Secret HistoryS


Hourglass

Spain: Irikaitz archaeological site: only for the tenacious


Basque Research
Sat, 31 Dec 2011 04:02 UTC
The recent discovery of a pendant at the Irikaitz archaeological site in Zestoa (in the Basque province of Gipuzkoa) has given rise to intense debate: it may be as old as 25,000 years, which would make it the oldest found to date at open-air excavations throughout the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. This stone is nine centimetres long and has a hole for hanging it from the neck although it would seem that, apart from being adornment, it was used to sharpen tools. The discovery has had great repercussion, but it is not by any means the only one uncovered here by the team led by Álvaro Arrizabalaga: "Almost every year some archaeological artefact of great value is discovered; at times, even 8 or 10. It is a highly fruitful location".

Irikaitz lies behind the bath spa in Zestoa, on the other side of the river Urola, 14 metres from the river bank. The archaeologist from the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) has been carrying out excavations here summer after summer, together with students and researchers from this and other universities and in cooperation with Aranzadi Science Society. Since 1998 they have uncovered 32 square metres; nothing compared to the eight hectares (at least) that this "gigantic" open-air site covers. This is archaeology, demanding a lot of patience, but the results are worth it: "You feel as if you have found something that has been waiting to fall into your hands for 200,000 years".
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Lovers' Pipe Dreams Emerge from Jerusalem Excavation

Wynne Parry
Live Science
Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:20 UTC
Pipe
© Clara Amit, courtesy of the Israel Antiquities AuthorityThis centuries-old pipe bears an inscription that indicates it may have been a gift between lovers.

An archaeological excavation in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem has uncovered a centuries-old clay pipe inscribed with the phrase "Love is the language for lovers."

Literally translated, the inscription reads "Heart is language for the lover." And, not surprisingly, it was most likely a gift to a lover, according to Shahar Puni, of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

"Clay pipes of this kind were very common in the Ottoman period, were mostly used for smoking tobacco, and some were even used to smoke hashish," Puni said in a statement. Hashish comes from the cannabis plant, like marijuana.

During this period, from the 16th to the 19th century, Jerusalem was part of the vast Ottoman Empire, a Turkish state that reached into Asia, Africa and Europe.
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Sherlock

Graeco-Roman masks shed light on cultural past


Archaeolgy News Network
Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:57 UTC
Two masks found in a grave during excavations in the central Anatolian province of Eskişehir's Şarhöyük-Dorylaion Necropolis site are expected to shed light on ancient culture. The masks date back to 1 A.D.
Image
© HurriyetThe masks date back to 1 AD and symbolize abundance and plentitude
Anadolu University Archaeology Department Professor Taciser Sivas said the masks were regarded as the most beautiful historical findings of the year. Excavations in the necropolis had been continuing since 2005, she said. "The masks were broken, but we have repaired the broken pieces. There are horns of a mythical figure on one of the masks, symbolizing a satyr [a half-human and half-goat god]. The other is bigger and white, with black and red hair."

Sivas said the masks had been worn to symbolize abundance and plentitude at wine-harvest ceremonies in ancient times. They were still being produced through the end of the Roman period.

"Masks were used during religious ceremonies. It is very significant the masks were found in Şarhöyük as Eskişehir became the capital of Turkish world culture."
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Ancient Texts Part of Earliest Known Documents

Rossella Lorenzi
Discovery News
Tue, 27 Dec 2011 13:24 UTC
Ancient Stele
© The Schøyen Collection, MS 2063Detail of the Tower of Babel stele, with the engraving of King Nebuchadnezzar II.

A team of scholars has discovered what might be the oldest representation of the Tower of Babel of Biblical fame, they report in a newly published book.

Carved on a black stone, which has already been dubbed the Tower of Babel stele, the inscription dates to 604-562 BCE.

It was found in the collection of Martin Schøyen, a businessman from Norway who owns the largest private manuscript assemblage formed in the 20th century.

Consisting of 13,717 manuscript items spanning over‭ ‬5,000‭ ‬years, the collection includes parts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Buddhist manuscript rescued from the Taliban, and even cylcon symbols by Australia's Aborigines which can be up to 20,000 years old.

The collection also includes a large number of pictographic and cuneiform tablets -- which are some of the earliest known written documents -- seals and royal inscription spanning most of the written history of Mesopotamia, an area near modern Iraq.

A total of 107 cuneiform texts dating from the Uruk period about 5,000 years ago to the Persian period about 2,400 years ago, have been now translated by an international group of scholars and published in the book Cuneiform Royal Inscriptions and Related Texts in the Schøyen Collection.

The Tower of Babel stele stands out as one of "the stars in the firmament of the book," wrote Andrew George, a professor of Babylonian at the University of London and editor of the book.

The spectacular stone monument clearly shows the Tower and King Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled Babylon some 2,500 years ago.
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Rare Cuneiform Script Found on Island of Malta


Popular Archaeology
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 15:26 UTC
Ancient Script
© Popular ArchaeologyA small-sized find in an ancient megalithic temple stirs the imagination.
Excavations among what many scholars consider to be the world's oldest monumental buildings on the island of Malta continue to unveil surprises and raise new questions about the significance of these megalithic structures and the people who built them. Not least is the latest find - a small but rare, crescent-moon shaped agate stone featuring a 13th-century B.C.E. cuneiform inscription, the likes of which would normally be found much farther east in Mesopotamia.

Led by palaeontology professor Alberto Cazzella of the University of Rome "La Sapienza", the archaeological team found the inscribed stone in the sancturary site of Tas-Silg, a megalithic temple built during the late Neolithic period, and which has been used for various religious and ceremonial purposes by the ancients from the third millennium BC to the Byzantine era. The inscription was translated as a dedication to the Mesopotamian moon god Sin, the father of Ninurta who, for centuries, was the main deity worshiped far to the east in the city of Nippur in Mesopotamia. Nippur was considered a holy city and a pilgrimage site with a scribal school that generated literary texts.
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Top Secret

Vatican Throws Light on History as it Opens Secret Archives

Nick Squires
The Telegraph, UK
Sun, 25 Dec 2011 01:50 UTC
Vatican scrolls
© Archivo Segreto Vaticano
As the confidential correspondence of popes, princes and potentates, the Vatican Secret Archives have been jealously guarded for centuries.

But now 100 of the most historically significant documents held by the Vatican's Secret Archives are to go on public display in Rome - the first and probably last time that they will leave the buttressed stone walls of the tiny city state.

The priceless documents span more than a millennium, from the 8th century to modern times, and feature a cast of historical characters ranging from the Knights Templar to Galileo, Martin Luther and Henry VIII.

They are normally kept in air-conditioned, climate-controlled rooms in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, which boasts more than 50 miles of shelves, as well as in a high-security underground bunker.

Archivists have gathered them together for an unprecedented exhibition, to be held in Rome's Capitoline Museums, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Secret Archives in their present form.
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Sherlock

Early Christian Church and Cemetery Unearthed in Syria

F. Allafi and H. Said
The Archaeology News Network
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 12:00 UTC
A Syrian archeological expedition working at the site of Tal Hasaka, northeastern Syria, have unearthed a church and cemetery dating back to the Early Christian Era during its fourth excavation season.

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© The Archaeology News Network
Head of the expedition, Abdul-Masih Baghdo, said the church is 22.50 m long and 14.50 m wide, located to the south of a cathedral which was discovered during the past three seasons.

The church was built with basalt stones, with its walls painted with gypsum.

Baghdo pointed out that the church can be entered from the southern part of Tal Hasaka through an entrance leading to a lobby, adding that the first part of the church can be accessed through 3 entrances, 1 m wide each.
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Attention

Turkey: Bracelet Reveals Amazing Craftsman's Skill From 7500BC

Ted Thornhill
The Mail Online
Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:50 UTC
obsidian bracelet
© CNRSPolished skills: The obsidian bracelet contains remarkable detail
A 9,500-year-old bracelet has been analysed using the very latest computers - and the results show that it is so intricate even today's craftsmen would struggle to improve it.

Researchers from the Institut Français d'Etudes Anatoliennes in Istanbul and Laboratoire de Tribologie et de Dynamiques des Systèmes studied the bracelet's surface and its micro-topographic features revealing the astounding technical expertise of the maker.

The bracelet is obsidian - which means it's made from volcanic glass - and the researchers analysis of it sheds new light on Neolithic societies, which remain highly mysterious.

Discovered in 1995 at the site of Asıklı Höyük in Turkey, it was analysed by software designed to characterise the 'orange peel effect' on car bodywork.
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Blackbox

US: 1,100-Year-Old Mayan Ruins Found in North Georgia

David Ferguson
RawStory
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 03:00 UTC
Image
© Flickr Commons
Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of an ancient Mayan city in the mountains of North Georgia believed to be at least 1,100 years old. According to Richard Thornton at Examiner.com, the ruins are reportedly what remains of a city built by Mayans fleeing wars, volcanic eruptions, droughts and famine.

In 1999, University of Georgia archeologist Mark Williams led an expedition to investigate the Kenimer Mound, a large, five-sided pyramid built in approximately 900 A.D. in the foothills of Georgia's tallest mountain, Brasstown Bald. Many local residents has assumed for years that the pyramid was just another wooded hill, but in fact it was a structure built on an existing hill in a method common to Mayans living in Central America as well as to Southeastern Native American tribes.

Speculation has abounded for years as to what could have happened to the people who lived in the great Meso-American societies of the first century. Some historians believed that they simply died out in plagues and food shortages, but others have long speculated about the possibility of mass migration to other regions.
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Deciphered Ancient Tablet Reveals Curse of Greengrocer

Owen Jarus
Live Science
Wed, 21 Dec 2011 10:37 UTC
Curse Tablet
© Professor Alexander HollmannThe curse tablet calls on Iao, the Greek name for Yahweh, god of the Old Testament, to strike down Babylas who is identified as being a greengrocer.

A fiery ancient curse inscribed on two sides of a thin lead tablet was meant to afflict, not a king or pharaoh, but a simple greengrocer selling fruits and vegetables some 1,700 years ago in the city of Antioch, researchers find.

Written in Greek, the tablet holding the curse was dropped into a well in Antioch, then one of the Roman Empire's biggest cities in the East, today part of southeast Turkey, near the border with Syria.

The curse calls upon Iao, the Greek name for Yahweh, the god of the Old Testament, to afflict a man named Babylas who is identified as being a greengrocer. The tablet lists his mother's name as Dionysia, "also known as Hesykhia" it reads. The text was translated by Alexander Hollmann of the University of Washington.

The artifact, which is now in the Princeton University Art Museum, was discovered in the 1930s by an archaeological team but had not previously been fully translated. The translation is detailed in the most recent edition of the journal Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik.
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