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The Sursock bronze is a gilded bronze sculptural group of Heliopolitan Jupiter dating to the 2nd century AD. A miniature of the cult statue that stood in the Great Temple of Baalbek, Lebanon, it depicts the god as a beardless youth wearing a kalathos, a basket-shaped headdress, and an ependytes, a close-fitting dress, under ornate armor. The front of the armor bears busts of seven deities associated with celestial bodies—Sol, Luna, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Juno (replacing Venus), and Saturn—arranged in an order encoding both the Chaldean sequence of planets and the days of the Roman week. The piece illustrates the syncretism of Canaanite, Greek, and Roman traditions, tracing the evolution of Heliopolitan Jupiter from the Canaanite storm god Baal Hadad into a cosmic deity of planetary order and prophecy. Named after its former owner, the Beiruti aristocrat Charles Sursock, and acquired by the Louvre in 1939, the piece inaugurated the first issue of Syria, the leading French journal of Levantine archaeology, in 1920. (Full article...)
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| Sam Poo Kong, also known as Gedung Batu Temple, is a Chinese temple site in Semarang, in the Indonesian province of Central Java. Its foundations were set when the Chinese Muslim admiral Zheng He arrived in the area via the Garang River, sometime between 1400 and 1416. After disembarking from his ships, Zheng found a cave in a rocky hillside and used it for prayer, establishing a small temple on the site. The temple later became an important site for both Chinese Indonesians and Javanese worshippers. Destroyed by a landslide in 1704, it was rebuilt and repeatedly renovated, notably in 1724, 1937, 1950, and 2002–2005. The complex contains five temples in a mixed Chinese and Javanese style and includes shrines dedicated to Zheng He and his crew. It is now shared by Indonesians of multiple religions, including Buddhists and Muslims, and hosts an annual carnival procession. This photograph of Sam Poo Kong was taken in 2014 and shows, from left to right, the main temple, the Kyai Juru Mudi Temple, and the Tho Tee Kong Temple. Photograph credit: Chris Woodrich |
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