1000-year-old stele with image of Mayan ruler found

1000-year-old stele of Mayan rulerA 1000-year-old stele engraved with the image of a Mayan ruler was found in the Lagartero archaeological area of Chiapas, Mexico. Archaeologists found the bas relief late last year while excavating the 10th section of Pyramid 4 in Lagartero.

The stele depicts the ruler standing above a man at his feet, probably representing a seizure of power.

Archaeologist Sonia Rivero Torres, who heads the Lagartero archaeological project, said that the stele or commemorative monument – the first to be found complete on the site – measures 2 meters (6 1/2 feet) long, 55 centimeters (22 inches) wide and 6 centimeters (2 1/3 inches) thick.

The stele was sculpted in metamorphic rock, known locally as “heart of stone.”

“In the pre-Colombian monument the profile image of a Mayan ruler is seen standing over a bench carrying a bag of incense in one hand and dressed in a loincloth bound with a sash and wearing sandals and a feather headdress.

“At his feet, lying on his back on the bench, lies another, smaller person with his torso opened as a sign of sacrifice or of being overthrown,” the archaeologist said.

It was found during the excavation of a stone casket which turned out to be empty, probably looted in pre-Columbian times.

A little further down in the pyramid, archaeologists found earthenware pots, a polychrome plate, a black vase with a zoopmorphic lid with a collection jade objects insides, including two earflaps, a turtle and a bead necklace.

Earlier, archaeologists found a box full of vessels of different shapes, zoomorphic vases and even a few human bones were recovered.

Lagartero was occupied for almost a thousand years, between 300 A.D. and 1200 A.D., and is a 2 1/2 acre ceremonial center. The area was a crux of trade between what are now Mexico and Guatemala as well as a religious and cultural capital. Not only have the pyramids provided rich finds, but the grounds have turned up a ball-playing court too.

Authorities plan to open the archaeological area for visitors some time this year.

The battle to save the Staffordshire Hoard

The Art Fund in collaboration with multiple local governments and museums have launched a campaign to raise the £3.3 million (ca. $5.4 million) to keep the Staffordshire Hoard intact in local museums. The problem is they have only 13 weeks to raise this princely sum, so they’re basically at DEFCON 1.

Unless they raise £3.3 million by April 17th, the hoard be sold to the highest bidder. There will certainly be an export ban so it’s not likely to leave the country, but it could easily be split up and scattered amongst private collections and museums all over the UK.

Celebrities like former Python Michael Palin have joined with historians like Dr. David Starkey to support The Art Fund’s campaign.

Dr Starkey said [the Staffordshire Hoard] transformed the history of the Midlands from being an Anglo-Saxon “obscure Brummie slum” into the “centre of England”.

He added: “It’s only six months since these things were found. They’ve barely been conserved. All the study, all the work has got to start right here.”

Dr Starkey, who is also a television and radio presenter, said breaking up the collection or moving it would “lose its meaning”.

He added: “It must stay here, together and intact, to be studied and displayed here in the West Midlands, the foundation of whose history it will now become.”

If the campaign is successful, the hoard will be jointly owned by both the Birmingham Museum and the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent. The city councils of Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent and The Art Fund have started the ball rolling by donating £500,000.

To pitch in yourself, click here to donate. Share the link on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, whatever you’ve got. These are lean times, so the more people hear about the fund-raising drive, the better the chances of its succeeding.

They have handy dandy icons and banners ready for people to use, as well as easy email links and links to their Facebook/Twitter pages. Spread the word!

P.S. – I customized the icon on my page (see left) by slowing it down a little, taking out a frame and adding a border so it matches my blog style. I’ll be glad to offer my rudimentary services to anyone who would like to tweak the button before displaying it on their site.

The battle to save the Staffordshire Hoard

Rembrandt found in a bathroom cabinet

Rembrandt etching found in CUA bathroomThen years ago or so ago, Monseigneur David M. O’Connell, president of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., was looking for paper towels in the bathroom cabinet of his office when he found a strange bit of frame poking out under some junk. He pulled it out and found an etching that seemed familiar.

The name Rembrandt was on the back, but of course the Monseigneur had no way of knowing if it was genuine or a print or a copy.

In January of last year, Father O’Connell finally got around to asking the university’s records management archivist Leslie Knoblauch to have the etching appraised. While they were waiting to hear the results, CUA doctoral student Paul Wesley Bush translated the French inscription.

The etching measures 4.5 by 5 inches and has a paper backing that is crumbly and darkened with age. It bears a French inscription saying the picture is “the bust of an old man with a great beard seen about most of the face… His head a little perched gives him… the attitude of a man who sleeps,” according to [Paul Bush’s translation].

In February the appraiser confirmed that it was the real deal: a genuine etching by Rembrandt. How it ended up with the paper towels in the bathroom cabinet, nobody knows.

Rembrandt was famous during his lifetime for his etchings. He made them by drawing with a needle on a resin-coated copper plate. The plate is dipped in acid which etches the needle lines into the plate.

Bush suggested they make an exhibit around the marvelous find, and so they have. “Fine Lines: Discovering Rembrandt and Other Old Masters at Catholic University” will be at the May Gallery in the John K. Mullen of Denver Memorial Library through May 24. Admission is free.

The current exhibit also features two engravings of Abraham Lincoln photos taken by famed Civil War-era photographer Mathew Brady: one by Scottish artist and engraver Alexander Hay Ritchie and the other by American John Chester Buttre, whose work includes a steel-plate engraving of a full-length portrait of President James Buchanan.

Additional exhibit pieces now on display at the May Gallery include a watercolor copy of a print of Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein; two black-and-white engravings by English artist William E.C. Morgan; and six woodcut prints by Julius John Lankes, an American artist whose works are included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Library of Congress and the British Museum.

Ship’s skeleton emerges on Washington beach

Shipwreck on Washaway BeachAs recently as a year ago this shipwreck was buried under 9 feet of earth and trees on Washaway Beach along the Pacific Coast in Washington state. Now erosion has revealed the 125 foot-long skeleton of a shipwreck.

A week and a half ago the keel peeked out, then the shifting coastline exposed more and more of the ship’s structure.

According to maritime experts and others, the wreckage could be part of the Canadian Exporter, a freighter that broke in two in August 1921 while carrying 3 million board feet of lumber and 200 tons of general cargo, as noted in a contemporary issue of American Shipping magazine. If so, the remains could belong to whoever bought salvage rights, or to a private landowner, or to the state.

“As near as I can tell, it’s on state land,” said Pacific County Assessor Bruce Walker, who visited the site over the weekend.

If ownership cannot be determined, the wreckage could become a salvageable piece of history. But even as the Assessor’s Office tries to sort that out, the worst fears of museum officials and maritime buffs are being realized as scavengers reap the sea’s rewards on their terms, stripping the remains for usable or sellable scrap.

“Why not?” asked nearby resident Lesley Strange, an unemployed former Bering Sea fisherman who said he already had taken away some pieces. “Am I gonna let it go in the ocean and not be recovered at all?”

Yes charming. If you’re going to “recover” bits of it, could you at least give a tiny crap about its historical value instead of selling it for scrap? Unfortunately, Washington’s Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation doesn’t have the authority to excavate, nor does the local Westport museum. Nobody does until ownership is established.

I suppose the locals are somewhat jaded. That stretch of the Pacific Coast has taken down of dozens of ships. It’s also one of the fastest eroding coastlines in the world, so people are always stumbling on remains.

The Canadian Exporter is just one of many ships to succumb to the sandbars and fog the entrance to Willapa Harbor. The crew were all rescued when the ship ran aground, but they couldn’t do anything but watch as the pressure from the waves broke the ship in two.

Twenty and forty-foot timbers have turned up before, matching the Exporter’s cargo. Identifying marks on the wreck also match the Exporter’s cargo manifest.

The Canadian Exporter, broken in two, 1921

Impossible Black Tulip of Cartography on display

One of the rarest of all maps, the Ricci World Map of 1602, is going on display as part of the Library of Congress’ “Exploring the Early Americas” map exhibit. Unveiled today, it will remain there until April 10 when it will move to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for a short exhibit, then to its permanent home, the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota.

Detail from Ricci mapThis map is one of only two in good condition. Its rarity, important representation of the meeting of East and West and its Chinese annotations have earned it a lovely romantic moniker among collectors: the Impossible Black Tulip. There are a handful other copies in the Vatican library, in a private collection in France and in public collections in Japan.

This particular copy was sold by a Japanese collector to the the James Ford Bell Trust for a cool million dollars, the second highest price ever paid for a map. The highest price is $10 million, paid by the Library of Congress for the 1507 Waldseemüller World Map, the first to use the name “America”. The Waldseemüller map is currently on display right next to the Ricci in the Library of Congress exhibit.

Detail from Ricci mapThe Ricci World Map was drawn by Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci at the request of Emperor Wanli. It’s the first Chinese map to show the Americas, and it’s huge with all kinds of detailed annotations. The notes next to North America mention “humped oxen” (aka bison) and the northernmost “Ka-na-ta” region. It’s composed of six rice paper panels totaling 5.5 feet in height, 12.5 feet in width. The panels were designed to be mounted on a folding screen.

Although Ricci never actually met the Emperor, he did impress him enough with a gift of a chiming clock that in 1601 he became the first Westerner ever invited into the Forbidden City. When he died in 1610, the Emperor granted him a special dispensation to be buried in Beijing rather than in Macao where all foreigners were by law to be buried.

Unfortunately this is the biggest picture I could find of the entire map, but the Library of Congress plans to upload detailed images of it to its excellent site after the exhibit is over.