Month: November 2019

The pristine view inside Frederick III’s tomb

Medieval

In the Apostles’ Choir of the great Gothic cathedral of St. Stephen’s in Vienna lies the monumental tomb of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III (r. 1452-1493), the first emperor of many to follow from the House of Habsburg and the last HRE be crowned by the Pope (Nicholas V) in Rome. Made from the prized red marble peppered with fossil inclusions from the Adnet quarry near Salzburg, the massive sarcophagus and platform were carved by Dutch sculptor Nikolaus Gerhaert van Leyden. Gerhaert carved all of the coat of arms of the emperor’s dominions around the side of the sarcophagus and peopled it with an incredible proliferation of some 240 figures climbing the edges, peering out from underneath it, and standing in classical dignity on the arches of the platform. It took Gerhaert, his workshop and his successors 50 years to complete the tomb. Frederick’s son Maximilian I had his body moved with much pomp and circumstance from the ducal crypt to the completed tomb in 1513, 20 years after his death.

The tomb is justifiably considered a masterpiece of late medieval sculpture, and also bore the distinction of being the only one of 14 tombs of kings and Holy Roman Emperors not to have been looted, damaged, altered or its contents moved. That changed in 1969, when a rumor spread that the tomb had in fact been empty all this time. A peephole was drilled into the side of the tomb and officials used lamps and mirrors to confirm that funerary goods and the imperial remains were indeed present.

In 2013, the 500th anniversary of Frederick III’s burial in the tomb, researchers embarked on a thorough study of the tomb aided by modern technology. The little hole was put to use again, this time to thread through endoscopes that lit the dark space and took photographs with a wifi-enabled camera and cellphone. They also took samples, fragments of the coffin and one tiny piece of a textile inside the sarcophagus.

The results of this study six years in the making are being revealed now and they document the most elaborate internment of a medieval European ruler ever found. The photographs capture a sumptuous interior indicating that Maximilian spared no expense on his father’s final resting place. The emperor’s remains were placed a coffin made of glazed ceramic tiles, draped in richly patterned textiles, his head resting on a pillow. Lining both sides of the sarcophagus are gilded tablets with inscriptions praising Frederick’s many accomplishments and Maximilian’s filial devotion in laying his father to rest “in hoc precioso monomento” (“in this precious monument”).

The unexpectedly elaborate imperial crown is made of gilded silver decorated with floral flourishes and vividly colored enamel inlays. It is the oldest surviving example of the mitre-crown that would become standard equipage for the Habsburg emperors when in 1602 Emperor Rudolf II commissioned the imperial crown that would grace all the heads of Holy Roman Emperors and Austrian Emperors until 1918. Its mitred dome and frontal cross were inspired by Papal regalia, symbolizing the emperor’s divine right to his throne and his anointment by the Pope. The crown was placed on Frederick’s skull which had been carefully wrapped in linen and covered with a piece of red fabric.

Along with the crown, Frederick was buried with an imperial orb and scepter placed a pillow to the right of his body. These were custom-made for his tomb. They were not the regalia of office. A sword was by his left side, as was a wooden arm that had fallen off a crucifix placed on his chest. The detail of the enamel and metalwork indicates they were produced by Italian artisans.

The textiles overall are in remarkable condition. From the photographs and samples, researchers were able to identify three different textiles. The body is shrouded in one (probably linen), and then covered with two large silk velvet panels with silver gilt threads. They too are of Italian manufacture and date to shortly after the Emperor’s death in 1493.

The full findings of the project, In hoc precioso monomento. The Burial of Emperor Frederick III, edited by Franz Kirchweger, will be published by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in December.

Babylonian stew

Ancient, Modern(ish)

An international team of food scientists, culinary historians and cuneiform experts have recreated the four oldest known recipes found on cuneiform tablets in the Yale Babylonian Collection. The three oldest tablets date to the Old Babylonian period, around 1730 B.C., the fourth to the Neo-Babylonian period about a thousand years later.

There are multiple recipes on each tablet. One of the oldest three lists a collection of 25 stews, mostly ingredients with brief instructions for preparing the food. The other two have more detailed recipes, but the quantities are rarely noted. Each of the tablets has suffered damage over the millennia, making it even harder to figure out to cook authentic ancient Babylonian dishes.

The tablets have been on display for years but the old translations of the cuneiform were in need of reinterpretation to make them work in a kitchen. The culinary experts and cuneiform scholars collaborated to identify some of the herbs and other ingredients in the recipes, and then through a process of trial and error, they were recreated this spring in preparation for a tasting symposium hosted by NYU’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World and Department of Nutrition and Food Studies.

The Yale-Harvard team wanted to keep as closely as possible to the original dishes, an ambitious goal considering how sparse some of the surviving instructions are and damage to the tablets themselves. The availability of ingredients was also a challenge.

The Yale-Harvard team prepared three recipes which were all from one tablet: two lamb stews — one with beets and one with milk and cakes of grain — and a vegetarian recipe enriched with beer bread.

The variety of ingredients, complex preparation, and cooking staff required to create these meals suggest that they were intended for the royal palace or temple — the haute cuisine of Mesopotamia, says Lassen. Few cooks were able to read cuneiform script, she adds, hence the recipes were most likely recorded to document the current practices of culinary art.

“This event gave us the opportunity to really connect with the people from that time,” says Graham. “By experiencing some of the processes that they would have used to cook these recipes and to taste the flavors that were prominent and popular then, you feel closer to the culture and the people, and I think that helps us to tell their story. It is interesting to think of all the tools we are aided by now and how cooking these recipes is so much easier for us than it was for them.” […]

While some of the Babylonian recipes were attempted prior to the event, one was new to the team and was prepared for the first time at the event. Called the “unwinding,” it is a vegetarian stew made with leek and onion. Lassen says that there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for this name, but that one hypothesis suggests it has to do with one of the stew’s ingredients, dried lumps of crushed grains that were “almost like hard cakes that you add to the stew and then it melts into the stew,” says Lassen. “That could be ‘unwinding.’ It could also simply be a more literal word for a comfort food.”

“Making a stew is a very basic human thing and I think that is one of the reasons that we really went into this project,” says Lassen. “There is something really human about eating and food and tasting things, and that’s what we wanted to explore by recreating these recipes. Maybe not entirely as they as they would have prepared it — maybe our ingredients taste a little bit different — but still approximating something that nobody has tasted for almost 4,000 years.”

If you’d like to try your hand at Babylonian cuisine, here are the four recipes translated from the cuneiform. 

Unwinding

Meat is not used. You prepare water. You add fat. (You add) kurrat, cilantro, salt as desired, leek, garlic. You pound up dried sourdough, you sift (it) and you scatter (it) over the pot before removing it.

Stew of lamb

Meat is used. You prepare water. You add fat. You add fine-grained salt, dried barley cakes, onion, Persian shallot, and milk. [You crush] (and add) leek and garlic.

Elamite Broth

Meat is not used. You prepare water. You add fat. Dill, kurrat, cilantro, leek, and garlic bound with blood, a corresponding amount of sour milk, and (more) garlic. The (original) name (of this dish) is Zukanda.

Tuh’u

Leg meat is used. You prepare water. You add fat. You sear. You fold in salt, beer, onion, arugula, cilantro, Persian shallot, cumin and red beet, and [you crush] leek and garlic. You sprinkle coriander on top. [You add] kurrat and fresh cilantro.

Rare Bronze Age sword found in Bohemia

Ancient

A Bronze Age sword in excellent condition has been discovered near Rychnov in northeastern Bohemia. While its handle is long gone, the blade is intact with its hilt and the decorative fine line engraved along its edge is clearly visible to the naked eye. Its cutting edge is still sharp.

It is one of only five prehistoric swords found in the Czech Republic in recent decades. A Bronze Age sickle hoard was unearthed by Very Good Boy Monty and his owner just last year in the Rychnov area, but it’s been 130 years since a prehistoric sword was found around there and that was an iron antenna sword from the Early Iron Age.

The sword dates to around 1200 B.C. and was produced by the Lusatian culture, a Late Bronze Age agrarian society that ranged over what is now Poland, eastern Germany and the western Czech Republic. Lusatian artifacts are rich on the ground in eastern Bohemia, often found in hoards like Monty’s. The sword find is unusual not only because so few of them have ever been discovered, but also because it was made at a location where no known Lusatian settlement or archaeological material has been recovered before.

It was found by a private individual who reported it to the Rychnov Museum on Saturday, November 2nd, and handed it in the next morning. He had no idea of its age or historic significance until a friend told him to alert the museum. Archaeologists searched the find site and discovered rivets used to attach the sword’s handle. (The handle was made of organic material that has long since decomposed.) They also found a bronze spear head from the same period.

Rychnov Museum archaeologist Martina Beková believes the sword was a ritual deposit, likely buried on its own as a votive offering to a deity. The spear head is from around the same period, but it does not appear to have been buried together with the sword.

The exact find site is being kept secret to prevent looters from disturbing it before archaeologists are able to explore it thoroughly. The artifacts will be conserved and stabilized for future display at the Rychnov Museum. Since the only other prehistoric sword discovered in the area is now in the National Museum in Prague, this will be a centerpiece of the museum’s collection.

Ring gifted by Oscar Wilde found 20 years after theft

Looting, Modern(ish)

An 18-carat-gold inscribed gold ring that was a gift from Oscar Wilde to a friend during his undergraduate days at Magdalen College in Oxford will be returning to its alma mater 17 years after it was stolen.

The inside is engraved “O.F.O.F.W.W & R.R.H. to W.W.W., 1876,” the initials of gifters and receiver: Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, Reginald Richard Harding and William Welsford Ward, respectively. The three were close friends as undergraduates in Magdalen’s classics program. Ward was a year ahead of Wilde and he sort of took him under his wing, introducing him to his friends, to Freemasonry, going on rides through the woods where they argued about philosophy so vigorously that Wilde often fell off his horse. It was Ward, known as “Bouncer,” who introduced him to Harding, aka “Kitten.” Wilde’s nickname in this crew was “Hosky.”

Ward took his final exams in November 1876 and while he did well, he did not receive the First he expected. Instead of returning to Oxford as a fellow, Bouncer decided to go walkabout and travel to Italy. Hosky and Kitten had the friendship ring made as a memento of their happy trio. The inscription on the outside read in Greek: “Gift of love, to one who wishes love.”

The ring was part of the extensive collection of Oscar Wilde memorabilia held by his alma mater, Oxford University’s Magdalen College. It was stolen in the wee hours of Thursday, May 2nd, 2002, by one Eamonn Andrews aka Anderson, a former Magdalen cleaner and handyman who, fortified with copious quantities of whisky downed at the college bar, broke into the Old Library through a skylight on a drunken mission to find evidence his estranged wife, the head gardener at Magdalen, had had an affair with another man.

At some point he broke in, this harebrained half-scheme got even more stupid and morphed into the incredibly random theft of two rowing medals — the 1910 Henley Royal Regatta Grand Challenge Cup medal and a 1932 silver and a bronze medal. The alarm sounded but while the college porter was investigating, Andrews stole the gold ring from a display cabinet in another part of the college.

DNA analysis of blood traces found at the scene of the crime led to the arrest and incarceration of Andrews. He admitted his culpability and described the theft as an impulse, not premeditated or even a tiny bit thought through. He claimed he had no idea of the objects’ value and had sold them to a London scrap dealer for £150. He was sentenced two years in prison for the theft, to be served concurrently with the six years he had begun to serve for an earlier robbery.

Magdalen kept the news of the theft quiet in the beginning, hoping police would be able get the artifacts back. A week later, they announced the loss of the ring and offered a £3,500 reward, the equivalent of a tenth of its insured value, for any information leading to the its return. None was ever forthcoming.

More than a dozen years passed, and the ring was feared melted down. In 2015, Dutch art investigator par excellence Arthur Brand heard some scuttlebutt on the mean streets that a gold buckle-shaped Victorian ring with a “Russian” inscription had surfaced in the black market. Brand recalled the theft of the unusual Wilde ring and wondering if that “Russian” writing might actually be Greek.

The Dutchman then started to put out feelers.

Together with a London-based antiques dealer named William Veres, their enquiries eventually led them to George Crump, a man whom Brand described as a “decent man with knowledge of the London criminal underworld because of his late uncle, a well-known casino owner.”

Through Crump, Brand and Veres finally managed to track down and negotiate the safe return of the stolen ring.

It’s possible the ring only surfaced because it was stolen AGAIN, this time in the Hatton Garden safe deposit burglary, at an estimated  £200 million in jewelry stolen the largest burglary in English history. That burglary, perpetrated by a gang of septuagenarians, took place in April 2015 and after that gossip was rife in the demimonde that a bunch of previously stolen goods had been found in the vault.

The ring is now in a secure location in England. It will be officially returned to Magdalen College in a ceremony at Oxford on December 4th.

18th c. brass writing kit found at New York fort site

Modern(ish)

Archaeologists have discovered an 18th century field writing kit at the site of a British fort on Rogers Island, in northeastern New York. The writing kit is made of brass and consists of an ink pot and long quill holder. The word “Barker” is etched on the base of the writing implement, the mark of a German company that manufactured writing tools for centuries.

Rogers Island, located at a strategically significant bend of the Hudson River that was  the portage site between the Hudson River and Lake Champlain, was part of the Fort Edward complex built by the British in the 1750s during the French and Indian War. It was a staging area for incursions into New France and from 1756 to 1759, was used by Major Robert Rogers has the base camp for a company of irregular troops. His 28 “Rules of Ranging” combined guerrilla and traditional warfare with Rogers’ own unique concepts to create a rugged, versatile fighting force adapted to the terrain. Rogers’ Rangers are considered the ancestors of today’s United States Army Rangers.

Fort Edward was evacuated in 1766 and the structures abandoned. By the time of the Revolutionary War, the fort was a dilapidated ruin, but the barracks that were still standing were used by Continental soldiers until General Burgoyne took the fort on his way to ultimate defeat in Saratoga. Some homes were built on the island in the 19th century and it saw its last use in the training of troops during the Civil War.

It was during Rogers’ time that barracks, a blockhouse, Ranger huts, a smallpox hospital and the officers house were built.

“We have never found a beautiful brass writing implement in any of our excavations,” [lead archaeologist David] Starbuck said in a phone interview Tuesday. “That, to me, says literate people were inside that building.” The items are more evidence to tell the story of the French and Indian War site that once housed British officers. Starbuck said he is still unsure if the house held one high-ranking officer or several.

The writing kit isn’t the only unique find this year. The team also unearthed a lead ingot, likely destined to be melted down for musket balls, and a metal fireplace spit. Some of the other items found on Rogers Island include the head of a broad axe, and cuff links. Butchered animal bones were also found in the officers house.

The animal bones and spit indicate the officers (or officer) ate fresh meat, unlike common soldiers, who would have eaten dried beef or pork, “which would have tasted awful,” Starbuck said.

Based on where things were found, Starbuck believes the hut originally had a dirt floor. He said “lots of things were walked on and pressed into the floor. Later they built a wood floor, which is now totally gone.”