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100-424: The cup is also a very rare example of a complete Roman cage-cup, or diatretum , where the glass has been painstakingly cut and ground back to leave only a decorative "cage" at the original surface-level. Many parts of the cage have been completely undercut. Most cage-cups have a cage with a geometric abstract design, but here there is a composition with figures, showing the mythical King Lycurgus , who (depending on

200-747: A homeland for the Jewish people . The modern definition of the region follows the boundaries of that entity, which were fixed in the North and East in 1920–23 by the British Mandate for Palestine (including the Transjordan memorandum ) and the Paulet–Newcombe Agreement , and on the South by following the 1906 Turco-Egyptian boundary agreement. The region of Palestine is the eponym for

300-517: A thyrsus , the special staff of the god and his followers, and his dress has an Eastern, perhaps Indian, flavour, reflecting what the Ancient Greeks generally believed (perhaps wrongly) about the origins of his cult. The calf section of one leg has been lost. A streamer hanging behind him from his thyrsus overlaps the raised foot of the satyr with the rock, completing the circle of the cup. It has been suggested that this not very common scene

400-706: A "district of Syria, called Palaistínē " ( Ancient Greek : Συρίη ἡ Παλαιστίνη καλεομένη ) in The Histories , which included the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley . Approximately a century later, Aristotle used a similar definition for the region in Meteorology , in which he included the Dead Sea . Later Greek writers such as Polemon and Pausanias also used the term to refer to

500-734: A cabbage was growing nearby. Palestine (region) The region of Palestine , also known as historic Palestine , is a geographical area in West Asia . It includes modern-day Israel and the State of Palestine , as well as parts of northwestern Jordan in some definitions. Other names for the region include Canaan , the Promised Land , the Land of Israel , or the Holy Land . The earliest written record referring to Palestine as

600-581: A century, beginning with the Turkish freeman Ahmad ibn Tulun , for whom both Jews and Christians prayed when he lay dying and ending with the Ikhshidid rulers. Reverence for Jerusalem increased during this period, with many of the Egyptian rulers choosing to be buried there. However, the later period became characterized by persecution of Christians as the threat from Byzantium grew. The Fatimids , with

700-625: A feature of Roman religious life around 300. A letter supposedly from the Emperor Hadrian (d. 138) to his brother-in-law Servianus , quoted in a biography in the Historia Augusta , records the gift of two dichroic cups, which the 4th-century author had seen: "I have sent you particoloured cups that change colour, presented to me by the priest of a temple. They are specially dedicated to you and my sister. I would like you to use them at banquets on feast days." Other depictions of

800-518: A geographical region is in the Histories of Herodotus in the 5th century BCE, which calls the area Palaistine , referring to the territory previously held by Philistia , a state that existed in that area from the 12th to the 7th century BCE. The Roman Empire conquered the region and in 6 CE established the province known as Judaea , but then in 132 CE in the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt

900-401: A large rock at Lycurgus. In his other hand he holds a pedum or shepherd's crook. To the right of Lycurgus comes first a figure of Pan , then at his feet a rather canine-looking panther , the traditional companion of Dionysus, whose face is missing but was presumably snapping at the king, and then the god himself, taunting him with his right arm extended in an angry gesture. Dionysus carries

1000-506: A long and tumultuous history as a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. The region has been controlled by numerous peoples, including ancient Egyptians , Canaanites , Israelites , Assyrians , Babylonians , Achaemenids , ancient Greeks , Romans , Parthians , Sasanians , Byzantines , the Arab Rashidun , Umayyad , Abbasid and Fatimid caliphates , Crusaders , Ayyubids , Mamluks , Mongols , Ottomans ,

1100-532: A major regional power, partly fueled by his monopolization of the cotton and olive oil trade from Palestine to Europe. Acre's regional dominance was further elevated under Zahir's successor Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar at the expense of Damascus . In 1830, on the eve of Muhammad Ali 's invasion, the Porte transferred control of the sanjaks of Jerusalem and Nablus to Abdullah Pasha , the governor of Acre. According to Silverburg, in regional and cultural terms this move

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1200-701: A name for the geographic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Under Arab rule, Filastin (or Jund Filastin ) was used administratively to refer to what was under the Byzantines Palaestina Secunda (comprising Judaea and Samaria ), while Palaestina Prima (comprising the Galilee region) was renamed Urdunn ("Jordan" or Jund al-Urdunn ). Nineteenth-century sources refer to Palestine as extending from

1300-627: A predominantly Berber army, conquered the region in 970, a date that marks the beginning of a period of unceasing warfare between numerous enemies, which destroyed Palestine, and in particular, devastating its Jewish population. Between 1071 and 1073, Palestine was captured by the Great Seljuq Empire , only to be recaptured by the Fatimids in 1098. The Fatimids again lost the region to the Crusaders in 1099 . The Crusaders set up

1400-483: A rare and highly expensive object, and the secrets of its manufacture, possibly not well understood even by its makers, seem only to have been used for about a century. There are various small losses, of which the face of the panther is the most significant, and the cup is cracked; the British Museum has never removed the metal rim for this reason. The base or foot of the cup is damaged, and the original form of

1500-609: A revolt against the latter led to its destruction in 586 BCE. The region became part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from c. 740 BCE, which was itself replaced by the Neo-Babylonian Empire in c. 627 BCE. In 587/6 BCE, Jerusalem was besieged and destroyed by the second Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II , who subsequently exiled the Judeans to Babylon . The Kingdom of Judah

1600-659: A term that had previously only referred to the smaller region of the Judaean Mountains . During the same period, the Edomites were converted to Judaism. Between 73 and 63 BCE, the Roman Republic extended its influence into the region in the Third Mithridatic War . Pompey conquered Judea in 63 BCE, splitting the former Hasmonean Kingdom into five districts. In around 40 BCE,

1700-587: Is a further reference to Lycurgus in Sophocles ' Antigone in the Chorus's ode after Antigone is taken away (960 in the Greek text). In Homer's Iliad , an older source than Aeschylus, Lycurgus's punishment for his disrespect towards the gods, particularly Dionysus, is blindness inflicted by Zeus followed not long after by death. According to Sophocles , the frenzied Lycurgus mocked at Dionysus and as punishment

1800-665: Is also sometimes used in a limited sense to refer to the parts of the Palestinian territories currently under the administrative control of the Palestinian National Authority , a quasi-governmental entity which governs parts of the State of Palestine under the terms of the Oslo Accords . Estimating the population of Palestine in antiquity relies on two methods – censuses and writings made at

1900-874: Is debated. Between 259 and 272, the region fell under the rule of Odaenathus as King of the Palmyrene Empire . Following the victory of Christian emperor Constantine in the Civil wars of the Tetrarchy , the Christianization of the Roman Empire began, and in 326, Constantine's mother Saint Helena visited Jerusalem and began the construction of churches and shrines. Palestine became a center of Christianity, attracting numerous monks and religious scholars. The Samaritan Revolts during this period caused their near extinction. In 614 CE, Palestine

2000-803: Is estimated to have occurred from 28 to 30 CE, although the historicity of Jesus is disputed by a minority of scholars. In the first and second centuries CE, the province of Judea became the site of two large-scale Jewish revolts against Rome . During the First Jewish-Roman War , which lasted from 66 to 73 CE, the Romans razed Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple . In Masada , Jewish zealots preferred to commit suicide than endure Roman captivity. In 132 CE, another Jewish rebellion erupted. The Bar Kokhba revolt took three years to put down, incurred massive costs on both

2100-470: Is first mentioned in print in 1845, when a French writer said he had seen it "some years ago, in the hands of M. Dubois". This is probably shortly before it was acquired by the Rothschild family . Certainly Lionel de Rothschild owned it by 1857, when the touring Gustav Friedrich Waagen saw it in his collection and described it as "barbaric and debased". In 1862 Lionel lent it to an exhibition at what

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2200-579: Is found in five inscriptions referring to a neighboring people or land starting from c. 1150 BCE during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt . The first known mention is at the temple at Medinet Habu which refers to the Peleset among those who fought with Egypt in Ramesses III 's reign, and the last known is 300 years later on Padiiset's Statue . Seven known Assyrian inscriptions refer to

2300-698: Is now the Victoria and Albert Museum , after which it virtually fell from scholarly view until 1950. In 1958, Victor, Lord Rothschild sold it to the British Museum for £20,000, £2,000 of which was donated by the Art Fund (then the NACF). The cup forms part of the museum's Department of Prehistory and Europe rather than the Greece and Rome Department, and was previously on display, lit from behind, in Room 50. In 2015 it

2400-437: Is probable that, like several other luxury Roman objects, it has always been preserved above ground; most often such objects ended up in the relatively secure environment of a church treasury . Alternatively it might, like several other cage cups, have been recovered from a sarcophagus . The present gilt-bronze rim and foot were added in about 1800, suggesting it was one of the many objects taken from church treasuries during

2500-471: Is the sort of esoteric religion which the Emperor Julian , Symmachus , Praetextatus , Macrobius and Proclus relished. The religious thought behind these floors is probably deeper and more complex than contemporary Christianity and many of the keys to understanding it have been lost." The cup was probably designed for drinking from at feasts, or more specifically Bacchic cult celebrations, where

2600-735: The Assassination of Ali , Muawiyah I became the Caliph of the Islamic world after being crowned in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock , completed in 691, was the world's first great work of Islamic architecture. The majority of the population was Christian and was to remain so until the conquest of Saladin in 1187. The Muslim conquest apparently had little impact on social and administrative continuities for several decades. The word 'Arab' at

2700-531: The British , and modern Israelis and Palestinians . The region was among the earliest in the world to see human habitation, agricultural communities and civilization . During the Bronze Age , independent Canaanite city-states were established, and were influenced by the surrounding civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia , Phoenicia , Minoan Crete, and Syria. Between 1550 and 1400 BCE,

2800-797: The Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York , in 2003 at the Hayward Gallery in London in "'Saved! 100 Years of the National Art Collections Fund", and in 1987 in "Glass of the Caesars" in the British Museum, Cologne , Milan , and Rome. Lycurgus (Thrace) In Greek mythology , Lycurgus (/laɪˈkɜːrɡəs/; Ancient Greek : Λυκοῦργος Lykoûrgos , Ancient Greek: [lykôrɡos]; also Lykurgos , Lykourgos )

2900-574: The Dead Sea and River Jordan ) has at times formed a political and administrative frontier, even within empires that have controlled both territories. At other times, such as during certain periods during the Hasmonean and Crusader states for example, as well as during the biblical period , territories on both sides of the river formed part of the same administrative unit. During the Arab Caliphate period, parts of southern Lebanon and

3000-792: The Iron Age , the Israelites established two related kingdoms, Israel and Judah . The Kingdom of Israel emerged as an important local power by the 10th century BCE before falling to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE. Israel's southern neighbor, the Kingdom of Judah , emerged in the 8th or 9th century BCE and later became a client state of first the Neo-Assyrian and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire before

3100-539: The Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291). Their control of Jerusalem and most of Palestine lasted almost a century until their defeat by Saladin 's forces in 1187, after which most of Palestine was controlled by the Ayyubids , except for the years 1229–1244 when Jerusalem and other areas were retaken by the Second Kingdom of Jerusalem , by then ruled from Acre (1191–1291), but, despite seven further crusades,

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3200-719: The Mongol raids into Palestine under Nestorian Christian general Kitbuqa , and reaching an apex at the pivotal Battle of Ain Jalut , where they were pushed back by the Mamluks. In 1486, hostilities broke out between the Mamluks and the Ottoman Empire in a battle for control over western Asia, and the Ottomans conquered Palestine in 1516. Between the mid-16th and 17th centuries, a close-knit alliance of three local dynasties,

3300-851: The Muslim conquest , place names that were in use by the Byzantine administration generally continued to be used in Arabic. The use of the name "Palestine" became common in Early Modern English , was used in English and Arabic during the Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem and was revived as an official place name with the British Mandate for Palestine . Some other terms that have been used to refer to all or part of this land include Canaan , Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael or Ha'aretz),

3400-407: The Neo-Babylonian Empire , the Achaemenid Empire , the Macedonian Empire , and the Seleucid Empire . The brief Hasmonean dynasty ended with its gradual incorporation into the Roman Empire, and later the Byzantine Empire, during which Palestine became a center of Christianity. In the 7th century, Palestine was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate , ending Byzantine rule in the region; Rashidun rule

3500-442: The Palestinian people and the culture of Palestine , both of which are defined as relating to the whole historical region, usually defined as the localities within the border of Mandatory Palestine . The 1968 Palestinian National Covenant described Palestine as the "homeland of the Arab Palestinian people", with "the boundaries it had during the British Mandate". However, since the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence ,

3600-497: The Parthians conquered Palestine, deposed the Roman ally Hyrcanus II , and installed a puppet ruler of the Hasmonean line known as Antigonus II . By 37 BCE, the Parthians withdrew from Palestine. Palestine is generally considered the "Cradle of Christianity ". Christianity, a religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth , arose as a messianic sect from within Second Temple Judaism . The three-year Ministry of Jesus , culminating in his crucifixion ,

3700-408: The Promised Land , the region of Syria , the Holy Land , Iudaea Province , Judea , Coele-Syria , "Israel HaShlema", Kingdom of Israel , Kingdom of Jerusalem , Zion , Retenu (Ancient Egyptian), Southern Syria , Southern Levant and Syria Palaestina . Situated at a strategic location between Egypt , Syria and Arabia , and the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity , the region has

3800-423: The Ridwans of Gaza , the Turabays of al-Lajjun and the Farrukhs of Nablus , governed Palestine on behalf of the Porte (imperial Ottoman government). In the 18th century, the Zaydani clan under the leadership of Zahir al-Umar ruled large parts of Palestine autonomously until the Ottomans were able to defeat them in their Galilee strongholds in 1775–76. Zahir had turned the port city of Acre into

3900-437: The Second Intifada (also called al-Aqsa Intifada) began, and Israel built a separation barrier . In the 2005 Israeli disengagement from Gaza , Israel withdrew all settlers and military presence from the Gaza Strip, but maintained military control of numerous aspects of the territory including its borders, air space and coast. Israel's ongoing military occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem continues to be

4000-440: The Six-Day War in June 1967, Israel captured the rest of Mandate Palestine from Jordan and Egypt, and began a policy of establishing Jewish settlements in those territories . From 1987 to 1993, the First Palestinian Intifada against Israel took place, which included the Declaration of the State of Palestine in 1988 and ended with the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords and the creation of the Palestinian National Authority . In 2000,

4100-408: The Torah , with undefined boundaries, and almost 200 of the remaining references are in the Book of Judges and the Books of Samuel . The term is rarely used in the Septuagint , which used a transliteration Land of Phylistieim ( Γῆ τῶν Φυλιστιείμ ), different from the contemporary Greek place name Palaistínē ( Παλαιστίνη ). It is also theorized to be the portmanteau of the Greek word for

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4200-408: The United Nations General Assembly adopted in November 1947 a Resolution 181(II) recommending partition into an Arab state, a Jewish state and the Special International Regime for the City of Jerusalem. A civil war began immediately after the Resolution's adoption. The State of Israel was declared in May 1948. In the 1948 Arab–Israeli War , Israel captured and incorporated a further 26% of

4300-423: The West Bank and the Gaza Strip respectively. The 1967 Six Day War saw Israel's occupation of both territories , which has been among the core issues of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict . Modern archaeology has identified 12 ancient inscriptions from Egyptian and Assyrian records recording likely cognates of Hebrew Pelesheth . The term "Peleset" ( transliterated from hieroglyphs as P-r-s-t )

4400-404: The British Museum's other spectacular work in Roman glass, the cameo glass Portland Vase , the cup represents to some extent the extension of skills developed by cutters of engraved gems , or the larger hardstone carving of vessels in semi-precious stones, which were luxury arts with enormous prestige in ancient Rome. No carved gemstone vessels directly comparable to either work are known, but

4500-454: The Canaanite cities became vassals to the Egyptian New Kingdom who held power until the 1178 BCE Battle of Djahy (Canaan) during the wider Bronze Age collapse . The Israelites emerged from a dramatic social transformation that took place in the people of the central hill country of Canaan around 1200 BCE, with no signs of violent invasion or even of peaceful infiltration of a clearly defined ethnic group from elsewhere. During

4600-409: The Franks were no longer a significant power in the region. The Fourth Crusade , which did not reach Palestine, led directly to the decline of the Byzantine Empire, dramatically reducing Christian influence throughout the region. The Mamluk Sultanate was created in Egypt as an indirect result of the Seventh Crusade . The Mongol Empire reached Palestine for the first time in 1260, beginning with

4700-413: The Jordan valley in 1918 and a campaign by the Entente into northern Palestine led to victory at Megiddo in September . The British were formally awarded the mandate to govern the region in 1922. The Arab Palestinians rioted in 1920 , 1921 , 1929 , and revolted in 1936 . In 1947, following World War II and The Holocaust , the British Government announced its desire to terminate the Mandate, and

4800-403: The Mandate territory, Jordan captured the regions of Judea and Samaria , renaming it the " West Bank ", while the Gaza Strip was captured by Egypt . Following the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight , also known as al-Nakba , the 700,000 Palestinians who fled or were driven from their homes were not allowed to return following the Lausanne Conference of 1949 . In the course of

4900-442: The Muslim Arabs not to settle in the villages, "for he who abides in villages it is as if he abides in graves". The Umayyads , who had spurred a strong economic resurgence in the area, were replaced by the Abbasids in 750. Ramla became the administrative centre for the following centuries, while Tiberias became a thriving centre of Muslim scholarship. From 878, Palestine was ruled from Egypt by semi-autonomous rulers for almost

5000-500: The Orontes , and a group on a 2nd-century sarcophagus at the Villa Parisi in Frascati . There is also a floor-mosaic from Vienne , now in the museum at Saint-Romain-en-Gal , with Lycurgus alone inside the vine. The preceding scene of Lycurgus attacking Ambrosia, is on a floor-mosaic at Brading Roman Villa on the Isle of Wight . Of this and similar mosaics, Martin Henig says: "In cases such as this, we are not concerned with simple, popular paganism but with recondite knowledge. This

5100-409: The Philistines and palaistês , which means "wrestler/rival/adversary". This aligns with the Greek practice of punning place names since the latter is also the etymological meaning for Israel . The Septuagint instead used the term "allophuloi" ( άλλόφυλοι , "other nations") throughout the Books of Judges and Samuel, such that the term "Philistines" has been interpreted to mean "non-Israelites of

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5200-416: The Promised Land" when used in the context of Samson, Saul and David, and Rabbinic sources explain that these peoples were different from the Philistines of the Book of Genesis . During the Byzantine period , the region of Palestine within Syria Palaestina was subdivided into Palaestina Prima and Secunda , and an area of land including the Negev and Sinai became Palaestina Salutaris . Following

5300-432: The Romans and the Jews, and desolated much of Judea. The center of Jewish life in Palestine moved to the Galilee. During or after the revolt, Hadrian joined the province of Iudaea with Galilee and the Paralia to form the new province of Syria Palaestina , and Jerusalem was renamed " Aelia Capitolina ". Some scholars view these actions as an attempt to disconnect the Jewish people from their homeland, but this theory

5400-433: The United Kingdom preceded its spread within the Jewish community. The government of Great Britain publicly supported it during World War I with the Balfour Declaration of 1917. The British began their Sinai and Palestine Campaign in 1915. The war reached southern Palestine in 1917 , progressing to Gaza and around Jerusalem by the end of the year . The British secured Jerusalem in December 1917 . They moved into

5500-426: The base uncertain. The Metropolitan Museum of Art , in New York, has a fragment measuring 2 + 3 ⁄ 16  in × 3 in (56 mm × 76 mm) of a satyr from a dichroic cage cup that turns from olive green to "reddish amber". Corning Glass Works has reproduced a blank of a material of similar chemical composition and internal structure, which displays under reflected and transmitted light

5600-553: The coast north of Mount Carmel . Elsewhere, distinguishing the Syrians in Palestine from the Phoenicians, he refers to their land as extending down all the coast from Phoenicia to Egypt. Pliny , writing in Latin in the 1st century CE, describes a region of Syria that was "formerly called Palaestina " among the areas of the Eastern Mediterranean. Since the Byzantine Period, the Byzantine borders of Palaestina ( I and II , also known as Palaestina Prima , "First Palestine", and Palaestina Secunda , "Second Palestine"), have served as

5700-405: The cup is mostly smooth, but behind the main figures the glass has been hollowed out, well beyond even the main outer surface, so that they are of similar thickness to the main outer surface, giving an even colour when light passes through. This is a feature unique among surviving cups; Harden suggests they were an "afterthought". An area around the torso of Lycurgus is a rather different colour from

5800-425: The dominant Arab tribe; their territory ran from the Hejaz in the south to the Negev in the north through the period of Persian and Hellenistic dominion. In the 330s BCE, Macedonian ruler Alexander the Great conquered the region, which changed hands several times during the wars of the Diadochi and later Syrian Wars . It ultimately fell to the Seleucid Empire between 219 and 200 BCE. During that period,

5900-424: The fallen kingdom became a Persian province known as Yehud . Except Yehud, at least another four Persian provinces existed in the region: Samaria, Gaza, Ashdod, and Ascalon, in addition to the Phoenician city states in the north and the Arabian tribes in the south. During the same period, the Edomites migrated from Transjordan to the southern parts of Judea , which became known as Idumaea . The Qedarites were

6000-447: The general taste behind these extreme exhibitions of glass-making skill is one formed by objects in natural stones like the Coupe des Ptolémées or the Rubens Vase . Indeed, it was not until the first full studies of the cup in 1950 that it was established for certain that the material was glass and not a gemstone, which had previously been in question. It seems likely that as many as three separate workshops or factories were involved in

6100-523: The glass material. The process used remains unclear, and it is likely that it was not well understood or controlled by the makers, and was probably discovered by accidental "contamination" with minutely ground gold and silver dust. The glass-makers may not even have known that gold was involved, as the quantities involved are so tiny; they may have come from a small proportion of gold in any silver added (most Roman silver contains small proportions of gold), or from traces of gold or gold leaf left by accident in

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6200-404: The global, and particularly European, economic pattern of growth. The beneficiaries of this process were Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians who emerged as a new layer within the Arab elite. From 1880 large-scale Jewish immigration began, almost entirely from Europe, based on an explicitly Zionist ideology. There was also a revival of the Hebrew language and culture . Christian Zionism in

6300-471: The god drove Lycurgus insane. In his madness, Lycurgus mistook his son for a mature trunk of ivy , which is holy to Dionysus, and killed him, pruning away his nose and ears, fingers and toes. Consequently, the land of Thrace dried up in horror. Dionysus decreed that the land would stay dry and barren as long as Lycurgus was left unpunished for his injustice, so his people bound him and flung him to man-eating horses on Mount Pangaeüs . However, another version of

6400-446: The grapevines, believing the wine to be a bad medicine. Dionysus drove him mad as a punishment, causing him to kill both his wife and his son, and threw him to the panthers on Mount Rhodope. Diodorus Siculus relates that, centuries before the Trojan war, King Lycurgus of Thrace exiled one of his commanders, Mopsus , along with Sipylus the Scythian . Sometime later, when the Libyan Amazons invaded Thrace, Mopsus and Sipylus came to

6500-482: The lack of a foot, also a feature found in other cage-cups, may mean it was passed around, as elaborate cups often were in medieval cultures. Alternatively other cage cups were almost certainly used, suspended, as oil lamps , where the dichroic effect of this cup would show to advantage. The cup was "perhaps made in Alexandria " or Rome in about 290–325 AD, and measures 16.5  cm × 13.2 cm (6.5  in × 5.2 in). From its excellent condition it

6600-462: The levels were probably added at higher levels to a larger volume of glass-melt, and increasingly diluted by adding more glass." The particles are only about 70 nanometers across, and embedded in the glass, so they cannot be seen by optical microscopy, and a transmission electron microscope is needed instead. At this size they approach the size of the wavelengths of visible light, and a surface plasmon resonance effect takes place. The interior of

6700-399: The light without eliminating the transmission. In transmitted light the fine particles scatter the blue end of the spectrum more effectively than the red end, resulting in red transmission, and this is the colour observed. Since it is impossible that the Roman artisans managed to add these incredibly low levels of silver and gold to the volume of the glass used to make the vessel deliberately,

6800-449: The northern highland areas of Palestine and Jordan were administered as Jund al-Urdun , while the southern parts of the latter two formed part of Jund Dimashq , which during the 9th century was attached to the administrative unit of Jund Filastin . The boundaries of the area and the ethnic nature of the people referred to by Herodotus in the 5th century BCE as Palaestina vary according to context. Sometimes, he uses it to refer to

6900-419: The original Lycurgus cup is due to small amounts of silver and gold nanoparticles, of the proper size and shapes, embedded in the 3D printable material. The figure of Lycurgus, bound by the vine and naked apart from boots, is flanked on the left by a crouching Ambrosia, at a considerably smaller scale. Behind her one of Dionysus's satyrs (shown with a normal human form) stands on one foot as he prepares to hurl

7000-416: The period of the French Revolution and French Revolutionary Wars . The foot continues the theme of the cup with open-work vine leaves, and the rim has leaf forms that lengthen and shorten to match the scenes in glass. In 1958 the foot was removed by British Museum conservators, and not rejoined to the cup until 1973. There may well have been earlier mounts. The early history of the cup is unknown, and it

7100-438: The population. Its suppression devastated many of Palestine's villages and major towns. In 1840, Britain intervened and returned control of the Levant to the Ottomans in return for further capitulations . The death of Aqil Agha marked the last local challenge to Ottoman centralization in Palestine, and beginning in the 1860s, Palestine underwent an acceleration in its socio-economic development, due to its incorporation into

7200-552: The production of the cup, perhaps not in the same part of the Empire. The glass may have been initially made in a large block of standard clear glass, perhaps in Egypt or Palestine , which both exported great quantities of glass for forming, and sometimes colouring, elsewhere. The thick "blank" dichroic vessel was probably made by one specialist workshop and passed to another consisting of specialist cutters. This would certainly have been

7300-552: The province of Judaea " Syria Palaestina ". There is circumstantial evidence linking Hadrian with the name change, but the precise date is not certain. The term is generally accepted to be a cognate of the biblical name Peleshet ( פלשת Pəlésheth , usually transliterated as Philistia ). The term and its derivates are used more than 250 times in Masoretic -derived versions of the Hebrew Bible , of which 10 uses are in

7400-522: The province was expanded and renamed Syria Palaestina . In 390, during the Byzantine period, the region was split into the provinces of Palaestina Prima , Palaestina Secunda , and Palaestina Tertia . Following the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 630s, the military district of Jund Filastin was established. While Palestine's boundaries have changed throughout history, it has generally comprised

7500-626: The region became heavily hellenized , building tensions between Greeks and locals. In 167 BCE, the Maccabean Revolt erupted, leading to the establishment of an independent Hasmonean Kingdom in Judea. From 110 BCE, the Hasmoneans extended their authority over much of Palestine, including Samaria , Galilee , Iturea , Perea , and Idumea. The Jewish control over the wider region resulted in it also becoming known as Judaea ,

7600-570: The region of "Palashtu" or "Pilistu", beginning with Adad-nirari III in the Nimrud Slab in c. 800 BCE through to a treaty made by Esarhaddon more than a century later. Neither the Egyptian nor the Assyrian sources provided clear regional boundaries for the term. The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the entire area between Phoenicia and Egypt was in 5th century BCE ancient Greece , when Herodotus wrote of

7700-576: The rescue by defeating them in a pitched battle, in which their queen Myrine was slain; the Thracians then pursued the surviving Amazons all the way to Libya . In some versions the story of Lycurgus and his punishment by Dionysus is placed in Arabia rather than in Thrace. The tragedian Aeschylus , in a lost play, depicted Lycurgus as a beer-drinker and hence a natural opponent of the wine god. There

7800-462: The rest of the glass; perhaps an accident of manufacture, but one exploited by the glass-cutter "so that he could make Lycurgus's rage glow even more strongly". After the very lengthy cutting stage the fine polished appearance was achieved by a process called "flame polishing" that risked the complete loss of the object. A suggestion in 1995 that in fact this and other cage cups used a mixture of moulding and cutting has met with little acceptance. Like

7900-464: The same "Lycurgus effect" of green to red colour change as the Lycurgus cup material does. Cranberry glass or gold ruby glass is somewhat similar and far more common, manufactured with colloidal gold, but this only ever shows a red colour. Recently, researchers from The Netherlands have been able to reproduce the green/red dichroic effect in a 3D printable nanocomposite material. This effect, like in

8000-573: The same region, which was followed by Roman writers such as Ovid , Tibullus , Pomponius Mela , Pliny the Elder , Dio Chrysostom , Statius , Plutarch as well as Romano-Jewish writers Philo of Alexandria and Josephus . The term was first used to denote an official province in c. 135 CE, when the Roman authorities , following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba Revolt , renamed

8100-846: The sea to the caravan route, presumably the Hejaz-Damascus route east of the Jordan River valley. Others refer to it as extending from the sea to the desert. Prior to the Allied Powers victory in World War I and the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire , which created the British mandate in the Levant , most of the northern area of what is today Jordan formed part of the Ottoman Vilayet of Damascus ( Syria ), while

8200-631: The southern part of Jordan was part of the Vilayet of Hejaz . What later became Mandatory Palestine was in late Ottoman times divided between the Vilayet of Beirut ( Lebanon ) and the Sanjak of Jerusalem . The Zionist Organization provided its definition of the boundaries of Palestine in a statement to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 . The British administered Mandatory Palestine after World War I, having promised to establish

8300-412: The southern portion of regions such as Syria or the Levant. As the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity , Palestine has been a crossroads for religion, culture, commerce, and politics. In the Bronze Age , it was home to Canaanite city-states; and the later Iron Age saw the emergence of Israel and Judah . It has since come under the sway of various empires, including the Neo-Assyrian Empire ,

8400-450: The story tend to either depict Lycurgus attacking Ambrosia, often with a double-headed axe, while her companions rush to her aid, or Lycurgus alone, entangled in the vine. The closest parallel to the scene on the cup is one of the apse mosaics in the triconch triclinium at the Villa del Casale , Piazza Armerina , which may also refer to Licinius. There is also a mosaic at Antioch on

8500-484: The tale, transmitted in Servius 's commentary on Aeneid 3.14, Porphyrio 's commentary on Horace 's Ode 2.19, and Hyginus in his Fabulae 132, records that Lycurgus cut off his own foot when he meant to cut down a vine of ivy. With Lycurgus dead, Dionysus lifted the curse. Also according to Hyginus, Lycurgus tried to rape his mother after imbibing wine. When he discovered what he had done, he attempted to cut down

8600-673: The term State of Palestine refers only to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. This discrepancy was described by the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas as a negotiated concession in a September 2011 speech to the United Nations: "... we agreed to establish the State of Palestine on only 22% of the territory of historical Palestine – on all the Palestinian Territory occupied by Israel in 1967." The term Palestine

8700-534: The time referred predominantly to Bedouin nomads, though Arab settlement is attested in the Judean highlands and near Jerusalem by the 5th century, and some tribes had converted to Christianity. The local population engaged in farming, which was considered demeaning, and were called Nabaț , referring to Aramaic -speaking villagers. A ḥadīth , brought in the name of a Muslim freedman who settled in Palestine, ordered

8800-539: The version) tried to kill Ambrosia, a follower of the god Dionysus (Bacchus to the Romans). She was transformed into a vine that twined around the enraged king and restrained him, eventually killing him. Dionysus and two followers are shown taunting the king. The cup is the "only well-preserved figural example" of a cage cup. The dichroic effect is achieved by making the glass with tiny proportions of nanoparticles of gold and silver dispersed in colloidal form throughout

8900-469: The workshop, as residue on tools, or from other work. The very few other surviving fragments of Roman dichroic glass vary considerably in their two colours. It is estimated that to a conventionally composed Roman glass flux 330 parts per million of silver and 40 of gold were added: "These particles were precipitated as colloids and form a silver-gold alloy. When viewed in reflected light the minute metallic particles are just coarse enough to reflect enough of

9000-580: The world's longest military occupation in modern times. In 2008 Palestinian hikaye was inscribed to UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage ; the first of four listings reflecting the significance of Palestinian culture globally. In November 2012, the status of Palestinian delegation in the United Nations was upgraded to non-member observer state as the State of Palestine . The boundaries of Palestine have varied throughout history. The Jordan Rift Valley (comprising Wadi Arabah,

9100-514: Was a reference to the defeat in 324 by the Emperor Constantine I of his co-emperor Licinius , who was killed in 325 after a period under close guard. Another suggestion is that the colour change from green to red was understood as evoking the ripening of red grapes, so that there was a particular suitability in depicting a scene with the god of wine. The cup may have been intended for use at Bacchic cult celebrations, still very much

9200-629: Was annexed by another Persian dynasty; the Sassanids , until returning to Byzantine control in 628 CE. Palestine was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate , beginning in 634 CE. In 636, the Battle of Yarmouk during the Muslim conquest of the Levant marked the start of Muslim hegemony over the region, which became known as the military district of Jund Filastin within the province of Bilâd al-Shâm (Greater Syria). In 661, with

9300-460: Was important for creating an Arab Palestine detached from greater Syria ( bilad al-Sham ). According to Pappe, it was an attempt to reinforce the Syrian front in face of Muhammad Ali's invasion. Two years later, Palestine was conquered by Muhammad Ali's Egypt, but Egyptian rule was challenged in 1834 by a countrywide popular uprising against conscription and other measures considered intrusive by

9400-671: Was occupied by the United Kingdom as part of the Sinai and Palestine campaign . Between 1919 and 1922, the League of Nations created the Mandate for Palestine , which came under British administration as Mandatory Palestine through the 1940s. Tensions between Jews and Arabs escalated into the 1947–1949 Palestine war , which ended with the establishment of Israel on most of the territory, and neighboring Jordan and Egypt controlling

9500-435: Was on display with other British Museum pieces at The Art Institute of Chicago 's Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman and Byzantine Art, where it was very effectively displayed in a free-standing case, lit from above with changing light so that the colour change was clearly visible. It is considered able to travel to important exhibitions and in 2008 was exhibited in "Reflecting Antiquity, Modern Glass Inspired by Ancient Rome" at

9600-528: Was on display with the new display of the Rothschild donation of the Waddesdon Bequest in Room 2A, with a changing internal lighting source that shows the colour change very effectively, though only one side of the cup can be seen. By October 2015 it was back in the re-opened Room 41. While Room 41, where it was then displayed, was closed for refurbishment, from November 2012 to August 2013 it

9700-463: Was shut in "a prison of stone" until his madness went away. The author of the Geoponica states that Dionysus, fleeing from Lycurgus, tied him up with vines and dove into the sea; Lycurgus shed a tear then, which transformed into cabbage . This was supposedly why grapevines and cabbages had a mutual dislike toward one another, and could not thrive together, as vines withered in the fields whenever

9800-748: Was succeeded by the Umayyad Caliphate , the Abbasid Caliphate , and the Fatimid Caliphate . Following the collapse of the Kingdom of Jerusalem , which had been established through the Crusades , the population of Palestine became predominantly Muslim . In the 13th century, it became part of the Mamluk Sultanate , and after 1516, spent four centuries as part of the Ottoman Empire . During World War I , Palestine

9900-731: Was the king of the Edoni in Thrace , son of Dryas , the "oak", and father of a son whose name was also Dryas. Lycurgus banned the cult of Dionysus . When Lycurgus heard that Dionysus was in his kingdom, he imprisoned Dionysus's followers, the Maenads , or "chased the[m] through the holy hills of Nysa , and the sacred implements dropped to the ground from the hands of one and all, as [he] struck them down with his ox-goad". The compiler of Bibliotheke (3.5.1) says that as punishment, especially for his treatment for Ambrosia , Dionysus' nursemaid;

10000-764: Was then annexed as a Babylonian province . The Philistines were also exiled. The defeat of Judah was recorded by the Babylonians. In 539 BCE, the Babylonian empire was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire . According to the Hebrew Bible and implications from the Cyrus Cylinder , the exiled Jews were eventually allowed to return to Jerusalem . The returned population in Judah were allowed to self-rule under Persian governance, and some parts of

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