dating from the pre-dynastic period, the Middle and Modern Kingdoms, and the Ptolemaic period.

The site became famous during the Roman era after Emperor Hadrian established a huge Roman-style city named for Antinous, filling it with theaters, temples, schools and other historic buildings. 

Many of the buildings were still standing during the French invasion of Egypt in the late 18th Century, and scholars later wrote about it in the book "Description de l'Égypte."

The city flourished after the age of Hadrian until the Antinoë region became one of the largest regions of Egypt and included most of Upper Egypt, starting from the South of Fayoum until Sohag, with Antinoopolis as its capital, site of the the wretched modern village of Sheikh Abada.

The importance of the region continued during the Byzantine era. By the spread of Christianity, the city became home to a large diocese. It also remained important during the Islamic eras, as its name became Ansena.

Last year, archaeologists at the site announced that they had located a Roman cemetery dating at least as early as the mid-second to mid-3rd Century AD.

Attacks against Egypt's historical sites began during the 18-day uprising against former President Hosni Mubarak, when some managed to get into the Egyptian museum in Tahrir Square. Later, with the security vacuum around the country, many more archaeological sites were looted or vandalized.

YOUR ONLINE ANTINOUS SHOP

ANTINOPHILES who have despaired of finding Antinous-related items for their homes, cars and work places can breathe a sigh of relief. 

One-stop shopping is just one click away at the online TEMPLE OF ANTINOUS SHOP

This shop features official Antinous articles selected and designed by FLAMEN ANTONYUS SUBIA personally.

If you admire the artwork of Antonyus, then order your own posters of his hand-picked favorite paintings and photographs.

A wide range of T-shirts is available, including classic "T", fitted "T", ringer "T", sleeveless, long-sleeve and baseball jersey — in up to nine colors, depending on the style and design you prefer.

The handy Antinous Tote Bag is a must-have as is a wide array of Antinous lapel buttons and refrigerator magnets in various sizes and designs.

Naturally, there are coffee mugs — and even an official Antinous beer stein appropriately adorned with the well-known Subian portrait of Antinous/Dionysus.

One of our favorites is the Antinous Keepsake Box, available in red-mahogany or black, with a tile cover portrait of the Louvre's breath-taking Ecouen Antinous. This roomy box is perfect for any home shrine or altar and is the perfect jewelry box.

And of course the ever-popular Antinous bumper sticker (at the top of this entry) provides the Beauteous Boy's blessings on any vehicle.

All items are ordered with safety and guaranteed efficiency through cafepress, which has a sound reputation for speedy delivery around the world, with secure payment in all major currencies.

ANTINOOPOLIS SITE "BEING DESTROYED"

AS EGYPT DESCENDS INTO LAWLESSNESS

AS Egypt descends into lawlessness and chaos, the last remnants of the sacred city of ANTINOOPOLIS are "being destroyed" by local villagers who no longer face apprehension by authorities.

The last major structures, such as the giant hippodrome, are being leveled to make room for cemeteries, according to Dr. Salima Ikram, professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. 

And farmers are plowing under portions of the archaeological dig site located adjacent to the village of Sheikh Abada, she added.

 "Sheikh Abada, ancient Roman Antinoopolis, south of Malawi, in Middle Egypt, is being destroyed systematically," Dr. Ikram said in a frantic appeal for help on Facebook.

"The hippodrome, as large as the Circus Maximus in Rome, has been flattened and laid out with cemeteries," she added.

"The northwestern corner of the walled city has been bulldozed for agriculture, and the area near the Ramesses II temple has been bulldozed and levelled as the town is expanding there," she said in an urgent appeal to archaeologists around the world.

"We need to stop this. Archaeologists are meeting with the Ministry of State for Antiquities," to see how to restore order in that part of Upper Egypt.

The alarming news comes amidst a widespread LOOTING EPIDEMIC that is sweeping Egypt all up and down the Nile Valley.

After all, it has happened before at Antinoopolis.

In his authoritative book BELOVED AND GOD, historian Royston Lambert describes the systematic destruction of the Sacred City, which was still thriving when the Arabs invaded ....

"Saladin (1137-93) emerges in the chronicles to order the great doors of the theatre arch to a gate in Cairo where they were still to be seen in the eighteenth century. More ominously, he is said to have ordered the city's demolition, though other Arab writers speak contradictorily of its extensive remains.

"The final destruction is charged indubitably to modern man. When Sigard toured the city in 1715 it was already in ruins. For centuries the locals had used it as a quarry for their homes, mosques and cemeteries. The north and east gates were piles of stones, the colonnades mainly fallen, but the western and southern gates stood substantially intact, architectural features were everywhere visible and even the minor streets could be discerned."

"Even the nitrous soil, rich in papyri, was carted off in loads to supply a gunpowder establishment or nibbled away by the ever-active nitre-gatherers of the valley, the sebbakhin.

"By the 1880s Dr. Freund, reporting back to Dietrichson, wailed: 'The Egyptians seek the last stone, the last piece of burnt brick'. He encountered great piles of recently smashed up stones and shafts. Nevertheless there were a few stumps of columns still obstinately standing and 'everywhere fragments of lovely marbles, remains of panels from houses and splendid remains of columns'.

"When in 1913 Johnson took the first photographs, Antinoopolis had vanished along with the meretricious local prosperity which had consumed it. His prints reveal a ravaged landscape of rubbish and shard tips and of trenches, like a torn battlefield of the coming World War, across which some paving from the great thoroughfare, now shrunken to a ghostly path, arbitrarily and sadly makes its way.

"By the irony of time, the scene which meets modern eyes at that bend of the Nile — with its desolate plain, fringe of palms, miserable village and archaic temple — has reverted back two millennia to that which Antinous may well have glimpsed in his expiring struggles before his head sank finally beneath the waters."

ROME RENEGES ON GLADIATOR TOMB,

OKAYS HIGH-RISE OVER A VILLA

AS Italy sinks into political and economic chaos, Rome has gone back on plans to save the so-called "Gladiator's Tomb", notwithstanding international appeals led by the American School in Rome, and Russell Crowe's intervention....

And ... a high-rise complex will soon be built over the ruins of a Roman Patrician villa where priceless Niobic statues were unearthed only weeks ago.

The recently unearthed tomb of the famous general from the time of Marcus Aurelius who was the inspiration for the character played by Crow in GLADIATOR, will be re-buried because authorities said they cannot afford to restore it.

Crowe spearheaded an effort to raise money to have the tomb restored. 

But, after initially agreeing to save it, the authorities have now reversed that approval and will re-bury the tomb after all, saying the economic crisis in Italy makes it impossible to allocate funds for such "peripheral" projects.

Archaeologists had barely recovered from that surprise announcement when they learned of plans to construct a huge concrete high-rise complex over the villa of Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus, a rich Roman general who was patron to Ovid.

The discovery at the villa of SEVEN EXQUISITE STATUES representing Ovid's retelling of the myth of Niobe made headlines in January.

Ironically, Messalla has gone down in history as a man who despised political capriciousness. He famously said, "I am disgusted with power."

ANTINOUS ARRIVES HOME IN TRIUMPH AT THE SIDE OF EMPEROR HADRIAN

ON March 6th the Religion of Antinous celebrates the arrival of Hadrian and Antinous in Nicomedia during the first year of the final and fateful tour of the Eastern Empire.

In the spring of 129 AD, after visiting Mt. Ida and the Phyrgian countryside the court of Hadrian entered Nicomedia, the ancient capital of the province of Bithynia, from which most of Asia was governed at that time. We commemorate this visit on March 6 each year. 

Here is how Flamen Antonyus Subia describes it at the online TEMPLE OF ANTINOUS:

"This is the triumphant return of Antinous to his homeland as the Imperial Favorite, and is symbolized as the return of the wandering Dionysus.

"It is said that Julius Caesar stayed as the guest of Nicomedes III, the last king of Bithynia, and that Caesar, when he was young, was the lover of Nicomedes. For the rest of his life, critics called Julius Caesar the Queen of Bithynia, a title that may have had some truth because when Nicomedes died without a son, and he left his kingdom to Rome in his will, or rather to his beloved Julius Caesar.

"This title of Queen of Bithynia would by inheritance fall to Hadrian, and it accentuates the homosexual liberty and voluptuousness of the Bithynians as a nation, the reputation of Nicomedia as a city where Kings loved beautiful boys and gave them the throne for their beauty's sake, and this is the atmosphere which permeated the return of Antinous to his people.

"We celebrate the ancient openness and homoeros of the Bithynians and pray that the modern nation of Turkey will one day return to the grace of its ancestors."

STEVEN KILGORE'S PILGRIMAGE TO ROME FOR THE HOLLYWOOD TEMPLE OF ANTINOUS

Tiber I went

 Homage to the Emperor God

Father of us all

Ghost of Castle San Angelo

Guardian of Rome

Sacred pathways

Pilgrims triangle

Ara Pacis

 Pantheon

Mausoleo di Adriano

Hadrian everywhere

Antinoo in the air

Amongst the trees

Smiling round every corner

Under transcendental stars

Antinoo Osiris watch's

Echoing the spirit of priest gone

Shaven heads crowned with garlands

No longer seen

Forever felt

Hiding in plain sight

Sacred Obelisk

Watcher of Rome

Sacred grove

Light of the world

Celestial river

Hadrians Rome

STEPHANOS KILGORE
KNIGHT OF ANTINOUS

MICHALIS HATZIGIANNIS

SINGS "THALASSA"

 

This Greek boy is so, so extra hot!

If Antinous were alive today, this the kind of music

He would be into,

or at least he would be into the boy...

Hadrian would have this music in his iPhone.