HOME | DD
AMELIANVS — Fort Luxor
by-nc-nd
Published: 2014-07-05 15:46:06 +0000 UTC; Views: 16929; Favourites: 153; Downloads: 38
Redirect to original
Description
Diocletianic officers standing in front of the first pylon of the Luxor temple converted into Roman army base during late 3rd/early 4th centuryRelated content
Comments: 30
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
One of them looks like Colonel Gaddafi. (Poor old Gaddafi...) Very nice work though.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Not the first time i hear this,he he.Ressemblance is unintentional although apart from face and haircut it is mainly style of hat what creates this impression as he often wore roughly similar form of hat.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Now I would do that better though.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I'll say it again man, your illustrations are absolutely incredible! You really bring the past to life through the vivid use of colour and detail, and give us a great idea of how Ancient Rome looked back then. It's often difficult because a lot of portrait busts/statues and buildings that were originally painted in bright colours have now completely lost them and faded to the base colour underneath. Btw, have you seen the portrait bust of Caligula with the paint restored from colour particles found on it? In the meantime, keep up the great work!
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Yes,I saw many speculatively painted busts and reliefs but also many artworks with original paint more or less preserved.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
I really like the details on the obelisk, the Gate and the officers paludamentums
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks for appreciation
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
great! wonderful historycal details...really evocative!
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Perhaps they garrisoned the area against the raids of the Blemmyes/Nubians....
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
They definitely were but this was not something new-there were always military garrisons in Egypt Rome's richest province.At that time Diocletian intentionally ceded some poorer territory to Blemmyes to achieve peace with them and used them as buffer state against other possible invaders of Roman Egypt.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Wow. Nice job. It must have been some fort. I wonder if there was much protest from the Egyptians, it surely must have been an important temple to them.
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
I guess if there were some protests at all they were rather very insignificant.Although ancient Egyptan religion was still present in Roman ruled Egypt(and probably survived to some level up to Arab conquest despite being illegal for long time) number of people who actively practicizied it was already very low with such knowledge as reading of hieroglyphs was more and more rare thing to see(as testified explicitly by Ammianus Marcellinus writting at the end of the 4th century).Archeology suggest that part of the Temple was still reserved to old egyptan clergy to execute their religion-I can imagine these were not happy to lost control over majority of the temple they held till that time.Later old egyptan clergy was replaced by the Christian and this was probably active in the tempe until Arab conquest during 7th century.I have no idea what Arabs done with the temple consequently but I guess Romans were probably the last who used this place actively and as a religious place until modern times.You can see good interpretation of this temple as Roman military base here:micasaessilvestre.blogspot.cz/…
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Thanks for replying. You're a real font of information; it's great seeing your artworks and learning more about the later Roman period. I really should read more it about myself, as it seems to be such an interesting time period.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Great details! I also love how the soldier in the background is all like, "man I want something to happen!"
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Why did the Romans convert the Luxor temple into an army base? Did it have anything to do with the Sassanid Persians?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
Details are unknown but it was likely part of Egypt reorganization Diocletian did here to finally achieve stability in the province.Persians at that time were not serious danger for Egypt especially after they were recently defeated heavily in other war with the Romans but main problems with Egypt at that time were frequent revolts and usurpations which forced Diocletian personally intervene repeatedly to settle things down.He newly devided Egypt on more smaller provincies and also ceded some southern territory because he came to conclusion that military units that were guarding it were to expensive to keep in service while Roman state had too little incomes from that region.Unit that was stationed at Luxor was likely a cavalry one as local wall paintings suggests.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Great!
I can feel the heat, heheh!
I love the colours, they're so sunny and give a sense of Egyptian light at midday.
The hieroglyphs must've taken ages d: or not?
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Wow what an awesome drawing ! I knew Luxor had been transformed into an army base during Roman times,
that's great to see a drawing based on this part of Egyptian and Roman History.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0
Beautiful work.
Do the insignias on their cloaks have any meaning?
👍: 0 ⏩: 1
We are not sure.More likely not because similar fashion was normal for civilians as well.Although we cannot exclude this possibility fully-some pictures points on that some of those decoration and designs might really served as distinction for various grades in the army or at least on social rank-especially those colored bands-those are very tempting to view in modern way of similar bands on modern uniforms.
👍: 0 ⏩: 0