Here's just a few samples of the new historical buildings of RESTITVTOR ORBIS:
- Mausoleum of Alexander -
Shortly after Alexander's death in Babylon in 323 BC, the possession of his body became a subject of negotiations. Some favoured Babylon for Alexander's final resting place, while others wanted to inter Alexander in the Argead burial at Aegae. In 321 BC Perdiccas, a general in Alexander's army, presumably chose Aegae. The body, however, was hijacked en route by Ptolemy, another one of Alexander's generals, and the self proclaimed new Pharao of Egypt. Ptolemy initially buried Alexander in Memphis, but in the late 4th or early 3rd century BC Alexander's body was transferred from Memphis to Alexandria, where it was reburied.
In 89 BC one of the later Ptolemies melted down the solid gold coffin, described as having been crammed with the richest aromatic spices and fitted to the body like a mummy case. This Ptolemy used the gold to pay his troops and substituted a glass coffin for the one he destroyed, but it did him no good, for he was drowned in a sea-fight with rebel forces within the year.
In 48 BC, when Julius Caesar arrived in Alexandria, he also took the opportunity to conduct a pilgrimage to the tomb of his hero, Alexander. So did his adoptive son and successor, Octavian, who crowned the mummy and strewed it with flowers. A succession of Roman Emperors paid homage to Alexander's corpse in the following centuries. Caligula commanded that Alexander's cuirass be brought from the tomb for use as a prop in his play-acting. Vespasian and Titus must have seen the tomb in 69 AD, whilst Hadrian visited the city in 130 AD. However, the next recorded visit is that of Septimius Severus in 200 AD. The Emperor was horrified by the ease of access to the tomb, and commanded that the chamber be sealed. The last known imperial visit is dated to 215 AD, when Severus' son, Caracalla, reportedly left his ring and belt in tribute to Alexander.
When the location of the tomb was finally lost is a matter of debate. Several medieval sources claim to have seen the tomb, and describes how it was still venerated in the 15th century.
- The Mausoleum of Augustus -
The mausoleum was one of the first projects initiated by Augustus in the city of Rome following his victory at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. The building is located on the Campus Martius, and is circular in plan, consisting of several concentric rings of earth and brick, planted with cypresses on top of the building and capped by a conical roof and a statue of Augustus. Vaults held up the roof and opened up the burial spaces below. Twin pink granite obelisks flanked the arched entryway.
The mausoleum holds the remains of the imperial Julio-Claudian dynasty. After the Emperor himself, the mausoleum hosted the ashes of his wife Livia, Marcus Agrippa, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and several others. The last Emperor to be entombed in the mausoleum was Nerva.
According to legend, in 410 AD, during the sack of Rome by Alaric, the pillaging Visigoths rifled the vaults, stole the urns and scattered the ashes. In the Middle Ages, the mausoleum was fortified and turned into a castle.
- Irminsul -
An Irminsul, or the Irminsul, was a kind of pillar which is attested as playing an important role in the Germanic paganism of the Saxon people. In Old Saxon, it probably meant “great/mighty pillar” or “arising pillar”. It is unknown if the Irminsul referred to a single mighty pillar or a number of them. The oldest chronicle describing an Irminsul refers to it as a tree trunk erected in the open air. The purpose of the Irminsuls and the implications thereof have been the subject of considerable scholarly discourse and speculation for hundreds of years. A number of theories surround the subject of the Irminsul.
Tacitus possibly refers to them in his Germania, where he mentions rumors of what he describes as "Pillars of Hercules" in land inhabited by the Frisii that had yet to be explored. He adds that these pillars exist either because Hercules actually did go there or because the Romans have agreed to ascribe all marvels anywhere to Hercules' credit. Tacitus states that while Drusus Germanicus was daring in his campaigns against the Germanic tribes, he was unable to reach this region, and that subsequently no one had yet made the attempt Connections have been proposed between these "Pillars of Hercules" and later accounts of the Irminsuls. Hercules was probably frequently identified with Thor by the Romans due to the practice of interpretatio romana.
A Germanic god Irmin, inferred from the name Irminsul and the tribal name Irminones, is sometimes presumed to have been the national god or demi-god of the Saxons. It has been suggested that Irmin was more probably an aspect or epithet of some other deity – most likely Wodan (Odin). Irmin might also have been an epithet of the god Ziu (Tyr) in early Germanic times, only later transferred to Odin, as certain scholars subscribe to the idea that Odin replaced Tyr as the chief Germanic deity at the onset of theMigration Period. This was the favored view of early 20th century Nordicist writers, but it is not generally considered likely in modern times.
The Old Norse form of Irmin is Jörmunr, which just like Yggr was one of the names of Odin. Yggdrasil ("Yggr's horse") was the yew or ash tree from which Odin sacrificed himself, and which connected the nine worlds. Jakob Grimm connects the name Irmin withOld Norse terms like iörmungrund ("great ground", i.e. the Earth) or iörmungandr ("great snake", i.e. the Midgard serpent).
According to the Royal Frankish Annals (772AD), during the Saxon wars, Charlemagne is repeatedly described as ordering the destruction of the chief seat of their religion, an Irminsul. The Irminsul is described as not being far from Heresburg (nowObermarsberg), Germany. It has also been proposed as being located in the Teutoburg Forest, and that the original name for the region "Osning" may have meant "Holy Wood."
It is mentioned by a number of later scholars, all of whom agree that this great pillar was destroyed in the holy wars brought on by Charlemagne, which finally pacified the Saxons bordering his realm.
- Shushtar -
Shushtar, also known as Adamdun, is an ancient fortress city in Persia. Its name, Shushtar, is connected with the name of another ancient city, Susa (or Shush, in Persian pronunciation), and means "greater (or better) than Shush." Much of its past agricultural productivity derives from the Roman-built irrigation system which centered on the Band-e Kaisar, the first dam bridge in Iran. During the Sassanian era, it was an island city on the Karun river and selected to become the summer capital. The river was channelled to form a moat around the city, while bridges and main gates into Shushtar were built to the east, west, and south. Several rivers nearby are conducive to the extension of agriculture; the cultivation of sugar cane, the main crop, dates back to 226. A system of subterranean channels called Ghanats, which connected the river to the private reservoirs of houses and buildings, supplied water for domestic use and irrigation, as well as to store and supply water during times of war when the main gates were closed. Traces of these ghanats can still be found in the crypts of some houses.The ancient fortress walls were destroyed at the end of the Safavid era.
The Band-e Kaisar ("Caesar's dam") was a Roman arch bridge, and the first in the country to combine it with a dam. When the Sassanian Shah Shapur I defeated the Roman emperor Valerian, he is said to have ordered the captive Roman soldiers to build a large bridge and dam stretching over 500 metres. Lying deep in Persian territory, the structure which exhibits typical Roman building techniques became the most eastern Roman bridge and Roman dam. Its dual-purpose design exerted a profound influence on Iranian civil engineering and was instrumental in developing Sassanid water management techniques.
The approximately 500 m long overflow dam over the Karun, Iran's most effluent river, was the core structure of the Shushtar Historical Hydraulic System, a large irrigation complex from which Shushtar derived its agricultural productivity. The arched superstructure carried across the important road between Pasargadae and the Sassanid capital Ctesiphon. Many times repaired in the Islamic period, the dam bridge fell out of use in the late 19th century, leading to the degeneration of the complex system of irrigation.
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Originally Posted by Joar
. Patiently waiting...
