Month: November 2013

600 ancient seals found at cult temple of Jupiter

Ancient, Treasures

Archaeologists from the University of Münster excavating the ancient sanctuary of Jupiter Dolichenus near the town of Dülük in southern Turkey have unearthed more than 600 stamp and cylinder seals dating from between the 7th and the 4th centuries B.C. Seals were used as votive offerings to the gods and as such have been found at many ancient sanctuaries, but the sheer numbers found here make the discovery unique.

“The amazingly large number proves how important seals and amulets were for the worshipping of the god to whom they were consecrated as votive offerings”, according to Classical scholar [and excavation leader Dr. Engelbert] Winter. Many pieces show scenes of adoration. “Thus, they provide a surprisingly vivid and detailed insight into the faith of the time.” The stamp seals and cylinder seals as well as scarabs, made of glass, stone and quartz ceramics, were mostly crafted in a high-quality manner.

The seals are carved with a wide variety of images. They range from simple geometric shapes to scenes of heroes battling animals or mythological creatures. One seal depicts men worshiping star-like symbols of divinity.

“Even those images that do not depict a deity express strong personal piety: with their seals, people consecrated an object to their god which was closely associated with their own identity”, said [Dr. Michael] Blömer. People wore the amulets found with the seals in everyday life. “Strung on chains, they were supposed to fend off bad luck”, explained the archaeologist.

The Roman name for Dülük was Doliche, hence the name “Dolichenus” for the Jupiter whose cult was centered around the temple on the hill known today as Dülük-Baba Tepesi. The cult of Jupiter Dolichenus was a mystery religion that was popular all over the Roman empire from the early second century A.D. until its precipitous fall in the mid-third century. Shrines to Jupiter Dolichenus, who is always depicted holding a thunderbolt in one hand and a double-headed axe in the other while riding a sacred bull, have been found in Rome, Hungary, Romania, Germany, Austria and even in the remote British fort of Vindolanda just south of Hadrian’s Wall. Like Mithraism, another bull-centered Eastern mystery religion, the worship of Jupiter Dolichenus was popular in the Roman army, but it wasn’t restricted to military. Judging from handy lists of adherents that have been found inscribed in some of the 17 known temples, more than 60% of the devotees were civilians.

Interest in the religion waned rapidly with the end of the Severan dynasty. Emperors like Caracalla and Septimius Severus had supported the religion, so when the last Severan, Alexander Severus, was assassinated in 235 A.D., his successor Maximus Thrax did not look favorably upon it or its adherents. The temple at Doliche was destroyed twenty years later by Sassanid emperor Shapur I. Since the cult was strongly identified with the deity’s original temple, Jupiter’s failure to save his own home from destruction made him look impotent and lost him whatever adherents he had left.

The seals that have been found long predate the Roman era of Jupiter Dolichenus, however. Like all the Eastern religions that carved a niche out for themselves in Rome, this Jupiter was a syncretized version of a much older deity. He started off as the Hittite sky and storm god Tesub-Hadad and was only blended with the Greco-Roman sky and storm god after the Romans conquered the area in 64 B.C. Most of what we know of this cult is post-Roman, so such a large number of seals from when he was Tesub-Hadad rather than Jupiter are invaluable sources for researchers. So far, archaeologists have identified seals from the Neo-Babylonian, local Syrian, Levantine and Achaemenid periods.

“The large find provides new impetus for research to answer unsolved questions of cult practices, cult continuity and cult extension – above all, these are important for the understanding of the early history of the sanctuary in the 1st millennium B.C., which had been unknown until recently”, according to Prof. Winter.

Seven score and ten years ago…

Modern(ish)

I was going to do a sort of Gettysburg Address inception thing where I rewrite the speech to describe the creation and delivery of the speech, but it was hackneyed and cheesy so I’ll just celebrate the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s delivery of the greatest two-minute speech in history the old-fashioned way.

On November 19th, 1863, the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was inaugurated, more than four months after the Battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863). In the immediate aftermath of the carnage, the dead had been buried on the field, in churchyards, field hospital sites, anywhere a space could be found. Gettysburg attorney David Wills had the idea to create a national cemetery funded by the state governments of the Union soldiers who died there rather than funded by plot purchases by the families of the dead. Pennsylvania governor Andrew Gregg Curtin approved of the idea and appointed Wills to secure the land, contract designers, arrange reburials and organize a dedication event.

Wills invited Edward Everett, a pastor, classicist, politician and renown public speaker, to delivered the featured speech, a two-hour oration that covered ancient Greek burial practices, the Battle of Marathon, the military conflicts leading up to Gettysburg, Gettysburg itself, whose fault the war was, civil wars throughout history and how the states in rebellion wouldn’t hold a grudge once the war was over and we’d all come together again under the Union. (Read the whole oration here.) Wills asked Lincoln to follow Everett with a few brief remarks, and he made it clear in the formal invitation which was sent on November 2nd, two months after Everett had received his invite, that he meant brief. From the invitation:

It is the desire that, after the Oration, you, as Chief Executive of the Nation, formally set apart these grounds to their Sacred use by a few appropriate remarks. It will be a source of great gratification to the many widows and orphans that have been made almost friendless by the Great Battle here, to have you here personally; and it will kindle anew in the breasts of the Comrades of these brave dead, who are now in the tented field or nobly meeting the foe in the front, a confidence that they who sleep in death on the Battle Field are not forgotten by those highest in Authority; and they will feel that, should their fate be the same, their remains will not be uncared for.

There’s a widely circulated story that the press at the time panned Lincoln’s speech because ears were accustomed in those days to lengthy declamations so his short remarks were considered unworthy. In fact, most of the reviews in the media were positive, many recognizing the power of Lincoln’s words. One of the more famously grouchy reactions was an editorial in the Harrisburg Patriot & Union printed almost a week after the ceremony. Believing all speeches delivered on the occasion to be shameless exploitation of the noble dead by Republican Party shills eager to promote their agenda, the Patriot & Union panned both Everett’s oration and Lincoln’s speech. Lincoln got it worse, though; the editorial veritably seethes with contempt for him.

To say of Mr. Everett’s oration that it rose to the height which the occasion demanded, or to say of the President’s remarks that they fell below our expectations, would be alike false. Neither the orator nor the jester surprised or deceived us. Whatever may be Mr. Everett’s failings he does not lack sense – whatever may be the President’s virtues, he does not possess sense. Mr. Everett failed as an orator, because the occasion was a mockery, and he knew it, and the President succeeded, because he acted naturally, without sense and without constraint, in a panorama which was gotten up more for his benefit and the benefit of his party than for the glory of the nation and the honor of the dead […]

We will not include in this category of heartless men the orator of the day; but evidently he was paralyzed by the knowledge that he was surrounded by unfeeling, mercenary men, ready to sacrifice their country and the liberties of their countrymen for the base purpose of retaining power and accumulating wealth. Hi oration was therefore cold, insipid, unworthy the occasion and the man. We pass over the silly remarks of the President. For the credit of the nation we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they shall be no more repeated or thought of.

A century and a half later here we are repeating and thinking of those words. The Patriot & Union’s descendant, the Harrisburg Patriot-News, has recently seen the light and issued a charming formal apology.

In the editorial about President Abraham Lincoln’s speech delivered Nov. 19, 1863, in Gettysburg, the Patriot & Union failed to recognize its momentous importance, timeless eloquence, and lasting significance. The Patriot-News regrets the error.

Regrets the error… I love that. 😆

The Internet is full of Gettysburg-themed events today. The Google Cultural Institute has three online exhibitions about the address: one curated by Cornell University that explores the Bancroft Copy of the speech and contemporary depictions of its delivery, one about early drafts and multiple versions of the speech, and the last about the cultural impact of the address which is still very much felt today.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has created a website encouraging people to upload videos of themselves reciting the Gettysburg Address. Here’s a mashed up version from famous artists, journalists, pundits and politicians, including all five living presidents:
[youtube=http://youtu.be/_Yzi79zpqQA&w=430]

For more about the Address, see the Library of Congress’ fine online exhibition.

Sarcophagus found under Lincoln Castle opened

Medieval, Modern(ish)

A limestone sarcophagus discovered earlier this year underneath Lincoln Castle during an archaeological survey before construction of an elevator shaft has been opened. It was a lengthy, delicate process. When the stone coffin was first unearthed, only the side was visible. The trench was deep and the sarcophagus very heavy; it took months to dig it out. Finally in October archaeologists were able to gingerly remove the sarcophagus from its berth 10 feet under ground level, sliding it out horizontally.

The team had hoped that once the lid was exposed they’d find an inscription identifying who was buried within, but they were not so lucky. The lid of the stone coffin was mortared down for burial and since then had cracked all the way across horizontally in two places. In order to lift it, the team had to remove the lid in three sections. Archaeologists had gotten a glimpse of the contents when they threaded an endoscopic camera into the sarcophagus after the initial discovery so they knew it contained an articulated skeleton. When the first section of the lid was removed, they found the remains of leather boots or shoes, a very unusual discovery that confirmed the deceased was someone of great status in the community.

The mere fact of his having been buried in a sarcophagus indicated he was someone of wealth and/or prestige. The bones have not been radiocarbon dated yet, but pottery found in the same layer as the burials dates to the 10th century, a hundred or so years before the Norman invasion and the construction of Lincoln Castle by William the Conqueror in 1068. It seems William chose the site of an Anglo-Saxon chapel or church upon which to build his castle, a chapel in which the community’s elite were buried. Anglo-Saxons didn’t typically use sarcophaguses to bury the dead. It was probably a Roman-era coffin recycled for a local dignitary, perhaps a king or a religious leader.

In addition to the one in the sarcophagus, eight other bodies were found in the small 10-by-10-foot space. Seven were buried in wooden coffins, one wrapped in a finely woven woolen shroud and laid to rest in a niche in the foundations of the wall. Archaeologists believe the shrouded burial was a votive, that the man was someone holy and his remains were placed in the foundations of the church to sanctify it.

Before the lid was removed, experts took a 3D scan of the complete sarcophagus. Once the lid came off, the interior was also 3D scanned. This will allow researchers to examine the burial in detail without risking damage to the human remains or any artifacts that might still be there.

Mary Powell, Programme Manager for Lincoln Castle Revealed project, said: […]

“Finding a sarcophagus from this period that’s still undisturbed is extremely rare, so this discovery is of national significance.

“The next step will be to thoroughly analyse both the sarcophagus and the remains to learn as much as we can from it. This will undoubtedly increase what we know about Saxon Lincoln.”

It pretty much has to, because historians know very little about Lincoln after the Romans left and before the Normans came. That’s why the discovery of the church, of which there are no surviving records so nobody even knew it was there, and burials is of national significance.

They will also attempt a facial reconstruction extrapolated from the remains of the skull, but they have to put it back together first. Judging from the pictures, it looks heavily damaged.

One-of-a-kind toy bank coasts to $266,500

Modern(ish)

The only example of a cast iron mechanical bank that heretofore was known only by an ad in an 1884 catalog sold at auction in Philadelphia on Wednesday for $220,000 ($266,500 including buyer’s premium), many times the pre-sale estimate of $30,000-50,000. The Coasting Bank is considered the Impossible Black Tulip of toy bank collectors, only unlike the cartographical impossible black tulip which has a handful of surviving copies, there is only one Coasting Bank known to exist.

It was found in the attic of a home in Peebles, Scotland, of all random places, in excellent condition. The owners have no idea how it got from the US to their attic or when. The sellers too it to Lyon & Turnbull auctioneers in Edinburgh and they suggested it be sold at their partner auction house Freeman’s so it could be sold directly to American toy collectors, obviously a wise business decision.

Before 1955, even hardcore collectors had no idea it had ever existed. It was antique dealer William J. Stackhouse who ferreted it out. He was browsing a second hand shop in Norwich, New York, which was going out of business. In a pile of old magazines that were shop owner planned to throw away, Stackhouse came across a copy of the Winter 1994 issue of Ehrich’s Fashion Quarterly Wholesale Catalog, the mail order catalog of the dry goods emporium founded by the Ehrich Brothers on Eighth Avenue at 24th Street in New York City. On page 426, he found a number of advertisements for toy banks. One of them was the Coasting Bank, on sale for 95 cents. The ad describes the bank’s action:

Upon placing the sled at the top of the hill and pulling the string, the sled swiftly makes the descent until it meets an obstruction that lands the coaster on his head and deposits the coin in the bank.

An article by F.H. Griffith in the April, 1955, issue of Hobbies magazine published the discovery of the catalog and it’s double secret bank. It confirmed that there was no known example of this bank in any collection, nor is there a patent on file for it which is not surprising since many toy bank models never were patented. The other banks on the page are all real, though, and this was a catalog of inexpensive ready-made objects so if it was listed for sale, that means it had to have been produced.

Griffith noted that the mechanism bears some similarity Shoot The Chute Bank, a bank designed by Charles A. Bailey for J. & E. Stevens Company in 1906. (You can see the patent here. Stevens Co., based in Cromwell, Connecticut, was the oldest toy manufacturing company in the United States and became the number one sellers of toy banks in the country. Bailey was a toy-maker who had his own shop in the back of his Cobalt, Connecticut, house who also freelanced for J. & E. Stevens Co. He is considered a shining star in the firmament of mechanical bank designers, and in fact happens to have designed two of the other banks offered for sale on that catalog page, the Bismark Pig Bank and the German Exchange Bank. (You can’t tell from the catalog illustration because they’re trying to keep it a surprise, but the Bismark Pig Bank was so named because after you put the coin in the slot and press his tail, Otto von Bismark, “the cause of [the depositor’s] trouble,” pops out. This is a reference to the German chancellor’s blocking imports of US pork, thus causing the American pig seller’s trouble.)

In addition to the slide mechanism, the Shoot The Chute Bank and Coasting Bank also have materials — lead or white metal — and design elements — cast iron floral scrollwork on triangular coin receptacles — in common. It’s likely that the Shoot The Chute Bank was a descendant of the Coasting Bank, a second attempt to make the slide concept pay off after the first one disappeared into obscurity. I think the timing suggests it was inspired by the Shoot the Chute rides in Coney Island’s Luna Park (built in 1903) and Dreamland (built in 1904) which were the parks’ most popular rides. Bailey did note in the patent application that the figures would ride “a miniature boat or toboggan” down the chute and the production model looks more boat-like

If that was his aim, piggy-backing off the popularity of the rides didn’t work. The Chute sold almost as poorly as the Coasting Bank and today it sells much worse, despite its rarity. A very fine example of the Shoot the Chute mechanical bank sold in 2008 for $18,000, well below the pre-sale estimate of $25,000 – $35,000. As of that auction, there were only 12 original Shoot the Chute castings known to exist.

Not even a hot comic strip merchandising deal could make it sell. Popular comic strip figures of Buster Brown and his dog Tige were shooting the chute, you’d think they’d have fared better on the market. Richard Outcault began drawing the adventures of young Buster — a sort of Dennis the Menace dressed in a Little Lord Fauntleroy-like suit — and Tige — a pit bullish pup with the attitude and grin of the dog in The Mask when he channels the spirit of god of mischief Loki — in 1902. The strip was published in the New York Herald and was an immediate hit. In 1904 Outcault, a merchandising visionary, signed a reported 200 licensing deals at the Saint Louis World’s Fair. One of them was St. Louis shoe company Brown Shoes whose Buster Browns line of children’s shoes was so successful it is still going strong and the logo still stars Buster and Tige. They also bought the rights to the name of Buster’s sister in the comic, Mary Jane. That was the birth of the now-iconic Mary Jane shoe.

Assyrian gold tablet going back to Germany

Ancient, Looting, Museums

A New York Appellate Court has ruled that the small gold cuneiform tablet looted from Berlin’s Vorderasiatisches Museum at the end of World War II and acquired by Reuven Flamenbaum after his liberation from Auschwitz must be returned to the museum. It took the court less than a month to announce its decision which sides firmly with the plaintiff rejecting all the defendants’ legal arguments.

Quick summary (read last month’s entry for the full background): The tablet was discovered in the foundations of the Ishtar temple by a German archaeological team in 1913. The 9.5-gram card is inscribed in cuneiform on both sides describing the construction of the temple and calling on all who visit the temple to honor its builder, King Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243-1207 B.C.). After complications and delays caused by the First World War, the artifacts made it into the Vorderasiatisches Museum’s collection in 1926. With another war looming in 1939, the museum closed its doors and put everything in storage. Sometime between then and the end of the war when inventory was taken, the tablet went missing. Overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of artifacts looted from the museum and the conflicting authorities of post-war Berlin, the museum did not report the loss to the police or any art theft registries.

According to Flamenbaum family lore, Reuven got the tablet from a Soviet soldier around that time. He traded it for two cigarettes or a salami (the details are hazy, obviously) and took it with him when he immigrated to the United States in 1949. He settled in Long Island and got a job at a liquor store. Later he bought said liquor store using the tablet as collateral for a loan. In 1954 he had it appraised at Chritie’s and they told him it was a fake worth a hundred bucks at most. Still he kept it as a treasured memento of his survival.

Reuven Flamenbaum died in 2003. Three years later, Hannah Flamenbaum, Reuven’s daughter and executor of his estate submitted a list of assets as part of a petition to settle the account. The tablet was not mentioned individually on this list, just a “coin collection.” Her brother Israel objected that the so-called coin collection was more valuable than Hannah had stated “and includes one item identified as a ‘gold wafer’ which is believed to be an ancient Assyrian amulet and the property of a museum in Germany.” He told the Vorderasiatisches Museum about it too, while he was at it.

The museum filed a claim to recover the tablet. At a Nassau County Surrogate’s Court hearing, Dr. Beate Salje, director of the Vorderasiatisches, testified that the piece was stolen at the end of the war by a person or persons unknown. The Red Army looted the museum — many of those artifacts were returned by the Soviets in 1957 — as did German troops and people taking refuge in the museum. The museum also submitted a report by Dr. Eckart Frahm, Assistant Professor of Assyriology at Yale University, covering a 1983 article by A.K. Grayson about the fate of the Ashur artifacts. This article stated that Professor H.G. Guterbock from the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago told the author that he had seen a gold Assyrian tablet from a Berlin museum “in the hands of a dealer in New York in 1954.”

There is a reference to that allegation in the Vorderasiatisches’ record of the tablet, an annotation that it was “seen by Guterbach 1954 in New York” with “Grayson” written underneath. This entry is not dated and could have been written at any time after 1983, or before, I guess, if you suppose that Grayson heard the story from Guterbock whenever and told the museum. There’s zero evidence of that, however, so it’s meaningless speculation.

The Surrogate’s Court decided that the museum had met its burden of proving legal title, but that its claim was barred by the doctrine of laches, a legal principle that requires an owner “exercise reasonable diligence to locate” lost property. Apparently the court thought that note was evidence that the museum knew about the tablet’s being in New York decades ago but didn’t pursue it. It’s really not, though. They seriously misread the report.

The museum appealed and Hannah Flamenbaum cross-appealed, now claiming an affirmative defense that the tablet belonged to the estate based on the doctrine of laches. In May of 2012, the Appellate Division dismissed the cross-appeal and reversed the Surrogate’s Court decision on the grounds that the defense had not demonstrated that the museum failed to exercise reasonable diligence to locate the tablet. The case went back to Surrogate’s Court and finally wound up before the New York Court of Appeals last month.

The New York Court of Appeals has decided for the museum, rejecting both the doctrine of laches argument and the ugly, in my opinion, spoils of war theory which the estate proffered holding that the Soviet Union gained legal title to the tablet when it was looted as a spoil of war and then transferred the title to Reuven Flamenbaum when he bartered two cigarettes or a salami for it. They shot down both arguments in terms that made my wizened little heart grow three sizes this day:

We agree with the Appellate Division that the Estate failed to establish the affirmative defense of laches, which requires a showing “that the museum failed to exercise reasonable diligence to locate the tablet and that such failure prejudiced the [E]state” …. While the Museum could have taken steps to locate the tablet, such as reporting it to the authorities or listing it on a stolen art registry, the Museum explained that it did not do so for many other missing items, as it would have been difficult to report each individual object that was missing after the war. Furthermore, the Estate provided no proof to support its claim that, had the Museum taken such steps, the Museum would have discovered, prior to the decedent’s death, that he was in possession of the tablet …. As we observed in Lubell, in a related discussion of the defense of statute of limitations, “[t]o place a burden of locating stolen artwork on the true owner and to foreclose the rights of that owner to recover its property if the burden is not met would . . . encourage illicit trafficking in stolen art” (77 NY2d at 320). […]

The “spoils of war” theory proffered by the Estate — that the Russian government, when it invaded Germany, gained title to the Museum’s property as a spoil of war, and then transferred that title to the decedent — is rejected. The Estate’s theory rests entirely on conjecture, as the record is bereft of any proof that the Russian government ever had possession of the tablet. Even if there were such proof, we decline to adopt any doctrine that would establish good title based upon the looting and removal of cultural objects during wartime by a conquering military force …. Allowing the Estate to retain the tablet based on a spoils of war doctrine would be fundamentally unjust.

Then Hannah Flammenbaum’s attorney expressed his dismay at the ruling in terms that almost made my heart re-wizen.

Attorney Steven Schlesinger said the family was disappointed and questioned whether the court refused to uphold “title by right of conquest” because it would open the door for those who obtained art looted by Germans during the Holocaust.

“You can’t argue that the United States doesn’t recognize the right of conquest when this entire country is the result of the law of conquest,” he said, citing territorial expansion that includes Texas and California and at least 50 Indian land claims in New York.

Uh, are you seriously using the genocide of Native Americans as an argument in favor of a Holocaust survivor’s descendants getting to keep stolen property? Because that’s appalling. And yeah, actually, while we’re at it, upholding “title by right of conquest” would open the floodgates to collectors and museums keeping art looted during the Holocaust. These legal battles are ongoing. Why in the world would you want to be the case that establishes the right of Holocaust profiteers to keep the treasures they acquired with blood on their hands? All of this for a tablet that Hannah Flammenbaum claims she wants to donate to the Holocaust Museum anyway? It’s gross.