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James Romm

James Romm is the James H. Ottaway Jr. Professor of Classics at Bard. He is the coeditor of The Greek Plays, which will be published in August.
 (July 2016)

IN THE REVIEW

The Great Rescue in Timbuktu

Abdel Kader Haidara in Timbuktu with ancient manuscripts from Mali, Niger, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Nigeria, September 2009. Haider was instrumental in saving the manuscripts during the militant Islamist takeover of Timbuktu in 2012.

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World’s Most Precious Manuscripts

by Joshua Hammer
On March 1, the International Criminal Court at The Hague formally charged Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, one of the leaders of the 2012 Islamist takeover of the Malian city of Timbuktu, with destroying the city’s cultural heritage—the first such international indictment. During June and July of that year, al-Mahdi took part …

NYR DAILY

The Vitality of the ‘Berlin Painter’

Red-figure bell-krater showing Ganymede, described in the Iliad as the most beautiful of mortal men, Greek, Attic, circa 500-490 BC

The master referred to as the Berlin Painter, who lived in Athens in the early fifth century BC, was an artist whose name, nationality, and even gender remain unknown, but whose distinctive and confident illustration in the red-figure style stands out as clearly as any signature. The first phase of the Berlin Painter’s career coincided with the birth of democracy in Athens, and the early works—which portray ordinary people caught in simple moments of daily life in much the same way that other vase painters treated gods and heroes—demonstrate the humanism of that political evolution.

Great Aspirations of the Iron Age

Openwork plaque with a striding sphinx, Nimrud, Neo-Assyrian period, South Syrian style, ninth-eighth century BC

The cultures that took part in the complex trade network between major civilizations during the Iron Age, and the traces the traders themselves left behind in shipwrecks and foreign settlements, are the focus of the vast and impressive exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, “Assyria to Iberia at the Dawn of the Classical Age.”

When the Greeks Ruled Egypt

Octadrachm, reverse: jugate portrait of Ptolemy I and Berenice I, Alexandria, 260–240 BCE

The strategies by which the Greeks—outnumbered by their subjects ten to one—maintained power in ancient Egypt are vividly illustrated in “When the Greeks Ruled Egypt: From Alexander the Great to Cleopatra,” an exhibition at NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World through January 4.