The History Blog

Two extremely rare early Iron Age swords have been unearthed in Andechs, southern Germany. They were crafted in the Hallstatt period, the 8th century B.C., and are among the oldest iron swords ever discovered in southern Germany.

The swords were discovered in March during construction of a new firehouse in Andechs, Bavaria. Crews had only barely broken ground when they encountered two swords and fragments from three ceramic vessels less than 16 inches under the surface. The objects were grave goods, each sword buried in a separate grave with cinerary remains. The remains were concentrated in certain areas, suggesting they were originally placed in an organic container like a cloth bag that was then buried next to the weapons. Another six burials were found at the site, with grave goods including a bowl-head pin and bronze jewelry.

The swords straddle an important transitional stage from the use of bronze to the use of iron in weapons. They are both made of iron, but the earlier one was made in the shape and style of a bronze sword. The later one, made in the same century, had an adapted design to take advantage of the stronger, more stable metal.

The swords are 76 and 66 centimeters long and six centimeters wide. While the shorter one was probably mainly used as a stabbing weapon in man-to-man combat, the longer and heavier one was more suitable as a stabbing weapon that the fighter could wield from above – for example from horseback.

In the Bavarian State Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Munich, a team of restorers cleaned the swords with micro-fine blasting technology and examined them more closely. The blades are partially heavily corroded, the handles are missing. However, the restorers were able to identify traces of horn on one of the so-called handle tongues, which suggests a handle made of this material. Two of the four rivets that held the horn plates on the grip tongue are still preserved on the handle. Because no such remains of attachment can be seen on the other sword, restorers and archaeologists assume that the hilt was attached with a resin adhesive. It is no longer possible to trace what material it was made of. […]

The remains of a multi-layer linen weave textile were also found on the two blades, as well as the remains of a cord that must have been wrapped around it in several places. The weapons were presumably wrapped in cloth and given to the dead.

Archaeologists have unearthed a stucco head depicting the youthful Maya maize god in the Archaeological Zone of Palenque in Chiapas, southern Mexico. This is the first depiction of the maize god, one of the major deities of the Mayan pantheon, found in Palenque. It dates to the Mayan Late Classic period (ca. 700 -850 A.D.).

The stuccoed head was discovered last year during conservation work at The Palace, the ancient city’s central administrative and ceremonial complex. The excavation team was clearing fill from a corridor connecting House B with House F when they found an alignment of stones indicating deliberate placement. Just under a layer of soil, archaeologists found a receptacle containing the visage of the young maize god.

The sculpted face has a sharp chin with a cleft, prominent cheekbones, elongated eyes, parted lips and a wide nose. His forehead is flattened and rectangular, an elongated shape often seen in the skulls of Mayan elite who practiced intentional cranial deformation. Fragments of a tripod mount on which the stucco head was originally placed point to the offering have been presented almost like a severed head on a platter, a representation of the corn god found in codices and on artworks.

The face of the deity was oriented east to west indicating a deliberate deposition symbolizing the dawn and the corn growing when the sun kisses it. This was confirmed as the excavation progressed revealing that the head was part of a larger offering placed in a small pond with a stuccoed floor and walls.

According to Mayan cosmology, humans were created from corn so the maize god (dubbed Nal, the word for corn, by scholars even though the full name is not known) represented generative power. He also traveled through the underworld in a canoe, so Nal was associated the gateway to the afterlife as well. The offering was recreating Nal’s entrance into the underworld through an aquatic environment.

González Cruz explains that the archaeological context is the result of several events: the first consisted of the use of the pond as a mirror of water to see the cosmos reflected.

It is probable that these nocturnal rituals began under the governance of K’inich Janaab’ Pakal I (615-683 AD), and continued during those of K’an Bahlam II (684-702 AD), K’an Joy Chitam II (702-711 AD) and Ahkal Mo’ Nahb’ III (721-736 AD).

Later, perhaps in the reign of the latter, they shut that space in a symbolic way, breaking a portion of the stucco floor of the pond and removing part of the construction fill to deposit a series of elements: vegetables, animal bones, shells, crab, worked bone fragments, ceramic pieces, three fractions of miniature anthropomorphic figurines, 120 pieces of obsidian blades, a portion of a greenstone bead, two shell beads, as well as seeds and snails.

The placement of these elements was constituted concentrically and not by layers, covering almost 75% of the pit, which was sealed with loose stones. Some animal bones were cooked, and others had meat marks and tooth prints, so they were used for human consumption as part of the ritual, the researchers explained. A limestone slab with a small perforation — 85 cm long by 60 cm wide and 4 cm thick — was placed on top of the offering, but not before “sacrificing” the tripod plate, which was almost broken in half and a portion, with one of its supports, was placed in the hole in the slab.

Then came a semicircular bed of potsherds and small stones, on which the head of the deity was placed, which was supported laterally with the same materials.

Finally, the entire space would be closed off with earth and three small walls. This would have left the head of the young maize god inside a kind of box, where it remained hidden for around 1,300 years.

Because the head was found in a very damp environment, conservators are now drying it out in controlled conditions to ensure its long-term stability.

A carved and inscribed ancient Greek marble plaque in the collection of the National Museums Scotland has been translated and published for the first time. It is a list of ephebic friends, close classmates who went through the ephebate in Athens, a year of rigorous military and civic training, during the reign of the Emperor Claudius (41-54 A.D.).

Ephebic training began in the 4th century B.C. as a requirement for all young men eligible for admission as Attic citizens. If they were 18 years old of Attic parentage on both sides, the youths would be de jure citizens, but to actually exercise those rights (vote, be party to a lawsuit, attend the assembly), first they had to sign up for two years of military studies. The requirement was ultimately dropped, and by the 2nd century B.C., ephebic training was open to foreigners and the study of literature and philosophy was added to the curriculum. From around 39 A.D., anybody from anywhere who graduated from an ephebia was deemed an Attic citizen.

Lists of ephebic classmates have been found going back to the beginning of the program, but they reached peak popularity during the reign of Claudius with the proliferation of philoi lists, names of select ephebes who were particularly close classmates.

The inscription was published as part of the Attic Inscriptions in UK Collections (AIUK), an ambitious digitization project to add all ancient Attic inscriptions in UK collections and institution to the Attic Inscriptions Online (AIO) database. The stele’s precise origins are unknown. It was donated to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 1887 by Scottish author and musician Alexander Wood Inglis, but there are no records explaining its previous history or how Inglis acquired it. AIUK researchers found a reference to the plaque in the National Museums Scotland catalogue and first thought it was a copy of a list from the same period now in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. When they retrieved it that it was a previously undocumented ephebic list.

Dr Peter Liddel, professor of Greek history and epigraphy at the University of Manchester, who led on the discovery, said: “Because of lockdown we were not able to travel to the museum until July 2021, and on seeing it we realised that this was not a copy of an already known inscription but it was a completely unique new discovery which had been in the storerooms of the NMS for a very long time, since the 1880s, and it listed a group of young men who called themselves co-ephebes or co-cadets and friends.

The top of the plaque is peaked and a worn relief believed to depict a small oil amphora of the type ephebes would have used in the school gymnasium. Under the relief the inscription begins:

In the archonship of Metrodoros, when the superintendent was Dionysodoros (son of Dionysodoros) of Phlya, Attikos son of Philippos, having inscribed his own fellow ephebes (and) friends, dedicated (this).

The 31 names are inscribed in two columns under the dedication. Attikos’ select bros in the ephebate were Aiolion, Dionysas, Anthos, Herakon, Theogas, Charopeinos, Tryphon, Dorion, Phidias, Symmachos, Athenion, Antipas, Euodos, Metrobios, Hypsigonos, Apollonides, Hermas, Theophas, (H?)elis, Atlas, Zopyros, Euthiktos, Mousais, Aneiketos, Sekoundos, Zosimos,  Primos, Dionys, Eisigenes, Sotas and Androneikos.

Dr. Liddel again:

“It turned out to be a list of the cadets for one particular year during the period 41-54 AD, the reign of Claudius, and it gives us new names, names we’d never come across before in ancient Greek, and it also gives us among the earliest evidence for non-citizens taking part in the ephebate in this period.

Several of the names are actually shortened versions (Theogas for Theogenes, Dionysas for Dionysodoros), conveying the lack of formality and camaraderie between the classmates. There appears to be a hierarchical element in the arrangement of names. Three of the young men at the top of the list are known from other inscriptions to have been the scions of prominent Attic families, and another one of the five (Dionysas, the second on the list) was the son of the superintendent.

The last name on the list wasn’t an ephebe at all. It was Caesar.

The word is in the genitive, signifying that the dedication was made in his reign, but also more broadly under his tutelage. In the Roman period, many of the ephebes’ activities emphasised veneration of the Roman emperor as a central part of Athenian identity.

That is a significant marker of the tectonic cultural shift from the origins of the ephebate as military training for young citizens of Attic city-states — direct civic engagement in the political structure of their native city transformed into elite schooling under the aegis of and beholden to the emperor in Rome.