Month: September 2010

After much drama, Cyrus Cylinder lands in Iran

Ancient, Museums, Social policy, Treasures

After much controversy and delay, a clay cylinder from the 6th century B.C. celebrating King Cyrus II the Great of Persia’s conquest of Babylon in cuneiform script has arrived in Iran to be displayed in the National Museum for the next 4 months.

The Cyrus Cylinder was discovered by a British Museum archaeologist in the ruins of Babylon in 1879 and has been on display at the museum ever since. It has only traveled twice, in 2006 to Spain, and one notable 2-week visit to Iran in 1971, where it was the centerpiece of Shah Reza Pahlavi’s celebration of 2,500 years of Persian monarchy.

The Shah was very keen to pain his regime as an unbroken continuation of that of Cryus the Great, and he promoted the Cylinder as the original declaration of human rights. In a 1967 book about the White Revolution (his 1963 program of reforms) he said: “the history of our empire began with the famous declaration of Cyrus, which, for its advocacy of humane principles, justice and liberty, must be considered one of the most remarkable documents in the history of mankind.”

The problem is there actually isn’t anything in the Cylinder text about human rights. The inscription details Cyrus’ royal genealogy and sings his praises for restoring local gods to their hometowns, freeing forced laborers (the Book of Ezra says this included the Jews who had been captured by Nebuchadnezzar 50 years earlier), rebuilding Babylon and just generally being so way more awesome than Nabonidus, the Babylonian low-born usurper he defeated at the personal behest of the god Marduk. It’s a classic piece of Mesopotamian style propaganda: praise the new guy and bury it in the foundations of the temple of Marduk. Nabonidus had done the same thing using similar language when he took over, as had his predecessors for a couple of thousand years.

Shah Pahlavi’s use of it to legitimize his own rule was quite congruent with its original intent, and in some ways it worked. The “first declaration of human rights” label stuck, for instance, and you’ll see it all over the articles today about the arrival of the Cylinder in Tehran. In 1971, there was a furor in the press at the time demanding the “return” of the Cylinder to Iran, despite the fact that it was found in what is now Iraq, is all about Babylon and was legally exported.

After the British Museum got it back — not without some difficulty — the board decided it would be unwise to lend it to Iran again. That’s where things stood until 2005, when the British Museum put on a major exhibition about the Persian Empire in collaboration with the Iranian government. Iran loaned the museum several important artifacts under a reciprocal agreement that the Cyrus Cylinder would be loaned back to them.

In early 2009, the British Museum announced the Cylinder would be loaned to Iran for 3 months later in the year. After the June protests and violence in the wake of the disputed reelection of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the museum backtracked. They decided it would be safer to delay the loan.

Iran was less than pleased. The government threatened to cut off all ties with the museum unless they got the as-promised loan within 2 months. Another display date was set (January 2010) and that deadline too passed, this time ostensibly because the British Museum found some other fragments with the same text and wanted to compare them to the Cylinder. They rescheduled the loan for July, but Iran was not mollified.

In February, Iran announced it was making good on its threat and cutting off ties with the museum. In April, the National Museum of Iran demanded the British Museum replay them for the $300,000 cost of a special display case built to show the Cyrus Cylinder. That was the last I’d heard of the controversy until today when articles popped up all over the place announcing the arrival of the Cylinder in Tehran.

The British Museum sent a delegation of experts/babysitters along with it, probably to ensure they actually get it back.

Cyrus Cylinder, front
Cyrus Cylinder, back

200-year-old whale skeleton found on Thames bank

Modern(ish), Museums, Treasures

Tracy Heath, curator Museum of London, in the middle of the right whale skeletonA team of archaeologist excavating the bank of the Thames in Bay Wharf, in the east London neighborhood of Greenwich, discovered a huge skeleton of a decapitated North Atlantic right whale.

The skeleton is 7 meters (23 feet) long, 4 meters (13 feet) wide at its widest part and weighs half a ton. The head would have been a third of the whale’s body length, so the critter would have been at least 11 meters (36 feet) long in total when it was alive. It is the largest object ever excavated in London. Historians estimate that he died in the late 18th or early 19th centuries, but we won’t know for sure until his bones are carbon dated.

So how did this badboy find his way from his home somewhere around Greenland to London? There have actually been whales who wandered upriver and beached themselves before. There are historical references to whales in the Thames, and one beached itself as recently as 2006.

Right whale skeleton excavated on the Thames banksThis fellow probably didn’t make it all the way there on his own, however. The placement of his skeleton on the bank — tail forward — suggest he was dragged to shore, but one of the reason right whales were so prized (and hunted to near extinction, natch) is that they float when dead so whalers could easily butcher them. They wouldn’t have killed it in the open ocean then dragged the entire 60-ton carcass into the city to strip it of its valuables.

[It] may have been harpooned in the Thames estuary or beached itself on the Essex or Kent banks, before being seized by whalers who would have towed it to Greenwich for butchering. It is rare for whales to enter the Thames estuary, but sometimes they become disoriented and stray far from their normal habitats.

The Greenwich area – especially Blackwall and Rotherhithe – used to be a base for whaling fleets that combed the far north of the Atlantic searching for just such prey. To find one on their doorstep, delivered for nothing, would have been a godsend.

But how much the whale merchants would have gained from the carcass is unsure, as any whale which beached itself between the low and high tide marks would have legally belonged to the Crown. It could have been worth up to £4,400 (or £400,000 in today’s money) in oil and whalebone.

16th c. woodcut of whale being butchered on Thames shoreAny whalers involved would have taken the head and left the rest of the carcass for Londoners to butcher on the spot.

As so often happens on the banks of the Thames, the thick mud preserved the skeleton in ideal anaerobic conditions. It went on display today in the foyer of the Museum of London Dockland where it will remain just until September 14th. After that, it moves to a permanent new home at the Natural History Museum where it will be studied in depth.

Preliminary examination by zoologists at the Natural History Museum indicate that the whale had reached full maturity. Some of the vertebrae in the tail had fused together, so he probably had a harder time moving his tail than his cohorts, making him more susceptible to beaching or capture.

There are only 300 or so North Atlantic right whales left in the western North Atlantic today, so DNA and isotope analysis of this historic skeleton will help expand our limited knowledge of the species’ genetic diversity, ocean movements and feeding techniques.

America’s first female cop?

Modern(ish)

There’s been some debate over who was the first female police officer in the country. Los Angeles boldly proffers its first female police officer hired in 1910, while Portland claims to have gotten the jump on LA by hiring a female officer in 1908. Now Rick Barrett, an amateur historian and former DEA agent, thinks he’s found the real first of the first in Chicago, her far earlier accomplishments obscured when a historian confused her with someone else back in the 20s.

Detective Sergeant Marie Owens was the daughter of Irish famine immigrants. She moved to Chicago from Ottawa with her husband, and when he died of typhoid fever leaving her with 5 children to support, in 1889 she got a job with the city health department as a factory inspector enforcing child labor and compulsory education laws. Not unlike certain federal agencies to this day (*cough* USDA *cough*), the health department had no real power to compel businesses to obey child labor laws. They couldn’t even walk into a factory without a warrant.

Det. Sgt. Marie Owens on the front page of the Chicago Daily Tribune, 1904The outcry over Dickensian sweatshop conditions spurred the city to take a firmer hand, and in 1891 Marie Owens was transferred to the police department. She was given powers of arrest, the title of detective sergeant and a police star. It wasn’t just a sinecure or one of those Official Police Assistant certificates they give to kids, either. She was a for real police officer, listed on a record of all police officers from the years 1904 through 1910 found in the archives of the Chicago History Museum. She even made the front page of the Chicago Tribune on August 7, 1904, described in the headline as “the only woman police sergeant in the world.”

Owens described how she had discovered children — “frail little things” as young as 7 years old — working in factories all over the city. Some assembly lines were staffed by scores of kids, many looking suspiciously younger than 14, the age at which children were legally allowed to work.

“In my sixteen years of experience I have come across more suffering than ever is seen by any man detective,” she said.

Her work affected thousands of children. She established schools within department stores so young workers could get an education, and she persuaded other employers to shorten their workdays, according to historical news accounts.

In 1923, she retired after 32 years with the department. Four years later, she died at age 74. The brief, eight-line death notice that ran in local papers didn’t mention her police career. Already, her work seemed to be fading from memory. And when a historian confused her with another woman and described Owens in a book about policewomen as a patrolman’s widow, her accomplishments were struck from history.

In 2007, Rick Barrett found a reference to her as the wife of a fallen policeman when he was researching Chicago police officers. When he looked up the death records, however, he found a discrepancy. Owens’ husband was listed as a gas fitter, not a cop. His interest now fully piqued, Barrett combed through all the records he could find, piecing together her remarkable life story and now finally calling attention to this overlooked pioneer.

Rare color footage of London Blitz revealed on 70th anniversary

Modern(ish), Multimedia

Rare color footage of the London Blitz shot by air warden Alfred Coucher between September 7th, 1940 and May 10th, 1941 was recently found by his family in the attic where he had stored it after the war.

Coucher’s granddaughter, Carolyn Keen (not the author of Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, but she gets points for the awesome name anyway), expected to find some film in the attic, but she didn’t realize there was such a depth of detail about the war at home.

The family donated them to the St. Marylebone Society, an architectural preservation group that Alfred Coucher, who had been wartime mayor of Marylebone in west London, helped found. With support from the Westminster Council, the color film has been digitized and uploaded to the West End at War website in honor of the 70th anniversary of the Blitz. They are short clips of just a few minutes each, in total 20 minutes of footage.

As well as panoramic shots that bring to life the sheer extent of the bomb damage in 1940, the films superbly capture the Blitz spirit as Londoners carry on with their daily routine and double-decker buses run along roads cleared of rubble.

Although the East End of London suffered the worst damage during the Blitz, the films provide a rare glimpse of the destruction wrought in the West End – the heart of London’s theatre and shopping district.

The John Lewis store, which was hit by a German bomb as 200 people slept in its basement air raid shelter, has a large “open for business” sign despite a large part of it being reduced to a shell.

In another scene medics are seen carrying wounded civilians into ambulances, and Mr Coucher also made a training film to show other air raid wardens how to deal with incendiary bombs, fires and casualties.

There’s also footage of Winston Churchill reviewing a parade of civil defence workers in Hyde Park.

So much of London was destroyed. I forget that sometimes when I get grumpy about the questionable zoning choices the city has made the past 70 years. The color footage really brings it all into high relief, the enormity of the destruction and how people somehow still lived their lives. The pops of red, the bus driving through the rubble, the stretcher blankets, in this video I find particularly affecting.

Arabic coins from Dark Ages found in Germany

Medieval, Treasures

Silver Arabic coin, 610 - 820 A.D.Archaeologists excavating a field near Anklam in Mecklenburg, Western Pomerania, uncovered a cache of 82 silver coins and coin fragments, a silver bracelet and 3 silver bars dating to the early Middle Ages. Finds from this era are rare, large numbers of coins from this era are even rarer, and large numbers of coins from this era that were minted in Arabic states practically unheard of.

The oldest coin is from around the year 610. The most recent coin has been dated back to roughly 820 AD.

“The discovery of Arabic coins at the coast of the Baltic sea proves that there was global trade more than 1,200 years ago,” said Greifswald historian Fred Ruchhoeft.

The coins were minted in regions belonging to modern-day Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan or northern Africa. They are thought to have reached Northern Europe via trading routes along the Black Sea, the Dnieper river and the Volga, before reaching the Baltic sea.

The find is near a former Slavic settlement, and gives new information about the importance of the region, in Pomerania, during the early Middle Ages.

Anklan is on the Peene river, a bustling source of trade for the Slavic settlement. The Viking town of Menzlin — a hub of trade with both east and west — was right next door. The Vikings traded with the Arabs and the Slavs, so they could have been the means by which Arabic coins ended up in Pomerania. Alternatively, Arabic traders could have made their way directly or Slavic traders might have returned from a voyage bearing Arabic currency.

The coins wouldn’t have had the monetary value they carried in their lands of origin. Their value would have been purely the weight of the silver, which is why coin fragments were found. People cut them up to trade as silver pieces. The full weight of the silver in the cache was 200 grams. That would have been the price of 4 oxen or 1 human slave.

It’s like The 13th Warrior only not really, really stupid.