The History Blog

Inadvertantly, of course. Authorities in Milas, near Bodrum, Turkey (once known as Halicarnassus of Caria), spent 7 months investigating a gang of looters, eventually following them to an illegal dig. The area was large so it wasn’t until after police arrested the looters that they found out the wretches had made an enormous find: the 4th century B.C. tomb of King Hekataios of Caria, father of King Mausolos of Caria.

It was for King Mausolos that a tomb was built which was so large and lavish that it would become known as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In fact, it was so wondrous that they named that whole category of grandiose tombs after Mausolos.

His father King Hekataois, also known as Hekatomnus, was a satrap of the Persian empire, but his success on the battlefield carved out an autonomous kindgom in Caria, a kingdom ruled by his descendants for 50 years, until Alexander swept through on his way to conquering the world.

So far what’s been found is a large tombstone that dates to 390 B.C., but who knows what else is on the site. There is some damage on the stone already, some caused by humans trying to dig it up in God knows what atrocious way, some by time.

“Even with its damaged parts the tomb stone is one of the most important archeological discoveries of all times. It has a very rare and precious workmanship.”

“The tomb stone could be as precious as Great Alexander’s, which is exhibited at the Istanbul Archeology Museum,” said [Undersecretariat of Culture and Tourism Ministry Özgür] Özarslan, adding that the relic first had to be saved. “The Ministry of Culture and Tourism will deal with that issue,” he said.

“The tomb stone has a length of 2.75 meters and a width of 1.85 meters,” said Culture and Tourism Ministry Properties and Museums Managing Director Murat Süslü.

Archaeologists from the University of Torino and the ministry for Archaeology of Southern Etruria excavating the Etruscan necropolis of Tarquinia have uncovered a large, possibly royal tomb from the 7th century B.C. Found in a central area of the city of tombs (an area known to have been frequented by Etruscan royalty), the tomb has fragments of paint on the wall.

Tests on the paint indicate it was made using an ancient Greek technique invented between the mid-8th and 7th centuries B.C. The tempera-like process is the oldest known paint making technique described in historical records. If the date on the tomb is confirmed, the band of red around the entranceway of the Tarquinia tomb will be the oldest Etruscan funerary painting ever found, beating the previous record-holder by several decades.

That’s not the only significant discovery. The tomb’s design and decoration use techniques from all over the Mediterranean.

The first stage of the excavation revealed a wide, imposing, open-air staircase leading down to the crypt’s entrance. After entering the tomb, archaeologists discovered the walls were covered in a form of gypsum plaster, using techniques common in the ancient civilisations of modern-day Cyprus, Egypt and Syria. This is the first example of this technique found in the central Italian region of Etruria and is believed to have been created by specialists from the eastern Mediterranean area. This theory is further backed up by the design of the crypt itself, which appears to be modelled on a style common in Cyprus, particularly in the ancient city-state of Salamis. The fact a royal tomb was created by a team of foreign architects and craftsmen is strong evidence of a solid network of ties and trade with other cultures, archaeologists said.

Etruscans are known to have traded extensively with the Greeks, but to see evidence of cultural influences from so many different places so early is a new puzzle piece in the little we know of the Etruscan civilization. Necropoli of tombs carved into the volcanic rock of central Italy are the source of most of what we have been able to learn about them, but even there we find a mystery at every turn.

There’s a black image outlined in red above the door and archaeologists have no idea what it means. It may be an animal representing the underworld, it may mean something else entirely.

In November of 1943, the Berlin Tell Halaf Museum was hit with an incendiary bomb and went up in flames, all the artifacts made out of wood or gypsum were completely destroyed. Its monumental basalt statues and stele withstood the fire, but were shattered into thousands of pieces when firemen blasted the burning building with cold water.

Tell Halaf is a palace from the 3,000 year-old Aramaen civilization found in 1899 by German archaeologist and banking scion Max von Oppenheim in what is now northern Syria. Over the next 30 years (interrupted by a failed diplomatic career and a World War) and 2 excavation projects, Oppenheim scooped up all the artifacts he could ship to Berlin, eventually opening a museum dedicated to the finds.

After the firebombing, it was Oppenheim who persuaded Walter Andrae, the director of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Pergamon Museum, to salvage the 27,000 fragments that were all that remained of the basalt monuments. In August of 1944, they were able to recover 9 truckloads of basalt fragments and store them in the basement of the Pergamon Museum. Consider the wartime deprivations of 1944 Berlin and Oppenheim’s known Jewish heritage, it’s pretty amazing those fragments were preserved.

They remained collecting dust in the Pergamon basement until after the reunification of Germany. A 1993 survey of the rubble raised the first hopes that perhaps some of the larger fragments could be reassembled into a few of the sculptures. The restoration project, funded in part by several Oppenheim charities, didn’t start until 2001 but the near decade of hard work has paid off far more than anyone expected. A full 60 artifacts have been pieced together from 25,000 of the fragments. (The remaining 2000 couldn’t be fitted back in.)

“We didn’t know how far we’d get because we didn’t know how much of the original material was recovered from the destroyed museum,” added Stefan Geismeier, the project’s chief restorer.

The team considered using computers to sort out their giant puzzle, but costs were too great, results uncertain, and they needed to show sponsors quickly that they could actually put things back together again.

“At first we thought we’d just reconstruct the outer shells and fill out the inner parts with cement. But after a couple of years we’d developed such a feeling for the basalt structure that we could also refit the inner parts so that most of the artifacts are pretty much complete,” said Martin.

“But unlike an ordinary puzzle where things get easier as you get towards the end, things just got more and more difficult as left over pieces became ever more shapeless and we had to imagine where they might fit,” he said.

“That was our biggest difficulty,” agreed Geismeier.

Some pieces were as small as a fingernail, others weighed one and a half tonnes. One of the statues, a goddess, was broken into 1,800 pieces.

“And every artifact had to be put back together in a single operation” to ensure all the pieces fitted properly, Geismeier added.

I can’t believe it only took 10 years. These are some seriously Zen people.

You can read more about Tel Hallaf, the excavations and the restoration on the project website. The restored statues will go on display starting in January at the Pergamon Museum.

When Howard Carter opened King Tut’s tomb in 1922, he found 4 chariots in the south-east corner of the antechamber (2 more were found in the treasury room). The chariots had been dismantled at the time of the King’s funeral. One of the chariots stood out not because of any elaborate decoration, but because of its lack thereof. Unlike the others, it was small, lightweight, and entirely undecorated. It also showed signs of regular use, again unlike the other more ornamental chariots.

Carter deduced from its open design that it was used for hunting and/or quotidian exercise. Since a recent study of the king’s mummy found that he suffered from a severe leg fracture right above the knee from a fall taken shortly before his death. Septicemia from the injury might have contributed to his death, and he could even have been hunting with this chariot when he took that fatal tumble.

There’s no way of knowing, of course. Still, it adds a little spice to the artifact which for the first time in its long life has left Egypt and is now winging its way to New York City where it will be added to the Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs exhibit at the Discovery Times Square Exposition.

The chariot will arrive in New York on Wednesday, accompanied by a conservator and the Director of the Luxor Museum, where the chariot is permanently displayed.

A team of Peruvian archaeologists excavating the archaeological complex of Huaca Bandera on the north coast of Peru (about 800 miles from Lima) have uncovered a ceremonial hall used by the the pre-Columbian Moche civilization for human sacrifices.

The Moche civilization flourished between the 1st century B.C. and the 8th century A.D. The ceremonial hall dates to the 6th century A.D., which means that the Moche were still practicing human sacrifice even at the end of their civilization.

Carlos Wester La Torre, director of the Bruning Museum in Peru and a leader of the dig, said the ceremonial site likely hosted ritual killings of prisoners of war.

Photographs taken at the site show more than half a dozen skeletons on the floor of the hall.

“There was a great ceremonial hall or passage integrated into the rest of the architecture that establishes the presence of certain figures of the Moche elite and also the practice of complex rituals such as human sacrifice,” Wester told Reuters.

His team uncovered a 60-meter-long (197-foot-long) corridor opening up to face three equidistant porticos and five thrones on the archaeological site’s main pyramid.

Behind the altar are the remains of a mural with colorful designs of 3 highly ornamented figures. Their ornamentation and the objects depicted on the mural indicate they are senior dignitaries, most likely political leaders, involved in the sacred ceremonies of human sacrifice. One of the dignitaries is female, from her ornaments probably the high priestess.

The Moche were a culture of farmers and potters, so unlike the Inca Empire that followed them, the Moche left few large ceremonial halls like this one behind, and this is the only one that dates so late in the civilization’s timeline.

There’s a famous story relayed by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History that Cleopatra drank the largest pearls in the world dissolved in vinegar on a bet with Marc Antony.

There were formerly two pearls, the largest that had been ever seen in the whole world: Cleopatra, the last of the queens of Egypt, was in possession of them both, they having come to her by descent from the kings of the East. When Antony had been sated by her, day after day, with the most exquisite banquets, this queenly courtesan, inflated with vanity and disdainful arrogance, affected to treat all this sumptuousness and all these vast preparations with the greatest contempt; upon which Antony enquired what there was that could possibly be added to such extraordinary magnificence. To this she made answer, that on a single entertainment she would expend ten millions of sesterces. Antony was extremely desirous to learn how that could be done, but looked upon it as a thing quite impossible; and a wager was the result. On the following day, upon which the matter was to be decided, in order that she might not lose the wager, she had an entertainment set before Antony, magnificent in every respect, though no better than his usual repast. Upon this, Antony joked her, and enquired what was the amount expended upon it; to which she made answer that the banquet which he then beheld was only a trifling appendage to the real banquet, and that she alone would consume at the meal to the ascertained value of that amount, she herself would swallow the ten millions of sesterces; and so ordered the second course to be served. In obedience to her instructions, the servants placed before her a single vessel, which was filled with vinegar, a liquid, the sharpness and strength of which is able to dis-solve pearls. At this moment she was wearing in her ears those choicest and most rare and unique productions of Nature; and while Antony was waiting to see what she was going to do, taking one of them from out of her ear, she threw it into the vinegar, and directly it was melted, swallowed it.

It hasn’t been taken terribly seriously by historians because as you can see, Pliny deploys the story more as an illustration of Antony and Cleopatra’s dissipated, luxurious wastefulness than a realistic description. Besides, a basic test of the tall tale fails: if you drop pearls in vinegar, even highly acidic vinegar, they don’t melt. At least not right away like they do in Pliny’s story.

Classicist Prudence Jones of Montclair State University decided to explore the pearls-in-vinegar possibilities. She didn’t discount the story as fiction off the bat, especially since Cleopatra was said by ancient physician Galen to be well-versed in poison lore. She also wrote a book on cosmetics — fragments of which still exist — displaying an extensive knowledge of chemistry.

Jones began experimenting with calcium tablets, then oyster shells in vinegar. Then in a shocking break, a jeweler gave her two 5 frikkin carat pearls to test.

“Experiments reveal that a reaction between pearls and vinegar is quite possible,” concludes the study. Calcium carbonate plus the vinegar’s acetic acid in water produces calcium acetate water and carbon dioxide, for chemistry fans. Jones finds a 5% solution of acetic acid, sold in supermarkets today and well within concentrations produced naturally by fermentation, takes 24 to 36 hours to dissolve a 5-carat pearl.

Boiling the vinegar, or crushing the pearl, or both, greatly speeds up the reaction, perhaps to under 10 minutes. Interestingly, stronger solutions of acetic acid greatly slows down dissolving (the water takes part in the reaction), something that may have hindered folks testing Pliny’s veracity in the past.

So the straight from earring to vinegar then down the hatch process either didn’t happen, or Cleopatra fixed the bet by softening the pearl for a day or two before wearing them at dinner, or she had the vinegar boiled before dropping in the pearls. I could totally see her hustling Marc Antony like that.

Okay so it’s not new, and it’s not really even a henge anymore so much as the ditches and postholes therefrom, but archaeologists are still lauding it as the most exciting find on the Salisbury Plain in 50 years. All kinds of smaller finds have been made during that time — from graves and attendant goods to a smaller wood circle — but this could be a major ceremonial monument.

Note of caution: We don’t know yet exactly what it is, though. Right now all we see are images of holes, basically.

Images show it has two entrances on the north-east and south-west sides and inside the circle is a burial mound on top which appeared much later, Professor Gaffney said.

“You seem to have a large-ditched feature, but it seems to be made of individual scoops rather than just a straight trench,” he said.

“When we looked a bit more closely, we then realised there was a ring of pits about a metre wide going all the way around the edge.

“When you see that as an archaeologist, you just looked at it and thought, ‘that’s a henge monument’ – it’s a timber equivalent to Stonehenge.

“From the general shape, we would guess it dates backs to about the time when Stonehenge was emerging at its most complex.

Despite the immense fame of the Neolithic standing stones, the surrounding area is surprisingly unexplored. An international team of archaeologists led by the University of Birmingham is surveying the plain to a depth of 3 feet starting with their back to Stonehenge then moving outwards 14 square kilometers (5 square miles). You’d have to deglove the plain and it would take years to do this using traditional pick and shovel methodologies.

That’s why the archaeological team is using new, non-invasive technology to uncover the secrets of the plain, using scanners attached to tractors to cover large amounts of ground in deep detail very quickly. Technologies used include ground penetrating radar, magnetic surveys, resistivity and electromagnetic studies. Ground penetrating radar is usually deployed by one person pushing the detector. The team scaled the detector up 5 times, attached it to a quad bike and were thus able to cover the 14 square kilometers around Stonehenge in just 3 weeks.

There is some loss of resolution in the data gathered at such speed, but they’ve got time to go back and focus on areas that need further exploration. The project is scheduled to continue for 3 years. By the end they’ll have a 3D map of the area

It could just be a phallic carving tool or some other kind of device, but it certainly looks like a penis. Archaeologists excavating a Mesolithic site in Motala, Sweden, found the suggestively carved antler bone (he he… I said bone) in an area replete with artifacts dating from between 4,000 and 6,000 B.C.

It’s rare that organic material survives over the millennia, but this particular site has ideal conditions for the preservation of bone artifacts: layers of sediment and clay riverbed that keep them safe from the elements. Bone and even wood artifacts have been found at the Motala site.

The dildo-like object is about 4 inches (10.5 cm) long and 0.8 inches (2 cm) in diameter.

It’s not the first time that such a phallic object has been found from the ancient world. Another item strongly resembling a penis was unearthed in Germany in 2005. That one is even older – dating from 28,000 years ago – and made of stone.

Yet the recent discovery was enough to shock the scientists working at the dig, which is led by National Heritage Board archaeologist Fredrik Molin.

“Nobody here, and nobody that we heard of or talked with, had ever seen something like this in northern European or Scandinavian sites,” Gruber said.

Since the non-penis end of it comes to a curving point, that could well have been the business end, used for carving or chipping flint. The site has revealed many other Stone Age tools with pointy uses, like harpoon and spear tips, so it would make sense that our penile friend would perform a similar function.

A team of archaeologists from Brown University has found an incredibly well-preserved Maya royal tomb beneath the El Diablo pyramid in the archaeological site of El Zotz, in northern Guatemala. The tomb dates to between 350 and 400 A.D., but despite its venerable 1600 years of age, it was so well-sealed that when archaeologists opened the tomb it still smelled of decaying bodies.

The tomb was sealed by layers of mud and stone, which kept the tomb safe from human and environmental ravages. The airtight and nearly watertight conditions have preserved the contents, including organic artifacts like carved wood, rope and textiles that rarely survive. There’s also richly decorated pottery and bowls containing finger bones.

It appears the tomb held an adult male, but the bone analyst, Andrew Scherer, assistant professor of anthropology at Brown, has not yet confirmed the finding. So far, it seems likely that there are six children in the tomb, some with whole bodies and probably two solely with skulls.

And who was this man? Though the findings are still very new, the group believes the tomb is likely from a king they only know about from other hieroglyphic texts — one of [team leader Stephen] Houston’s specialties in Maya archaeology. “These items are artistic riches, extraordinarily preserved from a key time in Maya history,” said Houston. “From the tomb’s position, time, richness, and repeated constructions atop the tomb, we believe this is very likely the founder of a dynasty.”

Houston says the tomb shows that the ruler is going into the tomb as a ritual dancer. He has all the attributes of this role, including many small ‘bells’ of shell with, probably, dog canines as clappers. “There is a chance too, that his body, which rested on a raised bier that collapsed to the floor, had an elaborate headdress with small glyphs on them. One of his hands may have held a sacrificial blade.”

There’s a red organic substance on the blade. It hasn’t been analyzed yet, but the stone expert notes that the style of blade is the kind used to cut through bone and other hard materials, so Houston feels safe in positing that the red substance is blood.

The team made this find early in the expedition — they’ve only been on site a few weeks — and there’s much left to do, especially given the complexity of royal tombs and the particular bounty of this undisturbed one.

A couple of years ago I wrote about Dogfish Brewery recreating an ancient Aztec chocolate beer using a recipe derived from molecular analysis of a Honduran drinking vessel. That inspired me to order their Midas Touch brew, a beery-meady concoction replicated from dregs in cups from Midas’ tomb. (It was a little weird but by the end of the six pack I really liked it, and no, I didn’t drink them all at once.)

Dogfish has another ancient fermented beverage on offer this year, only this one goes further back in time than either Midas or the Aztecs. It’s a Chinese brew derived from 9,000 year-old Neolithic pottery. Dr. Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Antropology, the same found the vessels 10 years ago. Using infrared spectrometry, gas chromatography and other molecular analysis technology, he figured out what used to be in those pots.

The molecular evidence told McGovern the vessels from China once contained an alcoholic beverage made of rice, grapes, hawthorn berries, honey and chrysanthemum flowers.

“What we found is something that was turning up all over the world from these early periods,” he says. “We don’t have just a wine or a beer or a mead, but we have like a combination of all three.”

McGovern has collaborated with Dogfish Brewery before on both the Aztec chocobeer and the Midas mead. This Chinese wine/beer/mead brew, felicitously named Chateau Jiahu, was first released in a limited run in 2006. Now it’s available again. Dogfish will brew 3000 crates of it.

In keeping with historic evidence, Dogfish brewers used pre-gelatinized rice flakes, Wildflower honey, Muscat grapes, barley malt, hawthorn fruit, and Chrysanthemum flowers. The rice and barley malt were added together to make the mash for starch conversion and degredation. The resulting sweet wort was then run into the kettle. The honey, grapes, Hawthorn fruit, andChrysanthemum flowers were then added. The entire mixture was boiled for 45 minutes, then cooled. The resulting sweet liquid was pitched with a fresh culture of Sake yeast and allowed to ferment a month before the transfer into a chilled secondary tank.