Author: MANCENT Course Director

I have been the Course Director of MANCENT for 10 years after a career in Adult Education and Academia in Europe and the US.
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MANCENT 2023 Programme now out

Just in time for the bank holiday weekend, MANCENT is publishing its Autumn programme.

Courses will start in September and there is a wide range of humanities courses from Music to literature to History and Archaeology.

We are also reviving our Cultural day trips to various museums and sites and hope that will once again prove popular.

The full programme is on the website and can be booked either by contacting the lecturers or with many of them the online courses via Eventbrite links, which are very popular with our overseas students.

All the best and we look forward to seeing you soon at one of our events.

Birgitta Hoffmann
MANCENT Course Director and her team.

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Thinking about Religion in Roman Britain

Birgitta Hoffmann

Time to look towards the Autumn lecture courses and I am beginning to review material for a course on the Religious World of Roman Britain. Sound like a clumsy title, but I am trying to introduce the students to the complexity that were the competing or coexisting belief systems in Roman Britain. And yes I will compare it occasionally with the very complex religious universe of the Indian subcontinent.

One of the issues that interest me is the different levels at which some cult followers made decisions on how to be seen by the wider population.
This is the Aesculapius stone from Maryport. It isn’t the only stone to Aesculapius in Britain and it isn’t the only Greek inscription from Britain either. But this one was found in Maryport, not exactly a Roman place that you would associate with words like ‘multiethnic’ beyond the Roman/Iron Age divide (?) and certainly not a place you would expect to see a lot of Greek speakers….and still Aulos Egnatios Pastor chose to use Greek on his dedication to Aesculapios. Did a Greek god give premium service to Greek speakers? Was this part of a small Greek-speaking group? Does that mean the language of the services was Greek?
And would everybody else feel excluded or welcomed to a mysterious cult that used special magic words and must therefore be powerful?

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The Ancient Greeks – Zenith

 Michael Tunnicliffe

The Ancient Greeks were at the height in the 6th-5th centuries. Though divided into competing city states there were able to unite for a time to meet the challenge of invasion by the might of the Persian Empire. This period also saw the flourishing of Athenian democracy and the building of works such as the Parthenon. Greek dramatists were also appearing on the scene, and the first philosophers, the pre-Socratics, were beginning to ask fundamental questions. Yet simmering tensions between Athens and Sparta were not far below the surface. The topic will continue in the summer term.

 

MINIMUM No: ……8…….MAXIMUM No  25 (please check with venue provider):..

 

PRICE:………..£80. CONCESSIONS?:……….No…………………………………………………..

 

 

Recommended reading (for publication in brochure):    

 

Robin Osborne 2009 (2nd ed.) Greece in the Making; 1200-479BC Routledge  

Simon Hornblower 2002 (3rd ed.) The Greek World 479-323, Routledge

Sarah Pomeroy et al 2009 A Brief History of Ancient Greece Oxford University Press

 

 

CONTACT ADDRESS FOR BOOKINGS (this will be printed in the brochure):

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Michael Tunnicliffe 5 St George’s Way, Northwich, CW9 8XG, 01606 42116 mtunni@sky.com

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Why study Greek and Roman Myths by Tony Keen

Whenever I visit the National Gallery in London, I always stop in front of Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-1523). It is one of my favourite paintings ever because mythologically it’s so rich.

Most mythological paintings of the sixteenth century and later draw upon the work of the Roman poet Ovid and his fifteen-book epic the Metamorphoses. Titian (full name Tiziano Vecelli) certainly drew upon Ovid’s work for paintings that came late in his career such as Diana and Callisto, Diana and Actaeon, and the Death of Actaeon. But the source for Bacchus and Ariadne, painted when Titian was in his thirties, was not the Metamorphoses. Ovid does mention the story, but not in detail. The best-known version of the tale is in an earlier poet, Gaius Valerius Catullus. Catullus’ poems were mostly short, but a small collection of longer poems survive. Of these, the longest is Poem 64. A ‘mini-epic’ of 408 lines, it covers a number of mythological accounts, including that of Bacchus and Ariadne.

Ariadne was a daughter of King Minos of Crete. She aided the Athenian hero Theseus when he came to Crete to kill her half-brother, the half-man, half-bull Minotaur. Understandably, afterwards, she had to flee Crete with Theseus. But then, for reasons no account really explains properly, Theseus abandons Ariadne on the island of Naxos. This is the moment Titian dramatises.

Ariadne is caught waving towards the ship of Theseus, which can be seen on the horizon, sail billowing in the wind. But Ariadne is suddenly distracted by the coming of the god Bacchus (the Greek Dionysus), the god of wine and revelry. We see her having turned her head towards the new arrival.

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Today we are 12 years old!

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Past Courses

I know some of you organise lectures for the U3A or local societies and are looking for suitable topics and lecturers. Many of our lecturers are available for one off lectures and will be happy to discuss terms with you.

After a lot of requests, we decided to leave the past courses online, so you can see what we have already done, and what the area of general interest of our lecturers is. I hope you approve.

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New exhibition co-curated by our lecturer Anthony Burton

The Elizabeth Gaskell house in Manchester is  showing from February an exhibition on
Elizabeth Gaskell’s Manchester

Elizabeth Gaskell lived in Manchester from 1832 until her death in 1865, a time of huge change and expansion for the city, which raised many challenges for its residents from the coming of the railways and the Free Trade Movement and the Reform Acts to the Cholera and the Cotton Famine on the other.

The exhibition focuses on the Politics, Commerce, Transport, Learning, Churches, the Mills, the Poor, the Shops, Art, Music and Literature.

Anthony is hoping to offer a day school in the Summer term on the topic

The Elizabeth Gaskell House at 84 Plymouth Grove, Manchester M13 9LW

is open Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays from 11.00am – 4.30pm (last admission 4pm) enquiries: 0161 273 2215 or enquiries@elizabethgaskellhouse.co.uk

 

 

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What is Heka? – An introduction to the Course

Joanne Backhouse

fertility-figurine-2 The course

Heka: The Magical Arts of Ancient Egypt

will focus on the concept of Heka (magic) in ancient Egypt. Heka was a divine force imbued in deities, the king and the dead.  It could be used for good or bad, private or state purposes.  This course will focus on two main areas.  Firstly, deities and ritual practitioners (priests and priestesses), this will include the god Heka and and the gods as healers, for example Sekhmet.  Secondly, the course will examine the objects and images created to channel the power of heka, including execration and fertility figurines, amulets, wands and spell books.

sekhmet-figure-3Although much, if not all, of Egyptian art was magical this course will examine images and objects created specifically for magical practice. A broad definition of magic will be used; which is, any activity that seeks to obtain its goal outside the natural laws of cause and effect, will be deemed magical.

This includes rituals in the home, temples and in the funeral realm; most rituals in ancient Egypt used a combination of recitation and action.

The lectures will demonstrate the assimilation of magic, medicine and religion in ancient Egypt and illustrate how magical practice was part of everyday life. As Egyptologist, Robert Ritner said, ‘one man’s magic is another man’s religion’.  The course also presents a rare opportunity to handle and photograph many magical objects from ancient Egypt at Manchester Museum.

execration-figure-1