The History Blog

In 800 B.C., a royal official in the city of Sam’al in what is now Turkey, ordered a stone monument be inscribed after his death directing his mourners commemorate his soul.

Archaeologists who found the stele last summer believe it’s evidence the locals believed in an eternal soul separate from the body, which is notable for the time and the area.

“Normally, in the Semitic cultures, the soul of a person, their vital essence, adheres to the bones of the deceased,” said David Schloen, an archaeologist at the university’s Oriental Institute and director of the excavations. “But here we have a culture that believed the soul is not in the corpse but has been transferred to the mortuary stone.”

A translation of the inscription by Dennis Pardee, a professor of Near Eastern languages and civilization at Chicago, reads in part: “I, Kuttamuwa, servant of [the king] Panamuwa, am the one who oversaw the production of this stele for myself while still living. I placed it in an eternal chamber [?] and established a feast at this chamber: a bull for [the god] Hadad, a ram for [the god] Shamash and a ram for my soul that is in this stele.”

There might be an Egyptian influence in this theology. An Egyptologist cited in the article notes that the ancient Egyptians broke our notion of a soul up into two parts, one of which, the bit that includes personal characteristics, leaves the body after death.

There’s no evidence of direct Egyptian influence, though, and there were all kinds of cultures interacting in the area at that time.

The are in which the stele was found has a fascinating history:

The site, near the town of Islahiye in Gaziantep province, was controlled at one time by the Hittite Empire in central Turkey, then became the capital of a small independent kingdom. In the eighth century, the city was still the seat of kings, including Panamuwa, but they were by then apparently subservient to the Assyrian Empire. After that empire’s collapse, the city’s fortunes declined, and the place was abandoned late in the seventh century.

It wasn’t until the post-Schliemann Germans excavated the area at the turn of the century that the rich history of the city began to be revealed, and after that was another 100 years of neglect until the University of Chicago archaeologists began excavations in 2006.

I came across an article today that pissed me off so much I actually bothered to register and comment: Genuine antiquities are surprisingly affordable.

Plasma TVs from the back of some guy’s van are surprisingly affordable too. Know why? BECAUSE THEY’RE FRIKKIN STOLEN.

I mean, just look at this quote.

I know it sounds unbelievable that it is possible to pay as little as $200 for a small Egyptian station (954-853 B.C.) or a Neolithic painted pottery jar c. 2000 B.C. or a free blown amber marbled glass flask c. 1st century A.D. for $1,000/$2,000.

Surprisingly the answer is because they aren’t very rare. According to Bill Gage, in the expert department of James Julia Auctions, they turn up regularly at auction. “They are still digging it up and it was untouched for 2,000 years.”

They are still digging it up. There. Right there. Who the hell does Anne Gilbert The Antique Detective think is doing that digging? Can ya maybe detect that every major antiquities-exporting country has LAWS against “digging it up” and selling it for a bargoon to Indiana Jones manqué IT professionals in the greater Chicago area?

Now watch this drive:

If you are still interested check before buying for historical significance, authentic age and good condition. Study museum collections and ask questions.

Historical significance, age and condition. Not a single word in the entire article about history of ownership. No need for buyers to care in the least if they’re supporting grave robbers, drug cartels and terrorists.

So here’s what I said in my comment:

I’m dismayed by your complete lack of acknowledgment that recently surfaced antiques (”They are still digging it up and it was untouched for 2,000 years.”) are most likely looted, stolen by highly destructive grave robbers and trafficked by criminal networks including a vast panoply of terrorists, drug dealers and all manner of criminals.

The market in Apullian red figure vases in particular is notoriously comprised of goods ripped from the ground of central Italy since 1970 in contravention of Italian law and the 1970 UNESCO convention.

To not even mention provenance or ownership history as something potential buyers should care about is deeply irresponsible. That sort of look-the-other-way attitude is why Shelby White, the Getty Museum, the Met and a myriad other collectors and institutions have been forced to return the stolen goods they so gleefully purchased with the reckless encouragement of people like you.

I had links in there but evidentally they don’t allow HTML in comments.

What do you think? Was I too nice?

Archaeologists digging west of Stonehenge have found a child buried with a chalk hedgehog figurine. The child was buried about 3000 years ago.

Archaeologists who discovered the grave, where the child was laying on his or her side, believe the toy - perhaps placed there by a doting father - is the earliest known depiction of a hedgehog in British history. [...]

Dr Joshua Pollard, of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, said: ‘Representational art from this period is very rare and so far as I’m aware, if the identification is correct, it’s the only known prehistoric depiction of a hedgehog from Britain.’

Hmm… Not quite seeing the hedgehog there. It does remind me of a Zuni animal fetish, though.

In February I posted about a beautiful 13th c. illuminated scroll of coat of arms, the earliest surviving English heraldic manuscript, which Sotheby’s had auctioned overseas.

The culture minister had put a temporary export block on it hoping to give a local institution time to scrape up the funds for purchase, and it worked. The British Library is now the proud owner of the Dering Roll.

The British Library received a £100,000 National Heritage Memorial Fund grant, £40,000 from The Art Fund and £10,000 each from the Friends of the National Libraries and Friends of the British Library to help buy the item.

Yay for the good guys winning! The Dering Roll is already on display in the British Library. I’d love to see it. The pictures clearly don’t do it justice.

I don’t know why this Russian brain research facility was abandoned, but they were in some kind of rush. Look at the wealth of creepiness they left behind.

There’s no information I could find on the web about the exact name and location of this facility. This site claims it was a secret Red Army lab closed under Gorbachev.

That awesome picture of him sans birthmark underneath a jar of brains supports the claim that the research ended along with the Soviet system.

How great is it that they just left the place as is, specimens floating bloatedly in yellow fluid and perched on boxes of what look like chocolate covered hazelnuts?

Click here for more cool pictures of Russian urban decay from the same photographer.

It might be a part of a 6th c. monastery, and it’s not just an olive press but rather the remains of a huge olive pressing operation destroyed — but also in a way preserved — by fire.

Three screw-type press beds and a stone weight that was originally connected to the end of a beam were revealed at the site. Alongside the press beds collecting vats, settling pits and other pools that were used to separate the oil from the watery lees (the non-oily liquid that is also expressed from the olives) were exposed.

Two stone containers that were used to store the oil were exposed next to the oil production installations. The containers had a combined capacity of approximately 20,000 liters, and have mosaic floors and are treated with plaster. The top of the wall that separates the two containers was paved with a mosaic, part of which is adorned with a geometric decoration and part bears an inscription that has not yet been deciphered.

This very formidable and rare olive press and the inscription on the mosaic floor suggest that the complex was not built at the initiative of a local individual.

That would lend credence to the monastery theory. Check out the bird’s eye view architecture of this place:

The circle in the middle is the crushing mill. Beasts of burden would be tied to it, the stone would turn and grind up the olives into mush.

This time it’s the X-Files donating a bunch of geegaws to the The National Museum of American History in anticipation of the upcoming movie sequel to the original tundra crapfest.

During a special ceremony today, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History received a collection of objects from “The X-Files,” the television series and movie franchise. Twentieth Century Fox together with Chris Carter, series and film writer, director and producer, and Frank Spotnitz, series and film director and producer, presented an annotated script from the series’ pilot episode, FBI badges, posters and other objects to the museum’s entertainment collections.

I’m afraid the collection of objects doesn’t look terribly impressive:

A scale model of the original Enterprise it ain’t.

Do you know how I come up with entry-worthy stories for this here wee bloggeh? Every day I check 4 or 5 news sites that I’ve found to have a good range of archaeology/history themed news, but my the bulk of my finds come from a vast panoply of Google News Alerts that I have set up.

Every day, several times a day, Google News sends me a list of articles that have appeared using a certain keyword. I have about 10 or so keywords so I get piles of alerts often packed with irrelevancy but there are always some nuggets worth the panning.

Well, thanks to one Henry “Indiana” Jones, Jr., some of my richest ore, the “archaeology” “archaeologist” family of keywords, has turned pyrite. Every single story is about that damn movie! It’s Indiana Jones is a horrible archaeologist here and Indiana Jones makes archaeology look sexy there, like, 10 times a day.

It’s not just the journalists, either. Archaeological society and university department/club press releases read like the pink, heart-shaped diaries of a bobby soxer.

I can’t takes it no more!11 I might have to boycott the movie to protest the hell the Lucas/Spielberg publicity machine has put me through. Or at least delay watching it until the furore dies down.

Oh okay, I’ll probably see it this weekend, let’s be honest, but I’ll be totally frikkin grumpy about it!

Do you ever wonder how dig workers get fed? I figured it was either hotel food or camping food, but the truth turns out to be a lot more interesting (and delicious) than that.

Evans came to the role of dig cook, which she adores, more by chance than planning. About 10 years ago her husband, who has a long-standing interest in archaeology, spotted an advertisement from a British academic looking for someone to cook for 15 people at an excavation site in Cyprus.

“I thought, 15 people, I could do that,” Evans says. “If someone asks me to cook for their party, I get really excited.

“I’ve done catering, worked in restaurants and cafes and done a lot of my friends’ weddings but I had never thought of cooking as a way of travelling and seeing other parts of the world.”

She got the job. “Then I had to get an atlas and look up exactly where Cyprus was.”

Much coolness ensues. Apparently archaeologists eat two breakfasts because they start so early in the morning and then try to avoid the midday heat.

She never knows what sort of cooking apparatus she’s going to find on site, whether it’s mud brick ovens or old Pepsi fridges like the 50’s one with the built-in bottle opener in Back to the Future.

But damn, she scores some fantastic produce from the locals. Who needs electricity when you’ve got this:

“One man used to turn up with 48 huge, perfect peaches on a tray, straight from the tree. Local women used to give me olives. They used to make haloumi in one village and we used to buy big buckets of it.”

AIA = Archaeological Institute of America. Why was Mr. Ford, aka Indiana Jones, an “archaeologist” indistinguishable from the looters the AIA decries, elected to this position?

“Harrison Ford has played a significant role in stimulating the public’s interest in archaeological exploration,” said Brian Rose, President of the AIA. “We are all delighted that he has agreed to join the AIA’s Governing Board.” [...]

Harrison Ford is already helping to raise public awareness of the AIA and its mission as the news of his election to the Board has spread. Many media outlets have covered the story.

And there you have it. They might as well benefit from the publicity of the revived Indiana Jones series even though Dr. Jones is about as far from a role model for archaeologists as you could conceive.

Oh well… I’m sure Harrison Ford will do just fine in his role as board member, whatever that might entail. Clearly he’s already done the job the AIA hoped he’d do by bringing attention to the organization.