The History Blog

The outstanding website Heritage Key is running a series of London-themed challenges for bloggers. There are neat prizes to be won, but most of all, much love for London’s marvelous wealth of history to be expressed.

I missed the first challenge because I got all freaked out under pressure and went completely blank, so I’m hoping I can squeak in just under the deadline for The Most Important Ancient Site in London challenge.

For my most important ancient site in London I choose (drumroll please) Drapers Gardens. This soggy patch of land on Throgmorton Avenue had the great fortune of being deemed basically undevelopable until 1967, when the Drapers Company decided to build an office tower on their garden space.

When the eponymous skyscraper was demolished in 2007 in preparation for a new building to be erected on the spot, an archaeological survey stumbled on a massive treasure trove of daily life in Roman London from the 1st to the 4th century A.D.

Drapers Gardens’ sogginess had not only kept this mother lode from being obliterated by two millennia of development and redevelopment, but it also helped keep these objects in an exceptional state of preservation.

Among the treasures are 19 metal vessels from the mid to late 4th c., possibly hidden in a well by a wealthy family fleeing one of many Saxon raids on the city, or they may have been left behind intentionally as part of the ritual closing of the well. The vessels are made from copper and lead ore and include wine jugs, dishes, ladles, even a set of three nesting bowls. They’re in such spectacular condition that the articulating handles on some of them still swing.

A total of over 1100 artifacts were found at the site. Other remarkable finds include hundreds of brooches, a wood door with its original hinges, a roman road with wood footbridges over the ditches on both sides, a wooden ruler with the lines marking the Roman inches still visible, an infant burial site and the skull of a brown bear that probably died in the amphitheater nearby.

The dig uncovered not just rare and beautiful artifacts, but really the entire structure of the neighborhood for 300+ years of Roman life in London: streets, alleys, floors, clay and timber foundations of dwellings, waste disposal and plumbing systems. In Rome itself you don’t find this kind of staging because the city has been built and rebuilt so many times, and because timber or clay housing just doesn’t tend to last 2000 years.

The Drapers Garden find is a microcosm of Roman city life, not only a worthy candidate for the most important ancient site in London, but surely in the running for one of the most important discoveries of Roman social history, period.

Pictures courtesy Pre-Construct Archaeology

In 2006, the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg found that 220 pieces worth up to $5 million from its enormous collection had been stolen and sold by a former curator. One of the lost items was a silver pendant of Peter the Great, part of a collection of 1,200 Peter the Great artifacts donated to the museum by the surviving family of Czar Nicholas II in 1947.

In May 2009, Russian authorities contacted the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit to report a Seattle antiquities dealer who was selling a suspiciously familiar Peter the Great medallion online. ICE Agents confiscated the pendant and forensic investigation by Kremlin Museum specialists determined that it was indeed the missing item.

Leigh Winchell, special agent in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Seattle, was in Moscow on Thursday for a repatriation ceremony. His agency, which recovered the pendant, declined to name the antiques dealer who bought and was attempting to resell the piece of art.

“Artifacts of historical or cultural significance allow the public to experience a nation’s heritage, and these items shouldn’t be offered as souvenirs for sale to the highest bidder,” Winchell said in a statement.

Apparently the unnamed dealer is still under investigation, which is why the ICE is refusing to comment.

A man digging the foundation of his new home in northern Syria uncovered a cache of over 250 coins from the Hellenistic era (4th to 1st centuries B.C.).

He gave the coins in their bronze box to the authorities, and they’re now being analyzed and cataloged.

[Youssef Kanjo, the head of archaeological excavations in the ancient city of Aleppo,] added that the box contained two groups of coins, 137 “tetra” drachmas (four drachmas) and 115 single drachma coins.

One side of the tetra drachma coins depicts Alexander the Great, while the other side shows the Greek god Zeus sitting on a throne with an eagle perched on his extended arm.

Some of the coins bear the inscription King Alexander in Greek, while others say Alexander or carry the name of King Philip, most likely referring to his father.

Alexander conquered Syria in 333 B.C., after his defeat of Darius III of Persia at the Battle of Issus. It and the rest of Alexander’s Asian empire became the Seleucid Empire after Alexander’s death and the splintering of his generals.

Alexander coins would have kept being produced under the Seleucid Empire, which would was finally toppled by Tigranes of Armenia 20 years or so before Pompey yoinked Syria for good for Rome in 64 B.C.

A late 16th century portrait of Queen Elizabeth I has reveled over time and degradation that she was originally depicted holding a coiled serpent in her hand instead of the innocuous nosegay she holds now. When an earlier image that has been painted over begins to show through, that is known as a pentimento, which means repentance in Italian.

The portrait, painted by an unknown artist, some time in the 1580s or early 1590s, has not been on display at the National Portrait Gallery since 1921. You can clearly see the shadow of the serpent’s coming up from between her fingers and his tail coiling above her hand.

The serpent was a symbol of wisdom and reasoned judgment — as on the rod of Aesculapius, the physicians’ emblem — so that’s probably where our unknown artist was going with the imagery. He changed his mind, though (possibly in consideration of the common association of snakes with the devil and original sin), and quickly painted it over with a strangely-shaped but perfectly inoffensive little bouquet of roses.

Paint analysis shows that the snake was definitely made at the same time as the rest of the portrait. There is no varnish between the snake and flower layers, so we know it was painted right over.

The artist repented of his creation, if you will, and now the serpent is repenting him right back.

That’s not the only pentimento showing through, though. X-rays show that a portrait of an unknown woman lies underneath Elizabeth. Her head is higher and she’s facing the opposite way. If you click on the first picture at the top right of this entry, you can actually see her eye and nose in the left side of Elizabeth’s forehead and temple where the paint has chipped off. It looks like an absorbed twin.

Again the painter is unknown, but he’s definitely not the same person who would paint Elizabeth on the panel later. It’s very thoroughly painted but not quite complete. This lady is wearing a French hood, a garment fashionable from 1570 to 1580, so she might have been on the recycling heap for 10 to 20 years before getting royally repurposed.

The serpent portrait will go on display starting on March 13th along with 3 other interestingly altered paintings of Elizabeth I in an exhibit called Concealed and Revealed: The Changing Faces of Elizabeth I.

The four works range in date from the 1560s until just after her death in 1603. They were all modified in their time and have recently been re-examined using advanced scientific techniques of paint analysis, infrared and x-Ray photography so we can see more of what Elizabeth painters had hidden.

The most famous portrait of Elizabeth in the group, the Darnley portrait, originally showed the Queen with pink and rosy cheeks, so the image of the Virgin Queen always made up with white face and hands may turn out to be more of an artifact of faded paint than Elizabeth beauty standards.

A series of alabaster statues carved between 1443 and 1456 have never moved more than 200 feet away from the tomb they decorate in the city of Dijon, and even that tiny hop only happened once over 6 centuries.

In an unprecedented opportunity created by the renovation of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon where the tomb is housed, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City gets to be the first place to exhibit them away from their home. The beautifully detailed and realistic alabaster mourners usually process around the base of the tomb of John the Fearless, so being able to see them not just across the Atlantic but also in detail and from all angles is a unique treat.

Carved over a 25-year-period by sculptors Jean de la Huerta and Antoine le Moiturier, each statue represents a mourner — mostly ecclesiastical figures such as a bishop, a choirboy and rows of monks from the Carthusian order.

In their normal setting in Dijon they are only partially seen as they blend in between miniature Gothic arches lacing the base of the wealthy and powerful couple’s black marble tomb.

The open display at New York’s Met has allowed them to loosen up, emerging as individuals with sometimes surprising results.

Far from being pompous advertisements for the deceased couple’s religious devoutness and social standing, the monks and priests of the procession exude individuality, humanity and a cheeky strain of rebellion.

Each statuette is about sixteen inches high (the choirboys are the smallest), and they’re all totally different. There’s a solemn bishop, a nattily accessorized gent with his hands in belt, a choirboy holding the remains of a cross, and a whole lot more. A total of 39 statues are exhibited on a catwalk so they still have their funeral procession flair.

John the Fearless, the second duke of Burgundy, died in 1419 and these figures are meant to depict his actual funerary cortege, even though the artists only began to carve them 24 years later.

Learn about the mourners from the Court of Burdundy on their website where an intensive photography project has borne beautiful fruit with 360 degree views of each statuette.

Say that 20 times fast. But seriously, folks, researchers studying the Diepkloof Rock Shelter in the Western Cape of South Africa have found hundreds of engraved ostrich fragments.

These fragments are 60,000 years old, far older than the earliest writing. The symbols engraved are regular lines and hatches and so many in number that archaeologists think they may be communicative, or at least symbolic, rather than just decorative.

“What is extraordinary at Diepkloof is that we have close to 300 pieces of such engravings, which is why we are speaking of a system of symbolic representation,” Dr Texier said.

The team, which includes Dr Guillaume Porraz from the University of Tubingen, tried themselves to recreate the markings using pieces of flint.

“Ostrich egg shells are quite hard. Doing such engravings is not so easy. You have to pass through the outer layer to get through to the middle layer,” Dr Texier explained.

Some of the engraved cross hatchings and parallel lines are similar to later known symbols for water. The ostrich eggs seem to have had spouts, which could indicate they were used for transporting water, a technological breakthrough for early man.

The fragments are also intentionally colored. They aren’t the natural color of the ostrich eggs nor is an external pigment applied. The team was able to reproduce some of the colors by baking fragments of shell in a fire.

Before these ostrich fragments, 30,000-year-old cave painting like those at the Lascaux Caves were thought to be the oldest evidence of written human communication. If we can confirm a communicative symbolism in these etchings, we’ll push that major milestone 30,000 years further back.

Archaeologists excavating the site of Amenhotep III’s funerary temple in Luxor have found a colossal head of the pharaoh from what was once an enormous full-body statue. Other pieces of the statue have been found in the area, but this is the largest and depicts the pharaoh’s serene visage at its youthful ideal.

Measuring 2.5 metres, made from solid red granite and depicting Amenhotep III wearing the Upper Egyptian white crown, it has been described in a press statement by Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities Zahi Hawass as a “masterpiece of highly artistic quality”.

The head, added Hawass, is a “portrait of the king with very fine youthful sculptured features”. It was sheared from the body statue at the chin and neck. The body statue – fragments of which are currently in restoration – is believed to show Amenhotep III in a standing position, with his hands crossed over his chest and holding the royal insignia.

So far the team has uncovered 84 statues at Amenhotep’s funerary temple, including the giant head plus other depictions of Amenhotep III and his wife, Queen Tiye.

They’ll keep looking for more pieces of the colossal statue, but the site is so gigantic — 350,000 square meters (that’s over 3,767,000 square feet) — that who knows if they’ll be able to find them.

A unrelated but nonetheless neat little tidbit from the article:

Amenhotep was the wealthiest and most powerful of all the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. In a list compiled by American business and financial bible Forbes in 2008, he was ranked as the 12th richest person in human history.

I couldn’t find the Forbes article the factoid was allegedly derived from and other lists I’ve encountered don’t include pharaohs or Alexander the Great type people who “owned” basically everything.

An 1,800-year-old marble bust of Jupiter was found in English Heritage’s main northern archaeological storage unit in Helmsley, North Yorkshire.

Conservators examined it and quickly realized it wasn’t a reproduction, but rather a genuine 2nd c. Roman sculpture that had been given to the Earl of Arundel, one of the first dedicated collectors of antiquities, by Dudley Carter in the early 17th century.

It was first documented in 1616, but the collection itself became dispersed later in the 17th Century.

However, about 100 years later, the bust fell into the hands of John Aislabie, an MP and wealthy owner of Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal, near Ripon.

It is believed it may then have taken pride of place in the Temple of Jupiter on the Studley Royal estate, adding a touch of authenticity to the 18th Century folly.

The Studley Royal neo-classical folly is actually called the Temple of Piety and was dedicated to Hercules, but it became known as the Temple of Jupiter because of the bust.

Aislabie found the bust in the cellar, where it had been relegated after the Earl of Arundel’s collection was broken up later in the 17th century. A lot of the Earl’s pieces were discarded rather unkindly, so it may have been at this point that the bust was damaged as we see it today.

Aislabie loved it anyway, so he moved the sculpture to Studley Royal and built the temple with Jupiter as its centerpiece. Aislabie’s son remodeled the temple and removed the sculpture, eventually putting it in storage.

Nobody’s quite sure how it got from Studley Royal to the English Heritage storeroom, but Professor Michael Vickers of Oxford’s Ashmolean confirmed that it was indeed the Jupiter bust from Arundel’s collection. Experts have looked for it in collections before but obviously never found it.

The bust is in fairly good condition despite its missing half. It needs cleaning and further research to try to pin down its movements over the centuries. Conservators will analyze the marble to determine exactly which part of the Roman world it may have come from originally.

Other than that, it’s good to go. In fact it will become the centerpiece of a series of free tours of the Helmsley facility which is normally closed to the public. It looks really cool in there. Huge floor to ceiling racks of dusty marbles just waiting to be explored.

Archaeologists excavating in the site of ancient Gabii south of Rome have uncovered the beginnings of lavish palace which probably belonged to the family of Tarquinius Superbus, the seventh and last Etruscan king of Rome.

So far just three rooms have been found, but they’ve already found terracotta roof tiles decorated with a minotaur, the emblem of the Tarquins, so they’re hoping they’ll find a lot more intact spaces as well as remains of the caved in parts.

“It’s an extraordinary find,” Rome Archaeological Superintendent Angelo Bottini said at the site….

“The way the site was demolished by furious locals in ancient times and later escaped local urban sprawl has allowed the palace to come to us virtually intact”. [...]

Aside from its historical value, the site is of “exceptional” archeological importance because similar buildings in Rome and other large cities were demolished to make way for later ones, Bottini observed. The 6th-century BC ruins, brought to light between September and December, in fact contain the highest intact walls of such a date ever found in Italy, at about two metres.

Under the well-preserved floor, archaeologists found 8 cells containing human remains, including 5 still-born infants. They weren’t human sacrifices, but rather buried during propitiatory rites before the building was built.

Tarquinius Superbus was considered a great tyrant by the Romans, who had become accustomed to being treated with respect according to pre-established social contracts by previous kings. The Tarquins were even related to the top families in Rome, including the Junii.

It was Lucius Junius Brutus who killed Tarquin after Tarquin’s son raped Lucretia, daughter of the prefect of Rome who was known for her virtue and who committed suicide after the rape by stabbing herself in the heart in front of her father.

He became the first co-consul of the Roman Republic. It was his descendant Marcus Junius Brutus who many centuries later on a certain Ides of March would plunge a dagger into another tyrant type fellow, one Gaius Julius Caesar.

The United States is returning a beautifully painted 21st Dynasty wooden sarcophagus to Egypt. Customs officials confiscated the coffin from a Spanish national at Miami International Airport in 2008 when they found it had no documentation of ownership.

They contacted the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities in October 2008 to let them know that they had the piece in custody. Since it had been shipped from Spain with the likely intent of selling it in the US without documentation, they figured (correctly) that it had been smuggled out of Egypt illegally at some point.

Egypt immediately provided documentation of their ownership of the coffin, but the Spanish dealer shamelessly refused to relinquish it until Zahi Hawass filed a suit against him in a US court.

The coffin of Imesy, a beautifully ornate piece with colorful religious scenes painted on it, had been a piece the council had been demanding be returned.

Zahi Hawass, the SCA Secretary-General said last year that the coffin likely belongs to pharaoh Ames from the 21st Dynasty, which ruled Egypt from 1070-945 BC.

A US investigation found that it was likely smuggled out of Egypt after 1970 (the dividing line established by the UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property), kept underground for a few decades, only to surface in an exhibit in Madrid in 2007. The dealer who shipped it to Miami apparently has family ties with the owner of the Egyptian museum in Barcelona.

According to Hawass’ statement, the sarcophagus was first smuggled out of Egypt in 1884. It’s always challenging to pinpoint the movement of looted artifacts. That’s one of the many reasons looting sucks. David Gill at Looting Matters looks at the smuggling trajectory of the coffin, especially the Spanish connection.

The sarcophagus is scheduled to be returned officially in a gala ceremony on March 10th in Washington, D.C. Zahi Hawass, of course, will be there with bells on.