The amazing likeness has come to light as part of a sale of ancient antiques by the auction house Bonhams.

… The Roman Elvis is in fact a genuine marble acroterion — a kind of architectural ornament often found for decoration on the corners of a sarcophagus, a stone tomb or burial chamber.

It forms part of a collection owned by Melbourne-based Graham Geddes — one of the world’s most foremost collectors — which is estimated to sell for more than £1m when it goes on sale in October.

- Niall Firth @ MailOnline: Link.

Via Boing Boing, via Neatorama.

BiblioOdyssey recently posted scans of a 16th-century fighting manual by fencing master Achille Marozzo, illustrating various techniques.

My brother is interested in such things so I sent him the link. He responded with this essay:

I have actually practiced Marozzo’s techniques for disarming an opponent of his dagger — they’re pretty effective.

Marozzo’s work is one of only a handful of medieval & renaissance martial arts texts that survive. They are enjoying a resurgence of interest and good translations are starting to appear.

It has been the tendency to think of Asian martial arts as being preeminent, although it is really the western martial arts that predominate globally (think of guns, missiles, etc.).

What has been forgotten are the pre-modern European hand-to-hand combat systems, many of which were very highly developed. Unfortunately, many of them were never recorded, as schools tended to be secretive about their techniques.

Even systems that were recorded are difficult to reconstruct; the meanings of terminology and references is often obscure, and knowledge taken for granted by the authors no longer exists. Still, much progress has been made, and it is clear that these systems were very sophisticated and effective, and integrated a variety of weapons and unarmed techniques.

- Geoff Jones

“Americans came back from their Independence Day holiday … and found their Empire of Debt in worse shape than ever — $1.6 trillion in potential losses from the credit crunch!”
- Bill Bonner

Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) and Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) are to America’s great empire what the East India Company was to the British Empire in the 19th century … and the Louisiana Company [see John Law] was to France in the 18th. Huge, stupid, and probably fatal.

Freddie and Fannie are huge government-chartered mortgage lenders. In 18th century France, speculators bet on the riches of Louisiana, through the government-chartered Louisiana Company. In the 19th century, they wagered their money on the riches of India, through the government-chartered East India Company. And in the 20th century, they gambled on rising housing prices through Fannie and Freddie.

- Bill Bonner @ GoldSeek.com: Link.

What more fitting name for the man “said to be the father of finance, responsible for the adoption or use of paper money or bills in the world today” than … John Law??

“Most ruins are – let’s face it – disappointing.”

Above: Bara, Syria - Link

I don’t mean all ruins, of course. I challenge anyone to find Pompeii or the Parthenon or the Colosseum disappointing or boring (though, according to Peter Green, William Golding did mount the Athenian Acropolis, muttering, “the bloody Parthenon again” and sit down firmly with his back to the monument gazing out at the Eleusis cement works). I mean those ivy clad mouldering walls of some third rate English Abbey or the pile of stray stones outside some jolly Cretan village which claim to be the remains of a Minoan rural settlement.

To most people in the world, this disappointment will not seem a great revelation, but to archaeologists and cultural theorists ruins are an object of intense interest (and so they are to me when I am wearing one of those hats). Archaeologists will bang on for hours about the minute significance of the position of one stone against the next. Cultural theorists will bang on even longer about ruins as a metaphor for the past, the fragility of human success, the melancholy of contemplating the death of the past, and so on.

The voice that most academics refuse to hear is that of most other people in the world who do not share this enthusiasm.

- Mary Beard @ Times Online: Link.

Reader comment:

Speaking of ‘broken down’ ruins, my favourite line overheard from some Americans in a taverna in Athens.

She: “We’re going to Knossos tomorrow.”

He: “No more ruins! I’ve had enough ruins.”

She: “But these ruins are different.”

He: “You mean they’re not destroyed?”

- Lucy @ Times Online: Link.

A striking reminiscence from J. G. Ballard:

Shanghai was one of the largest cities in the world, 90% Chinese and 100% Americanised. Bizarre advertising displays – the honour guard of 50 Chinese hunchbacks outside the premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame sticks in my mind – were part of the everyday reality of the city, though I sometimes wonder if everyday reality was the one element missing.

- J. G. Ballard @ Times Online: Link.

Via Boing Boing.

Miracles of Life @ Amazon.

I’m saddened to hear that Ballard is in the late stages of cancer. I read some of his books and short stories over the years, beginning in my teens; never so much as to make me a fan, but enough to give me the sense that I’d met the author and liked him as a person.

New Book Says Portuguese discovered Australia

A 16th century maritime map in a Los Angeles library vault proves that Portuguese adventurers, not British or Dutch, were the first Europeans to discover Australia, says a new book which details the secret discovery of Australia.

The book “Beyond Capricorn” says the map, which accurately marks geographical sites along Australia’s east coast in Portuguese, proves that Portuguese seafarer Christopher de Mendonca lead a fleet of four ships into Botany Bay in 1522 — almost 250 years before Captain James Cook.
Photo

Australian author Peter Trickett said that when he enlarged the small map he could recognise all the headlands and bays in Botany Bay in Sydney — the site where Cook claimed Australia for Britain in 1770.

[Trickett’s theory is based on] the Vallard Atlas, a collection of 15 hand drawn maps completed no later than 1545 in France. The maps represented the known world at the time. Two of the maps called “Terra Java” had a striking similarity to Australia’s east coast except at one point the coastline jutted out at right angles for 1,500 km (932 miles).

Trickett believed the cartographers who drew the Vallard maps had wrongly aligned two Portuguese charts they were copying from. “The Vallard cartographer has put these individual charts together like a jigsaw puzzle. Without clear compass markings its possible to join the southern chart in two different ways. My theory is it had been wrongly joined.” Using a computer Trickett rotated the southern part of the Vallard map 90 degrees to produce a map which accurately depicts Australia’s east coast.

… Trickett believes the original charts were made by Mendonca who set sail from the Portuguese base at Malacca with four ships on a secret mission to discover Marco Polo’s “Island of Gold” south of Java. If Trickett is right, Mendonca’s map shows he sailed past Fraser Island off Australia’s northeast coast, into Botany Bay in Sydney, and south to Kangaroo Island off southern Australia, before returning to Malacca via New Zealand’s north island.

Trickett … believes his theory is supported by discoveries of 16th century Portuguese artefacts on the Australian and New Zealand coasts.

[Michael Perry: Reuters]

Dieppe Maps

The Dieppe maps are a set of maps produced in Dieppe, France in the 16th century, thought to provide clues towards the Portuguese exploration of Australia’s east coast two hundred years before Captain Cook and even earlier than the first confirmed sighting of Australia by Jansz in his 1606 expedition along the eastern coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria. The maps show part of what might be Queensland, and name the land mass “Java a Grande”.

… In March 2007, Australian science journalist Peter Trickett stated that he believed a simple error had been made by cartographers working on the Vallard Atlas of 1547, and that if part of one map … was rotated 90 degrees, it became an accurate map of the eastern and southern Australian coasts, as far west as Kangaroo Island. The map is in Portuguese, which Trickett suggests is evidence that it was based on Cristóvão de Mendonça’s explorations in 1522.

[Wikipedia]

See Also

Beyond Capricorn @ Libraries Australia

Guide To Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Huntington Library

Digital Scriptorium Database: Huntington Catalog Images

Another nail in Cook’s coffin as map suggests he was pipped by Portugal @ Guardian Online

Archaeological treasure found Up North

Atop the highest hill in Walker, Minn., archaeologists have found what they believe to be evidence of the oldest human habitation in the state — perhaps 13,000 to 14,000 years old.

From the rough stone tools that were found, archaeologists are speculating that “we’re looking at certainly the relatively earliest occupants of the North American continent,” said Matt Mattson, a biologist and archaeologist who worked on the project for the Leech Lake Heritage Sites Program, which is based near Cass Lake.

They would be related to those who, according to conventional wisdom, came across the Bering Strait from Asia, Mattson said.

Britta Bloomberg, Minnesota’s deputy historic preservation officer, said it may be among the oldest known archaeological sites in North and South America.

… The stone tools found at Walker could have been used by big game hunters for butchering, chopping or scraping toward the end of the Ice Age.

Mattson speculated that the site could have been used by an extended family of 10 to 15 nomadic people moving through an “oasis,” in what is now north-central Minnesota, that was as close as five miles to remaining glaciers.

[Star Tribune]

See also KARE-11.

“U.S. Repatriates Historical Artifact to the Iraqi People”
- Press release: U.S. Embassy, Iraq

On Tuesday, July 25, 2006, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad, Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, and Iraqi Prime Minister Noori al-Maliki participated in a ceremony marking the repatriation of the diorite statue of Entemena to the Iraqi Government, at the Embassy of the Republic of Iraq.

Recovered this year by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wing of the Department of Homeland Security, the statue of Entemena is deemed one of INTERPOL’s most significant recoveries.

Around April 2003, Iraqi cultural institutions and archaeological sites, including the Iraq National Museum, suffered extensive losses of invaluable cultural artifacts. Among the objects illegally taken from the Museum was the Statue of Entemena — a headless, statue of the 4th king in the dynasty of Lagash (modern al-Hiba, Iraq), ca. 2400 BC, excavated at Ur, Iraq.

The Statue of Entemena is the oldest known representation of a king of ancient Iraq. The statue is made of diorite (a rare hard black imported stone), stands approximately 30 inches high, and weighs approximately 300 pounds. The king is standing in the pose of a worshipper, hands folded in front, wearing a fleece skirt. Cuneiform inscriptions on his back and right upper arm tell us that the name of the statue is “Entemena Whom the God Enlil Loves” and that the statue was placed before the god in a temple.

The statue was excavated in the early 20th century in the temple precinct at Ur in southern Iraq by the joint expedition of the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum, working under a permit from the Iraq Department of Antiquities. Since the text says it stood in Lagash, it must have been taken to Ur at a later time, perhaps as a war trophy.

In late 2005, confidential informants overseas notified DHS of the whereabouts of the statue. Around May 2006, the statue was recovered and shipped to the United States. The statue was authenticated around June 5 and remained in DHS custody.

[Link]

Interpol has pictures and case notes: Link.

Iraq Museum International reports: “Manhattan Art Dealer Helps Recover Priceless Iraq Museum Statue” –

Lebanese antiquities dealer Hicham Aboutaam believes this is a good time to consider investing in antiquities, but his refusal to handle the sale of an important statue stolen from the Iraq Museum led to its return to the people of Iraq.

After the looting of the Baghdad Museum in 2003, Aboutaam was approached in Lebanon by black market dealers offering to sell the headless statue of King Entemena.

Worth millions of dollars to collectors of illicit antiquities, the statue had made its way to Syria, and onto the FBI top 10 list of art heists.

Aboutaam, who sells antiquities to museums and collectors from his galleries in Geneva and New York, did the right thing and cooperated last year with agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wing of the Department of Homeland Security.

Information supplied by Aboutaam helped INTERPOL track down the whereabouts of the statue, and just 2 months ago, it was recovered and shipped to the United States for authentication.

[Link]

The above article is favorable to Aboutaam specifically, and the collecting of antiquities generally. Note, Iraq Museum International (baghdadmuseum.org) is not to be confused with the National Museum of Iraq.

Hicham Aboutaam’s site.

The brothers Aboutaam have their critics, and a reputation for controversy: Aboutaam Brothers in the news

See also Museum-Security.org

FBI Top Ten Art Heists — Although the FBI apparently was not directly involved in the Entemena case, the Bureau does maintain an Art Crimes Team:

Art and cultural property crime — which includes theft, fraud, looting, and trafficking across state and international lines — is a looming criminal enterprise with estimated losses running as high as $6 billion annually.

To recover these precious pieces–and to bring these criminals to justice — the FBI uses a dedicated Art Crime Team of 12 Special Agents to investigate, supported by three Special Trial Attorneys for prosecutions…and it mans the National Stolen Art File, a computerized index of reported stolen art and cultural properties for the use of law enforcement agencies across the world.

[FBI: Link.]

A gem in one on Tutankhamun’s necklaces is “older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation”, and appears meteoric in origin, according to a recent report:

In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun’s necklaces.

The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it is older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation.

Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.

But the glass is itself a scientific enigma. How did it get to be there and who or what made it?

An Austrian astrochemist Christian Koeberl had established that the glass had been formed at a temperature so hot that there could be only one known cause: a meteorite impacting with Earth. And yet there were no signs of an impact crater, even in satellite images.

Mark Boslough, who specialises in modelling large impacts on supercomputers, created a simulation of a [meteoric airburst] …. The simulation revealed that an impactor could … generate a blistering atmospheric fireball, creating surface temperatures of 1,800C, and leaving behind a field of glass.

[BBC: Link]

Via Slashdot

Wikipedia: Tutankhamun

My brother the archaeologist sent me these comments about his work:

Dog burials have come up in our work in Kazakhstan on Botai culture sites. The Botai lived in pit houses whose door opened to the southwest. Outside the door, they would bury two sacrificed dogs, presumably as symbolic or supernatural guardians. If you look in the attached image showing a magnetic map of Botai houses, you will see pairs of small magnetic highs to the southwest of the larger (but weaker) square pit-houses. These have not been tested, but it is imagined that these pairs of anomalies may be dog sacrifices.

The Botai culture, by the way, are candidates for having been the earliest horse domesticators, and also (more speculatively) proto Indo-Europeans.

See also:

• Ritual Dog Burials @ USA Today
• Dog @ Wikipedia
• Burial @ Wikipedia
• Community Organisation Among Copper Age Sedentary Horse Pastoralists Of Kazakhstan — Sandra Olsen, Bruce Bradley, David Maki And Alan Outram — Pending

From The Ancient City by Fustel de Coulanges (1830-1889), on the power that brought people together to form the first cities:

This power was a belief. Nothing has more power over the soul. A belief is the work of our mind, but we are not on that account free to modify it at will. It is our own creation, but we do not know it. It is human, and we believe it a god. It is the effect of our power, and is stronger than we are. It is in us; it does not quit us: it speaks to us at every moment. If it tells us to obey, we obey; if it traces duties for us, we submit. Man may, indeed, subdue nature, but he is subdued by his own thoughts.
[Doubleday Anchor Books, 1956, p. 132]

Amen to that. I love this guy’s Neoplatonism!

See also — I am not making this up! — Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges.

The world is so full of a number of things:

VISOKO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Researchers in Bosnia … unearthed the first solid evidence that an ancient pyramid lies hidden beneath a massive hill — a series of geometrically cut stone slabs that could form part of the structure’s sloping surface.

“These are the first uncovered walls of the pyramid,” said Semir Osmanagić, a Bosnian archaeologist who studied the pyramids of Latin America for 15 years.

Earlier research on the hill, known as Visocica, found that it has perfectly shaped, 45-degree slopes pointing toward the cardinal points, and a flat top. Under layers of dirt, workers discovered a paved entrance plateau, entrances to tunnels and large stone blocks.

Satellite photographs and thermal imaging revealed two other, smaller pyramid-shaped hills in the Visoko Valley.
[Link]

Via Slashdot

Dino Avdibeg has translated and published a November 2005 press release from Semir Osmanagić, along with photos:

Next fase is expected to begin in April 2006. We will completely clean-up the area of bushes, and start with careful opening of 6 wide sections from all sids, in order to make pyramidal character of megalitic blocks visible to every layman. As a special project, we will start mapping the underground tunnel complex in cooperation with speleologists and geologists. We will also investigate the statements of the citizens regarding the existance of starways and a corridor at the socle of the pyramid.
[Link]

Posted by Geov Parrish, This Day in Radical History:

April 5 1956:

Columnist Victor Riesel, a crusader against labor racketeers, blinded in New York City when a hired assailant threw sulfuric acid in his face.

(more…)

April 4, 1668: Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated.

“Martin Luther King, Jr., was “murdered by an intricate plot that included government agencies,” according to a December 1999 jury in Memphis Tennessee, ruling in a civil wrongful death suit. On March 15, 2000, The Christian Century Magazine (p. 308-313) published an article by James W. Douglass summarizing the evidence on which this startling verdict was made. The chronology which appears below is primarily based on the evidence presented in this article.” [Link]
(more…)

A BoingBoing reader points to the Wikipedia article on Marvin Bush, youngest of the Bush brothers:

He was a director of the Sterling, Virginia company Securacom, also known as Stratesec, from 1993 until fiscal year 2000. The Securacom/Stratesec company was publicly traded and backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corporation. Securacom/Stratesec was in charge of security at the World Trade Center, Dulles International Airport, and United Airlines on September 11, 2001. [Link @ Wikipedia]

BoingBoing reader #2 counters:

The Wikipedia claim about Marvin Bush’s ties to 9/11 seemed a little too “conspiracy theory” to me. A quick Google search turned up what looks like a more balanced view [link @ 911 Myths]. I’m no Bush fan, far from it, but there is enough REAL evil stuff about these guys without manufacturing conspiracy.

This “more balanced view” takes a critical approach, deconstructing various conspiratorial arguments. Although generally dismissive in tone, 911 Myths does concede:

Wirt Walker, another member of the Bush family, was President of the company through this time.

The 911 Myths critique essentially deconstructs this article at Common Dreams.