Joseon Dynasty structures worthy of UNESCO World Heritage Status

I see that UNESCO has added forty royal tombs of Korea's Joseon Dynasty to the World Heritage List. The Joseon Dynasty ruled Korea from 1392 to 1910.

[Image - The tomb of King Sejong the Great exemplifies the general style of Joseon Dynasty royal tombs. Photo by Kai Hendry, courtesy of Wikipedia]

It's founder, Yi Seong-gye,was a powerful general who seized power and had the Goryeo King U and his 8-year-old son, King Chang, executed then declared himself king, taking the name King Taejo.

King Taejo founded the city of Hanseong which became the modern city of Seoul. In it, he constructed Gyeongbuk Palace, completed in 1395, and the Changdeok Palace in 1405. Surprisingly, I noticed that although the Changdeok Palace was added to the World Heritage List in 1997, the Gyeongbuk Palace does not appear to be on the list. Upon further research I see that the original Gyeongbuk Palace was destroyed during the Japanese invasions of 1592. It was rebuilt in 1867 but again burned in 1876. King GoJong restored it in 1888 but it was dismantled by the Japanese in 1920 to restore the Huijeongdang of Changdeokgung Palace that had been destroyed by fire in 1917. Fortunately for all of us, Gyeongbuk Palace was reconstructed in 1994, meticulously replicated using the original specifications and design.

Joseon architects were truly masterful. Looking at pictures of the palace complex in Wikipedia, I find the Queen's Quarters especially beautiful.

[Image: KyoTaeJeon in Gyeongbokgung (Queen's Quarters), Seoul, Korea. Photo by Joon-Young, Kim. Courtesy of Wikipedia]

I was also touched when I read that King Sejong, Taejo's great-grandson, had the structure built to provide privacy to his Queen because Sejong suffered from frail health and often had to conduct business within the walls of his official residence in Gangnyeongjeon Hall. Behind the Queen's Quarters this sensitive ruler built a beautiful garden named Amisan. It's four hexagonal chimneys, constructed around 1869 in orange brick and decorative roof tiles, are renowned for their artistry that obscures their utilitarian function.

Sejong's reign was considered the pinnacle of the Joseon Dynasty. This interesting leader invented the Korean script, hanguel, "which is considered much easier to learn than Chinese characters. He also revolutionized agriculture and sponsored the invention of the rain gauge and sundial. Sejong was so wise, even as a young man, that his two older brothers stepped aside so he could be king." - More: About.com

[Image: Sejong The Great. Courtesy of The Korea Herald]

The Joseon Dynasty also fostered an acclaimed admiral, Yi Sun-sin, who, through the use of "turtle ships", the world's first ironclads, defeated the fearsome Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi at the battle of Battle of Hansan-do in 1592.
e of Yi Sunsin - Cropped.JPG

[Image right - The Statue of Yi Sunsin, Sejongro, Jongrogu, Seoul, S.Korea. Courtesy of Wikipedia]

Although Korea escaped domination by Japan at that point, the Joseon Dynasty eventually sucuumbed to the Manchu Dynasty after most of central Korea was ravaged by Manchu forces in 1637. When the Japanese returned to Korea during the Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95, Qing forces were defeated, leaving the Joseon Dynasty to its fate.

"When Emperor Gojong sent an emissary to The Hauge in June 1907 to protest Japan's aggressive posture, the Japanese Resident-General in Korea forced the monarch to abdicate his throne.

Japan installed its own officials in the executive and judicial branches of the Korean Imperial government, disbanded the Korean military, and gained control of the police and prisons. Soon, Korea would become Japanese in name as well as in fact.

In 1910, the Joseon Dynasty fell, and Japan formally occupied the Korean Peninsula." - More: About.com

Learn more about it:

Intact Canaanite Tomb Found in Bethlehem

It is always exciting when an ancient intact tact tomb is discovered, especially one over 4,000 years old like this Canaanite tomb unearthed in Bethlehem.

[Image - Although not specifically Canaanite, this Early Dynastic Period figurine of a woman, discovered at Tell Asmar, part of the collection of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, is only a few centuries older than the discovered tomb and probably reflects the dress and hairstyle of women from this period in the ancient Near East. Photo by Mary Harrsch.]

Workers renovating a house in the traditional town of Jesus’ birth accidentally discovered an untouched ancient tomb containing clay pots, plates, beads and the bones of two humans, a Palestinian antiquities official said Tuesday.

The 4,000-year-old tomb provides a glimpse of the burial customs of the area’s inhabitants during the Canaanite period, said Mohammed Ghayyada, director of the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.

Workers in a house near the Church of the Nativity uncovered a hole leading to the grave, which was about one meter (yard) below ground, he said. They dated the grave to the Early Bronze Age, between 1,900 B.C. and 2,200 B.C. - More: Azstarnet.com

This last statement is a little confusing as the Canaanite Middle Bronze Age I encompasses the dates indicated. Perhaps different scholarly groups name the periods differently. Anyway, this shaft tomb appears to be a typical semi-nomadic burial of a nuclear family.

The EB IV [Early Bronze Age IV Period] should be seen as the phase during which the process of the desertion of the towns [of Canaan] reached its peak; some of the towns had been abandoned during the EB III b, and others were abandoned during this phase. By the end of the EB IV, there were no urban settlements left in Canaan (Gophna 1992: 126 ff.). What were the motives of the decline of urban culture? Three different approaches of the events in Canaan during this period have been proposed. Some scholars consider that a wave of northern invaders (part of the Amorite migration to his area) or a campaign of Egyptian Fifth Dynasty kings was responsible for the destruction of the towns. The undestroyed sites would have been abandoned in terror.The second approach prefers an ecological point of view, pointing to data indicating a decrease in rainfall and a lowering of the water level, which would have doomed many settlements.Finally, others see the city-state system destroyed by friction and disagreement, a result of the constant warfare between the city-states evidenced in the repeated destructions and reconstructions visible in the EB II-III layers.Presently, it seems that an approach integrating the three explanations, along with additional reasons (trade, symbiosis, and cooperation), should be preferred in explaining the end of urban culture. - More: Sociedad De Estudios De Historia Antigua

I couldn't tell from the description, though, if this was a primary or secondary burial as the article did not state whether the bones were found "collected" or in an extended or flexed position as has been the case in primary burials excavated previously. The modest grave goods were consistent with a burial of this period.

The burial gifts interred in the Intermediate Bronze Age tombs do not excel in wealth. The typical offering consists of personal ornaments (metal pins, bracelets, and beads), pottery vessels, metal (copper) tools and weapons (a dagger or a spear). - More: Sociedad De Estudios De Historia Antigua

Islamic Art showcased in new exhibit in Madrid

This exhibit sounds fascinating. Unfortunately, I don't have time this year to travel to Spain to see it. But, I was excited to read that many of the items in it will be eventually housed in a new museum in Toronto, Canada! Some years ago I attended an exhibit of items from the Ottoman Empire at the Portland Art Museum. It was comprised mostly of ornamental weapons and manuscripts. This exhibit includes figural items to help refute the widespread misconception that animal or human motifs are prohibited in Islamic art. Although figural art is prohibited in buildings or objects related to religion, they were used profusely to adorn administrative or private structures or objects.

[Image - although not in the Madrid exhibit, this cast bronze lion in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York demonstrates a blending of Islamic, Byzantine and western artistic traditions. Originally gilded and inlaid, the lion was cast in 1000-1100 CE probably in South Italy. It is inscribed in Arabic in Kufic script. Photo by Mary Harrsch.]

I was particularly interested in the inclusion of art from the Mogul Empire. I watched an excellent program about the Moguls on the History Channel and have been reading quite a bit lately about the conquests of Genghis Khan and his successors. I also enjoyed the film, "Mongol". It is supposed to be the first installment of a trilogy and I look forward to the sequels. I regret that when I was in England again last summer I didn't have time to travel to Leeds to view the only remaining complete set of Mogul elephant armor in the world. Maybe it will be included in a traveling exhibit someday!

I encourage you to click on the link to the full article below. It is quite extensive and most informative!

The art, the history, the traditions and the geographies of the Islamic world from the Far East to the Iberian Peninsula are the subjects of the exhibition The Worlds of Islam in the Aga Khan Museum Collection. Organised by ”la Caixa” Social and Cultural Outreach Projects in association with the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, it contains some of the finest productions, not only of the Islamic sphere, but of universal art, with the common denominator of the Arabic language and the Muslim religion. The Aga Khan Museum Collection includes valuable and important pieces from the historical dynasties of the Muslim world. They describe the magnificence of the courts of the Abassids, Fatimids, Safavids or Moguls and show the ductility of Islamic art, capable of conveying a message, not always a religious one, adopting different styles and combining elements from different cultural traditions: from Roman to Persian, from Turkish to Chinese, from Mahgrebi to Hindu, transforming what it imitated and giving it a personality of its own.

The exhibition, which can be seen at CaixaForum Madrid until 6 September, presents a set of 190 objects spanning 1400 years of history and summarizing, in wood, stone, gold, bronze, ivory, glass, ceramic, fabric, parchment and paper, the finest artistic accomplishments of a world that stretched from ancient al-Andalus to India.

The exhibition presents the different Islamic dynasties, with their radiuses of territorial influence, which appeared in the wake of the dismembering of the Abbasid caliphate in the late 9th century: the Omeyas (al-Andalus), the Fatimids and the Mamelukes (Egypt), the Ottomans (Turkey), the Safavids and Qajars (Iran) and the Moguls (India). The Fatimid court was outstanding for its opulence, as some of the pieces of jewelry on show bear witness. The essential features of Islamic court culture are traced through a generic portrait of the profile of their sovereigns. Emphasis is placed on the high cultural level of the Islamic courts that were responsible for spreading knowledge of Ancient Greece to the West through their Arabic translations.

The exhibition also reflects some of the fundamental features of Islamic architecture, such as a capital in the Roman tradition with Islamic ornamental motifs, as well as carved wooden beams and doors. The outstanding examples of painting are to be found in the books illustrated with miniatures and the portraits of kings and sultans. - More: Artdaily.org

Archaeologists uncover worker structures in Persepolis

A joint Iranian-Italian archeological mission in Iran have found remains of the dwellings of some of the common people living in Persepolis. Persepolis was one of the five capitals of the Achaemenid Empire in ancient Persia. Its construction began in 520 BC under the Emperor Darius the Great. It was destroyed by fire during its occupation by the Macedonian forces of Alexander the Great two centuries later.

[Image - bas relief from the palace of Darius in Persepolis. Photo by Mary Harrsch]

In an interview with the “Tehran Times”, translated by the magazine “Archeologia Viva” (Giunti Editore), the Italian director of the mission, Pierfrancesco Callieri, professor of Archeology and Iranian Art History at the University of Bologna, affirmed that the new findings at the Persepolis site have furnished initial information on the city and on the neighborhoods where the common people lived. During the course of the excavations of the flat area at the foot of the Great Achaemenid Terrace and about 1 km from here, the team led by Professor Callieri discovered the first traces of a residential area which could correspond to the city of Mattezish, mentioned in the Elamite tablets in Persepolis. During the Achaemenid period (6th- 4th century BC), all the people working for the Imperial Court lived here, from functionaries to workers. Professor Callieri said that in one of the two excavation sites, “we localized a noteworthy structure, probably the walls of one of the building complexes of the city” instead in the other sites the archeologists localized “an artisan area with an oven and various waste ditches, surely connected to the work activities of the area as we found various ceramic pieces but also fragments of animal bones”. - Adnkronos.com

Midstone Project sheds light on construction of Alexandria's Pharos Lighthouse

The Midstone Project has released information it has compiled about the construction materials used in the building of the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria. The research team has even traced the materials to their quarries of origin. This lengthy article also provides an excellent overview of the history of the lighthouse and descriptions of it provided by ancient travelers and scholars.

Since that time every archaeologist has dreamed of the resurrection of such a great monument. But can Alexandria's Pharos really be reconstructed in its original, glorious form?

This question has perplexed archaeologists and scientists. They do not really know the materials used in construction, nor the exact shape and height.

Three years ago, however, answers to these questions were made possible when Egypt participated in a three-year-long European Union project called the MIDSTONE. This project aimed at preserving ancient Mediterranean sites in terms of their ornamental and building stone through determining stone provenance to proposing conservation and restoration techniques. The MIDSTONE project proposes to contribute to the knowledge and conservation of three of the most important ancient sites in North Africa: Voluble in Morocco, Djemila in Algeria and the Alexandria lighthouse in Egypt. An atlas of the stones of every site will be also provided within the project.

This year the Atlas of the Stones of Alexandria Lighthouse is being presented in a three-day conference at Cairo University and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

Amr El-Tibi, the project coordinator, says the scientific objective of the project is to identify the stones of the lighthouse and determine their provenance in terms of the geographical area. The data and results obtained are being presented in an accessible form including photographs and maps, i.e. the Atlas.

El-Tibi explained that a detailed study of the blocks was performed to categorise megascopically the main types of stones related to the Pharos, and a first series of 32 samples was collected. As most of the stones related to the lighthouse were still under water, a second series of 35 samples was collected by divers from submerged architectonic blocks. The whole of the 67 archaeological samples were described megascopically and categorised in the laboratory in terms of their petrographic type of stone and physical chemical properties. Studies revealed that the Pharos was indeed composed of granite, greywacke limestone, fine to coarse-grained sandstones, marble and sandstones with dolomitic cement to sandy dolostone found at the basement of Qaitbay fort.

The stones derived from two quarries not far from Alexandria at Mexx and Abusir, as well as from quarries in Moqattam near Cairo; Samalut; Minya; and Drunka in Assiut; Serai and Tarawan.

Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities )SCA), told Al-Ahram Weekly that he was very happy to introduce the results of this important project on the study of the stones of the Alexandria lighthouse. "This outstanding cooperative effort between the SCA and the European Union brought together teams from Egypt, France, Italy, Greece and Germany to identify and study remains of the lighthouse that are still at the site today," Hawass said.

He added that with the help of Empereur, who drew the attention to the location of the pieces lying submerged in the harbour of Alexandria, the team was able to classify the stone blocks that made up the remains of the lighthouse. One of the most interesting results, he said, was the identification of stones that they were able to match with the quarries from which they came. The provenance of the coarse-grained pink and grey granite blocks was from the quarries of Aswan, while pieces of greywacke were confirmed to have come from Wadi Hammamat. They also, Hawass said, succeeded in identifying the quarry in Greece from where the marble used in the lighthouse was obtained. - More: Al-Ahram Weekly Online

Will Underwater Excavation of Pavlopetri Provide Clues to Greek Dark Ages?

When I read about the underwater excavation and survey of Pavlopetri, a Mycenaen village submerged off the southern tip of Greece, I wondered if the team might find some clues to the Greek Dark Ages in the remnants of this Mycenaen settlement.

[Image: Terracotta chariot krater Helladic Mycenaean Late Helladic IIIB 1300-1230 BCE in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photo by Mary Harrsch]

The article says pottery dates abruptly stop at 1180 BCE which is significant as this marks the boundary period between the late Bronze Age and the period referred to as the Greek Dark Ages. Evidence that the city was not rebuilt would point to some kind of natural cataclysm of tremendous proportions. I immediately thought about the eruption of Thera but two studies reported in 2006 seem to support a much older date for that particular catastrophe:

"One study, led by archaeologist Sturt Manning at Cornell University, dated wood and seed samples collected from Akrotiri.

Another study, led by geologist Walter Friedrich of the University of Aarhus in Denmark, uses a single branch to pinpoint the time of death for an olive tree believed to have been buried alive during the eruption.

Together, the two studies strongly suggest an eruption date of somewhere between 1660 and 1600 B.C. - More: Fox News

This later cataclysm, however, could have been part of an earthquake "storm" that rippled along the Mediterranean's eastern plate boundary in subsequent centuries.

The BBC seems to dismiss the possibility that earthquake storms could have been that devastating:

Most controversial is the theory that an earthquake storm may have been responsible for the abrupt physical and political collapse of Aegean Bronze Age world around 1200 BC. Some geologists and archaeologists point out that most of the ancient cities that fell at that time lie along the plate-boundary of the eastern Mediterranean and show signs of destruction typical of earthquakes. It supports a view that a storm of earthquakes successively ‘unzipped’ the plate boundary, so weakening the cities along the way that they were left vulnerable militarily, inviting attacks from opportunistic neighbours.

Earthquakes have frequently been used by historians and archaeologists as convenient explanations for cataclysmic destructions and abandonments. But earthquakes rarely wipe out entire cities, let alone entire regions. More often, seismic shocks leave cities as jumbles of ruined, damaged and intact buildings, encouraging their inhabitants not to flee but to stay and rebuild their houses and livelihoods. It is a pattern that we see in modern earthquake disasters, and there is little sign that human nature was any different in the past. - More: Journeys From The Centre of the Earth, BBC, Open2.net

However, this generalization does not seem to take into account the evidence from Pavlopetri that its people did not rebuild in the 12th century BCE or evidence from excavations at Sagalassos that their citizens abandoned their city after Arab raids and a catastophic quake in the 7th century CE (As coincidence would have it, I just viewed a film about the excavations at Sagalassos at the Archaeology Channel International Film Festival two days ago). On the contrary, these examples from the archaeological record seem to lend substance to the "earthquake and subsequent military vulnerability" theory as a reasonable causal hypothesis for such epochs of cultural decline.

The researchers are using a new sonar scanning technique that sounds like it will yield as detailed of images as a laser scanner.

"'We're using scanning sonar', which has been developed by an offshore engineering company [Kongsberg Mesotech in Vancouver, Canada, a subsidiary of Kongsberg Maritime, headquartered in Norway]. Their equipment does the same thing a terrestrial laser scanner would do, only using acoustic signals. It can take thousands of points over a couple of minutes and also take photorealistic impressions, so we could produce three-dimensional models using this equipment. Until now, sonar hasn't been able to produce as accurate a survey as terrestrial techniques. But if it does deliver everything it is supposed to, it could completely revolutionize underwater archaeology. Getting decent plans quickly is often a problem, and we often use measuring tapes and lines — which is effective, but time-consuming." - More: NatureNews

Film "Agora" Profiles Female Mathematician and Pagan Martyr Hypatia

The new film "Agora" starring Rachel Weisz as 4th century CE female scholar, Hypatia, sounds almost like the antithesis of Ben Hur.

"The heart of the film is Hypatia (Rachel Weisz in an unfaltering performance), the fourth century AD philosopher and teacher who lived in Alexandria during the Roman Empire. Married only to her unquenchable intellect and passion for mathematics and astronomy, she is loved by two men: her slave, Davus (Max Minghella), and her student, Orestes (Oscar Isaac).

Politics in the film are weakest during the overtly political speeches and monologues, and best captured in the details. Like many, Davus seeks not spiritual salvation in the Christian uprising but freedom from slavery, despite the bloodshed. His first attempt at prayer is brilliant: Unable to remember the Lord's Prayer, he quickly falls into a mantra to God to keep Hypatia away from Orestes. For his part, Orestes will renounce paganism and convert to Christianity during his rise in Roman politics." - More: Reuter

Hypatia was the daughter of Theon, who was her teacher and the last known mathematician associated with the museum of Alexandria. She traveled to both Athens and Italy to study, before becoming head of the Platonist school at Alexandria in approximately 400 AD . According to the 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia the Suda, she worked as teacher of philosophy, teaching the works of Plato and Aristotle. - More: Wikipedia

"Hypatia corresponded with and hosted scholars from others cities. Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, was one of her correspondents and he visited her frequently. Hypatia was a popular lecturer, drawing students from many parts of the empire.

From the little historical information about Hypatia that survives, it appears that she invented the plane astrolabe, the graduated brass hydrometer and the hydroscope, with Synesius of Greece, who was her student and later colleague.

Hypatia dressed in the clothing of a scholar or teacher, rather than in women's clothing. She moved about freely, driving her own chariot, contrary to the norm for women's public behavior. She exerted considerable political influence in the city."

"...[The local Christian bishop Cyril incited] a mob led by fanatical Christian monks in 415 to attack Hypatia as she drove her chariot through Alexandria. They dragged her from her chariot and, according to accounts from that time, stripped her, killed her, stripped her flesh from her bones, scattered her body parts through the streets, and burned some remaining parts of her body in the library of Caesareum." - More: About.com

So much for compassion and tolerance!

Nefertiti: A Fake with Two Faces?

I was catching up on some of my news alerts after returning from Italy and noticed two fascinating articles about the famed bust of Nefertiti. The first headline to startle me was a claim that the Nefertiti bust is a fake. Apparently, Swiss historian Henri Stierlin says, after studying the records surrounding the discovery of the bust, that it was produced in 1912 in efforts to study ancient pigments. He even names the artist - Gerardt Marks, who supposedly produced the work at the request of archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt.

[Image - a documented replica of the bust of Nefertiti displayed at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum in San Jose, California. Photo by Mary Harrsch]

However, Stierlin's "evidence" seems a little thin to me. First, he claims that the statue was never designed to have a left eye - it just isn't simply missing. "This is an insult for an ancient Egyptian who believed the statue was the person themself," Stierlin says. Perhaps he describes how he arrived at this conclusion in his paper.

Stierlin also observes that the shoulders of the work are cut vertically in the Art Nouveau-style of the early 20th century, not horizontally as is usually portrayed in ancient Egyptian art. Although this is an interesting observation, I can't help but wonder if the difference in style was the result of the shift in Egyptian art that occurred during the Amarna period and not a reflection of later art styles.

I thought his more compelling argument was the lack of documentation of the find by the original excavation team. Stierlin says this exquisite object was not mentioned at all in dig records. "[They] didn't even bother to supply a description, which is amazing for an exceptional work found intact!" he exclaimed.

He does admit, though, that the pigments have tested out as appropriately ancient.

From a political viewpoint, I can't help but wonder about the timing of this report. Egypt is demanding the return of the bust. If its authenticity is questioned, this would present a substantial legal obstacle to repatriation efforts. If it is, in fact, a German 20th-century sculpture, Egypt has no claim to it. The bust is so famous, though, the public will continue to flock to see it anyway - especially since dating of the stone underneath is not possible at this time - and its the tourist dollars the two governments are actually after.

Speaking of the stone underneath brings me to the next article about the bust I found quite interesting. A CT scan has revealed that the plaster features of the bust vary slightly from the actual carved stone bust within. I think she still ranks as one of the most beautiful profiles in the world though!

"Researchers in Germany have used a modern medical procedure to uncover a secret within one of ancient Egypt's most treasured artworks -- the bust of Nefertiti has two faces.

A team led by Dr. Alexander Huppertz, director of the Imaging Science Institute at Berlin's Charite hospital and medical school, discovered a detailed stone carving that differs from the external stucco face when they performed a computed tomography, or CT, scan on the bust.

The findings, published Tuesday in the monthly journal Radiology, are the first to show that the stone core of the statue is a highly detailed sculpture of the queen, Huppertz said.

"Until we did this scan, how deep the stucco was and whether a second face was underneath it was unknown," he said. "The hypothesis was that the stone underneath was just a support." - More: The Discovery Channel News

Update - It seems another researcher is questioning the authenticity of the Nefertiti bust based upon the content of the pigments used to adorn it:

The sculpture is composed of the so-called Amarna-mix, a blend of gypsum anhydride plaster applied on top of a limestone base. The material is named after Tel el-Amarna, a small city in central Egypt founded by Pharaoh Akhenaton in the 14th century B.C. That is also where the bust of his queen would be found in 1912.

"This special blend was unknown before 1912," said Simon says, which would mean that Borchardt and his contemporaries could not have known its exact composition. Currently, researchers are comparing material used in the Nefertiti bust with that utilized in statues of her husband, Akhenaton, and other artifacts from the Amarna period. A model of her husband is also currently in Berlin -- lying in storage in much worse condition. - More: Spiegel Online International

Ancient selective breeding reveals intelligent design?

The headline for an article in New Science really caught my eye - "Ancient Breeders Show Intelligent Design". With all of the excitement over the 200th anniversary of the publication of the "Origin of Species" and after watching a program on PBS about the recent legal battle between proponents of Intelligent Design and biology teachers in New Jersey, I couldn't help but do a double take, fearing a political coup at the headquarters of this online scholarly publication. As it turns out it was just a writer's effort to garner attention, as the piece was quite scientific.

Researchers have shown that, in the case of horses, DNA evidence points to coat coloration manipulation through breeding practices after the horse was domesticated about 5500 years ago. The study involved 89 equine fossils ranging in age from 42,000 years ago to medieval times and in location from Spain to China.

A similar study of ancient sheep fossils by researchers at the University of Glasgow showed that ancient sheepherders in Iraq and Iran began selecting sheep who shed their coats less often and developed shorter horns about 6,000 years ago.

When I was in high school my science project focused on genetic coloration in mice so I always find this kind of thing fascinating.

[Image: The Gute sheep originate from the horned sheep that have been kept in open pasture on the island of Gotland from ancient times. The population was almost extinct in the beginning of the 1940´s, after which the remaining horned sheep were collected and the flock started to increase in numbers. The sheep are hardy and well adapted to the island climate. Traditional use is for production of both meat and wool. The colour varies from light grey to nearly black. Both the rams and ewes are horned with short tails. The wool is double coated with underwool and guard hair and is mostly used for making carpets and souvenirs. The average live weight of rams is 75 kg and of ewes 50 kg. The mean litter size is 1.4 lambs at birth. The present population size is around 5,500 sheep and is increasing (year 2000).
See also Breeds of Livestock, sheep breeds.

Local name: Gutefår
References: Sven Jeppsson, Jordbruksverket, 551 82, Jönköping, Sweden.
Photographs: Jordbruksverket, 551 82, Jönköping, Sweden.

Courtesy of North Shed website]

Luwian hieroglyphs near ancient Antioch shed light on "Dark Age"

I have been intrigued by the so-called "Dark Age" that engulfed the eastern Mediterranean since I first learned about it in Archaeology 101 many years ago. I know there has been much speculation about the cause of the collapse of many Bronze Age cultures like the Mycenaeans and the Minoans ranging from the effects of volcanic eruptions and resulting tsunamis to pandemics and marauding tribal societies from the Asian steppes. But researchers involved in the Tayinat Archaeological Project say their findings indicate a continuity of many civilizations across this cultural chasm.

An ancient temple in Turkey has been found filled with broken metal, ivory carvings, and stone slabs engraved with a dead language [Luwian]. The find is casting new light on the "dark age" that was thought to have engulfed the region from 1200 to 900 B.C.

Written sources from the era—including the Old Testament of the Bible, Greek Homeric epics, and texts from Egyptian pharaoh Ramses III—record the transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age as a turbulent period of cultural collapse, famine, and violence.

But the newfound temple suggests that may not have been the case, say archaeologists from the University of Toronto's Tayinat Archaeological Project, led by Timothy Harrison.

"We're beginning to find new archaeological evidence that there was a continuation of writing traditions, as well as cultural and political continuity from the Bronze Age into this Iron Age period," Harrison said.- More: National Geographic News

Like the early University of Chicago excavations in 1935 & 1938, the largest number of inscriptions have been Luwian hieroglyphs.

The Chicago excavations produced an extensive corpus of Akkadian, Aramaic and Neo-Hittite (or Luwian) inscriptions. Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions accounted for the largest number, a total of 85 fragments, 32 of which have been shown to come from seven distinct monumental inscriptions. One of these, comprised of six basalt fragments, had formed part of a colossal statue of a figure seated on a throne. Although the precise provenience of the statue remains unclear, the inscription makes reference to Halpa-runta-a-s(a), very possibly the same Neo-Hittite ruler who is listed as having paid tribute to Shalmaneser III in the mid-9^th century BCE.

If this historical correlation is correct, it provides a possible date for the remainder of the Luwian hieroglyphic inscriptions found at the site, and raises the possibility of isolating the Building Period, and cultural horizon, in which these monumental objects were erected.

With only a few exceptions, all of the fragments appear to have been found in the fill or foundation trenches of structures dating to the Second Building Period; in other words, in secondary and tertiary contexts. Moreover, all but one of the inscriptions (an altar piece in obvious secondary reuse in Building II) clearly had been smashed and destroyed intentionally before being discarded. The Halparuntas inscription, therefore, would appear to date the Luwian epigraphic remains at Tell Ta‘yinat to the mid-ninth century or earlier, while their stratigraphic context places this material in the First Building Period.

The Tayinat Archaeological Project’s primary aim is to assemble archaeological data from the central settlement at Tell Ta’yinat of a succession of prominent, historically-attested Bronze and Iron Age polities for comparison with existing data sets from comparable contexts (e.g. domestic, residential, administrative, or public) at rural village sites in the region. This explicitly regional approach, still relatively rare in Near Eastern Archaeology, is designed to facilitate multiple levels of analysis, and to produce the multivariate data needed to engage in more systematic investigations of the complex social, economic and political institutions developed by the first urban communities to emerge in this part of the world.

Tell Ta’yinat forms a large low-lying mound located 45 kilometres west of Antakya (ancient Antioch) in Southeastern Turkey. The Chicago excavations uncovered the remains of several large palaces (called bit hilani), a temple (famously compared with Solomon's temple), and numerous beautifully carved stone reliefs and sculptures demonstrated that the site preserves a lengthy settlement history that spans the Early Bronze (ca 3000 2000 BCE) and Iron Age(ca. 1200 550 BCE) periods. In addition, the Expedition discovered numerous inscriptions (in Luwian/Neo Hittite, Neo-Assyrian and Aramaic), which helped to identify the site as ancient Kunulua, capital of the Neo Hittite/Aramaean Kingdom of Patina/Unqi. - More: Tayinat Archaeological Project.

[Image: Tayinat Lions - Hittite, courtesy http://www.anadolugizemi.com/]

Digitized Persepolis tablets now online

In another example of application of HP's Polynomial Texture Mapping technology, the University of Chicago is digitizing thousands of cuneiform tablets from the Persian fortress at Persepolis. Apparently, hundreds of the images are now available online. The article includes a video but it must be HD as it was so choppy it was difficult to watch. I only have a 1.5 Mps DSL connection as I live out in the countryside.

High-resolution images of about 200 Persepolis Fortification texts are available on InscriptiFact, on the Web site of the West Semitic Research Project, http://www.inscriptifact.com. Several hundred more will be available soon.

Images of about 150 more Persepolis tablets, along with editions and analytical tools, will soon be released on the On-Line Cultural Research Environment, the archaeological and textual database and presentation application developed at the Oriental Institute and maintained by the Library (http://ochre.lib.uchicago.edu/index.htm).

These ancient tablets from the palaces of Persepolis include pieces of language and art from the center of the Persian Empire, all made when it extended from India and Central Asia to Egypt and the Mediterranean.

The tablets being digitized come from the Persepolis Fortification Archive, some 30,000 administrative tablets and fragments that Oriental Institute archaeologists recovered in 1933 at Persepolis, the ruined palaces where the kings of the ancient Persian Empire held court. Since 1936, they have been on loan from Iran to the Oriental Institute for analysis and recording.

“They were written, sealed and filed in a short span of time, between 509 and 493 B.C., in the middle of the reign of the Achaemenid Persian king Darius I,” Gil Stein, Director of the Oriental Institute, said. “The oldest Greek tragedy of Aeschylus, and the first Greek history of Herodotus tell us about the reign of Darius, but they don’t tell us anything like this. The administration that these documents record touched every level of society, from lowly workers through bureaucrats and governors to the royal family itself,” he said. - More: University of Chicago Chronicle

Markov Model determines Indus Script contains grammatical structure

As someone who has experimented with artificial intelligence programs since the mid 1990s, I was riveted by this article about the use of a program, normally used to predict failure in electronic components, to analyze ancient Indus script fragments. Apparently the program revealed a definite grammatical pattern in the symbols quite similar to the cadence found in other language structures.

The process of decrypting ancient languages has fascinated me for a long time. Just last week I watched a Nova production, "Cracking the Maya Code", that detailed the history of the process used to unlock the Mayan past secreted within the intricate glyphs carved on many of the structures they left behind.

I am still a little skeptical about how a Russian linguist reached the "aha" moment when he realized different symbols represented the same syllable - it just seemed like a quantum leap to me. Why would the Maya develop a system using multiple complex symbols to mean the same thing. I could understand it if it was like differences in a regional dialect, but apparently the various symbols all occurred within the same context. Maybe they're examples of the ancient development of synonyms.

Anyway, the problem of decrypting the Indus script is even far more challenging than the challenges encountered in deciphering the Mayan glyphs as the longest script fragment found to date only contains 27 symbols. The Indus script is an elegant series of highly detailed pictograms like the one above. If we have only 27 symbols to work with and some of them represent the same syllable, as occurred with the Mayan glyphs, the task may prove to be ultimately impossible unless more extensive scripts are found.

Computational analysis of symbols used 4,000 years ago by a long-lost Indus Valley civilization suggests they represent a spoken language. Some frustrated linguists thought the symbols were merely pretty pictures.

"The underlying grammatical structure seems similar to what's found in many languages," said University of Washington computer scientist Rajesh Rao.

The Indus script, used between 2,600 and 1,900 B.C. in what is now eastern Pakistan and northwest India, belonged to a civilization as sophisticated as its Mesopotamian and Egyptian contemporaries. However, it left fewer linguistic remains. Archaeologists have uncovered about 1,500 unique inscriptions from fragments of pottery, tablets and seals. The longest inscription is just 27 signs long..."

"...In 2004, linguist Steve Farmer published a paper asserting that the Indus script was nothing more than political and religious symbols. It was a controversial notion, but not an unpopular one.

"...Rao, a machine learning specialist who read about the Indus script in high school and decided to apply his expertise to the script while on sabbatical in Inda, may have solved the language-versus-symbol question, if not the script itself.

"One of the main questions in machine learning is how to generalize rules from a limited amount of data," said Rao. "Even though we can't read it, we can look at the patterns and get the underlying grammatical structure."

Rao's team used pattern-analyzing software running what's known as a Markov model, a computational tool used to map system dynamics.

They fed the program sequences of four spoken languages: ancient Sumerian, Sanskrit and Old Tamil, as well as modern English. Then they gave it samples of four non-spoken communication systems: human DNA, Fortran, bacterial protein sequences and an artificial language.

The program calculated the level of order present in each language. Non-spoken languages were either highly ordered, with symbols and structures following each other in unvarying ways, or utterly chaotic. Spoken languages fell in the middle.

When they seeded the program with fragments of Indus script, it returned with grammatical rules based on patterns of symbol arrangement. These proved to be moderately ordered, just like spoken languages.

As for the meaning of the script, the program remained silent." - More: Wired

Stone sarcophagus and skeleton unearthed in Tibet

Again, I wish there had been an accompanying photo. This brief notice also did not include any speculation about the age or cultural period of the find. I did find references online to Tibetan funerary practices that said inhumation was the most common form of burial before Buddhism was introduced to Tibet, but after that sky burial became the most widely accepted funerary practice. Buddhism was first introduced in Tibet in 173 CE [Reference: Buddhism in Tibet] but supposedly had little impact at that time. I'm not sure what this website means by introduced because it goes on to say the appearance of the first Buddhist scripture did not occur until the 6th century CE and it goes on to say the scripture was not translated at that time. The first Buddhist monastery was erected in the ninth century after King Trisong Detsen officially declared Indian Buddhism and not Chinese Buddhism to be the religion of Tibet in 792 CE. If inhumation was abandoned somewhere between the 6th and 8th centuries, then the sarcophagus would predate that period at least.

I also found a fascinating discussion of ancient Tibetan royal burial practicies.

"... the funeral rituals of the tsenpos [early Tibetan kings] [are] closer to those of other Eurasian cultures - for example, the Scythians. We know quite a lot about the funerals of the Scythian kings because Herodotus wrote about them in the 5th century BC. Here’s what he wrote:

The tombs of their kings are in the land of the Gerrhi, who dwell at the point where the Borysthenes is first navigable. Here, when the king dies, they dig a grave, which is square in shape, and of great size. When it is ready, they take the king’s corpse, and, having opened the belly, and cleaned out the inside, fill the cavity with a preparation of chopped cypress, frankincense, parsley-seed, and anise-seed, after which they sew up the opening, enclose the body in wax, and, placing it on a wagon, carry it about through all the different tribes. On this procession each tribe, when it receives the corpse, imitates the example which is first set by the Royal Scythians; every man chops off a piece of his ear, crops his hair close, and makes a cut all round his arm, lacerates his forehead and his nose, and thrusts an arrow through his left hand.*

And as a commentator on Herodotus recently wrote: “The magnificent funerals of the Scythian kings have several parallels among Eurasian nomads of every age…” Indeed, restricting ourselves to the practices of cutting off the hair and self-laceration among mourners, we can easily pick out the following further examples. It was reported that at the funeral of Attila the Hun, mourners cut off their hair and made deep cuts in their faces. They kept the body in a ceremonial tent for a time before being buried. The Xiongnu (a nomadic empire that ruled northern China for a while in the 3rd and 4th centuries AD) buried their kings in large tombs, and plaits of hair have been found in some of those that have been excavated. The Khazars (around in the 7th-11th centuries) buried their dead in mausoleums near rivers, and at the funerals they beat drums, whistled and lacerated their faces. And so on

What we see again and again is the mourners cutting off their hair and lacerating their faces and bodies. This seems to me to be quite persuasive circumstantial evidence for rereading the Old Tibetan Chronicle in the same way. It also shows just how much the religion of the early Tibetan clans preserved the culture of their nomadic ancestors from the northern steppes. Other aspects of the tsenpo’s funerals which I haven’t mentioned here are also found among Eurasian nomadic peoples - like the long period elapsing between death and burial; the sacrifice of animals, especially white ones, and especially horses; and the killing and entombment of the king’s retainers.

I think all this helps us to see the early Tibetan religion (at least the myths and rituals surrounding the tsenpos) in the wider Eurasian cultural matrix shared by Scythians, Huns, Khazars, Turks, Mongols, and many more people of nomadic origin. - More: Early Tibet

News article:

A sarcophagus carved from stone, has been unearthed in Dongga Town, Lang County, southeastern Tibet's Nyingchi Prefecture, the prefecture's Cultural Relics Survey Team said.

The coffin was discovered in the course of building a road in the area. The frame and top of the stone coffin were made of bluish schist. The sarcophagus was 1.4 m long, 0.7 m wide, and 0.5 m tall. The tomb chamber was filled with cobblestones, sand and stones. A skeleton was also found in the chamber.- Tibet.news.cn

Newly-found tomb mural depicts ancient Chinese Medicine

I wonder if the mural described in this article is one of the murals described in an earlier article I discussed last month? I wish there had been an accompanying picture.

"Song Dynasty murals are not rare in and around the ancient Chinese capital Xi'an, but researcher Sun Bingjun at Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology said this was the first found to depict traditional Chinese medication, prevalent in China for nearly 5,000 years.

The mural, about four meters square, had a man sitting on a chair, whom experts believed was the tomb owner. "Jars and bottles were seen on a table nearby," said Sun.

Two other men were sitting at the table, one of whom was carrying two bags of herbs and the other consulting a huge collection of herbal formulas.

"The names of the herbs were still seen on the bags and the papers," said Sun. "We assume the master of the house was sick and two physicians were making prescriptions."

Sun and his colleagues have finished a preliminary research on the mural, which was found in a Song Dynasty (960-1279) tomb in the suburbs of Hancheng City in February."- More: chinaview.cn

Earliest Known Child with Deformity found among Homo Heidelbergensis remains

It seems scientists are still surprised by evidence of more human, rather than primitive animal, behavior in very early human ancestors like Homo Heidelbergensis. In a study presented to the National Academy of Sciences, researchers identified a 530,000 year-old member of the species with a deformity known as craniosynostosis, a condition where the skull sutures of a child close prematurely. The condition usually results in mental retardation because the developing brain can not expand normally. The Pleistocene-era child survived to about eight years old, so obviously received adult attention to reach that age.

Deliberately killing unwanted offspring "is not an uncommon practice among mammals, including great apes," our closest genetic relatives, Ana Gracia of the Centro UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamientos Humanos in Madrid explained.

Evidence of the practice also exists among modern human cultures. The Inuit, for instance, used to kill babies with severe genetic defects.

And at a medieval poorhouse in England, where parents often left their unwanted children, the cemetery contained a higher than normal number of children with deformities, the study team noted. - More: National Geographic News

But there are other early historical examples of compassion towards the physically deformed as described in Nick Thorpe's paper, "The Prehistory of Disability and ‘Deformity:

Yet there are examples which go against this, as at Salzmünde-Schiepzig in
Germany, where a child from the Early Bronze Age was buried in a wooden
coffin at the edge of a settlement. This child had suffered from both
incorrectly aligned thighs and a very long and narrow head obstructing brain
growth, with possible consequences ranging from restricted vision to partial
paralysis.

In the Early Neolithic of France, c. 4800 BC, an elderly man buried at
Buthiers-Boulancourt had, some years before death as indicated by
the degree of healing, had his lower left arm amputated. Despite this,
he was buried with highly prestigious grave goods of a complete sheep or
goat, a polished stone axe and a flint pick.

A case of dwarfism resulting from a genetic mutation occurred at Riparo del
Romito in Southern Italy at the end of the Paleolithic around 10,000 BC. Despite his severe condition, which must have greatly limited his ability to contribute to either hunting or gathering, the young man survived to the age of 17.

Are examples of compassion found in the early archaeological record simply remains reflecting a parent's instinct towards their offspring? Should we attribute compassion to an entire population group based on such isolated findings? Would a deformed child whose parents had perished been cared for by others?

[Photograph courtesy of Jose Luis Martinez Alvarez from Asturias, España]

Navigational Instruments & French Apothecary Weights found in Queen Anne's Revenge

Since I am planning to attend the new Pirates! exhibition at the Chicago Field Museum when I am in the Chicago area attending the Historical Novel Society conference in June, this article about the latest discoveries found in a wreck thought to be Blackbeard's "Queen Anne's Revenge" caught my eye.

A brass navigational instrument known as a chart divider is among artifacts recently recovered from a shipwreck thought to be the Queen Anne's Revenge, the ship of the infamous 18th-century pirate Blackbeard, archaeologists said in March 2009.

Underwater archaeologists from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources have been excavating the wreck—which lies 22 feet (7 meters) underwater a few miles off Beaufort, North Carolina—since 1997.
- More: National Geographic Society News

Archaeologists have also discovered some apothecary weights embossed with distinctive French fleur-de-lis. Blackbeard captured a French ship originally named Le Concorde and renamed her the Queen Anne's Revenge. So, the discovery of French-marked weights lends more authority to claims the wreck is, in fact, the fabled pirate ship.

—Photographs courtesy Wendy M. Welsh, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

Intimate Portraits From The Georgian and Regency Period Featured in New Exhibition at the British Museum

This beautiful portrait of Mary Hamilton by Sir Thomas Lawrence in an announcement of a new exhibition at the British Museum caught my eye. I collect small historical portraits called Cameo Creations and Mary Hamilton, with her rather windswept hair and trace of a broad brimmed hat looks very much like a portrait in my collection of Elizabeth, The Duchess of Devonshire, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. I have always been fascinated by historical portraits as if studying the faces of these people could somehow provide keys to unlocking the past.

My son had a less appreciative viewpoint of my hobby when he was growing up. I overhead him telling his friends, once, that his Mom was a little strange because she hung pictures of dead people she didn't even know all over the house.

Anyway, I hope if you are able to attend this exhibit at the British Museum you do appreciate these marvelous works of art. Alas, I just returned from Rome so won't be venturing "across the pond" again this year.

"The Intimate Portrait will explore the period between the 1730s and the 1830s – the heyday of British portraiture – when some of the country’s greatest artists produced beautifully worked portraits in pencil, chalks, watercolours and pastels that were often exhibited, sold and displayed as finished works of art. Jointly organised by the National Galleries of Scotland and the British Museum, this exhibition of 180 works will draw upon the superb (and largely unexplored) holdings of intimate portrait drawings in the collections of both institutions, as well as upon important private collections that have been placed on long-term loan at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Highlights will include masterpieces by Allan Ramsay, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Lawrence and David Wilkie.

While oil paintings and sculpture dominated the very public art of portraiture which flourished in Georgian and Regency Britain, many artists were simultaneously involved in creating more private portraits for domestic consumption and display. Portrait miniatures painted in watercolour on ivory were worn as jewellery or displayed as treasures in cabinets; pastels with their fragile but brilliant surfaces were protected under glass and hung within gilt frames; while drawings were either framed and hung in family groups or kept in albums or portfolios to be shown to friends and family.

Until now, there has never been a serious investigation of these captivating modes of portraiture, and it has largely been forgotten that these smaller, more intimate portraits were also enjoyed by a wider public, and were exhibited in their hundreds at the Royal Academy in London and other public exhibition spaces in Britain. Sir Thomas Lawrence’s magnificent portrait drawing of Mary Hamilton, which will feature in the exhibition, was one of a dozen pastel and chalk drawings he showed at the RA in 1789.

The Intimate Portrait will bring together works by around eighty artists, including many of the leading figures of the period, such as Richard Cosway, Henry Fuseli, John Downman, John Hoppner, the architect George Dance and the Irish artist Hugh Douglas Hamilton. Two Scottish artists, John Brown and Archibald Skirving, will be a revelation to London audiences and of particular note will be two masterly self-portrait drawings by the young rivals Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough.

The exhibition is arranged thematically to look at artists’ self-portraits and images of their families and friends, as well as their portrayal of the rising middle classes and the celebrities of the day. Well-known sitters include Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, Lady Hamilton, the Duke of Wellington and the young Queen Victoria. Intimate portraits are revealed to be important indicators of contemporary taste and ideas of ‘sentiment’, particularly through the many portraits of women and of children. The exhibition explores how and why they were made, where they were displayed and, above all, their qualities as portraits that are ‘intimate’ in the multiple senses of the word." - The British Museum

Bejewled Rug garners only 1/4 of estimated $20 million at Sotheby's

I had read that the economic crisis was impacting even the super rich and this article seems to be proof of that.

"Crafted in the 1860s as a gift for the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, Saudi Arabia, the carpet was created under the auspices of Gaekwar Kande Rao, the maharajah of Baroda, a former kingdom in northwest India that is now part of Gujarat state. It took five years of labor by hundreds of craftsmen to make. Some 2 million seed pearls and colored glass beads and gems set in a gold foil background make up the swirling rosette design."

Apparently, the rug was never bestowed on the tomb but ended up as divorce spoils when the Maharajah of Baroda separated from his second wife, the "Wallis Simpson" of India, in 1956.

I do hope some of the larger museums have some funds squirreled away so they can step in and buy up some of the quality art pieces that are now being liquidated by wealthy collectors.

Song Dynasty Frescoed Tomb found in Shaanxi Province China

Frescoes are one of my favorite art forms so I was naturally excited to see this article about the discovery of a frescoed Song dynasty tomb in China's Shaanxi province. I am most familiar with Roman frescoes and did not realize the fresco art form was so prevalent in ancient Chinese cultures as well.

"Tomb number M218, where the painting was discovered, is made of brick, and is nearly seven and half meters underground. A tunnel connects it with the outside world. Without any funerary objects found at the site, the fresco is the most significant discovery. Painted directly on the inner wall of the tomb, this fine fresco covers a wide range of topics and includes nearly 40 figures. The skeletons of the tomb's owners are also well preserved, as are the beds they lie on." - CCTV International.

The article included a short video with images of several of the paintings.

I found this website about frescoes in Chinese art that was very interesting. Apparently, Chinese frescoes are thought to date back to the Stone Age although the frescos in the tomb of Prince Liang of the Western Han Dynasty are the earliest extant frescos in China.

"During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the art of painting experienced the greatest prosperity in China's history of painting. The frescoed brick tombs of the Wei and Jin dynasties in the Jiayu Pass typically represent the paintings of these periods. In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, frescos were divided into grotto frescos, temple frescos, palace frescos, burial chamber frescos, and so on. The frescos had reached a great height either in terms of the configurations of the characters, styles and techniques, or color application, as represented by Dunhuang frescos and Kezier grotto frescos."

Logue's "War Music" to premiere at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco

Christopher Logue's reimagined version of books 16 -19 of Homer's Iliad, published under the title "War Music" in 2003, will be the inspiration for a new production by the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco which previews tomorrow, March 26, 2009 with full productions running April 1 through April 26.

[Image: Costume of Achilles, sketch by D.B. Bauer, American Conservatory Theater]

Director Lillian Groag has garnered kudos for her ambitious effort:

"In a wildly theatrical, totally modern interpretation that captures all of the passion and spirit of Homer's Iliad, renowned writer and director Lillian Groag (A.C.T.'s The Rivals) reignites the wrath of Greek warrior Achilles against his archrival, Agamemnon. Adapted from lauded contemporary poet Christopher Logue's ravishing translation that was 45 years in the making, War Music is a large-scale, visionary fusion of language, music, and movement as only A.C.T. can create.

In addition to an ensemble cast of A.C.T.'s finest actors, War Music features the talents of award-winning set designer Dan Ostling (Argonautika, Metamorphoses) and celebrated opera, ballet, and Broadway choreographer Daniel Pelzig—complete with an original score by John Glover." - Los Angeles Times

Ever since Julie Taymor's "Titus" was released to critical acclaim in 1999, a number of playwrights have emulated her modern spin on classical themes to lure audiences to productions based on ancient tales and it appears Groag is using this approach with "War Music" as well. The costumes range from familiar Bronze Age armor, worn by Achilles, to the stereotypical attire of a 21st century military dictator that will be worn by Agammenon. Greek divinities will peer through fantastical masks as they observe and direct the human participants in mankind's most famous conflict.

[Image - Left, Agamemnon; Right, Mask of Hades, sketches by D.B. Bauer, American Conservatory Theater]

"War Music," Groag explains, "is pretty much a choreographed and music piece all the way through. What we're trying to do is not turn it into a play but an epic poem for the theater. So there are three Homers, who narrate but also become characters as they speak. My goal is to slide from narration, where everybody is involved in hearing a story, into this very hot action, and the audience shouldn't know how they got there." - San Francisco Chronicle

The presentation promises to be a moving experience for those of you who can make it to San Francisco during its run. Having depleted my travel budget with a trip to Rome, I must be satisfied with reading "War Music" and Mr. Logue's other Iliad-related tomes including "All Day Permanent Red" and "Cold Calls", the sequel to "War Music" that brought Mr. Logue the Whitbread Poetry Prize.

Horses domesticated 1000 years earlier than previously thought

This new discovery in Kazakhstan has far reaching implications for the study of migration of ancient peoples:

[Image: Roman Mosaic depicting a battle with Amazons 2nd-4th century CE from Antakya, Turkey, now part of The Louvre's permanent collection, Photo by Mary Harrsch]

"Conventional wisdom would have it that horses were domesticated in the Bronze Age, sometime around 2,000 B.C., perhaps 2,500 B.C. But what we found in this study is that we have very clear evidence of horses being domesticated as early as 3,500 B.C. in the Botai culture, which is in northern Kazakhstan," says Alan Outram, an archaeologist at Britain's University of Exeter who led the team of scientists excavating what appears to have been a horse farm maintained by the Kazakh people of the ancient Botai culture. "And it is not just that we have found that they have been domesticated for food -- but these animals also appear to have been ridden and also milked."

At the site, the archaeologists found the remains of horses' bones and teeth as well as shards of pottery. By examining these closely, they have been able to put together a picture of daily life there.

The horses' bones show the marks left by stone axes and knives used to butcher the animals for meat. That is no surprise, because for centuries before, if not millennia, men had been hunting wild horses.

But what was surprising was to find traces of horses' milk in the remains of the clay jars.

Outram says that because pottery can preserve remnants of what was stored in it, the shards revealed their secrets even after thousands of years.

"Prehistoric pottery, which isn't glazed usually, absorbs a lot of the food that is in it, it soaks into the pottery fabric," Outram says. "The fat that is in food often preserves remarkably well, over thousands of years, because it is trapped in there away from chemical attack or bacterial attack in the soil. And you are able to extract [the fat] and carry out a number of really quite complex analyses on it which indicate what species group it comes from [and] in some cases also what type of foodstuff it was."

The evidence that men were milking horses at the time is perhaps proof enough that horses were already being kept as livestock, much like goats and sheep. But the team also found clear signs that the horses may have been sufficiently tamed to be ridden as well.

"We found evidence that these particular horses had been ridden or at least harnessed," Outram says. He says wear in the horses' mouths of the type they discovered "doesn't occur through natural diet or any other natural process."

"You also get changes to the jaw itself, because as that harness is hitting against the gum in the jaw it irritates the jaw and can cause extra bone growth in that area," Outram says, "and what we had on these Botai horses was both some very clear examples of the bit wear on the teeth [and] also changes to the jaw." - More: Radio Free Europe

Getty produces fascinating new video about Spanish polychrome painting techniques

Today on Twitter, the Getty Museum posted a link to a new article and excellent video they produced about Luisa Roldán and how her sculpture of Saint Ginés de La Jara was created. The video is about twelve minutes long and reveals fascinating details of the process.

I was fortunate to have viewed and photographed [Image left] this marvelous sculpture several years ago on my first visit to the Getty. I was astounded by the particularly lifelike depiction of the flesh and veins. I almost expected the saint to look down at me as I framed my image on my camera's LCD screen.

The technique, called encarnaciones, involves applying "thin layers of glue and gesso, followed by a pinkish beige layer of oil paint for the skin and blue to suggest the veins." Painter Tomás de los Arcos, La Roldana's brother-in-law, then applied a translucent coat of pinkish beige oil paint over the figure's veins, and added reddish highlights on the knuckles.

Of course when you enter the exhibit space, the first thing that catches your eye is the dramatic glint of gold on the saint's robe. The painter created the look of genuine brocade using a technique called estofado, in which one paint layer is scratched through to reveal another layer of contrasting color or material below.

Estofado was used extensively in Spain to depict rich embroidery and brocade on sculptures. The statue's garment was covered in gold leaf and painted over with brown paint, then incised in intricate patterns to reveal the brilliant burnished gold underneath.

La Roldana evenutally became the court sculptor for both Charles II and King Philip V. Other examples of her work, like the sculpture at right, may be viewed on this Spanish site.

Ancient Bead with Brahmin script points to 5th century BC Buddhism in Thailand

As someone who is fascinated by miniatures, I couldn't help but be intrigued by this article about Dr Bunchar Pongpanich, secretary of the Suthee-Rattana Foundation in Nakhon Si Thammarat, who collects ancient beads in Thailand. His collection is now being exhibited at the National Discovery Museum. I also noticed that his collection includes a Roman aureus inscribed with Antonius that a local villager unearthed.

Dr Bunchar said he was directing a tsunami relief operation in Krabi's Khlong Thom district when a villager came across the tiny object and handed it to him for examination.

"The engraved script on the pendant was made in a dialect called Brahmin that was used from the reign of King Ashoka [c 265 to 238 BC] up to the 5th century of the Buddhist Era [1st to 2nd century BC]," said Dr Bunchar.

Even though the meaning of the script remains a mystery, he said, it is potential evidence to mark the arrival of Buddhism in this region at that period.

"That may tell something about Suvarnabhumi. We know that Buddhism arrived in the region at that time but archaeological evidence that has been found in the country dates back only to the 9th century. But this bead dates farther back, to the 5th century."

He also found several other ancient signs used by Buddhists before the creation of Buddha images, including a tiny bead called Tri Rattana.

HISTORY: Beads of various origins and periods at the exhibition. They were loaned by Dr Bunchar Pongpanich of the Suthee-Rattana Foundation.

The bead, despite its importance, remains largely unknown to Buddhists, he said.

"Due to its peculiar, shoulder-like design, some villagers call it a 'doll bead'. I called it a 'frog bead' which did not make any sense," he said.

It was not until he met a French archaeologist who studied beads in Khao Sam Kaeo in Chumphon in 2007, that he realised that the bead, which is made of several kinds of stones including rock crystal and carnelian, signified the Three Gems of Buddhist beliefs.

"People don't recognise it largely because they look at it upside down. The round design at the bottom is a lotus, which is dhamma, the middle part is dharmachakra, the wheel of law, and the flame at the top is the spread of Buddhism."

Dr Bunchar said he then returned to the Suan Mokkh sanctuary and went through a note written by Phra Buddhadasa during his trip to India in 1955. "His note showed that the revered monk had seen this type of bead in that country and already knew of its meanings. I noticed also that the Tri Rattana sign is a motif of some of the walls of Suan Mokkh buildings."

After years of prohibited excavation, new finds in Moenjodaro

I first learned about Moenjodaro many years ago in my very first archaeology class where it was presented as an example of a city that had to be abandoned because of wholesale environmental destruction. I notice, though, that the current article in Mohenjodaro in Wikipedia does not venture to speculate on a particular cause for its decline.

"The Indus Valley Civilization (c. 3300–1700 BC, flowered 2600–1900 BC), abbreviated IVC, was an ancient riverine civilization that flourished in the Indus river valley in Pakistan and north-west India. Another name for this civilization is the "Harappan Civilization."

The Indus culture blossomed over the centuries and gave rise to the Indus Valley Civilization around 3000 BCE. The civilization spanned much of what is now Pakistan and North India, but suddenly went into decline around 1900 BCE. Indus Civilization settlements spread as far south as the Arabian Sea coast of India in Gujarat, as far west as the Iranian border, with an outpost in Bactria. Among the settlements were the major urban centers of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, as well as Lothal.

[Image - The so-called "Priest King" wearing what is now a Sindhi Ajruk, ca. 2500 BC. National Museum, Karachi, Pakistan]

The Mohenjo-daro ruins were one of the major centres of this ancient society. At its peak, some archaeologists opine that the Indus Civilization may have had a population of well over five million.

To date, over a thousand cities and settlements have been found, mainly in the Indus River valley in Pakistan and northwestern India." - Wikipedia

I was intrigued to read that Moenjodaro had public baths, like the Romans almost 3,000 years later:

At its height the city probably had around 35,000 residents. The buildings of the city were particularly advanced, with structures constructed of same-sized sun dried bricks of baked mud and burned wood.

The public buildings of these cities also suggest a high degree of social organization. The so-called great granary at Mohenjo-daro as interpreted by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1950 is designed with bays to receive carts delivering crops from the countryside, and there are ducts for air to circulate beneath the stored grain to dry it. However, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer has noted though, that no record of grain exists at the "granary." Thus Kenoyer suggests that a more appropriate title would be "Great Hall."^[8]

Close to the granary, there is a building similarly civic in nature - a great public bath, with steps down to a brick-lined pool in a colonnaded courtyard. The elaborate bath area was very well built, with a layer of natural tar to keep it from leaking, and in the centre was the pool. Measuring 12m x 7m, with a depth of 2.4m, it may have been used for religious or spiritual ceremonies.

Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells. Some of the houses included rooms that appear to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes. A variety of buildings were up to two stories high.

Being an agricultural city, it also featured a large well, and central marketplace. It also had a building with an underground furnace (hypocaust), possibly for heated bathing. - Wikipedia

Apparently, the last major excavation of Moenjodaro was conducted in 1964-65 by Dr. G. F. Dales.

After this date, excavations were banned due to damage done to the exposed structures by weathering. Since 1965, the only projects allowed at the site have been salvage excavation, surface surveys and conservation projects. Despite the ban on major archaeological projects, in the 1980s, teams of German and Italian survey groups, led by Dr. Michael Jansen and Dr. Maurizio Tosi, combined techniques such as architectural documentation, surface surveys, surface scraping and probing, to determine further clues about the ancient civilization
A team of archaeologists working on a drain to flush out rainwater from the DK-G area of an explored part of Moenjodaro found some ancient artefacts and cultural objects. Wikipedia

These latest findings were only the result of a $10 million UNESCO project to protect the site from flooding.

"Rainwater stagnates in several parts of the world heritage site every year, causing causes immense damage.

Well-defined structures of old drains were discovered along with certain old artefacts during the digging.

We had gone just half a metre down the level of surface of the old structures in the DK-G area and found the material of cultural value, The Dawn quoted Moenjodaro director Qasim Ali Qasim, as saying.

An object called elliptical lid was also found and according to Moenjodaro curator Irshad Rid, it was something new for archaeologists.

He said that prior to this digging no such object had been found at any site of the Indus Valley civilisation.

The curator said E. J. H. Mackay did last excavation of the site between 1927 and 1931. Since then, he said, no excavation in this portion had been done.

He said that the new finds could be related to the late period of Moenjodaro.

Rid said that the elliptical lid might have been used for keeping holy water or ceremonial water. A miniature used for keeping medicines was also discovered at the site, the curator said." - Thaindian.com

There is an excellent collection of Quicktime VR panoramic images of Moenjodaro on the World Heritage Site.

Unopened sarcophagus found near Djoser's pyramid

Although Imhotep was mentioned in this article as the architect of the Step Pyramid, no one is suggesting that this cache of mummies may be part of Imhotep's burial site that has been sought for decades.

Archaeologists have discovered dozens of mummies and several sarcophagi in a tomb estimated to be more than 4000 years old, says the Egyptian ministry of culture.

The find was made at Gisr al-Moudir, west of Egypt's first ever pyramid at Saqqara, the step pyramid of Djoser built by architect Imhotep in around 2700 BC, the ministry says in a statement.

"The tomb dates from the era of the sixth dynasty of the Old Kingdom, about 4300 years ago," says Egyptian archaeologist Zahi Hawass.

"Thirty mummies and skeletons were discovered, including a wooden sarcophagus that has been sealed since the pharaonic era in the burial chamber at a depth of 11 metres."

Four other stone sarcophagi and another wooden one were also found in the tomb. Twenty of the mummies were stored in niches.

The mud-brick tomb commemorates a priest who was also a choir leader, says Hawass.

Teaching Company's new course, "Making History: How Great Historians Interpret the Past" looks fascinating!

I was quite excited to see this new course offering, taught by Dr. Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College, from The Teaching Company. I like to read the accounts of ancient historians whenever I can but I always try to keep in mind the political and cultural influences that tend to skew the "eye-witness" perspective of these ancient minds. I will share some of my course discoveries with you when I get a chance to watch this new series on DVD. I will have to wait until I finish Experiencing Rome: A Visual Exploration of Antiquity's Greatest Empire though, as I am prepping for my March 12 trip to Rome at the moment.

Making History is on sale now for only $69.95 on DVD although you can also order it on audio CD, audio cassette, or MP3 download. I opted for the DVD version because it includes over 800 maps and images.

History is not truth.

While it forms the backbone of our knowledge about the world, history is nevertheless only a version of events. History is shaped by the interpretations and perspectives of the individual historians who record it.

Consider:

• Sallust, writing his dark history of Rome to rail against the political corruption he saw consuming the empire—while artfully concealing his own role in it;
• John Foxe, in his Book of Martyrs, writing about church history to discredit the Catholics and legitimize the reign of Elizabeth I;
• David Hume, penning his massive History of England with the deliberate goal of creating a potboiler that will earn him a fortune.

What, then, is the motive and the vision of the historian? How do historians create their histories? And what role does the historian's viewpoint and method play in what we accept as truth?

These questions underlie a history lesson of the most revealing kind.

In Making History: How Great Historians Interpret the Past, award-winning scholar Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College takes you inside the minds of our greatest historians. Over 24 intriguing lectures, he challenges you to explore the idea of written history as it has shaped humanity's story over 2,000 years. Told through enthralling historical anecdotes, the course travels deep into mankind's fundamental desire to record and understand the world, to shed new light on the events and experiences of yesterday, and to use the past as a window onto the present and the future.

History: The Art of Discovery

"History is more than merely a pile-up of facts or a chronicle of the past," notes Dr. Guelzo. "It is an art—and a very complicated one at that. And like the others arts, it has techniques and perspectives, some of them old and long-since retired, some of them in violent conflict with each other."

The actors in this art of discovery are the great historians themselves, from the ancient Greeks to our own time. You look through the eyes of our civilization's greatest historical minds to ponder why they conceived and wrote history the way they did.

In key sections, you explore the seminal thinking of these men:

• Herodotus, considered by many the first history writer, who replaced the epic imagination of Homer with istorieis, or inquiry
• Livy, the author of a 142-volume didactic history of Rome that spanned three continents and seven centuries
• David Hume, who framed English history with an evolutionary vision of economic, political, and intellectual freedom
• Edward Gibbon, whose monumental Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire forged a complex picture of epic collapse and decay

Beneath the Surface of Written History

With Professor Guelzo's penetrating perspective, you examine the processes that create accepted views of historical events. As you take apart the elements of history writing, you discover how the great stories of the past were chosen and how they were interpreted.

In considering the key choices the historian makes, you uncover the ways in which understanding how history is written is crucial to understanding historical events themselves. You also explore how the version of history you accept reveals much about you as an individual and as a member of a community.

The journey rewards you with an unforgettable insight into our human heritage and the chance to look with discerning eyes at human events in their deeper meanings. Anyone with an interest in history, philosophy, or intellectual history will find these lectures a far-reaching meditation on the evolution of historical thought.

Laurence Hutton's "Undying Faces" mesmerizing

I want to thank Laurence Hutton for commenting on my post about the recreation of Abraham Lincoln in the upcoming program "Stealing Lincoln's Body". He pointed me to his blog highlighting famous life and death masks, entitled "Undying Faces". I was mesmerized as I looked at faces of people I had read about but only seen in painted portraits, as they lived, for the most part, before the age of photography.

[Image left - Vice-admiral Horatio Nelson life mask, 1800, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London]

I was particularly interested in the life mask of Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson, commander in Britain's most famous naval victory at Trafalgar. I have always found Lord Nelson to be a very handsome man. I certainly understand why Emma Hamilton found him so attractive and have even collected historical figures of him (my favorite is a portrait doll by English artist Ann Parker. I was gratified to see that he was as handsome in reality as he has been portrayed in art.

[Image right - Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson, by Lemuel Francis Abbott]

It is not surprising that Lord Nelson had a life mask made of himself. He was, apparently, quite vain, according to an assessment of his personality in Wikipedia:

Nelson was regarded as a highly effective leader, and someone who was able to sympathise with the needs of his men. He based his command on love rather than authority, inspiring both his superiors and his subordinates with his considerable courage, commitment and charisma, dubbed 'the Nelson touch'.^[206][207] Nelson combined this talent with an adept grasp of strategy and politics, making him a highly successful naval commander. However, Nelson's personality was complex, often characterised by a desire to be noticed, both by his superiors, and the general public. He was easily flattered by praise, and dismayed when he felt he was not given sufficient credit for his actions.^[208] This led him to take risks, and to enthusiastically publicise his resultant successes.^[209] Nelson was also highly confident in his abilities, determined and able to make important decisions.^[210] His active career meant that he was considerably experienced in combat, and was a shrewd judge of his opponents, able to identify and exploit his enemies' weaknesses.^[206] He was often prone to insecurities however, as well as violent mood swings,^[211] and was extremely vain: he loved to receive decorations, tributes and praise.^[212] Despite his personality, he remained a highly professional leader and was driven all his life by a strong sense of duty. - Wikipedia

Of the Civil War-era death masks in Mr. Hutton's collection, I found the cast of Ulysses S. Grant to look the closest to his portraits in paintings and on our currency. Of course, in his case we have a photograph to compare with it.

[Image left - death mask of President Ulysses S. Grant]

I thought the death mask of Robert E. Lee reflected a sad end to a once great warrior.

His face seemed more elongated and emaciated than portraits I have seen of him.

[Image right - Death mask of Confederate General Robert E. Lee]

Of course, that is the problem when looking at a death mask. It is created at the end of life after, in many cases, wasting illnesses. In Lee's case:

"On September 28, 1870, Lee suffered a stroke that left him without the ability to speak. Lee died from the effects of pneumonia, a little after 9 a.m., October 12, 1870, two weeks after the stroke, in Lexington, Virginia. He was buried underneath Lee Chapel at Washington and Lee University, where his body remains today. According to J. William Jones' Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of Gen. Robert E. Lee, his last words, on the day of his death, were "Tell Hill he must come up. Strike the tent," but this is debatable because of conflicting accounts. Since Lee's stroke resulted in aphasia, last words may have been impossible. Lee was treated homeopathically for this illness.^{[42]" - Wikipedia}

^{It's as if you can see the profound sadness on his face, even in death, for the effects of his surrender at Appamatox and the brutal "reconstruction" that followed.}

"Lee attended a meeting of ex-Confederates in 1870, during which he expressed regrets about his surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, given the effects of Republican Reconstruction policy on the South. Speaking to former Confederate Governor of Texas Fletcher Stockdale, he said:

Governor, if I had foreseen the use those people [Yankees] designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand.^[39]- Wikipedia

Digital Modeling combined with Still image texture maps used to bring Lincoln to life

I received an update about the upcoming special "Stealing Lincoln's Body" that shows a little more detail of the process used to bring Lincoln to Life using a combination of digital modeling from a life mask of Lincoln with still images of Lincoln that provided texture maps for wrinkled skin, hair, etc. I wish I could sit down with the animators and watch each step of the process!

New Museum to Showcase Jin War Chariots

With all of the spectacular archaeological finds made in China since the 1980s it is difficult to choose the most important - and the finds just keep multiplying each year. I have been fortunate to have seen a traveling exhibit of the terracotta warriors and hope to see them in situ one day. Now it looks like I need to plan to include this new museum showcasing the fabulous Jin war chariots of the Western Zhou Dynasty (1120-781 BC), like the one shown here, in my itinerary!

[Image - life-size model of a Zhou Dynasty "4 Horses 3 men" War Chariot in the China's People's Revolutionary Military Musuem in Beijing]

In the remote village of Yangshe on the banks of the Yellow River, Chinese archaeologists are little by little bringing an ancient culture back to life after nearly 3,000 years. The vast cemetery they are excavating belonged to the rulers of the Jin state, which is finally emerging in all its remarkable diversity in what is now northern China's Shanxi Province. It is a discovery that in most countries would excite the entire scholarly community, but in China it is just one in a string of startling finds.

At the Yangshe dig, the outstanding feature is a large pit containing 48 chariots and 105 horses that were buried with a Jin ruler particularly noted for his military campaigns during the Western Zhou Dynasty (1120-781 BC).

The find is the largest horse and chariot pit dating from the Shang and Zhou dynasties (1600-256 BC) so far found in China and predates the terracotta warrior tomb of China's first emperor, Qin Shihuang, by more than 600 years, Ji said.

Among the finds are ceremonial carriages exquisitely painted with red lacquer and which include finely crafted doors with bronze hinges. Armoured war carriages protected by bronze plates are also among the finds.

"We believe the chariots and horses were the actual cavalry used in the military campaigns of the Jin leader," Ji said. "So far we have counted at least 105 horses, which we believe were drugged and buried alive as some of their heads were erect and others had their legs bound," he added.

The state of Jin existed as part of the Zhou Dynasty, which was divided into western and eastern periods.

The Jin cemetery was first discovered in 1992, but funding for major excavations only began in 1996.

Since then all 19 tombs have been excavated with the dig of the largest horse and chariot pit alone taking four years, Ji said.

Coinciding with the discoveries, archaeologists in China are seeing funding on a scale they could only have dreamt of a few years ago. "The Museum of the State of Jin, which begins construction in March, will sit on top of the horse and chariot pit and is expected to be opened by 2010," he said.

The 100-million-yuan (13-million-dollar) museum will house a treasure trove of bronze and jade artifacts from all 19 tombs of the early Jin rulers and their wives.

Murals from Tomb of Nebamun featured in refurbished Egyptian Gallery at The British Museum

Although the ancient Egyptians stylized the human form, their naturalistic depictions of animals has always amazed me. The detail and vibrant color of the cattle in this fragment from the tomb of an Egyptian official named Nebamun, painted around 1350 BCE during the late 18th dynasty, is no exception. Acquired during the 1820s by the British Museum it has been carefully conserved over the last 10 years and is now featured in their recently rennovated Egyptian gallery. I wish it had been on display when I was there this past summer.

[Image courtesy of The British Museum]

"The alternating colours and patterns of cattle create a superb sense of animal movement. The artists have left out some of the cattle’s legs to preserve the clarity of the design. The herdsman is telling the farmer in front of him in the queue:

'Come on! Get away! Don’t speak in the presence of the praised one! He detests people talking …. Pass on in quiet and in order … He knows all affairs, does the scribe and counter of grain of [Amun], Neb[amun]’.

The name of the god Amun has been hacked out in this caption where it appears in Nebamun’s name and title. Shortly after Nebamun died, King Akhenaten (1352–1336 BC) had Amun’s name erased from monuments as part of his religious reforms."

History Channel special to bring Lincoln virtually to life

This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln. In commemoration, The History Channel will be broadcasting a special, "Stealing Lincoln's Body" beginning February 16 at 9 p.m. EST. Many of us are aware of the thwarted attempts to steal and ransom Lincoln's corpse after it was delivered to Springfield, Illinois for burial, but, what caught my attention about this program is it's use of new visual graphics technology to present reenactments using photographs of Lincoln himself, not costumed actors.

[image - Abraham Lincoln at Madame Tussaud's in London, England]

"...the program features moving images of Abraham Lincoln, digitally created from actual historical photographs. For the first time, Lincoln walks and moves according to the historical record. The moving images and some of the stills showcase the first “virtual photography” of Lincoln and the only “virtual motion” pictures of him ever created. Using computer-generated imagery, it illustrates key sections of the story and brings them to life, often with startling effect.

These new photographs and moving images of Lincoln highlight a level of historical detail and information never seen before. Ray Downing of Studio Macbeth, who created these digital effects for STEALING LINCOLN’S BODY, explains the technique began as a kind of experiment using contemporary film technology. It gives the modern audience an opportunity to “gaze upon the noble face of our most beloved president, to see him walk down the street, to see him alive again…. Today’s technology allows us to achieve a level of photographic realism previously unattainable, with the added bonus of motion graphics."

Author and Lincoln scholar Harold Holzer , who is interviewed in STEALING LINCOLN’S BODY, says: “ The result—an uncanny, believable, realistic, living Lincoln—moving before our eyes as he must have in life, wholly imagined yet based on actual photos—took my breath away. Here is the man who lived, laughed, spoke, walked, for precious seconds practically born again.”

Here's a YouTube preview. Pay particular attention to the first few seconds - the animation is truly seamless!

I have worked with a product called CrazyTalk by Reallusion to animate the faces of still images of sculptures of people from long ago and this Christmas I even used it to create an animation of my late father calling one last square dance for my other family members as a OOAK Christmas gift. I'm presently working on a project to combine such animation with artificial intelligence to enable website visitors to virtually "talk" to historical personalities using the historical sculptures of George Stuart.

So I am anxious to see how similar software can be used to create full length animation and virtual photographic reenactment.

The program's focus:

"After lying in state at the White House and at the Capitol (the nation’s first presidential state funeral), Lincoln’s body was carried by train in a grand funeral procession through several states and nearly two thousand miles, arriving in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois on May 4. However, his final burial would not take place until 1901, thirty six years later.

Before Lincoln finally came to rest in a steel-and-concrete-reinforced underground vault in Springfield , the President’s body was repeatedly exhumed and moved, his coffin frequently opened.

In 1876, 11 years after Lincoln 's assassination, a band of Chicago counterfeiters devised a fantastic plot to steal Lincoln ’s body and hold it for ransom. They wanted $200,000 and the release of the gang's master engraver who was in prison in Illinois . The Secret Service – recently formed to deal with the country's ballooning counterfeiting problem – infiltrated the gang with an informer. Yet it also set in motion a cringe-inducing chain of events in which a group of well-intentioned, self-appointed guardians took it upon themselves to protect Lincoln ’s remains by any means necessary.

Some efforts to protect the remains of the 16th President of the United States would prove to be equally misguided and macabre. Finally, in 1901, thirty six years after Lincoln ’s assassination, Robert Todd Lincoln had the body of his father interred in a massive concrete vault. The contrast between the nation’s reverence for Abraham Lincoln and the shocking manner in which his body had been treated is striking. This strange story of Lincoln at un-rest reveals how important this man was to so many, and perhaps our reluctance to let such a beloved and visionary leader go."

Teacher and student contests, original short form video about Lincoln ’s life and Presidency, related lesson plans, as well as instructions for how to donate to this campaign will be available online at www.history.com/lincoln .

STEALING LINCOLN’S BODY was produced for The HISTORY Channel by Left/Right. Productions.

Brooklyn Museum adds 19th century lantern slide collections to Flickr

I was up on Flickr this morning checking comments on my images and noticed that the Brooklyn Museum has digitized their 19th century lantern slide collection of Egypt and added them to their account on Flickr:

Harry Burton's photographs of King Tut's tomb on display at Michael C. Carolos Museum

As a fellow photographer, I can appreciate the technical difficulties Burton encountered in his efforts to document one of the world's most astounding archaeological discoveries. Apparently he used just two electric lights and reflected sunlight to capture his amazing images. For those of us that can't make it to Emory for this exhibit, the Met published the book "Tutankhamun's Tomb: The Thrill of Discovery" featuring Burton's images.

The thrill of discovery, chronicled as a turning-point in the appreciation of ancient art and societies, connects the exhibition “Wonderful Things: The Harry Burton Photographs and the Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun” at the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University to “Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs” at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center. On view at the Carlos Museum through May 25, 2009, “Wonderful Things” brings to Atlanta 50 photographs showcasing the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. These photographs not only bring to life the excitement of the discovery and excavation of the tomb, but also highlight Harry Burton’s artistic genius as he captured some of the most evocative images ever put on film. Visitors can see how the photographs were taken, the way in which they were used, and how these images of the excavation captured the imagination of the world.

Providing context to the objects from the Tutankhamun exhibition at the Atlanta Civic Center, “Wonderful Things” highlights some of the great puzzles and unforgettable masterpieces from the reign of the “boy king.” Dr. Peter Lacovara, Senior Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art, said, “The Atlanta community is getting a glimpse into what it took to bring Tutankhamun’s treasures to the world, the atmosphere in which they were discovered, and the opening they provided archaeologists in their search to understand this ancient civilization.” Harry Burton’s photography is made more remarkable by his use of primitive equipment under difficult conditions. In addition to Burton’s world famous photographs the exhibit also shows his experimentation with motion pictures and color photography as well as the ways his photographs popularized the discovery of the tomb. On view there is also objects that highlight Howard Carter’s career and his search for the tomb, including drinking vessels of Tutankhamun, on loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, that led to the discovery and a rare sculpture of the boy king himself. Harry Burton’s iconic photographs at the Carlos Museum includes one of Tutankhamun’s mummy mask and another depicting Anubis, god of mummification and the journey into the afterlife, protecting Tutankhamun's canopic shrine containing his internal organs. Also included is a painting by Howard Carter lent by London collector, Rupert Wace, that highlights Carter’s talent as an artist and his love of Egyptian art.

Wonderful Things: The Photography of Harry Burton and the Discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamun captures every step of the archaeologists' painstakingly detailed work in and around the tomb, one of the first large-scale excavations to be so thoroughly recorded. Harry Burton took more than 1400 large format black-and-white images to try to document the experience of the discovery and excavation. The photographs in the exhibition document the Valley of the Kings, the initial discovery of the tomb, the dramatic moment when the excavators first glimpsed the dazzling array of artifacts, the entry to the burial chamber, the series of shrines and coffins that protected the king, and the king's mummy, wreathed in floral collars and bedecked with gold jewelry. - Artdaily.org

Large necropolis discovered at Himera may hold victims of the Carthaginians

[Image - Surprise at Himera]

It will be interesting when analysis is complete on the skeletal remains uncovered in the huge necropolis found in Himera to see if they are the victims of one or both of the major battles fought there with the Carthaginians in the fifth century BCE.

Archaeologists have uncovered what they believe to be the largest Greek necropolis in the city of Himera on the island of Sicily, where the ancient version of babies beakers has been found.

According to the new agency ANSA, although experts have long known about the burial ground, they have only recently understood its importance because of building work to extend a local railway track.

Hundreds of graves have already been uncovered, but archaeologists believe there are thousands more waiting to be found in the burial ground of the city, which rose to prominence more than 2,500 years ago.

The necropolis is of an extraordinary beauty and notable dimensions, said Sicily's regional councillor for culture, Antonello Antinoro.

”Preliminary estimates indicate the presence of around 10,000 tombs, which gives the site a good claim to being one of the most important discoveries of recent years, he added.

Among the most exciting finds are skeletons of newborn babies placed inside funerary amphorae along with the ancient version of babies beakers, namely small terracotta vases equipped with spouts to function as feeding bottles.

Most of the graves in the necropolis date from between the sixth and fifth centuries BC, and archaeologists believe that many of the tombs contain the remains of thousands of soldiers, civilians and prisoners who died during two bloody battles that took place in the city.

According to Stefano Vassallo, who heads the dig, archaeologists were excited to have found a common grave containing a dozen bodies, all of whom he said were young, male and showed unequivocal signs of a violent death in battle.

Some of the skeletons bear the signs of being hit by heavy objects, while others still have arrows attached to them, Vassallo said.

He added that skeletons found in the necropolis would undergo analysis by forensic anthropologists to determine information about the populations lifestyle and eating habits.

In addition to the huge numbers of human remains, the necropolis is gradually offering up a significant haul of funerary goods buried alongside the bodies such as oil-lamps, bowls, and ceramics. - Thaindian.com

The first battle in 480 BCE alone would have contributed thousands to the body count:

At sunrise the cavalrymen rode up to the naval camp of the Carthaginians, and when the guards admitted them, thinking them to be allies, they at once galloped to where Hamilcar was busied with the sacrifice, slew him, and then set fire to the ships; thereupon the scouts raised the signal and Gelon advanced with his entire army in battle order against the Carthaginian camp. The commanders of the Phoenicians in the camp at the outset led out their troops to meet the Siceliotes and as the lines closed they put up a vigorous fight; at the same time in both camps they sounded with the trumpets the signal for battle and a shout arose from the two armies one after the other, each eagerly striving to outdo their adversaries in the volume of their cheering.

The slaughter was great, and the battle was swaying back and forth, when suddenly the flames from the ships began to rise on high and sundry persons reported that the general had been slain; then the Greeks were emboldened and with spirits elated at the rumours and by the hope of victory they pressed with greater boldness upon the barbarians, while the Carthaginians, dismayed and despairing of victory, turned in flight.

Since Gelon had given orders to take no prisoners, there followed a great slaughter of the enemy in their flight, and in the end no less than one hundred and fifty thousand of them were slain. All who escaped the battle and fled to a strong position at first warded off the attackers, but the position they had seized had no water, and thirst compelled them to surrender to the victors. - Livius.org

Then the Carthaginian commander's grandson, Hannibal Mago, returned in 409 and wreaked a terrible vengence:

Hannibal marched to Himera and set up his main camp on the west of the city, while about a third of the army encamped to the south of Himera.^[6] Instead of building a circumventing wall and fully investing the city, The Carthaginians assaulted the walls with the help of siege towers and battering rams after setting up their camps. However, the city walls withstood the attack and no breaches could be made for the Puinc infantry to exploit. Hannibal then sent sappers, who dug tunnels under the walls and collapsed sections of it by setting fire to the wooden support beams.^[7] Carthaginian infantry then attacked through the gap, but The Himerans repulsed the Punic assault on the city, and then threw up make shift walls to close the breaches.^[8]

Sometime after this event, Syracusan general Diocles arrived with 3,000 Syracusan hoplites, 1,000 soldiers from Akragas and another 1,000 mercenaries and entered the city. Joining the Himeran force of about 10,000 troops^[9] (majority hoplites with some cavalry and peltasts), the Greeks launched a surprise attack on the Punic lines, probably on the forces posted on the south of the city. The Greeks achieved total surprise and in the confusion, Carthaginian troops fought each other as well as Greeks. As the Carthaginians ultimately broke and fled after losing about 6,000 soldiers, Greek soldiers went after the scattered remnants of their enemy. At this point, Hannibal launched a counter attack with the force he had held in reserve at the other camp (to the wast of Himera), routed the Greeks and chased them back into the city, with 3,000 Greeks losing their lives in the debacle.^[10]

The main Syracusan fleet was away from Sicily, but 25 triremes had arrived at Himera after the battle from Syracuse. As the Carthaginian fleet was at Motya, their arrival gave the Greeks command of the sea around Himera.^[11] Hannibal spread a false report that the Punic army was going to attack Syracuse after sailing there from Motya, as the main army of Syracuse was approaching Himera, thus leaving their city unguarded. This convinced the Syracusans to leave Himera for their mother city. The city of Himera had little chance of withstanding the Carthaginians on their own, so they decided to evacuate the city.^[12]

Diocles marched out of the city with half the men and all his troops at night, the Syracusan ships evacuated as many of the women and children as possible. The Carthaginians resumed their assaults the next day. The city managed to hold out for 1 day. Just as the Syracusan fleet was returning and was within sight of the city the following day, the Carthaginians broke through. Iberian troops of the Punic army had managed to secure a gap on the wall, and also the sections of the wall flanking the gap. The held off the Greeks until the Carthaginian army stormed the city through the gap, and the reduced garrison of Himera was overcome by weigh of numbers.

Hannibal sacrificed 3,000 Greek prisoners at the place where Hamilcar, his grandfather and leader of the 480 BC expedition, had fallen. The city of Himera was utterly destroyed, even all the temples were flattened to the ground, and the women and children were enslaved. - Wikipedia

The article I read did not provide information about the ethnic origins of the grave goods but with the reference to infant burials I guess we can assume they are all Greek/Sicilian and not Punic. However, since the Carthaginians were the ultimate victors, some graves could have contained their fallen as well. The article emphasized the discovery of "baby beakers" - spouted drinking vessels - but these types of vessels have been found in documented Punic burials on Malta as well.

Archaeologist Claudia Sagona in her work, Punic Antiquities of Malta and Other Ancient Artefacts Held in Ecclesiastic and Private Collections, Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Supplement 10, identified amphorae, urns, jars, jugs, juglets, flasks, spouted flasks, askoi, bottles, unguentaria, beakers, bowls, cups, skyphoi, kylikes, open pots, tripod bowls, situlae, plates, lids, incense cups, braziers, cooking pots and lamps among the grave goods in Punic burials on Malta.

Study shows Nasca trophy heads home grown

Just like the Carthaginians, who in time of crisis sacrificed their own children, the Nasca turned to their own people for ritual sacrifice to ensure a plentiful harvest. I wonder why, though, the Nasca followed this practice instead of sacrificing war prisoners like the surrounding Incas? Perhaps, also like the Carthaginians, they preferred commerce and trade to conquest of their neighbors - or simply chose to focus their efforts on other aspects of social development rather than the maintenance of warriors that could triumph over their more warlike neighbors.

[Image - Nasca double-spouted jar depicting bird with trophy head, courtesy of the British Museum]

"In South America’s ancient Nasca culture, some local folk literally lost their heads so that everyone else might fill their bellies. The Nasca obtained trophy heads, human skulls modified in various ways and intended to spur successful farming, from their own people, not from foreigners slain in battles and raids as was practiced by the Inca and other prehistoric societies of that region, a new study finds.

Earlier analyses of paintings on Nasca pottery had suggested that members of this culture believed that the taking of trophy heads provided supernatural power needed for crop growth. Since the first Nasca trophy heads were discovered nearly 100 years ago, scientists have debated whether these items came from vanquished enemies or from local individuals thought to represent venerated Nasca ancestors...

...The finding comes from an analysis of the diet-related substances that had collected and remain in the teeth of unearthed Nasca trophy heads. Comparing these substances with those in the teeth of skeletons known to be from Nasca individuals shows that one set of trophy heads came from the Nasca themselves rather than from outsiders, Knudson’s team reports in a paper published online December 11 in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.

Such data can’t yet pinpoint the geographic origins of the people whose heads became Nasca trophy heads, nor can the data rule out the possibility that the trophy heads were acquired in fights between local Nasca groups, remarks anthropologist William Isbell of Binghamton University in New York. “We can’t draw any final conclusions from this new study, but the results make it more likely that these severed heads were ancestors and not enemies,” Isbell says...

...Nasca sites of various ages have yielded more than 150 trophy heads, often found in caches of as many as 48 skulls, in graves as offerings to the dead and in public buildings. Most trophy skulls come from men, but some are from women and teenagers.

Knudson and her colleagues studied 16 trophy heads found at six Nasca sites by the late anthropologist Alfred Kroeber in 1925 and 1926. All the heads had been modified in the same way, with a hole drilled in the forehead for a carrying cord. Many Nasca trophy heads contain comparable forehead holes. Kroeber’s finds are kept at The Field Museum in Chicago.

Biochemical profiles of tiny amounts of tooth enamel taken from these trophy heads were compared to corresponding data for 13 intact Nasca skeletons that had already been excavated from either of three Nasca cemeteries. The scientists measured levels of key forms of strontium, oxygen and carbon in the ancient teeth, which were compared to baseline levels of these substances in rock formations, water, plants and small animals throughout the Nasca region.

Signature ratios of different forms of strontium, oxygen and carbon reflect where a person lived and what types of foods he or she consumed.

Overall, teeth from the trophy heads and from the comparison group displayed no substantial differences in the ratios of these substances. " - Science News

Apparently, an as yet unpublished mitochondrial DNA study by Kathleen Forgey of Indiana University Northwest in Gary points to a similar conclusion.

18th century shipwreck unearted in Argentina

It looks like a construction crew in Argentina stumbled across the remains of a Spanish ship from the 18th century:

"Workers digging to lay the foundation of a luxury apartment complex in Argentina uncovered a Spanish ship believed to be from the 18th century.

It was found in Buenos Aires' upscale Puerto Madero neighborhood, on the banks of the Plata River. The area used to be the city's old port, but was eventually filled in and developed.

Urban archaeologist Marcelo Weissel says it probably dates back to 1750 or earlier. But he says it likely does not contain any treasure, beyond its archaeological value."

Apparently, archaeologists plan to excavate the wreck then reconstruct the ship for a museum display.

[Image - A frigate being constructed on a slipway by the Marquis of La Victoria. Cádiz, 1719-1756]

Sahara chronicles last stand of a Berber warrior queen

I watched a very interesting two-hour program about the Sahara and the history in that region on History Channel International yesterday. I was particularly interested in the segment about a Berber warrior queen that arose during the late 7th century to lead her people against invading Arabs in 669 CE. It's been many years ago that I read a book entitled "Warrior Queens" by celebrated historian Lady Antonia Fraser. I learned about several female warrior leaders in that book that I had never encountered before but even Lady Fraser seems to have overlooked Al Kahena.

[Image - Berber Woman, Emile Vernet-Lecomte, French, 1870]

I was able to find this interesting article about Dahia Al Kahena on the web though. An abstract:

"According to Arab chroniclers of the time, Kahena was half queen and half sorceress with dark skin, a mass of hair and huge eyes. When she was angry or possessed by her demons, her eyes would turn red and her hair would stand up on end. The chroniclers may have had an interest in painting a fiendish image of this woman. Yet such propaganda may have done more to contribute to her reputation as a fearsome opponent. Kahena amply demonstrated her fiery mettle when, in 696, she led a Berber force which routed an Arab army in the plains below the Atlas mountains spanning modern-day Algeria and Tunisia. So numerous were the Arab casualties that Arab chroniclers renamed the wadi where the battle took place as the `Valley of Disaster'. Like a latter-day Boadicea, or a precursor to Joan of Arc, this female warrior this female warrior was proving a troublesome enemy to the invaders.

Legend may have grown around Kahena, but she was an all-too-real opponent for the caliphs forces. She proved utterly ruthless in conducting a guerrilla war of harassment. She adopted a scorched earth policy by having all the standing crops destroyed in order to deprive the Arab army of any sustenance from the land. This act, however, aroused resentment among settled tribes, who sent emissaries to the Arab commander asking him to come to their assistance.

In 699 the caliph, tired of the interminable struggle, decided to strike a decisive blow. He sent into North Africa the largest army ever seen in the region. The force was made up of Arab troops reinforced by thousands of Berbers who had turned against Kahena."

Like Boudicca, Al Kahena's revolt ended in a slaughter although her final battlefield was the huge colosseum built by the Roman emperor Gordian at the trading crossroads of Al Jem. However, she did not take her sons with her into death but ordered them to go to the Arab commander and offer their service. They were accepted into the caliph's service and later became outstanding leaders in their own right.

According to Wikipedia, her sons' acceptance was accomplished by an Arab officer that Al Kahena had captured early in her career and adopted.

Onassis Cultural Center to host Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens

I really need to plan a visit to the Onassis Cultural Center in New York. I wanted to see the exhibit about life in Sparta they hosted a couple of years ago but the Historical Novel Society conference I attended in Albany was scheduled too late. I'm afraid I won't get to see this excellent exhibit either as I'll be just back from Rome in March and would not have enough "recovery" time to turn around and attempt another trip to New York so soon.

[Image - Although this sculpture of a mid-4th century BCE Attic woman from Acharnae Menidi discovered before 1827 is part of the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is not part of the upcoming exhibit, it typifies the subtle grace and modesty depicted in sculpture of the period. This image is included in my Flickr image archive. I have licensed all images with Creative Commons for free non-commercial use with the attribution "Photo by Mary Harrsch". Any derivatives must also be shared in like manner]

The galleries of the Onassis Cultural Center in New York will be transformed into evocations of ancient Greek sanctuaries, each filled with artistic masterpieces assembled from international collections, for the major exhibition Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens. On view from December 10, 2008, through May 9, 2009, the exhibition brings together 155 rare and extraordinary archaeological objects in order to re-examine preconceptions about the exclusion of women from public life in ancient Athens. The story told by these objects, and experienced in the galleries, presents a more nuanced picture than is often seen, showing how women’s participation in cults and festivals contributed not only to personal fulfillment in Classical Greece but also to civic identity.

Among the treasures being brought to New York for the exhibition are marble statues of the goddesses Artemis and Athena (National Archaeological Museum, Athens); a white-ground vase with an image of Artemis, by the Pan Painter (State Hermitage Museum, Petersburg); a red-figure vase with an image of Iphigenia, the legendary heroine worshiped as a cult figure and seen as a model for priestesses (Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Ferrara); a vase showing the Trojan priestess Theano, another model for priestesses, receiving the Greek warriors who had come to recover Helen from Troy (Vatican Museums); and a limestone grave marker (conserved with support from the Onassis Foundation) carved with the image of a young woman in bridal costume, holding a votive offering (State Museums of Berlin). Interspersed with these and other exquisite artworks are archaeological objects that document the religious practices of Classical Athens and tell the complex story of women’s roles in that society.

Worshiping Women tells this story in three main chapters. “Goddesses and Heroines” introduces the principal female deities of Athens and Attica, in whose cults and festivals women were most actively engaged: Athena, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Demeter and her daughter Persephone. This first section also investigates the role of heroines, a special group of women believed to have lived in the distant past, who like Iphigenia became important figures of cult worship after their deaths.

The second chapter, “Women and Ritual,” explores the practice of ritual acts such as dances, libations, sacrifices, processions and festivals in which women were active in classical antiquity. Here the critical role of the priestess comes to light, specifically in her function as key-bearer for the temples of the gods.

In the final chapter, “Women and the Cycle of Life,” the exhibition explores how religious rituals defined moments of transition. Because the most important transition in a girl’s life was understood to be marriage, the wedding took on great significance, with its rituals depicted on a variety of vases associated with nuptial rites and wedding banquets. Death was another occasion on which Athenian women took on major responsibilities, such as preparing the deceased for burial and tending the graves of family members.

N.S. Gill's post about the exhibit in her "About Ancient History" blog included a link to a fascinating article about the ancient festival of Thesmophoria. An abstract:

Before the Thesmophoria festival itself, there was a preparatory night-time festival called the Stenia. At the Stenia women engaged in Aiskhrologia, insulting each other and using foul language. This commemorated Iambe's successful attempts to make the grieving mother Demeter laugh.

[This almost sounds like modern antics associated with male bonding!]

During the Stenia portion of the Thesmophoria women may have placed fertility objects, molded bread [in the shape of male genitals], pine cones and piglets, in a snake-filled chamber called a megaron.

The objects were later retrieved and ceremonially carried to an altar during a night time torch-lit procession commemorating Demeter's search for her kidnapped daughter Persephone. Aristophanes' comedic play Thesmophoriazusae tells the story of a man trying to infiltrate the Thesmophoria. Maybe Clodius of Roman fame got his idea to sneak into the celebration of the Bona Dea and seduce Julius Caesar's wife after reading the Thesmophoriazusae!

Has "Timeline" been realized at some point in the future?

This article caught my attention. I enjoyed the late Michael Crichton's book "Timeline" and liked the movie as well although it could have been improved by casting someone besides Paul Walker in one of the leading roles. At least Gerard Butler pretty much made up for that. I considered it purely science fiction though. But this discovery of a 100-year old watch in a 400-year old sealed tomb makes one pause. Perhaps we are going to crack the time travel mystery in the future after all!

[Photo by Europics]

ARCHAEOLOGISTS are stumped after finding a 100-year-old Swiss watch in an ancient tomb that was sealed more than 400 years ago.

The real-life tomb raiders were the first visitors to the Ming dynasty grave in Shangsi, southern China, since its occupant's funeral.

Inside they discovered a miniature watch encrusted in mud and rock in the shape of a ring marked 'Swiss', as reported by the Austrian Times.

Jiang Yanyu, former curator of the Guangxi Museum, said: "When we tried to remove the soil wrapped around the coffin, suddenly a piece of rock dropped off and hit the ground with metallic sound.

"We picked up the object, and found it was a ring. After removing the covering soil and examining it further, we were shocked to see it was a watch."

Inscription on Sudanese ram statues may hold key to Merotic

I have always been fascinated by the process used to decipher ancient scripts. I think that is why I was so anxious to view the Rosetta Stone when I visited the British Museum a couple of years ago.

Three ancient ram statues newly discovered in Sudan could help decipher the oldest script in sub-Saharan Africa whose secrets are mysterious to the modern world, a Western archaeologist said on Tuesday.

The rams were excavated at El-Hassa, 180km north of Khartoum, on a sacred causeway leading to an ancient temple, said Vincent Rondot, head of the French Section of the Directorate on Antiquities of Sudan.

The site is one of the most southern temples built to Amum, considered an omnipotent god, creator and guardian by people who lived throughout the Nile valley during the Merotic period 300 BC to 450 AD, said Rondot.

Key to the discovery three weeks ago is a royal inscription that bears the name of little known king Amanakhareqerem, said Rondot, whose unit is funded by the French foreign ministry.

"Merotic language is one of the last antique writings that still waits for its understanding... and it is the most ancient (sub-Saharan) African language written in script," Rondot told reporters.

Experts can pronounce the text and can read names, but cannot understand the words. Merotic is a branch of the same linguistic tree as languages spoken in contemporary Sudan and Eritrea, the archaeologist said.

Unlooted Chachapoyan city discovered in the Andes

Archaeologists are examining a recently discovered, exceptionally
well-preserved city carved into the Andes mountains by the ancient
Peruvian Chachapoya tribe.According to the Daily Telegraph, local hikers were the first to
stumble upon the city ruins, covering close to 12 acres of a
mountainside in Peru’s northern Amazon.
When the hikers arrived, they found a nearly 500-meter high waterfall
surrounded by lush jungle scenery, and buildings set upon the face of a
cliff. The city’s remoteness has protected it from looters,
leaving “ceramics and undisturbed burial sites” intact.


“We suspect that the ancient inhabitants used this as a lookout
point from where they could spot potential enemies,” said
Archaeologist Benedicto Pérez Goicochea to the Daily Telegraph. - Finding Dulcinea

The Chachapoyas, also called the Warriors of the Clouds, were an Andean people living in the cloud forests of the Amazonas region of present-day Peru. The Incas conquered their civilization shortly before the arrival of the Spanish in Peru. When the Spanish arrived in Peru in the 16th century, the Chachapoyas were one of the many nations ruled by the Inca Empire. Their incorporation into the Inca Empire had not been easy, due to their constant resistance to the Inca troops.

Since the Incas and the Spanish conquistadors
were the principal sources of information on the Chachapoyas, unbiased
first-hand knowledge of the Chachapoyas remains scarce. Writings by the
major chroniclers of the time, such as El Inca Garcilaso de la Vega,
were based on fragmentary second-hand accounts. Much of what we do know
about the Chachapoyas culture is based on archaeological evidence from
ruins, pottery, tombs and other artifacts.

The chronicler Pedro Cieza de León offers some picturesque notes about the Chachapoyas:

"They are the whitest and most handsome of all the people that I have seen in Indies,
and their wives were so beautiful that because of their gentleness,
many of them deserved to be the Incas' wives and to also be taken to
the Sun Temple (...) The women and their husbands always dressed in woolen clothes and in their heads they wear their llautos, which are a sign they wear to be known everywhere."

Cieza adds that, after their annexation to the Inca Empire, they adopted customs imposed by the Cuzco-based Inca.

The name Chachapoya is in fact the name that was given to
this culture by the Inca; the name that these people may have actually
used to refer to themselves is not known. The meaning of the word Chachapoyas may have been derived from sacha-p-collas, the equivalent of "colla people who live in the woods" (sacha = wild p = of the colla = nation in which Aymara is spoken). Some believe the word is a variant of the Quechua construction sacha puya, or people of the clouds. - Wikipedia

Grave of Real D'Artagnan found in the Netherlands

Dutch archaeologists believe that they have located the tomb of Louis XIV musketeer Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnan in a small Catholic church in the Netherlands.

According to a leading French historian, Charles de Batz de Castelmore dArtagnan, who served Louis XIV as captain of the Musketeers of the Guard, was buried a few kilometres away at Saint Peter and Paul Church in Wolder, Holland, The Times Online reports.

The trail is very precise, according to Odile Bordaz, author of several works on the musketeer.

She has marked down theories that d'Artagnans body was brought back to France, and has been insisting the Dutch authorities and the Catholic Church approve an archaeological dig of the site.

According to recently discovered documents, during the siege, bodies of French officers were buried in the nearest Catholic Church. D'Artagnan died during the Siege of Maastricht on June 25, 1673.

Alexandre Dumas wrote the novel The Three Musketeers in 1844 after reading about d'Artagnans exploits in Les Memoires de Monsieur d'Artagnan, which was published almost 150 years earlier.

Bordaz also said that d'Artagnan reputation as a lady killer was absolutely right

The musketeers and their officers led joyous lives and multiple conquests not only on the battlefield but also in the secret of the alcoves, she said.- From CathNews