Month: December 2020

Oldest gynecological treatment found on Egyptian mummy

Ancient

Scientists have discovered the oldest physical evidence of a gynecological treatment in an Egyptian mummy from the Middle Kingdom. A team of researchers from the University of Grenada in Spain and the University of Jaén in Aswan studied the mummy of an adult woman found in a shaft and chamber tomb at Qubbet el-Hawa on the west bank of the Nile opposite Aswan in 2017.

Radiocarbon dating found the woman died between 1878 and 1797 B.C., the late 12 Dynasty. While people buried there where from the upper echelons of society, mummification of this period at Qubbet el-Hawa tends not to preserve a great deal of soft tissue. The remains of the woman wrapped in layers of linen bandages were skeletonized. The outer coffin has suffered extensive termite damage, but enough survived to identify her by name as Sattjeni A. Archaeologists believe the initial was added because Sattjeni was a popular name among upper-class women of her time, so the A was necessary to distinguish her from all the other Sattjenis.

Osteological examination of her remains discovered a fracture in her pelvis, perhaps the result of the fall, severe enough to have caused her a great deal of pain and sterility. Medical texts dating to this period prescribed fumigations to heal gynecological injury. A hemispherical drinking cup placed between her bandaged legs was found to contain the burned remains of organic material consistent with the fumigation treatment described in 12th Dynasty papyri.

“The most interesting feature of the discovery made by the researchers from the University of Jaén is not only the documentation of a palliative gynaecological treatment, something that is quite unique in Egyptian archaeology, but also the fact that this type of treatment by fumigation was described in contemporary medical papyri. But, until now, there had been no evidence found to prove that such treatment was actually carried out,” explains the UJA’s Dr. Alejandro Jimenez, an expert in Egyptology and director of the Qubbet el-Hawa Project. This work has now been published by one of the most prestigious academic journals in Egyptology, Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Spracheund Altertumskunde.

Galloway Hoard cross revealed in its original glory

Medieval, Museums, Treasures

An Anglo-Saxon silver cross from the Galloway Hoard has been revealed in all its intricate glory after being cleaned and conserved by experts at the National Museums Scotland (NMS). The Greek cross is decorated with black niello enamel and gold leaf typical of Late Anglo-Saxon design. Each arm bears the symbols of the four evangelists (Matthew’s divine man, Mark’s lion, Luke’s cow, John’s eagle) with floral swirls and knotwork surrounding them. It was made in Northumbria in the late 9th century and is extremely rare. Only one other Anglo-Saxon pectoral cross from this period is known, and it is nowhere near as elaborately decorated.

“The cleaning has revealed that the cross, made in the 9th century, [has] a late Anglo-Saxon style of decoration.This looks like the type of thing that would be commissioned at the highest levels of society. First sons were usually kings and lords, second sons would become high-ranking clerics. It’s likely to come from one of these aristocratic families.”

The pectoral cross has survived with its intricate spiral chain, from which it would have been suspended from the neck, displayed across the chest. The chain shows that the cross was worn.

[Dr Martin Goldberg, NMS principal curator of early medieval and Viking collections,] said: “You could almost imagine someone taking it off their neck and wrapping the chain around it to bury it in the ground. It has that kind of personal touch.”

When the hoard was discovered in 2014, the cross was in the top layer. It was caked it dirt, as was the spiral chain wound around the junction of the bars. The thin silver wire of the chain is less than a millimeter in diameter and was coiled around an organic center. The core was preserved and analysis identified it as animal gut. Cleaning the tightly coiled spiral and the enameled grooves of the cross posed a challenge. Conservators used a porcupine quill and scalpel to remove the dirt as carefully as possible without damaging the metal.

Cross before conservation. Photo courtesy National Museums Scotland.
Anglo-Saxon cross during conservation. Photo courtesy National Museums Scotland.
Anglo-Saxon pectoral cross after cleaning and conservation. Photo courtesy National Museums Scotland.

The National Museums Scotland acquired the hoard in 2017 after a successful fund-raising campaign with donations from the public, non-profit heritage organizations and the government of Scotland. Museum conservators have been working ever since then to clean and conserve the objects in the hoard — more than 100 pieces from jewelry to ingots to a Carolingian pot — and preserve its extremely rare organic elements, like the cord in the spiral chain and textiles found inside the pot.

It has been dubbed a Viking treasure — the largest Viking hoard discovered in Scotland since 1891 — but the new exhibition that opens at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh on February 19th is pointedly entitled Galloway Hoard: Viking-age Treasure, emphasis on the age. The important Anglo-Saxon objects like the cross in the hoard underscore that while it was buried in the Viking era, its contents are multicultural.

Goldberg said: “At the start of the 10th century, new kingdoms were emerging in response to Viking invasions. Alfred the Great’s dynasty was laying the foundations of medieval England, and Alba, the kingdom that became medieval Scotland, is first mentioned in historical sources.

Galloway had been part of Anglo-Saxon Northumbria, said Goldberg, and was called the Saxon coast in the Irish chronicles as late as the 10th century. But this area was to become the Lordship of Galloway, named from the Gall-Gaedil, people of Scandinavian descent who spoke Gaelic and dominated the Irish Sea zone during the Viking age.

“The mixed material of the Galloway Hoard exemplifies this dynamic political and cultural environment,” Goldberg added.

Celtic bronze with golden eyes found in Slovakia

Ancient

An Iron Age figurine of a man with golden eyes has been unearthed at Jánovce, northern Slovakia. The small bronze depicts a nude male wearing a very thick torque around his neck. The wide eye sockets are filled with gold that shine brightly in contrast with the dark patinated bronze. It was created by the Celtic La Tène culture which dominated the area until it was conquered by Rome in the 1st century B.C.

The town of Jánovce was founded in the Middle Ages — the first documented reference to it was written in 1312 — but it has been known since the 19th century that it was replete with archaeological material from the La Tène period. That has made it a target for looters and while there has been some archaeological excavation work in the area, Jánovce hasn’t been systematically excavated in a targeted fashion. A team of researchers from the Spiš Museum has been doing a preliminary archaeological survey to get an idea of the site’s potential. There was no excavation. All they did was collect objects churned up to the surface by agricultural activity, and over their work in the spring and fall of this year, they recovered more than 800 artifacts from prehistory to the modern era.

Most of the finds were from the La Tène period overlapping with the Roman Iron Age (ca. 3rd – 1st century B.C.). The artifacts include Celtic coins, bronze fibulae, ceramics, glass beads and jewelry. These were luxury objects, and an enormous density of them has been found in the Spiš area, with a particularly high concentration in Jánovce. The richness of the finds indicate the Celtic settlements of the La Tène period were exceptionally affluent, far more so than in another regions of what is today Slovakia.

All of the objects recovered from the ploughed soils of Jánovce are now at the Spiš Museum where they are being documented, cleaned and conserved. Aided by experts from the Department of Archeology, Faculty of Arts, University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra, the museum plans to put some of the finds on display next year in a new exhibition. The golden-eyed figurine will be the foremost among them.

Left side view of figurine. Photo by Milan Kapusta, TASR. Right side view of figurine. Photo by Milan Kapusta, TASR.

Weeding uproots Tudor gold coin hoard

Medieval

A little lockdown weeding has unearthed a Tudor-era hoard of 63 gold coins and one silver coin in a backyard in New Forest, Hampshire. The family was turning up soil to clear weeds when the gold coins sprang from the ground. The coins range in date from the late 15th century to the early 16th and were issued during the reigns of Edward IV (r. 1461-1470), Henry VII and Henry VIII.

Most of the coins are of a type known as “angels” for the design on the obverse of the archangel Michael slaying a dragon (ie, satan) with a cross-shaped spear. First minted under Edward IV in 1465, angels were the standard gold coin in Britain for two centuries. The dates of the coins in the hoard suggest they were buried around 1540. The total value of the coins in 1540 was £24, which was much more than average annual wage in the Tudor era. On the auction market today, the coins would be worth around £220,000.

John Naylor, from the Ashmolean Museum, said the hoard was likely to have been hidden either by a wealthy merchant or clergy fearful of Henry VIII during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, in which he took control of many of the religious community’s assets.

Mr Naylor said: “It is likely that there are two options of who may have buried a hoard like this. It could be a merchant’s hoard. There was a lot of wealth in that part of the world. The wool trade was still very important. The New Forest is also very close to the coast and very close to some major ports so it is entirely possible it could be someone involved in maritime trade.

“On the other hand though, you also have this period in the late 1530s and 1540s where you have the Dissolution of the Monasteries. We do know that some monasteries and some churches did try to hide their wealth hoping that they would be able to keep it in the long term.”

Four of the gold coins are of particular note: they bear the initials of three of the wives of King Henry VIII. The first three of the six, to be precise — K for Catherine of Aragon, A for Anne Boleyn and I for Jane Seymour. The one with Jane’s initial is the earliest coin in the hoard dating to 1536 or 1537. Henry’s choice to give his wives cameos on his coins was unprecedented at the time and his motivation for it remains unknown. After Jane died giving birth to his obsessively-wanted heir, Henry stopped putting his temp spousal staff on the coinage.

This year has seen a rise in backyard finds reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme as the pandemic has kept people at home. More than 47,000 finds have been reported this year in the UK, 6,251 made during the first lockdown when metal detecting was prohibited and people turned to their own properties for fun and profit. Last year the number of archaeological find recorded by the PAS was 81,602, a leap of 10,000 from 2018. Obviously people’s backyards don’t provide quite so rich a terrain for archaeological prospecting as, you know, the whole country.

8th c. B.C. Phoenician moat found in Spain

Ancient

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of an ancient moat at the Phoenician site of Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño in the southeastern coast of Spain. The moat is about 10 feet deep and 26 feet wide at the top and was part of the defensive systems of the 8th century B.C. Phoenician citadel. It is the only Phoenician moat from its age known to exist in the western Mediterranean. The only other comparable structures are in Phoenician cities like Tel Dor, Israel, and Beirut, Lebanon.

The site was founded in the 8th century B.C. by Phoenician merchants who traveled from the Mediterranean up the Segura River. They built a citadel on the banks of the river in around 770-750 B.C., following a well-planned urban template seen in other Phoenician colonies. Excavation of the settlement area has revealed the presence of commercial concerns — storage structures, warehouses, metallurgic workshops, forges, furnaces — and residences — a large roundhouse with adobe benches, other dwellings.

A multi-disciplinary team from the University Institute for Research in Archeology and Historical Heritage (INAPH) of the University of Alicante and the Archaeological Museum of Guardamar (MAG) have been excavating the site since 2013, focusing on getting a wide picture of the defensive structures, long obscured by sedimentary deposits, natural erosion and damage wrought by a quarry that destroyed much of the town in the 1990s.

Aerial photography first detected evidence of a moat running parallel to the citadel wall. This year’s excavation confirmed it was indeed a defensive moat, painstakingly cut out of the living rock by hand. Chisel marks are clearly visible in the substrate.

This exceptional find confirms the challenges encountered by Phoenician settlers on the Iberian coast. They encountered enough hostility from the locals to justify the massive effort expended in carving out and building a heavily fortified settlement at Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño. The natural resources of the area, primarily metal mining (Cabezo Pequeño del Estaño means Little Head of Tin) made it worth their while. For a few decades, at least. The town was abandoned around 700 B.C.