Apologies and a shout out to Turkey

I apologize for what seemed like an endless day of History Bloglessness. A Turkish hacker took down the host server and it took all day to get the site restored.

8000 year old sealIn honor of the pirate who took us down, here’s a story about an 8,000-year-old seal found in the province of Izmir, in western Turkey. Archaeologists discovered the seal while excavating the Yesilova Tumulus, one of the oldest settlements in that part of the country.

“The seal is dated back to 6,200 B.C. It is evident that the seal belonged to an administrator. This bull-shaped seal is one of the oldest seals ever unearthed in Anatolia. We’ve unearthed many important findings during the excavations at this site since 2005. Some 700 pieces have been sent to museums for display. We give 150 pieces every year. This region is very important in terms of both tourism and science,” [Associate Professor Zafer Derin] said.

There. ARE YOU HAPPY NOW, HAX0R?!

Nefertiti bust was airbrushed

NefertitiThe famed bust of Nefertiti now in the Neues Museum in Berlin has long been considered an icon of beauty. It turns out to be very similar to contemporary images of beauty: nipped, tucked, botoxed and airbushed.

Historian Bettany Hughes was part of a team of researchers who took a CT scan of the Neues Nefertiti last week and she announced yesterday that the inner limestone template upon which the stucco outer shell was built presents a less idealized version of the queen. She’s still a great beauty, but the first face seems to have been a more realistic rendering, complete with crows’ feet and nose bumps.

This confirms the CT scan results German researchers got last year. They found the limestone face has less prominent cheekbones, a bump on the bridge of the nose, smile lines around the mouth and cheeks, and less depth at the corners of the eyelids. The sculptor Thutmose, in whose workshop it was found and to whom it is attributed, may have done the limestone carving from life and then built up the stucco to be more in accordance with their cultural notions of ideal beauty.

“That statue is still very beautiful,” [Hughes] said, “but not as beautiful. It showed her nose was bent, and that she had wrinkles around her eyes. It’s a real portrait of a real woman. We’re now going to a tomb in the Valley of the Kings where we think Nefertiti’s sister is to see if the dynasty has the same features.”

Ms Hughes, who flew out to Egypt immediately after yesterday’s event, said the Nefertiti scan was likely to reveal much more about the dynasty, of whom Tutenkhamen is the most famous member.

It may even help lead archaeologists to Nefertiti’s remains. Her tomb has never been found, but there are a number of identified mummies that are believed to be part of her family. The new information about her looks might provide more data to find a match.

I don’t know if that’s really likely, however. I mean, did anyone really expect the Nefertiti bust to be an exact replica of the queen, to the point where a potential mummy would be ruled out on the grounds of it not precisely matching the sculpted version of her? It’s hardly shocking news that portraiture and propaganda have gone hand in hand for millennia.

37 more ancient Macedonian tombs found in Pella

Bronze helmet with gold mouth protector, 6th c. B.C.Excavations of the Iron Age cemetery in Pella keep turning up huge numbers of finds. Thursday archaeologists announced that they’ve found another 37 tombs dating from 650 to 280 B.C. One of the tombs was the final resting place of a warrior from the 6th century B.C. and it held a bronze helmet with a gold mouthplate, weapons and jewelry.

These treasures aren’t quite as elaborate as the accouterments found in 43 graves last year, but these tombs too are an incredibly rich source of ancient Macedonian artifacts ranging from ceramics to precious metals. Overall, archaeologists have uncovered an astonishing 1,000 tombs since excavations of the site began 10 years ago, and they’ve only excavated an estimated 5% of the site.

They’ve found so many ancient artifacts that Greek Ministry of Culture and Tourism spent 1.6 million euros building a new Archaeological Museum of Pella. The old museum was built in 1960 to store the finds. It was quite teeny — it only had 3 rooms — but it had had to function as the sole archaeological museum since 1973. The new museum has 6,000 square meters (a whopping 65,000 square feet) of display space, all of it packed with archaeological wonders.

Among the most important exhibits are six mosaics from houses (depicting Dionysus riding a panther, a lion-hunt, a griffin attacking a deer, a pair of centaurs, and vegetal ornaments), an interior wall of a house decorated with coloured plaster in the first Pompeian style (2nd century BC), a marble portrait head of Alexander the Great and a marble statuette of Alexander as Pan of the Hellenistic period, a small bronze statue of Poseidon attributed to the sculptor Lysippos, also of the Hellenistic period, hoards of silver coins of the Macedonian kings (5th century BC) and of the Hellenistic period, a red-figure hydria decorated with a representation of Poseidon’s duel with Athena, dated to the late fifth or early fourth century BC, and a headless statue of a youth on horseback.

Lion hunt mosaic Bronze of Poseidon Wall decorated with coloured plaster in the first Pompeian style

Pella was the second ancient capital of Macedonia (Aigai, another rich source of archaeological finds, was the first). Archelaus (413–399 BC) made it his capital and it remained so through Philip II’s and Alexander’s times. It was sacked by Roman troops in 168 B.C., when the last Antigonid king, Perseus of Macedon, was deposed and killed. Shortly thereafter an earthquake silted the harbor and the city’s decline was sealed.

The Colosseum on Fire

Don’t freak out! It’s just virtual flames. They look totally cool, though.

Danish artist Thyra Hilden and her partner Pio Diaz have been setting famous historical monuments on virtual fire all over Europe for years. They use large scale video projection installations to make a point about the significance and fragility of Europe’s cultural heritage.

After several years of preparation, they’ve finally set up their vision of arson in a place where you can still see melted copper coins embedded in the pavement from the fires that blazed through the city 2,000 years ago.

Creating the flames inside the historical building had been demanding of the couple, said Hilden, but added that they had not allowed the technicalities to distract them from the main purpose of the installation.

“As far as I know it’s half a kilometre just to walk around the building so to set it on fire was a really, really huge effort but to us all the technical things are not important, we want to focus mainly and only on the content and the expression and why we want to do it,” she said.

Even the challenges were essentially part of the message of the display, Diaz added.

“I think that the most challenging is to go from and idea to something that is concrete and sometimes it’s pretty difficult, not just to burn the Colosseum but in every day life for everybody so I think that just to do it, in a way symbolises that, that you know, to have the idea and put it in realisation,” he said.

The timing just happens to suit the city’s plans as well. Rome is in the process of raising $32 million from private donors for a full restoration of the Colosseum, so curator Gianni Mercurio sees the fire as symbolizing the phoenix rising from the ashes.

(I haven’t blogged about this restoration project yet because there’s a strong chance it will involve advertising on the Colosseum and the thought makes me physically ill. They say it won’t be hideous billboards or anything like that, but rather some tasteful sky-projected laser logos. I am skeptical and I am grumpy.)

And now, without further ado, fire up your fiddle and clear your throat for a rousing rendition of the Sack of Illium.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/v/3NhGndIMUrE&w=430]

Gorgeously illustrated WWI diary found after 90 years

Lieutenant Kenneth Edwin Wootton, 1/21 Battn London Regt Tank CorpsLieutenant Kenneth Edwin Wootton was a tank operator in the trenches of the Western Front during World War I. He operated the lead tank in his section and was on the front lines of many battles, taking out machine gun emplacements.

He also happened to be an exceptional artist with pen and ink and watercolors who kept a journal of what he experienced and saw in battle between 1915 and 1917. He fought in the notorious third Battle of Ypres (aka the Battle of Passchendaele) which killed half a million soldiers on both sides for a few miles gained by Allied forces.

His writing is as vivid and powerful as his art. Here’s part of his entry on Third Ypres:

My driver Fagg could be seen anxiously peering through the half open window in July 1917 at the Third Battle of Ypres. I lit a cigarette as my mouth became quite dry, I lit another, it tasted rotten but I smoked it somehow as we got nearer the lines of burning shells.

We escaped with nothing more than lumps of earth falling around us. The German front line had been smashed almost out of recognition as we passed through shell holes and most were filled with filthy water and bodies.

Up the hill Fagg and I felt we were in for it as the Germans still held Westhoek and Gelncorse wood. I was kept busy dodging from side to side on my tank as a great many shells fell around us. I should have got inside but I hate being boxed up in the stifling heat of a tank. I felt safer in the open.

Christmas Truce 1916 entryHe also records a Christmas Truce in 1916, which is notable because after the first and most famous Christmas Truce of 1914, the commands on both sides did everything they could to discourage such spontaneous eruptions of humanity, including resorting to threats of hard punishment for any soldier engaging in fraternization with the enemy.

Christmas Day 1916, Ypres: Distance between the line was 100 yards. Had an excellent Christmas dinner in a dug out, turkey, Christmas pudding, mine pies, fruit and champagne. Both sides stopped. Did patrol from midnight till 3am and felt very merry.

So there were no twinkling lights, no hanging out, sharing food, cutting each others’ hair like there had been in 1914, but at least they stopped shooting at each other long enough to enjoy a decent Christmas meal.

The last entries in the diary describe his time in a hospital in Rouen after an explosion almost killed him. He was discharged from the military due to the injury, receiving a Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty upon his return. He stashed the diary at that point and it remained incognito until his great granddaughter inherited some old books and papers and found the diary among them.

She’s selling it (sigh) at a Hansons Auctioneers sale at the end of September. The estimated sale price is £3000 ($4700), a steal considering its far greater historical value.

Pen and ink drawing of the ruins of YpresWatercolor of Renault FT17 tank in battle