The History Blog

Over 9,000 actually, ranging from medieval treatises to first editions of 20th century novels. Library officials think they’re just lost in the stacks, not stolen or removed from the premises.

One item, an essay entitled Of the Lawful and Unlawful Usurie Amongest Christians, by 16th-century German theologian Wolfgang Musculus, is valued by the library at £20,000, and has not been seen for almost two years. Others are precious only to a specialist market, such as a set of tables of 1930s London cab fares, or the 1925 souvenir history of Portsmouth Football Club.

Although the library has not listed any value for thousands of the books, a quick Guardian tot-up of the market price of nine collectible volumes came to well over £3,000 – including £1,300 for a first edition of Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, published in 1891, missing from the library’s shelves since 1961. [...]

Most of the losses are 19th and 20th century texts, including first editions of novels by Charles Dickens and John Updike, although many older books have also vanished, including a 1555 edition of 12th-century Jewish scholar Moses ben Maimon’s Letter on Astrology, missing since 1977, and a 17th-century guide to Rome.

Many of the books turned up missing in and around 1998, the year the library moved from the British Museum to St Pancras, so it’s very possible they were put on the wrong shelves in the confusion of the move.

Still, some of these have been missing for decades. You can declare a missing person dead after 7 years. How long before they admit that the first edition of Dorian Gray is gone for good?

The article’s headline suggests archaeologists spotted this thousand-year-old v-shaped rock wall off the coast of West Wales using Google Earth, but really they were perusing more mundane aerial photographs.

The unique shape of the rock structure helped the Normans trap fish without boats or anything at all. All they had to do was wait for the tide to go out and hundreds of fish would be trapped behind the rocks.

The trap is just 12ft deep close to Poppit Sands on the Teifi Estuary in Dyfed. Dr Otto believes the walls are made of locally quarried rock or boulders brought down to the coast by glaciers during the last ice age.

The trap’s walls are covered in algae, worms and sea anemones. The wall is around three feet wide, and only the top foot is exposed. The researchers are unsure how tall the original trap was - and how much is buried under the shifting sands.

Louise Austin, of the Dyfed Archaeological Trust, said: ‘Fish traps were a widely used means of catching fish in the past which made a significant contribution to the economy of many coastal and estuarine communities. Today only a few are known to survive in Wales.’

These structure were so effective that their use in rivers was actually banned in the Magna Carta. Traps like this were only allowed along the coasts where stock was less likely to be depleted.

j/k on the bar mitzvahs, but it really is opening for weddings. The city of Verona is hoping to market itself as the capital of love with the famous balcony as the epicenter.

Britons and other European Union nationals will be charged 800 euros (£740). Couples from outside the EU must pay 1,000 euros.

Locals will have to pay a comparatively cheap 600 euros, although that is still expensive when compared with an ordinary marriage certificate in Italy, which costs just 50 euros. [...]

The balcony is part of a 14th century building known as Juliet’s House, which was once the home of the Cappello family – possibly the model for the Capulets of Shakespeare’s play.

Even more possibly not related to the play at all. There was no feud between the Cappelli and Montecchi, and no famous lovers that we know of. Shakespeare made it all up, basically, and now Verona is looking to cash in.

And why not? It’s a lovely, picturesque location, and down in the courtyard there’s a statue of Juliet which brings good fortune to people who rub her right breast. Hence the noticeably shiny patina in the chestal area.

The British government has returned over 1500 artifacts confiscated at Heathrow over the past 6 years to Afghanistan.

That’s 3.4 tons of antiquities looted from thousands of archaeological sites all over the country.

The Heathrow collection includes more than 1,500 objects spanning thousands of years of Afghan culture: a 3,000-year-old carved stone head from the Iron Age and hand-cast axe heads, cut rock crystal goblets, and delicate animal carvings from the Bactrian era, another thousand years earlier. The oldest artifacts in the collection include a marble figure of an animal showing similarities to artifacts dating to the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods, dating as far back as 8,000 years.

The collection also contains gilded bronze pieces, coins, and ornately inscribed slabs dating from Afghanistan’s early Islamic period (8th-9th centuries A.D.) and treasures from the Medieval Islamic period (10th-14th centuries A.D.) that serve to replace the decimated collection at the National Museum, which was hit by a rocket in 1993 during the civil war, then repeatedly looted.

The National Museum workers have somehow managed to save 90% of the museum’s holdings — I’ve written about their puts-movies-to-shame heroics before — but that still leaves 70,000 pieces lost.

None of the Heathrow hoard were previously held at the museum. They are all freshly looted directly from archaeological sites and have no trail of ownership whatsoever, but they are going to help plug some of those 70,000 holes.

I leave you with a chilling thought: 3.4 tons of antiquities is just a fraction of what gets stolen from Afghanistan every year. Most of them aren’t intercepted at customs. These artifacts were all found during random searches, so you can imagine it’s a rather hit-and-miss system.

In a mass grave of 16th c. plague victims excavated in Venice, one of the interred was found with a brick jammed in her mouth.

Archaeologist Matteo Borrini thinks her survivors shoved a brick into her mouth because they thought she might turn vampire and spread more plague.

At the time the woman died, many people believed that the plague was spread by “vampires” which, rather than drinking people’s blood, spread disease by chewing on their shrouds after dying. Grave-diggers put bricks in the mouths of suspected vampires to stop them doing this, Borrini says.

The belief in vampires probably arose because blood is sometimes expelled from the mouths of the dead, causing the shroud to sink inwards and tear.

He claims this is the earliest vampire-treated remains, but similar finds have been made elsewhere, including by Peer Moore-Jansen of Wichita State University who scoffs at the “first vampire” claim.

Borrini is undaunted, insisting that his study reveals that this Venetian lady who died in 1575 is the first one to provide archaeological evidence of anti-vampiric exorcism.

The whole thing seems tenuous to me. Vampire legends were pretty much all over the map until Bram Stoker sealed the 19th c. Transylvanian version into the popular consciousness. The post-mortem shroud chewers sending plague vibes out from underground bear little resemblance to what people today think of as vampires.

There may just be a wee drappie of sensationalism driving Prof. Borrini’s claim. And understandably so given the sweet press he’s gotten.

Catchy title, innit? I can’t claim credit, though. It’s the name of an exhibit of medieval jewelry at the Wallace Collection in London.

The 14th century jewels come from two hoards — one uncovered in Colmar, France, in 1863, the other in Erfurt, Germany, in 1998 — most likely buried by Jews in fear of their lives during the Black Death when gentiles blamed them for causing the plague.

The entire Jewish population of Colmar was massacred in January 1349, and 1000 Erfurt Jews were slaughtered in one day in March 1349, so probably whoever buried their most precious treasures never had a chance to retrieve them because they were killed during these pogroms, died of plague or were expelled never to return.

Most of the surviving gold and silver treasures from this time are ecclesiastical, since secular gold and silverwork tended to be remade later into more fashionable jewellery or melted down for coinage. But here we can see what fashionable men and women about town were wearing 650 years ago: lumpily gaudy brooches with tiny heraldic lions roaring among boulders of sapphire and garnet; belt fittings with robed figures and serpentine beasts in gothic niches; silver-gilt clasps in the form of fleurs-de-lis, dragons and flowers.

There is also a handy cosmetic set that would have hung from a belt, comprising a little silver flask that may have contained scent, a tiny scoop for ear-cleaning, and attachments for other beauty tools. Some of the symbols could do sentimental service on charm bracelets today: clasping hands, a padlock, a bow poised to shoot love’s arrow.

Many of the objects relate to marriage. The star exhibit, from Erfurt, is a gold Jewish wedding ring (pictured [left]), shaped like a hexagonal building – symbolising both the marital home and the Temple of Jerusalem – with gothic arches, gables and a pyramidal roof on which is inscribed mazel tov (good wishes). The same slogan adorns two similar rings, from Colmar and from a hoard found in Weissenfels, Germany. These large and precious pieces were worn only on the day of the wedding ceremony.

The exhibition runs until May 10th and admission is free.

Once the Erfurt hoard returns to Germany it will go permanently on display in what was once the Erfurt synagogue.

Built around 1100 A.D., the Old Synagogue is thought to be the oldest standing synagogue in Europe. Many parts of the building are original, including, notable for its rarity, the roof.

It was used as a warehouse after the 1349 massacre until it became a dance hall in the late 19th c. Nazis partied the night away there, unaware of its history.

Developers prepping for new construction in the Greenwich Wharf area have found the remains of an enormous 12th c. waterwheel.

Look at the size of this monster:

Archaeologists estimate that the foundations were 30 feet by 36 feet and the waterwheel was more than 20 feet in diameter.

The Romans were the first to build tide mills long the Thames foreshore. The waterwheels powered millstones by sucking in the high tide and releasing the low tide.

We know the technology was still going strong in 1086 because four tide mills are mentioned in the Domesday book, but until now, little evidence of them has ever been found.

It has been preserved against centuries of damage by riverside peat deposits. Carpenters’ or millwrights’ assembly marks are clearly visible on the timbers. [...]

The find is similar in design to Roman mills. What has survived is the water trough, carved from a single log, and a carved section of the waterwheel itself with paddles.

Dendrochronological analysis - where tree rings are counted - dates the trees’ felling to 1194.

Researchers think the mill was probably associated with a nearby monastery run by a Belgian order. They’re going to sift through the monastery records to see if they can find any information on the mill.

Meanwhile, the timbers have been removed for conservation and the site is being fully documented. Then the developers will get it back to build some ugly contemporary crap on it.

Okay to be fair, I don’t know that it’ll be ugly or crap, but given what’s become of the London skyline over the past 50 years, it seems likely.

Warning: major teal deer. If you’re looking for my usual quick, fun read, this ain’t it.

It’s been all over the (history-related) news this past week: ancient Bible found in Cyprus could be from time of Jesus!!1 The news is big because the Syriac language is a dialect of Aramaic — Jesus’ lingua franca — and therefore a Bible written in it might be extra-specially connected the Man himself.

The manuscript carries excerpts of the Bible written in gold lettering on vellum and loosely strung together, photos provided to Reuters showed. One page carries a drawing of a tree, and another eight lines of Syriac script.

The problem is the only people who think the Bible is anything close to that old are the Turkish Cypriot police who found the Bible along with a bunch of other looted antiquities in Famagusta, Cyprus. I’m sure the Turkish Cypriot police are many great things, but archaeologists-at-a-glance isn’t one of them.

Actual experts think the Bible is likely to be medieval at the earliest, and probably far newer than that.

Experts said the use of gold lettering on the manuscript was likely to date it later than 2,000 years.

“I’d suspect that it is most likely to be less than 1,000 years old,” leading expert Peter Williams, Warden of Tyndale House, University of Cambridge told Reuters. [...]

After further scrutiny of photographs of the book, manuscripts specialist at the University of Cambridge library and Fellow of Wolfson College JF Coakley suggested that the book could have been written a good deal later.

“The Syriac writing seems to be in the East Syriac script with vowel points, and you do not find such manuscripts before about the 15th century.

“On the basis of the one photo…if I’m not mistaken some words at least seem to be in modern Syriac, a language that was not written down until the mid-19th century,” he told Reuters.

Reuters calls that experts being divided over whether the Bible is “an original” or a “fake” but they don’t actually cite any experts who think the book is anything like 2000 years old. All the actual experts they quote are like “um, no”.

Good thinking on the part of the Turkish Cypriot police. You want global wire services to cover your relatively small looting bust? Invent a tenuous connection to Jesus and it’s on.

There’s no provenance on the looted Bible, so you can say it “might be” anything at all. (Another reason scholars of any sort should vocally support anti-looting measures instead of rationalizing their lust for ancient objects.)

Meanwhile, the part of the story I’m most interested in — the looting arrests — gets short shrift. There’s only one decent article on background from the Cyprus Sunday Mail, and I only found that after scouring Google News. The rest of the press and bloggers refer to the Reuters article, which cuts out the intricate Cypriot political aspect entirely.

For example, here’s a snip from the Sunday Mail article:

The bible may have come from the heartland of the Syrian Orthodox community in southeastern Turkey, where a small community remains, despite often being caught in the crossfire between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish military.

“It is very likely to come from the Tur-Abdin area of Turkey, where there is still a Syriac speaking community,” Dr Chalotte [sic] Roueche, professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King College, London told Reuters yesterday.

In 1994, the British historian William Dalrymple wrote that the community “could die out within one generation”. However, conditions are reported to have improved in recent years with the Turkish government making efforts to protect religious minorities in the country.

The first and third paragraphs contain rather glaringly pertinent facts. The Reuters quote of Dr. Roueche seems vacuous to me now without that context. They just didn’t want to get into it, preferring the groundless-but-sexy Jesus angle.

Now, look at the rest of what Dr. Roueche said which did not make it into the Reuters article:

“The problem about this description is that a Syriac gospel-book could be from the 4th century, but it could date from several centuries after that, well into the middle ages. Indeed, I think that gospel books may still have been being written in Syriac then. Obviously the smugglers will have wanted to date it as ancient as possible,” Dr Roueche added.

Oh snap! Obviously Reuters is glad to help them in that endeavor.

Other details on the bust courtesy of a tiny local Cypriot newspaper which the giant wire service didn’t care to include in their story: the police arrested 9 people at the Famagusta bus station on a tip that the stolen Bible was about to sold. Two men fled the scene and are still being sought. The nine have been charged with smuggling antiquities, carrying out illegal excavations and possession of explosives.

Well, here. I’ll let Cyprus Mail tell the story, since Simon Bahceli took the time to do some actual reporting.

Police in the north believe that those arrested may have been involved in a wider antiquities smuggling operation after a Christian prayer statue and a carving of Christ were found in the Karpas village home of one of the suspects. Five sticks of dynamite were also found, which police believe were to be used for later excavations by the suspects. [...]

The smuggling of antiquities from churches and ancient sites in the north has been an ongoing problem since the division of the island in 1974, but questions are being asked why such a valuable item would have been smuggled into the north from Turkey. Some reports said the bible may have been destined for a buyer in the south of the island.

Three more people have been arrested since then for being in possession of a 145-year-old church bell.

It’s unclear from the article whether they are thought to be in cahoots with the 11 wrong-doers from the Bible raid or whether Cyprus is just bristling with stolen antiquities.

It’s probably the second most famous prayer after the Our Father. You know, the “make me an instrument of your peace” one. Mother Theresa recited it every day and even Margaret Thatcher and Bill Clinton have cited it in their speeches.

Well, not only did St. Francis not write it, but it wasn’t written until 600 years after he was born.

An article published this week in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said the prayer in its current form dates only from 1912, when it appeared in a French Catholic periodical.

And it became wildly popular only after it was reprinted in L’Osservatore Romano in 1916 at the behest of Pope Benedict XV, who wanted a prayer for peace in the throes of World War I.

This isn’t news, really. No actual Franciscans ever thought it was penned by the wolftamer himself, nor anyone remotely familiar with the history of the Italian language or Catholic Church.

Although it is inspired by some of St. Francis’ favorite themes, the prayer’s syntax does not match the Umbrian dialect of the 1200’s which he used.

One of his devotional songs has survived, so we do have means of comparison. He wrote the Canticle of the Sun in 1224. It’s one of the first pieces of literature written in a recognizably Italian idiom.

An associate English professor at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, Timothy Stinson, has begun DNA testing medieval manuscripts.

Since parchment was made from animal skin, there is genetic material to be found in the pages of the books themselves.

Thousands of fragile manuscripts still survive from the Middle Ages (roughly 400 to 1500 CE), a time when most of Europe’s population was illiterate, and monks transcribed nearly all of the books that circulated around the continent. Until recently, scholars relied on visual analysis (such as handwriting samples) to trace the origin of most ancient texts. But Stinson says that more precise genetic analyses are possible because the preferred “paper” of the day was thin parchment made from the skin of local cattle, sheep or goats. “DNA offers much more specific information, but no one’s mapped it yet,” he says. [...]

Medieval manuscripts often were written on pages made from the skins of as many as 100 different animals, according to Stinson. But scholars speculate that, at least until the mid-15th century, most books were made from local herd animals, which could make tracing their point of origin fairly reliable.

His goal is to create a large DNA database from manuscripts with a known provenance, and then use that database to pinpoint where unknown manuscripts may have come from.

The genetic material might also link manuscripts which have been separated over time and distance. There may be all kinds of partial books amenable to reconciliation scattered through libraries and collections around the world.

The database would be replete with information about quotidian aspects of medieval life, like herd movements and trade routes.

For a lovely browse of medieval manuscripts online, check out Oxford University’s Bodleian Library site.