January 2010 – Page 3 – The History Blog

Smugglerius Unveiled

January 21, 2010

Smugglerius is the cast of an executed criminal which has been used to teach anatomical drawing at the Edinburgh College of Art for generations, but nobody knew anything about it.

Now a new exhibit in conjunction with the restoration of the college’s Art Cast collection lays out the history of Smugglerius the casting and his unfortunate model.

Artist Joan Smith and anthropologist Dr Jeanne Cannizzo from the University of Edinburgh researched the provenance of Smugglerius. They found out he’s a 19th century copy of a cast made in the 18th century from the deceased. They also found out the likely identity of the model, but you have to go to the exhibit to find out ’cause they’re not telling on the website. Yes, I am pouting.

Here’s what we do know.

Dating from 1854, the College Smugglerius is a copy of an original écorché – a figure with the skin and fat removed to expose the muscles and tendons – made in 1776 at Royal Academy of Art in London. This earlier cast, now lost, was moulded from the body of a hanged criminal by the sculptor Agostino Carlini, following its dissection by William Hunter, the famous anatomist. The College cast, which retains the stunning detail of the original, was made by a little known ‘moulder and figure maker’ called William Pink, probably at the time of his employment at the British Museum; an inscription on the base of the cast states “Published by W PINK Moulder 1854”.

Since its arrival at the College, the cast has been used in the teaching of anatomy to art students, much as the original cast would have been used by artists at the Royal Academy, among them William Blake.

The exhibit features not only the history of Smugglerius, but also a variety of art pieces made from his example. It’s a fascinating exploration of the storied relationship between anatomical dissection and artist depictions of the human body, issues of anonymity and identity.

The companion exhibitions of “Smugglerius Unveiled” and “Drawing For Instruction: the art of explanation” will be open from February 2nd to to March 6th. Admission is free. I’d love to hear about it, so if anyone goes, please comment and dish.

Oldest bones of English royal found in Germany

January 20, 2010

Medieval, Treasures

Queen Eadgyth (pronounced Edith) was the granddaughter of Alfred the Great. Her half-brother Athelstan unified disparate Saxon and Celtic kingdoms and is thus considered the first king of England.

When Eadgyth was 19, Athelstan sent her and her half-sister Algiva or Adiva to Germany, telling the then Duke of Saxony to pick the one he liked best. Eadgyth was said to the prettiest and the Duke married her in 929 A.D.

That Duke later became Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor. Eadgyth bore him two children and died at the young age of 36 in 946 A.D. She was buried in the Cathedral of Magdeburg. Otto died 26 years later in 973 and although he had remarried after her death, he chose to be buried next to Eadgyth in Magdeburg.

Their remains didn’t stay put. Over the years they were moved several times, the last time in 1510 when the fancy cenotaph was erected in the Cathedral. People thought that it was just a marker, not the actual location of her bones, so when archaeologists researching the cathedral opened the vault they were shocked to find a lead coffin marked with Queen Eadgyth’s name and the 1510 date.

Inside they found a skeleton wrapped in silk. The bones belong to a woman between the ages of 30 and 40. That’s not final confirmation that the bones belong to Queen Eadgyth, of course. We’ll have to wait for the results of chemical analysis to know for sure.

In particular they will try to match radioactive isotopes embedded in the bones to those found in her birthplace in England.

Professor Mark Horton, of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, who is co-ordinating the research, said: “We know that Saxon royalty moved around quite a lot, and we hope to match the isotope results with known locations around Wessex and Mercia, where she could have spent her childhood.

“If we can prove this truly is Eadgyth, this will be one of the most exciting historical discoveries in recent years. It is quite a surprise to find them so much in tact. It really is an important discovery.”

No earlier remains of an English royal are extant. Her brother Athelstan’s tomb is still extant in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, but archaeologists think it’s empty.

More history of science treasures

January 19, 2010

Modern(ish), Multimedia

The Royal Society has published a new set of documents marking important moments in the history of science, including an 18th century manuscript telling the original Isaac Newton apple story.

It’s a 1752 biography of Newton by William Stukeley who knew the great man personally and worked with him Boswell-style. The biography has been squirreled away in archives of the Royal Society for centuries, only to be published now as part of the Society’s 350th anniversary celebrations.

“After dinner, the weather being warm, we went out into the garden and drank tea under the shade of some apple trees, only he and myself,” reads Stukeley’s account of an evening with Newton in the scientist’s garden.

“Amidst other discourse, he told me he was just in the same situation as when formerly the notion of gravitation came into his mind.

“Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground, thought he to himself, occasion’d by the fall of an apple, as he sat in a contemplative mood.

“Why should it not go sideways or upwards, but constantly to the earth’s centre? Assuredly, the reason is that the earth draws it.”

Unlike the Royal Society’s already awesome Trailblazers site, the Turning the Pages site features actual facsimiles of the manuscripts, so you can read them online as if you were turning their fragrant yellow pages.

Other documents in the Turning the Pages collection include Thomas Paine’s 1789 letter “On Iron Bridges” , Henry James’s 1843 Fossil notebook with beautifully detailed sketches of fossils, the 1681 “Constitutions of Carolina” by John Locke and other luminaries of political philosophy.

See if your computer has the specifications to load the amazing 3D version. If you don’t have Microsoft Net 3.5, it’s really worth it to download for the full experience. Otherwise you can use the Accessible version which isn’t as flashy but still has great scans of each page.

An American Rosetta Stone?

January 18, 2010

Modern(ish), Treasures

Last June, archaeologists excavating the James Fort area of Jamestown, Virginia, found a 400-year-old slate tablet covered on both sides in words, numbers, etchings of people and animals. It was found in a well believed to have been dug in 1609 by Captain John Smith himself, although it had become brackish within a couple of years and served as a trash pit for the settlers.

Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in America and this tablet is the first found with extensive inscriptions from the early colonial period. It has been studied assiduously in the 7 months since its find, most recently by examining digitally enhanced images of the complex engravings.

The enhancements have helped researchers identify a 16th-century writing style used on the slate and discern new symbols, researchers announced last week. The characters may be from an obscure Algonquian Indian alphabet created by an English scientist to help explorers pronounce the language spoken by the Virginia Indians.

“Just like finding the Rosetta Stone led to a better understanding of the Egyptians, this tablet is beginning to add significantly to our understanding of the earliest years at Jamestown,” [director of research and interpretation at Historic Jamestowne William] Kelso said. It conveys messages about literacy, art, symbols and signs personally communicated by the colonists who used it, he explained.

The digital images were made by curators at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute using a technique called reflectance transformation imaging, which takes hundreds of high-res pictures of the surface of the tablet under different angled lights. This emphasizes different grooves on the tablet’s surface. It’s like when you tilt your head and hunker down and narrow your eyes to find any marks you couldn’t see looking straight down on a shiny surface.

Can you tell I just kneaded some dough on a granite countertop? Only this is even worse because many of the images were made with a slate pencil on the slate surface, so they’re gray-on-gray and hard to see with the naked eye under any circumstance.

The Elizabethan specialists have found the words “Abraham” and “book” as well as some individual letters, but since the tablet was reused, there are many missing parts. The Elizabethan writing is in secretary’s hand, which supports Kelso’s theory that the tablet belonged to William Strachey, the first secretary of the Jamestown colony.

There’s drawing of a Palmetto tree and what may be a cahow, a rare sea bird found only in Bermuda. Strachey was stranded in Bermuda for 10 months on his way to Virginia.

Slate tablet (left), digitally isolated inscriptions (right)

World history in 100 objects starts tomorrow

January 17, 2010

Ancient, Education, Medieval, Modern(ish), Multimedia, Museums

Mark your calendars, folks. The first episode of BBC’s Radio Four and the British Museum A History of the World in 100 Objects debuts tomorrow. That’s already today for those of you across the Atlantic.

The theme of the first 5 episodes is “Making Us Human” and they covers objects that define us as human, made between 2,000,000 and 8,000 B.C. Tomorrow’s inagural object is the Mummy of Hornedjitef.

This is the mummy of Hornedjitef an Egyptian priest who was buried in a coffin, within a second, outer coffin. Examining his body using CAT scans and X-rays revealed that he suffered from arthritis and osteoporosis suggesting he was a mature man when he died. The embalmers have placed four packages inside his torso, probably his lungs, liver, stomach and intestines. He lived over a thousand years after Tutankhamun and Ramesses the Great at a time when Egypt was ruled by Greek kings.

There’s tons of information on the brand spanking new website on each of the 99 objects that have already been selected for broadcast. For those of us out of Radio Four’s range, the programs will be posted as podcasts.

The website also has a neat feature where individuals upload objects of their own and explain their significance. Just get a good quality digital picture and click the yellow Add Your Own Object icon in the upper right of the page. A moderator will check to be sure it’s not pr0n then approve it.

You can view all the images in the series plus the ones uploaded by individuals and find out more about them using this Flash map. Click on Contributor in the menu on the left and choose Individuals to see only the pictures uploaded by people.

The radio program is just 15 minutes a day, but I’ve already spent hours browsing the site. It’s addictive.