Three Coliseums

The University of Georgia where I did both my undergraduate and graduate studies periodically sends me travel brochures of their annual trips around the world. The trips are always to exotic and beautiful locations dripping with Romance and history. Two years ago, I received a brochure that stunned me. On it was a photo of a structure that the average person is probably not aware of. Most everyone has heard of and seen photos of the coliseum in Rome, famous for its gladiatorial fights and notorious for the martyrdom of many early Christians. I was stunned to see on a brochure about a trip to Croatia that there is another ancient coliseum still in existence which is in better condition than the one in Rome. This second coliseum is located in the city of Pula and can be seen here.


Even in my mundane southern town, there is also a coliseum on the campus of my old university. Here is an old post card of it. It can be said that I graduated from high school in a coliseum because the building below is where I and my 12th grade classmates gathered on evening in early June to end one phase of our lives and to begin another.

The Romance of Cameos

Today when I was out, a woman came up to me and just stared at my throat because from it hung one of my most treasured pieces of jewelry, a genuine, hand engraved shell cameo pendant of Mary Queen of Scots. Since I was a girl I have adored cameos. The woman who approached me was a nurse, and said she has long wanted to own a cameo. I told her that what I had on was the real thing, not some mass produced junk.

When some people think of cameos they probably envision prim Victoria ladies in high collars with a cameo pinned on their collars at their necks. I envision them too in my mind’s eye, but my imagination also takes me further back in time to ancient Roman patrician ladies in elaborately circled hairdos with cameo earrings dangling from their earlobes and with intricate necklaces composed of a number cameos around their necks.

The making of handmade cameos is an ancient and dying art which began in the 6th century in ancient Greece. After ancient Roman times cameos enjoyed revivals during the Renaissance, the 17th and 18th centuries and in Victorian times. For a time they were produced and were quite poplar in post World War II Germany.

M + M Scognamiglio is run by Amedeo Scognamiglio who is keeping the cameo tradition alive and well in Italy as are a few other families there. Amedeo comes to the US several times a year and appears on the Home Shopping Network to present new batches of his company’s cameos once they are produced. Some of his available cameos can be seen here. The production of cameos is a painstaking process. Since each piece is made by hand, no two items are exactly alike. Most cameos today are made out of shell, but in the past, cameos were sometimes made out of precious or semi-precious stones. Engraving cameos in stone is more difficult than in shell.

The word “cameo” means “to engrave,” and is believed to be to come from the ancient Hebrew or Arabic word “kamea” which means “charm” or “amulet.” Folkloric claims say that cameos bring on good fortune and or health.

Here is my own cameo which I bought nearly two years ago from M + M Scognamiglio of the tragic and beautiful Mary Queen of Scots.

Last year my mom and I went to see an exhibition of Byzantine artifacts at The Georgia Museum of Art here in Athens on The University of Georgia campus. The collection contained a good quantity of jewelry with pieces that were cameos in semi-precious stone. Over the centuries the subject matter of cameos has tended to be from classical mythology and the profiles of rulers. The Byzantine cameos were not only from Greek mythology, but also on Christian themes since the Byzantine Empire was the Christian offshoot of the Roman Empire. I had a very special and full feeling in the rooms where those pieces were on display because of their mystic and ancient beauty. I wondered about the long dead people who wore those cameos. Most of the pieces which came from what is now Turkey, Syria, and Iraq were well over 1000 years old.

Amedeo Scognamiglio has said that people who appreciate cameos today are those who live history, tradition, art, and beauty. The art of cameo making is a Romantic craft that I hope will never die. I hope to increase my collection someday.

A New Discovery, Sort Of...

When I was an undergraduate at The University of Georgia, I almost majored in anthropology. At the time my alma mater was seeking or claimed to be diligently seeking minorities especially African Americans to major in fields which did not usually attract blacks. Among my choice of electives I picked anthropology since then as now I was extremely interested in world cultures. The professor I studied under encouraged me to consider majoring in the field because I did so well in my studies, getting all A's. I evaded her urgings for reasons I will not go into here.

Around 2003 or 2004 when I was hunting online for any information I could find on Iraqi reactions to what was happening to their country, I found a site called Iraq4u.com which catered to Iraqis who no longer resided in Iraq. On the site were some Iraqi music by various singers, and because of my search there I fell in love with the music of Ilham al Madfai. I subsequently bought one of his CDs. But besides discovering al Madfai, I learned from the site that a people whom I thought had vanished in the pages of Biblical history still existed in Iraq. These people are the Assyrians, the fearsome warriors spoken of over and over in the Old Testament portion of The Bible. The ancient capital of the Assyrians was Nineveh, and even today in Iraq there is a province called Nineveh (Ninawa). There is very little left of what was once the ancient city of Nineveh, however, the descendents of these ancient people who had one of the first Middle Eastern high cultures live on, not as the worshippers of pagan gods like their ancestors millenia ago, but as Christian people. The Assyrians live dispersed throughout the world now. Assyrian minorities who still live in the regions which is their homeland are threatened by Arabization and Islamic extremism. About 400,000 live in the US.

The Assyrians are a Semitic people, whose native language is a form of Aramaic called called Neo-Aramaic or Syriac. Jesus is believed to have spoken Aramaic, so I am sure knowledge of this gives the Assyrian people a lot of pride. When I was Turkey in September, I watched a program on Al Jazeera English one afternoon, about a soccer team for the Assyrian community in Sweden. In this report, I heard for the first time about the Turkish genocide against the Assyrians who lived in eastern Turkey. I was well aware of stories of the Armenian Genocide, but here was a second group who apparently is not fighting as aggressively to get Turkey to admit to crimes as the Armenians are doing. At least I have not heard of any uproar coming from the Assyrian quarter to the degree it does from the Armenians.

What I am learning about the modern day Assyrian people is fascinating along with their music. One of their top singers who was born in Baghdad, but now lives in California is Linda George. She sings in Syriac (Neo-Aramaic) and English and has been inspired by such singers as Anita Baker and Barbara Streisand. Her official website can be accessed here.

The Assyrian people are very proud of their heritage and dream of being able to reclaim their homeland. They were after all the old kids on the block before the Babylons, Medes, Persians, Arabs, and Turks showed up in their territories. Nevertheless, the Assyrians are a mixed "race" of people. I personally think the ones I have viewed online resemble the Turkish people more than they do Arabs, Iranians, or Kurds.

It is said that Assyrian culture was around over 6,000 years ago. They had converted to Christianity before Islam existed. When I look at the products of Assyrian nationalism, it is a interesting mixture of their pagan and Christian heritage. These people are proud, ancient, and becoming a group which is a rare entity in the Middle East: they are Christians.

Here is a video by Linda George about Iraq.



A video by Assyrian singer Faris Esho with a lively couple dancing in traditional Assyrian costume.



A nationalist Assyrian video with (can you believe it?!) the rapper 50 Cent wearing a muscle shirt with the Assyrian flag on it. Is he Assyrian? :) Or does he even know that what he is wearing is the Assyrian flag? Perhaps an Assyrian fan gave it to him.




Here is another Assyrian nationalist video which has art referencing ancient Assyrian civilization.

Finally this video explains Assyrian traditional clothing

I really hope this ancient people can survive because the world will be less colorful without them.