Ancient lives, new discoveries

Volume 25 Number 4JULY/AUGUST 2014

£5.9

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The tragic tale of a Syrian site’s treasures

Spoils of war

The art of yoga

Taking uppostures past and present

Not one of the boysWhy was Howard Carter never offi cially honoured?

On the Home Front

Dan Snow champions First World

War sites in the UK

Ghengis Khan’s tomb The search is on throughout Mongolia

Medea in the spotlight

Was she a psychopath or a wronged woman?

Ancient Egyptian goldDazzling Nubian jewellery, the inside story of Tutankhamun

and eight mummies unwrapped

Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kaszon on how to broker peace between academics and collectors

MINERVAMAGAZINE.COM

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8 Medea: the mythical murderessAs it hits the London stage again, the timeless appeal of Euripides’ play is obvious – but it also had a political message. David Stuttard

12 The collectorBaron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kaszon opens the doors of his new London gallery of Classical art. Mark Merrony

18 Gold and the godsA collection of precious jewellery and amulets in Boston showcases the fine craftsmanship of the Nubians. Denise M Doxey and Yvonne J Markowitz

22 Ancient lives, new discoveriesEight mummies come to life at the British Museum after they are given the latest hospital treatment. John H Taylor and Daniel Antoine

28 Discovering Tutankhamun: the inside storyEgyptology’s greatest moment is marked by a new exhibition drawn from Howard Carter’s archive in the Griffith Institute. Jaromir Malek

32 The art of transformationThe practice and philosophy of yoga are celebrated for the first time in a major show of paintings, sculpture and manuscripts. Murray Eiland

36 In the footsteps of Genghis KhanLeaving no stone unturned in the search for the tomb of the great emperor that takes us on a journey across Mongolia and into China. John Man

42 Your country needs you! Historian, television presenter and president of the CBA, Dan Snow explains how we can all do our bit for archaeology. Diana Bentley

44 The lure of the OrientThe discovery, destruction and resurrection of the ancient sculpture Baron von Oppenheim found at Tell Halaf in Syria. Ulrike Dubiel

contentsvolume 25 number4

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Features

Regulars

Volume 25 Number 4JULY/AUGUST 2014

The tragic tale of a Syrian site’s treasures

Spoils of war

The art of yoga

Taking uppostures past and present

Not one of the boysWhy was Howard Carter never offcially honoured?

On the Home Front

Dan Snow champions First World

War sites in the UK

Ghengis Khan’s tomb The search is on throughout Mongolia

Medea in the spotlight

Was she a psychopath or a wronged woman?

Ancient Egyptian goldDazzling Nubian jewellery, the inside story of Tutankhmun

and eight mummies unwrapped

Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kaszon on how to broker peace between academics and collectors

Volume 25 Number 4

Cartonnage mummy-mask of Satdjehuty, painted plaster, linen and gold, Luxor, Egypt, early 18th Dynasty, circa 1500 BC. H. 61cm. © Trustees of the British Museum. Turn to pages 28 to 31.

02 From the Editor 03 In the news51 In the saleroom 54 Book reviews 56 Calendar

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fromtheeditor

To say that Greek myths are timeless is a cliché, but when you see how many modern works of art, books, films, operas and plays they inspire, you realise that it is true. Each generation re-interprets and re-works them. So I, for one, will

be interested to see the new production of Euripides’ Medea at the National Theatre with Helen McCrory taking the lead role. Then I look forward to seeing Kristen Scott Thomas as Electra at the Old Vic in September and, next year, Juliette Binoche will play Antigone at the Barbican. In ancient Greece women were probably not allowed to watch plays, let alone to act in them, but the playwrights certainly knew how to create powerful female roles. They could also weave political messages into their plot lines, as you will see in David Stuttard’s piece on Medea on pages 8 to 11.

The ancient Greek word for ‘beauty’ is kallos, and that is the name that Baron Lorne von Thyssen has chosen for his new London gallery. Mark Merrony has interviewed the great collector about his love of antiquities, his sponsorship of archaeological digs and how the rift among academics, collectors and art dealers could be healed. See pages 12 to 16.

In each issue of Minerva I try to give weight to one of the big three: Egypt, Greece and Rome. This time it is the turn of Egypt, and we have three features on aspects of this great civilisation. First, on pages 18 to 21, we look at a dazzling collection of Nubian jew-ellery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Then, taking a more visceral turn, we see eight mummies electronically ‘unwrapped’ in an astonishing show at the British Museum; see pages 22 to 26. Last, but not least, we hear about Discovering Tutankhamun: The Inside Story, an exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum. It marks the 75th anniversary of the Griffith Institute in Oxford, whose archive contains Howard Carter’s documentation of the boy-king’s tomb, Harry Burton’s original photographs of the world-famous discovery and some of Carter’s delicate watercolours of tomb paintings. Talking of Carter, have you ever wondered why the man at the centre of the greatest

Egyptological discovery ever made was not honoured by his country or by any university? Perhaps he was considered to be neither a gentleman nor a scholar. But if he lacked the finesse of the former, he was a fine exam-ple of the latter. Yet as Jaromir Malek tells us on pages 28 to 31, when Carter died in 1939, only one Egyptologist attended his funeral. Dr Malek also gives us one or two hints as to why Carter remained an outsider. Perhaps it is time to erect a bronze statue of this indefatigable archaeologist, artist and scholar in the market town of Swaffham, where Carter spent his early life. I am tempted to start a campaign.

From Egypt we move east to India, land of mys-tical religions and ascetic practices to consider the path of yoga. This ancient philosophy has generated some amazing art but, strangely enough, there has never been a major exhibition on the subject – until now. Yoga: The Art of Transformation is on show at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Murray Eiland, who went to see it, tells us all about it on pages 32 to 35.

Travelling even further east, to Mongolia, we follow writer and explorer John Man, who goes in search of the tomb of Genghis Khan. Was he successful? You can find out on pages 36 to 40.

Returning to the Home Front, quite literally, Diana Bentley caught up with Dan Snow on a battlefield near Portsmouth – although this particular one had only been used for training. There, young men were taught the rudiments of battle tactics before being sent off to fight in the First World War (the outbreak of which is being commemorated this year). As President of the Council for British Archaeology, Dan is encouraging everyone to look out for and to record traces of the Great War in Britain. It is part of a project called The Home Front Legacy 1914-18; see pages 42 to 43.

The First World War put paid to many archaeo-logical excavations or, at least, halted their progress temporarily. One of them was a dig undertaken by Baron von Oppenheim at Tell Halaf in Syria. The tale of what he discovered there and what happened to his remarkable finds is one of triumph, tragedy and, now, some hope, as Ulrike Dubiel, who has curated an exhibition on the subject at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, reports on pages 44 to 48.

Editor-in-Chief Dr Mark Merrony FSA

Editor Lindsay Fulcher

Publisher Myles Poulton

Editorial Consultant Murray Eiland

Art Director Nick Riggall

Designer Lyndon Williams Advertising, Subscriptions and Circulation Manager Georgina Read

Editorial Advisory Board Prof Claudine Dauphin Paris Dr Jerome M Eisenberg New York Massimiliano Tursi London Prof Howard Williams ChesterProf Roger Wilson Vancouver

Correspondents Nicole Benazeth, FranceDalu Jones, ItalyDr Filippo Salviati, RomeRosalind Smith, Cairo

Minerva was founded in 1990 by Dr Jerome M Eisenberg, Editor-in-Chief 1990-2009 Published in England by Clear Media Ltd on behalf of the Mougins Museum of Classical Art

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Minerva 20 Orange Street London WC2H 7EF Tel: +44 (0) 20 7389 0808 Fax: +44 (0) 20 7839 6993 [email protected]

Myths, money, mummies

ContribUtorS

Ulrike Dubiel John Man Jaromir Malekhas studied near Eastern Archaeology and Egyptology (MA in 2001) and she worked for 10 years as an archaeologist for the tell Halaf restoration Project. She is currently employed as a research assistant at the Egyptological Seminar of the Free University berlin.

is the former Keeper of the Archive in the Griffith institute, University of oxford. He is Honorary President of the Association for the Study of travel in Egypt and the near East. His books include The Treasures of Tutankhamun and The Cat in Ancient Egypt.

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Denise M Doxey and Yvonne J Markowitzare Curator of Ancient Egyptian, near Eastern, and nubian Art, and the rita J Kaplan and Susan b Kaplan Curator of Jewelry, at the Museum of Fine Arts, boston. they are joint authors of The Jewels of Ancient Nubia.

A timeless Greek drama, two illustrious barons, three Egyptology exhibitions – and is it time to honour Howard Carter?

is a writer specialising in Mongolia, combining history with exploration and travel. His Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection is published in more than 20 languages, and he has 10 other books in print. His latest,The Mongol Empire, was published in June 2014.

Minerva July/August 2014

02_Ed's letter_J-A.indd 1 10/06/2014 17:50

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inthenewsrecent stories from the world of ancient art and archaeology

Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), the first of two large-scale permanent video installations created by the internationally acclaimed artist Bill Viola, has been installed in St Paul’s Cathedral in London. This is the first moving-image artwork to be installed in a British cathedral or church on a long-term basis.

Martyrs is located behind the High Altar of the cathedral in the South Quire aisle, next to the American Memorial Chapel where US servicemen and women who gave their lives in the Second World War are commemorated. This is an area designated for contemplation and meditation.

The installation employs four colour vertical plasma screens. As the work opens, four individuals are shown in stasis, a pause from their suffering. Gradually there is movement in each scene as an element of nature begins to disturb their stillness. Flames rain down, winds begin to lash, water cascades, and earth flies up.

As the elements rage, each martyr’s resolve remains unchanged. In their most

violent assault, the elements represent the darkest hour of the martyr’s passage through death into the light. Martyrs will be joined in 2015 by a second piece by Bill Viola, a companion work entitled Mary.

The installations (that have been offered to the Tate as a gift) are on long-term loan to St Paul’s Cathedral, thus strengthening cultural links between the two institutions that face each other across the River Thames.

Although they are installed in an Anglican cathedral, these works of art engage with a multi-denominational, multi-national audience, in keeping with a spiritual environment that attracts millions of people of all faiths.

‘The two themes, Martyrs and Mary, symbolise some of the profound mysteries of human existence. One is concerned with birth and the other with death; one with comfort and creation, the other with suffering and sacrifice,’ said Bill Viola.

‘If I am successful, the final pieces will function both as aesthetic objects of contemporary art and as practical objects

of traditional contemplation and devotion.’Born in 1951, Bill Viola is internationally

recognised as one of the leading artists of our time. An acknowledged pioneer in the medium of video art, over the last 40 years he has created a wide range of video installations displayed at different locations across the world, from major museums to religious institutions, from royal palaces to universities.

His works focus on universal human experiences – birth, death and the unfolding of consciousness – and has its roots in both Eastern and Western art as well as spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Sufism and Christian mysticism.

Using the inner language of subjective thoughts and collective memory, his videos communicate to a wide audience, allowing viewers to experience the work directly, and in their own personal way. • 20 of Bill Viola’s works are on show at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais in Paris until 21 July. (For more on his work visit www.billviola.com).

Moving elemental art in St Paul’s


From left to right: Bill Viola’s Martyrs (Earth, Air, Fire, Water), a colour high-definition video polyptych on four plasma displays, has been installed in St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Executive producer: Kira Perov. Performers: Norman Scott, Sarah Steben, Darrow Igus and John Hay.

03-06_News(A).indd 3 13/06/2014 14:12

inthenews

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A unit from MOLA (Museum of London Archaeology) that has been excavating the site of the new United States Embassy in Vauxhall, south London, has discovered rare evidence of prehistoric activity. A flint tool from the Palaeolithic Period, circa 700,000-10,000 BC, is probably one of the earliest objects found in the capital. Mesolithic (10,000-4,000 BC) and Bronze Age (2,000-600 BC) tools have also been found there. Other discoveries include a 12 metre-long prehistoric fish trap, and evidence of camp fires.

The site was once a river

consisting of smaller channels with sand and gravel islands in between them. Some of these islands were large and dry enough for prehistoric people to settle on, while the fertile, marshy banks provided access to rich food sources and were a perfect hunting ground for prehistoric communities.

Kasia Olchowska, MOLA Senior Archaeologist, said:

‘What we have found may be the earliest archaeological evidence currently known from London. It will be interesting to see how this evidence relates to other prehistoric structures on

the Thames foreshore. We hope to be able to reconstruct and have a better understanding of the prehistoric landscape of a much wider area than we do now.’

Further analysis of the flint tools needs to be carried out by MOLA specialists to establish firm dates and learn more about their production and use.

First Londoners lived at US Embassy

Three views of a Palaeolithic flint tool from the site of the new US Embassy.

A rare, 800-year-old, lead seal of St Sabas has been excavated in the Bayit VeGan quarter of Jerusalem. Found 18 months ago, the seal has been studied by experts, Dr Robert Kool of Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and Professor Jean-Claude Cheynet, who have confirmed that it was stamped by the Great Monastery of St Sabas in medieval times.

During the summer of 2012 the IAA conducted two salvage excavations at the Horbat Mizmil site in the Bayit VeGan area and these revealed the remains of a farmstead built in the Byzantine period (5th–6th centuries AD). The site was then abandoned, resettled under the Crusaders (11th–12th centuries AD), then expanded in the Mamluk period (13th–15th centuries AD).

Most of the artefacts found reflect daily life in the farmstead, and it was while they were being processed that the rare lead seal came to light. Dating from the Crusader period, the seal or bulla was fixed to a letter to deter an unauthorised person from trying to open it. It was made up of two blank lead discs with a string passing between them. They were then pressed together with a pincher-shaped object with dies, creating the double-faced seal. It is in excellent condition and has a figure on the obverse,

the bust of a bearded saint wearing a himation (an outer garment worn over the left shoulder and under the right) and holding a cross in his right hand and possibly the Gospel in his left hand, with his name in Greek, ‘Saint Sabas’. On the back a Greek inscription reads: ‘This is the seal of the Laura of the Holy Sabas’. ‘Laura’ (which means literally ‘a narrow path’ or ‘lane’) was the word used for a monastery by the Eastern Church.

St Sabas, or Mar Saba in Syriac, was one of the most important and influential leaders of the Christian monastic movement that developed in the Judaean Desert in the Byzantine period. Sabas established several monasteries, but his crowning achievement was the founding of the Monastery of St Sabas (the ‘Great Laura’) in AD 483. It is

situated on a cliff overlooking the Kidron Valley and is the only monastery in the Judaean Desert to be continuously inhabited since its foundation.

Sabas was the first of the Desert Fathers to formulate a set of written rules for the conduct and way of life of hermit monks in the Judaean Desert.

He is regarded as an efficient administrator as well as a holy man and a theologian. After his death in 532 at the age of 93, he was buried in the yard of the monastery. Once home to several hundred monks, today around only 10 Greek Orthodox monks reside in the ‘Great Laura’.

Dr Robert Kool said: ‘The

Mar Saba monastery played an important role in the affairs of the kingdom of Jerusalem during the Crusader period, maintaining a close relationship with the ruling royal family.

‘The monastery had numerous properties and the farmstead may have been part of its assets in the Crusader period.’

Dr Yuval Baruch, the IAA’s regional archaeologist responsible for Jerusalem and its environs, presented the St Sabas seal to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III, who noted both its importance for the history of Christianity in the Holy Land and its significance for archaeological research.

The seal of St Sabas

The obverse of the seal shows a bearded saint holding a cross.

The site of the Byzantine-era farmstead, dating to about 1500 years ago, in the Bayit VeGan area of Jerusalem where the St Sabas seal was found.


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5Minerva July/August 2014

A rich Viking’s life savings have been bought by the Yorkshire Museum, York. Found by a metal detectorist in May 2012, the Bedale Hoard includes an inlaid gold sword pommel and a silver neck-ring and collar, the likes of which have never been recorded before.

It was discovered in a part of Yorkshire whose history during the Viking period, 1000 years ago, is very little known, so the very fact that this hoard exists sheds new light on the region.

Part of the hoard was found in Bedale by two metal detectorists who informed the North Yorkshire finds liaison officer of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Rebecca Griffiths, based at the Yorkshire Museum. She and a colleague from the museum then went to the site and unearthed the rest of the hidden treasure.

The full hoard consists of a gold sword pommel, a unique silver neck-ring and neck collar,

a silver armlet, 29 silver ingots, two other silver neck-rings, half a silver brooch and gold rivets. Archaeologists believe it dates from the late 9th or early 10th century. The large gold pommel, believed to be from an Anglo-Saxon sword, is made of iron inlaid with plaques of gold foil. These plaques bear Trewhiddle-style decoration

(named after a hoard found in Trewhiddle, Cornwall) made up of entwined animals – a style used all over England in the 9th century. Usually applied to silver and copper alloy, its use on gold is rare. With the pommel were four oval gold ring mounts from the grip of a sword bearing Trewhiddle-style animals. Six, tiny, gold,

dome-headed rivets may also have been used on a sword hilt. The unique neck collar is made of four ropes of twisted silver strands joined together at each end and terminating in hooks, which would have been linked when the collar was worn. There are also three twisted neck-rings, one of which has been cut in two as hack-silver.

Like most hoards of the period, this one is dominated by silver ingots, of which there were 29. It also contained a piece of a ‘Permian’ ring, cut as hack-silver – a design of Russian origin, and a broad, flat Hiberno-Scandinavian type arm-ring, made by Vikings in Ireland and decorated with a pattern of stamp-impressed grooves. Also from Ireland are the hack-silver remains of a bossed penannular brooch. • The Yorkshire Museum needs funding to preserve the hoard (to donate please contact: [email protected]).

The Bedale Hoard sheds new light on Viking settlement in Yorkshire.

Viking hoard stays in Yorkshire

A prehistoric Egyptian pot from 3400 BC, found in a garage in Cornwall, has been reunited with other tomb offerings 120 years after its excavation.

A couple contacted the UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology regarding a broken pot in their garage, after seeing a television documentary, The Man Who Discovered Egypt, about pioneering archaeologist Flinders Petrie, during which they were reminded of a small black-lipped vessel, around 15cm high, with a yellowing label. The pot had belonged to the present owner’s grandfather, a taxi driver who, in the 1950s, was offered the pot by a mystery passenger in lieu of payment of the standard fare.

Flinders Petrie (1853-1942), known by his workmen as Abu Bagousheh (‘Father of pots’ in Arabic), established the first timescale of Egyptian prehistory by organising pottery into nine

classes and putting them into a sequence, a process now called seriation. He sold his collection of antiquities to UCL in 1913.

Petrie Museum Curator Alice Stevenson matched the number ‘1754’ on the base of the pot and the label with grave records from Petrie’s excavations in Naqada in Egypt during the 1890s, now held in the museum’s archives. She said: ‘We don’t know what the pot was originally used for but it may have had a different function in daily life, such as holding a liquid like beer, before being reused as a tomb offering.

‘Petrie’s discoveries were widely distributed to museums across Europe and the US but some items found

their way into private hands. ‘The fact that effort was put

into printing and designing a label suggests that this was not a one-off, so it’s possible that many other artefacts from prehistoric Egypt might be concealed in garages, cupboards and attics. This pot is particularly significant as it marks the discovery of a new era in Egyptology not really known about at the time of excavation. The unusual nature of pots such as this one led Petrie

to be the first to define the Predynastic Egyptian era, the period before the pharaohs.’

The label on this particular pot indicates that it is, in fact, Libyan Pottery, from a period now known as the Predynastic Egyptian

era, discovered through

Petrie’s research. The pot was excavated by his teams at a very large cemetery in southern Egypt called Naqada in 1894-95. The number of the grave is written on the bottom of the pot. Other items from grave 1754 include shells and a fragment of rock crystal (both held at the Petrie Museum) and a red polished P-ware bowl that is now in the Ashmolean Museum.

Alice Stevenson has launched a three-year project (funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council) to identify Petrie finds in museums around the world.

Petrie was one of the first to demonstrate the importance of pottery to archaeology, even broken fragments. Yet it is often considered so commonplace that it is under-appreciated. Pottery is vital for dating sites and finds, and this, in large part, is a legacy of Petrie’s work on sequencing prehistoric pottery from Egypt.

Petrie pot found in Cornish garage

Petrie’s prehistoric Libyan pot, dating from 3,400 BC.

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6 Minerva July/August 2014

The Hadrian’s Wall Trust’s research and community archaeology project at the Maryport Roman settlement (directed by Oxford Archaeology North and funded by philanthropist Christian Levett) has revealed new evidence that is raising more questions about the internationally famous site. Site director John Zant said: ‘We are piecing together the complex story of the site over at least a couple of hundred years from around AD 100 to AD 300.

‘From our work so far it’s possible there may be an earlier fort than the remains we can see in the next field, and possibly even a lost Roman harbour to the north of the present-day harbour.

‘The Maryport civilian settlement is the largest currently known along the Hadrian’s Wall frontier. We already know from geophysical surveys that there are lines of buildings here either side of the main street running from the north-east gate of the fort.

‘We are concentrating on a building plot on the west side of the road. It is possible the road linked the fort with a Roman harbour. If this were the case, the road would have been a bustling thoroughfare along which most of the people and goods arriving at Maryport would have travelled.

‘We have found a fascinating variety of artefacts, including an iron spearhead, fragments of fine tableware imported from Gaul and the Rhineland, storage vessels that once contained Spanish olive oil and Gallic wines, fragments of fine glass vessels and several items of jewellery, including a jet finger-ring and part of a decorated glass bangle. The ring and bracelet would have been owned by quite well-off women, perhaps the wives and daughters of serving soldiers or retired veterans.’

The remains of the stone building have been carefully removed, revealing earlier

Roman remains beneath. It is now clear that the stone structure replaced an earlier long, narrow building made entirely from timber. The Roman timbers themselves have vanished completely, but the positions of the north and south walls survive as stone-filled construction trenches, the stones having been packed around the base of wooden posts to hold them in position. At least part of the building was floored with clay and had an internal drainage channel lined with stone slabs.

There are archaeological levels below this, too, showing there was an even earlier phase of occupation at the site. Several pits are also being investigated. One of these has yielded a Samian ware (red pottery from central Gaul) cup in a style that had fallen out of fashion by the early years of the 2nd century AD. This, together with a late 1st-century Samian vessel recovered last year, could mean the settlement was occupied before the reign of Hadrian (AD 117-38) and that there was an earlier Roman fort at Maryport.

The team has also been looking at the area at the rear of the building plot. Three rectangular, vertical-sided pits that may have served as wells or cisterns are now being excavated. Detailed analysis of pollen and other environmental remains in the soils at the base of these features may shed light on what they were used for. Samples from other parts of the site will also be analysed to provide information on local environmental conditions and cultivation of animals and plants for food.

Christian Levett, the owner of Minerva

and of the Mougins Museum of Classical Art, said: ‘I am particularly interested in the connections we are seeing across the Roman Empire through the imported objects the team is finding, such as pottery, amphorae and ornaments. Maryport is a remote but important part of the Roman world with a fascinating story. I am looking forward to more information coming through as the team continues the detailed analysis after they leave the site.’

Nigel Mills, who is Heritage Adviser to the Hadrian’s Wall Trust, said: ‘We are indebted to the volunteers, local people and visitors alike of all ages, many of whom have come back to work on the site for a second year. The settlement project is helping us to understand much more about who the people were who lived here, how they lived, and the significance of Maryport on the Roman frontier. The frontier defences down the Cumbrian coast were just as important as Hadrian’s Wall itself.

‘New interpretation panels have recently been installed at all the main sites, along with guidebooks, cycle routes and a tourist trail, so there is lots to see in this part of the World Heritage Site.’

Rachel Newman of Senhouse Museum Trust said: ‘It is very exciting to find such a wealth of information at the site. It confirms that it had a complex history beyond the visible, 2nd-century fort. We’d also like to thank the volunteers – more people get involved each year – and there’s a lot of interest from our local community.’ (For more on Senhouse Roman Museum visit www.senhousemuseum.co.uk).

Artist’s impression of Maryport Roman settlement at the western end of Hadrian’s Wall.

Message from Maryport

Nigel Mills, Heritage Adviser to the Hadrian’s Wall Trust, Jane Laskey, Manager of Senhouse Roman Museum, and John Zant, Site Director for Oxford Archaeology North, examine a find.

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Greek drama

9

Ever since its first perfor-mance in Athens in 431 BC, Euripides’ play Medea has gripped the imagina-

tion. Ancient Greek vase-painting attests to revivals of the play in the centuries that followed; Roman poets paid homage to the play or wrote gruesome adaptations of it; post-Renaissance impresarios staged operas and plays inspired by it. Famous actresses, ranging from Sarah Bernhardt in 1898, to, more recently, Diana Rigg (1992) and Fiona Shaw (2000-2003) in London, have taken on the role of the vengeful child-murderess. This summer Helen McCrory will star in a new version of the play by Ben Power at the National Theatre. And who can forget Maria Callas in her only film role as the lead in Pasolini’s Medea of 1969?

Partly, the play is memorable because of its universality: the story of a woman scorned, who wreaks a terrible revenge on her faithless hus-band by killing the sons she has borne him. It resonates not only with any-one who has loved and lost, but with all who have experienced the isola-tion of being an outsider, or of being overwhelmed by passion, infatuation, betrayal, frustration, hopelessness or anger – and that, to a greater or lesser degree, is everyone.

Briefly, the story is this: Medea, a beautiful princess from Colchis (far from Greece in modern Georgia on the south-eastern shores of the Black Sea), falls in love with Jason when he arrives with his Argonauts to steal the Golden Fleece from

Medeathe mythical murderessDavid Stuttard tells the tale of a terrifying female character, created by the playwright Euripides in 5th-century Athens, who still has the power to shock theatre audiences today

her father, Aeëtes. Infatuated, she employs her skills as a sorceress to ensure Jason’s success in his quest and, in gratitude, he takes her with him back to Greece. He swears eter-nal devotion and fathers two sons by her. However, their life does not continue as a fairy tale.

Already Medea has shown her true cruel and ruthless character when, to impede her father’s pur-suit, she kills her young brother and throws his dismembered corpse into the sea, knowing that Aeëtes will not rest until he has collected all the body parts so that he can bury them with the due funerary rites.

Next, in Greece, she tries to further Jason’s career by tricking his over-bearing uncle with assurances that she can restore his youth by boiling him alive. Then, fleeing the charge of murder, Medea, Jason and their sons seek refuge in Corinth; this is where the action of the play takes place.

Perhaps not surprisingly, by now Jason has grown tired of his ‘bar-barian’ wife, so, when he is offered an escape – the chance of marriage into the Corinthian royal family and, more importantly, the dowry that this will bring – it proves irre-sistible. It is only as the wedding is actually under way that Medea is informed, and she reacts with vio-lent fury. Having first secured a promise of asylum from Aegeus, king of Athens, she engineers the gruesome deaths of both the new bride and her father, then takes the cruellest vengeance on Jason him-self, not only murdering their sons, but preventing him from burying

them. Although this is a play soaked in the blood of ancient legend, it still manages to seem startlingly modern. One reason is that for most of it Euripides deliberately strips away the more outlandish elements to focus squarely on the predica-ment of Medea herself. This is espe-cially true in her first speech, where – far from being the wild barbarian sorceress of myth – she appears as a demure matron, appealing to the (female) chorus for support by cata-loguing the ways in which women (in 5th-century Athens at least) are so much more powerless than men.

Marriage, she avers, is a lottery – a bad husband cannot be divorced – and, while a man might have to fight for his country in battle, the dangers faced at home by women are even greater: ‘I’d rather stand my ground three times in battle, in the shield-line, than endure the ago-nies of childbirth once.’ No wonder Medea (the play was first performed in London in 1907) was so popu-lar with militant Suffragettes during the early 20th century.

The subtlety of Euripides’ psy-chological observations is positively breathtaking. Before she commits filicide, Medea famously debates with herself the rights and wrongs of the killing – at one moment seem-ing to soften, at the next viciously lashing herself into a frenzy of mur-derous hatred. Indeed, many mod-ern productions (including my own with Actors of Dionysus) have focused on what they perceive to be Medea’s mental breakdown, pre-senting the play as an inexorable

Medea, oil on panel, 1868, by Frederick Sandys (1829-1904).According to a contemporary art critic, writing in The Times on 1 May 1869, Medea shows the enchantress ‘… in the act of incantation, the baleful light of her chafing-dish playing in the folds of her robe, and making the pale cheeks look paler, and the ashy lips more ashy, and kindling the array of foul ingredients and witch’s properties that surround her tripod – foul toads and strange roots, and images of strange gods, and quaint shells filled with evil compounds’. The model for Medea was Keomi Gray, a gypsy woman whom Sandys met in his native city of Norwich and whom he took back to London to sit for many of his paintings.© Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery/Bridgeman Art Library.

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Greek drama

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spiral into madness and beyond. Yet is this actually what Euripides

intended? In an attempt to make Medea ‘relevant’ to modern audi-ences, students or readers, it is all too tempting to emphasise the uni-versals and to downplay those elements of the drama that are peculiarly rooted in the society and politics of 5th-century Athens – and which may have resonated with the first audience in such a way as to make their understanding (and appreciation) of the play very different from our own.

To begin with, that first audience was very different to the one that will flock to the National Theatre this summer. Although our evi-dence for this is not entirely solid, it is likely that it was composed entirely of men (certainly the actors were all male, including the actor who played Medea). We also know from contemporary comedies that Athenian audiences could be relied on to laugh heartily at jokes which, to us, seem shockingly misogynistic or distastefully xenophobic. Even audiences listening to serious politi-cal speeches were assumed to take the inferiority of women – when compared to men – as read.

Certainly, when delivering his famous Funeral Oration in the year after Medea was first staged (430 BC) before an audience unusually made up of both men and women, the politician Pericles thought it in no way a vote-loser to tag the fol-lowing sentence on to his long dis-course on the virtues of Athenian men: ‘As for you women, glory lies in not showing greater weakness than is natural for the female sex, and not being spoken of by men, either for good or ill.’

So how readily, we may ask, might an all-male theatre audience have been expected to sympathise with a feisty foreign woman, like Medea, who slices a swathe of mis-ery through the life of the Greek hero Jason?

This is not to say that Euripides does not portray her in an unusu-ally understanding and, where appropriate, sympathetic light. But it does suggest that he may not have relied on his contemporary audi-ence wholeheartedly to go on the same empathetic ‘journey’ with his central character that mod-ern audiences are invited to share today. Besides, as Aristotle (albeit not always the most reliable of lit-erary critics) was at pains to point out a century or so later, it is plot,


not character, that drives Greek tragedies. So, what of the plot, and what might Euripides have hoped to achieve with it? To answer this, we must know something of the polit-ical context in which the play was first performed.

In 431 BC, Athens was at the height of her powers. Only a year earlier, the Parthenon, that vaunting testament to Athenian glory, had been completed. But already war was in the air. For some time, the Athenian Empire had been engaged in skirmishes with Corinth, its greatest economic rival, and a matter of weeks after Medea was performed tensions erupted into full-scale conflict. The Peloponnesian War had begun.

When it ended, 27 years later, Athens would be humiliatingly defeated. But for now, as they filed in to take their seats in the Theatre of Dionysus on that March morn-ing in 431 BC, most of the audience not only knew that war was immi-nent, but positively relished its pros-pect. Soon they would be voting to back Pericles’ proposals to aban-don the countryside to the enemy, turn Athens into a fortress and pre-pare to endure a lengthy siege that would, so Pericles assured them, wear down the enemy until they sued for peace.

However, not everyone was so sanguine about Athens’ pros-pects and, among the dissenters, it appears, was Euripides – and he may well have used Medea to express his fears.

Before Medea can unleash her vengeance, she must first secure asy-lum in another land. Her chance comes unexpectedly. In a dramatic coup (not fully appreciated by Aristotle), Euripides has Aegeus, king of Athens, quite unexpectedly arrive in Corinth. He does not know Medea’s situation or intentions – or, indeed, the depths of depravity to which she is prepared to sink.

So, unwittingly he allows her to prevail upon him, blithely swearing an oath to welcome her to Athens. It is only when Aegeus leaves that Medea reveals the true horror of her plans: to kill not only the Corinthian princess and king – but her own sons. Too trusting, Aegeus has embraced a woman who is the embodiment of slaughter and ruin.

The first audience would have remembered myths which related what happens next, once Medea reaches Athens: she marries Aegeus and, in time, tries to kill his

Colour lithograph poster by Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) with Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1939) starring as Médée at the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris in 1898. Bernhardt, the theatre’s director from 1893 to 1899, brought Mucha’s artistic talent to the attention of the public by commissioning him to design posters. He, in turn, immortalised her. © Mucha Trust/Bridgeman Art Library.

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first-born son, the great Athenian hero Theseus, before being exiled and fleeing east, where her new sons become the ancestors of Athens’ old enemies (named after her), the Medes. Embrace Medea and you embrace destruction.

Euripides’ play ends with a dra-matic coup. As Jason demands that the palace doors be opened, so that he can see with his own eyes the results of her infanticide, Medea appears high in the sky above him, triumphantly riding in the chariot of her grandfather, the sun-god

Helios, with the corpses of her sons slumped at her feet. In the Theatre of Dionysus, this special effect was achieved through the use of the mechane (a crane, such as those used in the building of the Parthenon), which enabled actors and props to swing up and out over the playing area.

Quite what the visual impact was, we cannot tell. Later vase-paintings, perhaps illustrating subsequent stagings, show Medea in a radiant chariot pulled by serpents, but it is possible that in the first production

the tableau was even more dra-matic and sinister. For snakes are not mentioned in the text, though much is made of the fact that the chariot belongs to Helios. And it was only recently – surely so recently that it was still fresh in the audience’s mind – that the chariot of Helios really had soared high above Athens, when another crane hoisted a sculpture of it into place on the Parthenon’s east pediment. Here, it showed the sun-god rising from the waves to mark the dawn at Athene’s birth, a sign of hope for Athens. But, in Medea, the chariot of Helios hovering over Athens was being driven not by the god of light, but by a force of pure destruction. How doubly chilling would the image have been were the chariot pulled by replicas of those very horses on the Parthenon!

We shall never know exactly how Euripides staged Medea, but we can be reasonably sure of the political point that he was trying to make. Just as welcoming Medea from Corinth threatened to bring destruction to Aegeus and the Athens of myth, so embracing war with Corinth might bring destruc-tion to Pericles and contempo-rary Athens, too. But this was not something that most of the belli-cose Athenians wished to hear. So, at the competitive City Dionysia of 431 BC, they awarded Euripides the third prize – there were only three contenders. n

• Looking at Medea: Essays and a translation of Euripides’ tragedy by David Stuttard is published in paperback by Bloomsbury Press at £18.99. In Parthenon: Power and Politics on the Acropolis (British Museum Press, £9.99) he explores the relationship between Medea and the Parthenon. • Medea, starring Helen McCrory, is on at London’s National Theatre (www.nationaltheatre.org.uk) from 14 July to 4 September. Platform performances (talks related to the play) include: Acts of Madness with Edith Hall and Femi Oyebode on 19 August; Motives and murder with Julia Stroud and Christopher Cordess on 21 August; Women in Ancient Greece with Bettany Hughes and Oliver Taplin, on 1 September. • Actors of Dionysus will tour with a new play based on the myth of Helen of Troy in the autumn (www.actorsofdionysus.com).

‘Embrace Medea and you embrace destruction’

Helen McCrory will play the leading role of Medea in a new version of the play by Ben Power at the National Theatre in London. Photograph: Jason Bell.

Greek drama

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Interview

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You are a world-famous collector of Roman art. When did you start and how has your collection developed over the years?My first passion was coins. I started collecting them in a seri-ous way in 2005 when, for about 18 months, I had an open window to go out and buy aggressively and build up a good base, especially in Roman coins. I was able to do this because the dealers dare not go back to their clients and say, ‘This nutcase is buying and buying and now the market has shifted up by 50 per cent.’

That is when I really began to study Roman portraiture, monu-ments and military victories, and so on. Then I got involved with the Oxford Roman Economy Project. At which point I decided I did not have a good enough knowl-edge of Roman history, so I enrolled to study for an Open University Classics degree, which I really enjoyed.

I would say that the common thread in my collecting up until that time was exquisite craftsmanship shown on small surfaces. I used to collect gold boxes, beau-tiful enamels and so on. But I was also naturally and hugely attracted to the other end of the spectrum.

The first time I saw a Roman imperial portrait, it was of Septimius Severus – magnificent. I bought it in New York and that gave me the bug to start to collect Roman statuary and imperial portraiture.

Looking at other important col-lections that have been built up over time, it’s very clear to me that if you want to build up a

really stunning collection you have to keep the bar high, take the best advice from experts, and be patient.

Then I was offered some really exquisite Roman silver. I love the Augustan period. So my favourite period in Roman history is the Late Republic transition to the Empire. In my view, artistically speaking, nothing comes close to the Augustan period – this is the greatest experi-mental period in architecture, art, portraiture and silver. I built up a collection of early Augustan silver, and that is the core part of my col-lection. I would say that my collec-tion as it now stands is made up of coins, Roman portraits and Roman silver, and these are the areas that I like to try and build up.

Sometimes I toy with the idea that when I finish my degree – and if I wanted to take my studies fur-ther – I would look at Roman sil-

ver of the 1st century. I don’t think that we have the archae-ological evidence of where some of these Greek work-shops were in southern Italy. Clearly they were master silversmiths who had pieces commissioned by wealthy Romans – governors and so on. That is the full-blown, exquisite Roman silver. After that, as the Roman Empire becomes wealth-ier and people want silver dinner services and wine cups, it becomes slightly more mass-produced.

What is your favourite Roman building?The Pantheon, with its outside columns, rotunda and the oculus. To me, it is the most spectacular building in Rome. I believe that

Brunelleschi studied

the Pantheon before he constructed the Duomo in Florence.

Are you tempted to collect later artefacts or art influenced by the Classical world?If you are asking me whether I pre-fer a 1st-century Roman wine cup to a 19th-century candlestick, that can be answered, obviously. As a collec-tor I can well understand the natural progression from collecting Classical antiquities to Renaissance bronzes, for example. I am very fond of the work of the French Baroque artist Monsù Desiderio (1593-1620), who painted extraordinary, imaginary mythological scenes set in Classical ruins. I also like the work of de Chirico; I think the connection there is fairly obvious. But it is my sister [Francesca, Archduchess of Austria] who is a great patron and collector of contemporary art, which is very reassuring because she and I will never clash in auctions. We are at polar opposites in this sense.

You visited many archaeological sites in Syria before the war there started. What are your impressions of these ancient places?Yes, I took a group of Oxford pro-fessors through Lebanon and Syria the year before the Syrian uprising, so we were very lucky as we were able to see all the sites. We started in Damascus, then went up to Hamma, Aleppo, Apamaea, Dura-Europos, Rasafa and down to Palmyra and Mari, close to the Iraqi border. Mari is quite something, a mud palace on a mud plain, which is being exca-vated by the French.

Rasafa is also quite extraordi-nary – a great walled city in the desert connected with Roman impe-rial power and the delineation of its frontiers. It was also a pilgrimage

The

CollectorBaron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kaszon talks to Mark Merrony about the pleasures of collecting, sponsoring archaeological digs, the state of the antiquities market, and the vision he has for Kallos, the gallery he has just opened in London

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1. Baron Thyssen in Kallos (Greek for ‘beauty’), the gallery he recently opened in London’s Mayfair.

2. Corinthian helmet of the ‘Hermione’ type, bronze, Late Archaic to early Classical Period, circa 540-460 BC. H. 26cm. W. 16.5cm. D. 25cm.

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site, as St Sergius, one of Nero’s cen-turions, who wouldn’t renounce his Christian faith, was buried there. To supply water for the pilgrims, they built these incredible under-ground cisterns, which are about 15 yards high by 10 yards deep by 30 yards long – an extraordi-nary feat of engineering and they are still working. What is happen-ing in Syria today is beyond trag-edy – I would be happy, when the dust settles, to try to help support their heritage.

Part of what I would like to do in Kallos, my new London gallery, is to use it as a forum to bring people on various sides of the debate about the issues of provenance, loot-ing, etc around the table, to have a reasonable discussion, because everybody needs to work together.

Private collectors should open their collections to the academic com-munity. As we know, in the absence of government funding, archaeol-ogy is starved of money. Frankly, it is funded by people like me and Christian [Levett]. I think that the whole debate needs to be reframed.

You trained as an actor, and have been involved in film projects including Labyrinth in 1993, which you directed and produced, based on the Lebanese Civil War. How did it get its title?Originally the film was just called Lebanon but when I met up with a Lebanese general, he suggested that a better title might be Labyrinth, on the basis that it’s easy to find a way into Lebanon but impossible to find a way out. This is true historically

speaking for every conquering army that has been there since the Persians, and I thought it was a rather catchy title. Do you have plans for any more screen productions?The answer is yes – I would love to make a film on Augustus, but I’ll try not to go for the cheesy Hollywood version. I want to get some proper actors and a good script. I am a big fan of archaeol-ogy documentaries on the ancient world, and I would quite like to do something in this sphere.

You sponsor various archaeological excavations – Utica in Tunisia, Aphrodisias in Turkey and Ur in Iraq. How did you come to fund these particular digs?Andrew Wilson [Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire at the Institute of Archaeology in Oxford], who is one of the world’s greatest authorities on anything related to water systems, was very keen to do some work at Utica – he wanted to find the harbour walls. It is a lightly excavated site, dug by the French in the 1950s. They excavated one street of 1st-century Roman villas and a Punic acropolis.

Now the archaeologists have plotted the whole grid and worked out where the forum was and all the other streets; they can see it on res-onance images (the remote sensing plan). It is still a virgin site waiting to be uncovered – it’s just palm-trees, tall grass and goats at the moment. It is also government land and the authorities there are very keen that Andrew Wilson should train up some Tunisian students to preserve the mosaics on site.

As for Aphrodisias, I am just one of the Friends of Aphrodisias. Andrew Wilson wants to excavate all the Roman pools there, so it’s related to water supply again.

I am also funding an ongoing new dig in Iraq at Ur. The archaeolo-gists there have uncovered the roof of a temple and large administrative buildings, and have already pulled out a number of clay tablets, dag-gers, small artefacts. The Iraqis, who could not have been more help-ful, are very keen on the project.

London has become a focal point of the ancient art scene, a fact underscored by the opening of your new gallery, Kallos. What is the thinking behind?I did a presentation to my own board on the analysis of the health


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Baron Thyssen with one of his favourite objects, a magnificent gilded silver Parthian stag rhyton, or drinking horn.

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of the antiquities market generally versus other segments of the art market. It is clear, for example, that in 2010 – the second year into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression – modern and contem-porary art crashed and burnt by 50 per cent, Old Master paintings dipped by 7 per cent, fine furniture dipped by 3 per cent but top-end antiquities rose during this period. So they are clearly recession-proof and impervious to wars, revolutions and so on.

Looking at it from a financial per-spective, it is clear to me that there are maybe 10 to 12 really serious collectors – mostly people who are focussed on targeted areas, Roman, Egyptian, Near Eastern – but every-body fishes in the same pond when it comes to, say, Greek antiquities because it is hard not to fall in love with them.

I just felt instinctively that here was a great opportunity to assem-ble a small group of exquisite pieces and offer them for sale. I don’t col-lect Greek objects so, by offering these pieces, nobody can accuse me of cherry-picking.

That’s the business premise behind it – and the aesthetic premise is simple. I believe that it’s a small market, because most collectors who wouldn’t think twice about spending huge sums of money on contemporary paintings have never actually been in front of fabulous antiquities – beautiful pieces with a good provenance. I don’t think we need to do too much of a sales pitch

– when you see an exquisite krater from the 5th century BC, I think the piece speaks for itself. My goal is to bring in new collectors. Clearly, people will look at this space and infer that it is a safe haven. The increase in prices at the top since I have been in the game – which is only eight or nine years – has been extraordinary. The same pieces that came up in the 1980s and 1990s are going for multiples. I think that is a very

compelling argument for anybody who is trying to squeeze four or five per cent out of financial investments to buy antiquities.

How is the art market divided up right now?There are three categories, the exist-ing European, US and Qatari collec-tors, the US museums, and the new museums in Abu Dhabi and Qatar, which are already in the game. I believe that the Chinese will come into this market because they have a long cultural tradition of exqui-site artefacts; for them, it is a nat-ural progression. With all the new wealth in China, they are doing what the Russians did 20 years ago, which is buying back pieces from their own culture. And I think that the transition from Chinese art to Classical art is a natural move. I think that we will be pitching this to Beijing, Moscow, Hong Kong and Abu Dhabi.

In my experience from coins, it only takes one or two new collec-tors to shift the entire market up. It is still, in my opinion, a hugely undervalued niche part of the art market, and you don’t need to be a Classical scholar to enjoy beautiful antiquities. What is interesting is that people are paying huge prices for second- and third-rate Picassos, and I think the jury is out as to whether the value of a lot of contemporary art will actually

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4. Enthroned, crowned and painted terracotta kore (maiden), Archaic Period, circa 550-500 BC. H. 53cm. Her bearing, jewellery and elaborate polos crown mark her out as a goddess, perhaps she is Demeter, or her daughter Persephone.

5. Detailed close-up of the Parthian stag rhyton, silver with gilding and inlaid garnet eyes. Late Hellenistic to Early Roman Period, H. 27.9cm. L. 41cm.

‘If you want to build up a really stunning collection you have to keep the bar high, take the best advice from experts, and be patient’

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Interview

increase in 30 years’ time, or even hold. Any art where the prices are a product of media hype is unsus-tainable in my opinion.

There has long been a rift between the academic community and most collectors of ancient art, and it still endures. Is there hope of dialogue between these two sides?It has been a dialogue of the deaf. We need to inject some sanity into the dis-cussion. I think we are all on the same page. We all want to prevent looting, and if you want to do that, you have to look at what is happening in source countries, not how we would like the world to be but how it is.

If you don’t have a system equiva-lent to the British Portable Antiquities Scheme in source countries, then you will feed the black market, because if you don’t materially compensate peo-ple who find antiquities – and I am not talking about looting – you drive it all underground.

The second part of this argument is that you need to enforce existing legis-lation, to hand out stiff sentences to people who are involved in pillaging and not just give them a €500 fine and a slap on the wrist. Current legislation needs to be enforced, and the best solution is the Portable Antiquities Scheme or something like it. The num-ber of artefacts found that are reported to the authorities in the UK is in the thousands, whereas in France, very few pieces are actually declared. If you are paying somebody €50 for a piece that is actually worth €5,000 then you will drive it underground.

The application, for example, of the 1970 UNESCO Convention [on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of

Ownership of Cultural Property], by UK museums, where it includes coins, is self-defeating. The losers are muse-ums, such as the Ashmolean and the Fitzwilliam, as they cannot accept, even as donations, scholarly collections of coins (or antiquities) formed after 1970. The losers are also the students, as this material is not included in the corpus. How can that be of benefit to the academic community or future students? There are extremely articu-late professors, such as James Cuno, [President and CEO of the J Paul Getty Trust] who are in favour of the legitimate collecting market and whose voices need to be heard.

This is about common heritage. What is the British Museum quote? ‘World Culture for the World’. Let’s face it, 90 per cent of all the exhibits in national museums are from private col-lections. And private collectors buy many pieces – not to keep them at home, but to put them in museums on loan. I believe that there needs to be a bit more openness from everyone con-cerned; and frankly if you don’t believe in the individual’s right to collect prov-enance antiquities in the free market then maybe you should go and live in North Korea.

Are only ancient Greek artefacts on show in Kallos, and what makes it different from other galleries?First, I think that we have to broadly define what we mean by ‘ancient

Greek’. It stretches from Cycladic

to Persian – under Greek influ-ence. Look at the marriage between Eastern art and Greek art, which started in the 9th century BC with that rather extraordinary Egyptian-style statuary. As for Rome, there is that famous saying by Horace that ‘Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium’ [II, I, 156-7].

With Kallos, I wanted to avoid the feeling that you are coming into a museum or an old Victorian curi-osity shop, so not all of the pieces will be under glass bells. Some are on tables and open plinths.

The general tone of the gallery is of a very comfortable sitting-room in the Cycladic Islands. It has wonderful Turkish honey-coloured limestone walls, parts of which are made up of irregular white bricks. It’s a very inviting, light space in which to see wonderful pieces beautifully lit and given the space they need. It is a good space, a double-fronted retail space, and there is a small private room with a library where col-lectors can come and spend a couple of hours looking at reference books.

There is going to be an open-door policy not based on appointments. I would like to bring in art stu-dents and school groups, and really let them enjoy pieces that they will only otherwise see behind glass in museums. Hopefully young kids will come in and it will make them want to study Classics, become archaeologists or, even, collectors. n

• Kallos, 14-16 Davies Street, London W1K 4DR (+44 (0) 20

7493 0806; www.kallosgallery.com). The gallery motto: ‘One is as 10,000 to me, if that one is the best’ (Herakleitos).

6. Fine, unrestored black-figure dinos (wine-mixing bowl), showing a band of naked, spear-bearing hunters pursuing a wild boar. Archaic Period, circa 540-520 BC, belonging to the Campana group and attributed to the Ribbon Painter. H. 19.7cm.

7. The gallery’s small private reference library can be used by visiting collectors.

8. A pair of exquisite gold bracelets with lion head finials, Classical Period, 4th century BC. D. 8.8cm.

‘You don’t need to be a Classical scholar to enjoy beautiful antiquities’

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During the early decades of the 20th century, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Harvard

University conducted joint excava-tions at several sites (7) in Sudan, where thousands of years ago Nubian artisans created some of the most spectacular jewellery made in antiquity. As was customary at the time, there was an equal division of the objects between Khartoum and Boston. Over the decades the Nubian jewellery in Boston has been researched, pub/lished, and conserved. This work has been greatly aided by a rich archive that includes thousands of photographs, drawings, maps, excavation notes, and scientific analyses.

The jewellery, which spans more than 3,000 years, offers insights into the daily life of the Nubians, including their aesthetic prefer-ences, religious beliefs, technologi-cal inventiveness, and relations with foreign lands.

The peoples of ancient Nubia were an indigenous African popula-tion who occupied the region that is now southernmost Egypt and north-ern Sudan, between Aswan in the north and Khartoum in the south. Nubia was a gateway between cen-tral Africa and the Mediterranean; exotic materials such as ebony, ani-mal skins, and ivory were acquired from the south and traded with neighbours to the north and east, especially Egypt. But of all the valuable commodities found in Nubia, none was more important than gold, which was extensively

mined in the deserts east of the Nile. While Egypt was Nubia’s clos-est trading partner, relations with this powerful state were often con-tentious, and both lands were at various times under each other’s domination. It is not surprising that this country’s power was at its greatest during periods when Egypt was relatively weak.

Early in Nubia’s history, many ornaments were imported from Egypt, especially those made of faience, a man-made, quartz-based ceramic with a vitreous, coloured

glaze. But, by the middle of the second millennium BC (Classic Kerma Period, 1700-1550 BC), the Nubians had established a thriv-ing kingdom near the Nile’s 3rd cataract. Their craftsmen were skilled metal workers, had mastered faience technology, and turned their energies to glazing clear quartz a dazzling blue.

Because the inhabitants of Kerma did not leave written records of their intentions, scholars are unsure why they attempted such a feat. It was labour-intensive and difficult,

Gold

Exhibition

Denise M Doxey and Yvonne J Markowitz, co-curators of a stunning exhibition of ancient Nubian jewellery that is about to open at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, reveal some of the extraordinary and varied treasures on show

1. Hathor-headed pendant, rock crystal and gold, 743-712 BC.5.4 x 33.3cm.

2. Gold-winged Isis pectorale, 538-519 BC.6.9 x 17cm.

3. Maat amulet, gilded silver and malachite, 743-712 BC. H. 5.4cm.

4. Gilded bronze and ivory fly pendant, 2400 -1550 BC. 12 x 5.5 x 1cm.

and the gods

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Exhibition

as evidenced by the large number of ‘wasters’ discovered at the man-ufacturing site. The most common objects made of glazed quartz were spherical, translucent beads used in necklaces and bracelets. In some instances, they were sewn onto tunics and other garments.

One necklace with faience

star-shaped beads and a cylindri-cal silver amulet case from Egypt includes several of these beads as well as carnelian beads produced locally (5). This necklace is typical of Kerma jewellery in that imports were often intermingled with locally crafted elements – this was a feature that would characterise Nubian

jewellery for centuries. In addition to the blue-glazed quartz beads, large, stylised fly pendants made of ivory and bronze (4) were made and worn at Kerma. These compelling objects were typically found in pairs in the tombs of warriors whose capabilities as tough, tenacious fighters must have been compared to the determined aggressiveness of the Nilotic fly. Later, the Egyptians adopted the fly as their own mili-tary decoration, indirectly paying homage to the skill and valour of Nubian warriors.

By the mid-8th century BC (Napatan Period, 750-332 BC), the Nubians had established a powerful dynasty whose capital lay at Napata further upstream near the 4th cat-aract. Under King Piankhy (r. 743-712 BC) the Nubians conquered Egypt and for the only time in his-tory a single king ruled the entire Nile Valley. In the monumental inscriptions describing his victory,


5. Silver, carnelian, faience and glazed crystal necklace with a cylindrical silver amulet case, circa 1700-1550 BC. L. of necklace 21.5cm. L. of amulet 4cm.

6. Ram-headed sphinx pendant, gilded silver, lapis lazuli and glass, Napatan Period, reign of Piankhy (Piye),743-712 BC. H. 9cm.

7. Photograph of the joint Harvard University/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston excavation in Sudan taking place sometime between 1913 and 1928.

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Piankhy lists the booty of gold, sil-ver and semi-precious stones seized during his conquest. The beneficia-ries of his success certainly included his four wives, whose tombs housed some of the most exquisite jewel-lery discovered in Nubia. Napata’s ruling elites were heavily influenced by Egyptian culture, and Nubian kings portrayed themselves as the true heirs of Egypt’s supreme deity, the ram-headed Amen-Ra, who fea-tures prominently in royal jewellery.

As with Kerma, some of the objects created and worn during the period appear to be of Egyptian origin, while others are uniquely Nubian and still others are an amal-gam of Nubian and Egyptian ele-ments. An outstanding example of an Egyptian-made jewel is a Hathor-headed crystal pendant (1) found in the burial of one of Piankhy’s queens. Hathor, a popular Egyptian goddess who personified love, fer-tility, motherhood and music, was also worshipped in Nubia. In this ornament she is depicted as a woman wearing a headdress com-posed of cow horns, a sun-disc, and a uraeus – the stylised upright cobra that signified royalty or divine

authority. The rock crystal orb sur-rounding the golden amulet case in the centre is rare – only one other amulet case embedded in crystal is known to exist, and it was recov-ered from the same queen’s burial.

Rock crystal was a valued mate-rial in Nubia, perhaps because gold, a substance associated with the sun god Amen-Ra, is mined from beds of quartz. In the same queen’s tomb were other pendants in the Egyptian style. They are not direct copies of Egyptian motifs, however. An amu-let of a ram-headed sphinx (6), for

example, shows the sphinx, which has a long history in Egypt, in a very non-Egyptian pose, seated with its head turned to the side.

The funerary pectoral of King Amaninatakelebte (r. 538–519 BC), made to be sewn to the mummy wrappings, also has Egyptian par-allels. Made of finely chased gold sheet, it features the goddess Isis kneeling with outstretched wings (2). An Egyptian deity, Isis became an important part of the Napatan pantheon as a protector and defender of the deceased. Too deli-cate to have been worn in life, the beautiful pectoral was made exclu-sively for burial.

Other adornments exhibit dis-tinctly Nubian features, especially their aesthetic regarding the female figure, best expressed in some of the large faience pendants found among the burial goods of early Napatan queens. One example portrays a nude, winged goddess crowned with a sun-disc, a pair of horns, and a double plume (9). The god-dess’s pose, body type, hairstyle and nudity are distinctively Nubian. The voluptuous curves of her breasts, abdomen and thighs suggest fertil-ity, rebirth, and resurrection – all believed to be powerful attributes in this life and the next.

Napatan royal accoutrements drew from both Egyptian and local sources. The style of their kilts, for


Exhibition

8. Gold enamelled bracelet with image of Hathor, Meroitic Period, 250-100 BC. 1.8 x 5.7 x 5.1cm.

9. Winged goddess faience pectorale, Napatan Period, reign of Piankhy (Piye) 743-712 BC. 9 x 6 x 1.4cm.

10. Bronze statue of King Taharqa, Napatan Period, reign of Taharqa, 690-664 BC. 22 x 8.2 x 6.8cm.

11. Strand of stratified eye beads, glass with gold foil bands, Meroitic Period, 270 BC-AD 320. 1.8 x 15cm.

12. Double Hathor head earring, gold and enamel, Meroitic Period, 90 BC- AD 50. 5.8cm.

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example, harks back to Egyptian royal dress from the 3rd millen-nium BC. Their jewellery and other royal attributes, however, are typi-cally Nubian. The preferred style of crown was a close-fitting cap with streamers at the back, two tall feath-ers on top, and a double uraeus on the forehead. The standard necklace was composed of three rams’ heads suspended on a heavy cord or chain – one close to the neckline and two draped down the shoulders, as seen in a bronze statuette of King Taharqa (r. 690–664 BC) (10).

Many of the ornaments found at Napatan sites are made of exotic stones. This differs from Egypt, where a symbolic trilogy of coloured stones in jewellery – red carnelian, blue-green turquoise, and deep blue lapis lazuli – was established as early as the third millennium BC. These colours, representing blood and strength, vegetation, and the revitalising Nile, may have had sim-ilar meanings among Napatans. But other stones, such as malachite (3), appear to have been equally prized.

A banded-agate falcon amulet and also a blue chalcedony amu-let of Thoth, god of wisdom, are examples from royal burials. While Queen Khensa, the sister-wife of Piankhy, appears to have had an interest in mineralogy, as her tomb contained a collection of polished rocks including specimens of agate, carnelian, porphyry, travertine, amethyst, green-glazed limestone and serpentine. Examples of the use of other exotic stones include King

Tanwetanami’s (r. 664-653 BC) heart scarab of rodic rhyolite and a miniature ritual vessel made of amethystine quartz. There are also more than 40 perfectly round flint pebbles and a number of oddly shaped natural stones with two, three or more nodes on them; one of these had been deemed so special it was wrapped with gold wire (15).

Around the 3rd century BC (Meroitic Period, 332 BC-AD 364) the centre of Nubian life moved further south towards modern Khartoum. From then on the jewel-lery created and worn in Meroe was less influenced by Egypt and often includes representations of Nubian deities. Ram-headed depictions of Amen-Ra, often combined with other gods and goddesses, or even human heads (14), were especially popular, as were representations of the lion god, Apedemak.

Enamelling was developed to a high degree (8) and certain tech-niques found in jewellery, including champlevé and repoussé enamel-ling, appear for the first time. The people of Meroe wore a wide vari-ety of earring types (12), including studs and pendants with ear wires. Many are abstract designs using filigree wirework, granulation, and enamelling. Finger rings, especially cast signets, were also popular. Most are made of gold and feature important Meroitic deities (13).

Stratified glass eye beads offer insights into Meroitic glass-

making. These extraor-dinary beads have spots or circular rings

representing eyes, and they were believed to magi-

cally protect the wearer from

malevolent forces. The most com-plex eye beads have multiple rings, often in contrasting colours.

A group of beads (11) recov-ered from a royal burial at Meroe has a unique feature: crisscrossing gold bands made with en résille sur verre enamelling: the artist first carved into the blue glass matrix, then set thin strips of gold sheet in the channels, and finally covered the gold with a thin, protective coat of clear glass. Imported strati-fied eye beads, probably made by the Phoenicians, had been known to the Nubians since the Napatan Period, but none of the earlier beads have such dazzling, translu-cent blue glass or gold-band deco-ration. These beads have no known parallel in the ancient world.

With the disappearance of the Meroitic kingdom in the 4th century AD and the arrival of Christianity in the 6th century, Nubia’s ancient deities and their associated iconog-raphy disappeared for centuries, taking with them the symbolism hidden in Nubia’s exquisite jewel-lery. Only since the early 20th cen-tury have the secrets begun to be revealed. Many mysteries remain. n

• Gold and the Gods: Jewels of Ancient Nubia will be on show from 19 July 2014 to 14 May 2017 in the Kaplan Family Foundation jewellery gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Jewels of Ancient Nubia, an accompanying book by Denise M Doxey and Yvonne J Markowitz is published exhibition’s co-curators, is published in hardback by MFA Publications at £29.95 ($45).

13. Gold signet ring, Meroitic Period, 110-50 BC. 1.2 x 1.5cm.

14. Gold and carnelian necklace with human head and ram’s-head pendants, Meroitic Period, 270 BC-AD 320.38 x 2.4cm. 15. Pebble with gold bands, Napatan Period, reign of Taharqa, 690-664 BC.4.4 x 3.9 1.7cm.

All images: Courtesy of Harvard University/Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition.

All photographs © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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Egyptian mummies have no equal in their power to draw visitors through the doors of museums.

The prospect of seeing the body of someone who lived 3,000 years ago holds an undeniable fasci-nation but, viewed through the prism of the often macabre ritu-als of embalming, there is a dan-ger that we might forget that these bandaged corpses with their smil-ing, gilded masks were once living people like ourselves.

Ancient Lives, new discover-ies, a special exhibition on show at the British Museum, challenges that idea. Through the use of CT scanning and sophisticated visuali-sation, it is possible to perform vir-tual unwrappings and autopsies – to peel away mummy-cases and linen wrappings, layer by layer, on a digi-tal screen and to scrutinise the body inside in immense detail.

Confronting these ancient peo-ple face to face emphasises their humanity and, while this can be an emotional experience, it is also an important scientific exercise. The scans have yielded huge amounts of new data, which are helping to fill in the gaps in our knowledge about past societies, especially in those areas which written records tell us little about: life expectancy, physical appearance, state of health, patho-logical conditions, and mummifica-tion techniques.

The exhibition features eight mummies chosen from the British Museum’s extensive collection. They include the remains of men, women and children from a wide time span (circa 3500 BC to circa AD 700), from different social groups and from different sites in Egypt and Sudan. With the help of

hospital staff in both Britain and Australia, each mummy was CT- scanned after hours.

The CT scan images are first cap-tured in the form of thin 2D ‘slices’ through the mummy from head to toe. These are then digitally reas-sembled to create 3D visualisations using advanced graphic software. CT scanning of mummies is not new in itself. In an earlier exhibition, Mummy: The Inside Story, held at the British Museum in 2004 (and afterwards a successful interna-tional touring show), images based on CT scans of a mummy were pre-sented as a 3D film. But in the past

10 years the quality of CT scan data, as well as that of the images that can be generated from it, has advanced significantly, with 3D visualisation becoming much more sophisticated and accurate. In Ancient Lives, new discoveries, special screens located near each mummy allow visitors to see what is inside, and sometimes to interact directly on a one-to-one basis to discover for themselves what each scan revealed.

The software used to analyse the mummies and create the 3D visuali-sation of the scans allows research-ers to separate the different layers virtually, making it possible to see what lies beneath the wrappings and to explore inside the body. This has provided a wealth of new infor-mation on the mummification tech-niques used to preserve them, as well as new insights into their biology and state of health. The bandages, skin, preserved organs, embalming materials and bones, not previously seen, have been virtually studied to provide new information on life and death along the Nile Valley.

Of the eight mummies in the exhibition, two are those of children. Tjayasetimu, the older of the two, was believed to have died around the age of 12, based on older X-rays. The new CT scan made it possible to image her skeleton in great detail and her developing teeth indicate that, at around seven years old, she is much younger than previously thought. Dating from the 22nd Dynasty (circa 800 BC), her mummified body is remarkably preserved, revealing the great skill with which the embalmers prepared her for the afterlife. Unlike adult mummies, no attempts were made to remove her brain, which can still be seen inside her skull. Unusually

John H Taylor and Daniel Antoine ‘unwrap’ eight mummies in a special exhibition they have co-curated at the British Museum, which aims to reveal the back-story of these people who once lived in the Nile Valley

Ancient lives, new discoveries

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1. Painted cartonnage, with a gilded face, of a priestess named Tayesmutengebtiu (also called Tamut), 22nd Dynasty (circa 900 BC), found at Thebes.

2. A mummy about to undergo a CT scan at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London.

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for her age, her hair is long and was carefully arranged on either side of her face.

Dating from the early Roman period (circa AD 40-60), the other child mummy in the exhibition is also very well preserved. The state of this boy’s dental development

indicates that he was much younger, about two years old. In neither case were any signs of pathology or trauma detected on the scan, and the cause of death remains to be elucidated. These are rare examples of child mummification and offer unique insights into childhood, an aspect of ancient Egyptian society further explored in the exhibition.

The six other mummies on show are all those of adults. Most of them have been aged, and in some cases sexed, for the first time using the CT scan data. The amount of den-tal wear is usually visible, even on simple X-rays, and has sometimes been used to approximate a mum-my’s age at death. Unfortunately, tooth wear is also influenced by other factors, such as diet and food processing, making it an unreliable age indicator.

In this project, the amount of wear and tear on the frontal joint of the pelvis (the pubic symphysis) was used to approximate the age at

death. This more reliable approach shows that only the two naturally preserved mummies appear to have died in early adulthood, between the ages of 20 and 35. Desiccated by being buried in the hot dry sand soon after death, their inter-nal organs were not removed by

embalmers and are clearly visible on the scans, including extremely well-preserved brains and lungs. The remains of partially digested food were also found in the lower abdomen of the oldest of the two mummies, that of a young man dating to the Predynastic period (circa 3500 BC). The second natu-rally preserved mummy, a female, was discovered in Nubia (Northern Sudan) and is much more recent – from the medieval period (circa AD 700). A very rare example of a tat-too representing a monogram of the Archangel Michael can be seen on the skin of her inner thigh. Such tat-toos are extremely rare and offer a unique insight into culture and belief in Christian Sudan.

The other four adult mummies were artificially embalmed and were between 35 and 50 years old – possibly older – when they died. All four showed signs of dental disease, including multiple large dental abscesses, tooth decay and

tooth loss. Dental abscesses form when bacteria enter the pulp cham-ber in the centre of a tooth, where the nerves and blood vessels are located. Severe tooth decay and extreme dental wear are the most common reasons for bacteria enter-ing the pulp, causing an infection,

the formation of an abscess at the end of the root and, in most cases, severe inflammation and pain.

Three of the older mummies had several large dental abscesses and, if the infection had entered the blood-stream and caused blood poisoning (septicaemia), this could have been fatal. The CT images also revealed that two of the older mummies had significant calcified plaque deposits in the arteries of their legs. The for-mation of fatty plaques on the inner walls of arteries, a disease called atherosclerosis, has an element of genetic susceptibility but is also associated with a diet rich in animal fat, such as cholesterol, as well as with obesity. The plaque can harden (making it detectable on a CT scan), causing the affected arteries to nar-row, obstructing blood flow and damaging organs. Significantly, atherosclerosis is a major risk fac-tor in cardiovascular disease and can cause blood clots that can trigger a stroke or a heart attack.


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4. CT scan 3D visualisation of the mummified remains of Tamut, showing a section through the cartonnage and wrappings.

3. CT scan 3D visualisation of the mummified remains of Tayesmutengebtiu, or Tamut, showing the wrappings.

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Cardiovascular disease is regarded as the single biggest cause of death in the developed world today, and both dental and arterial disease may have played a role in the untimely deaths of these ancient Egyptians.

Of the six mummies that were embalmed using artificial methods,

that of an unidentified man from Thebes (circa 600 BC) shows how carefully the brain was extracted via the nostril through a small hole not more than 2cm square, made in the bone at the top of the nose. But although the skull is almost empty the scans revealed part of a tool – apparently a kind of probe made of some low-density material (such as a reed, perhaps). It seems to have broken when the embalmer was attempting to remove the last of the contents of the cranium, and per-haps as a result some brain was left behind, still clearly visible.

We know from the writings of Classical historians such as Herodotus that different grades of mummification were available, varying according to cost. Another of the mummies in the exhibi-tion exemplifies the best treatment that was available. The beauti-ful painted cartonnage case identi-fies the deceased as a woman called Tayesmutengebtiu (whose lengthy

name is abbreviated to Tamut in front of her painted image on the upper part of the case). Tamut was a lady of high status. She was the daughter of a priest of Amun and herself served the god as a chant-ress. The scans show that her body is extremely well preserved, even

revealing her close-cut hair (a style which suggests that she may have worn a wig). Tamut’s mummy was scanned using one of the latest types of equipment, a dual-energy CT

scanner, and this has enabled us to identify the many amulets which were placed on her body under the wrappings – these include a winged goddess, a falcon, a vulture and a winged scarab beetle in sheet metal (possibly silver), a heart scarab and smaller amulets made of stone or

faience. Covering the incision in her abdomen, which the embalmer made to extract her internal organs, are two thin metal plates, on both of which the protective image of the eye of Horus can be discerned. It is thanks to this new generation of CT scanners that such delicate incised detail can be detected.

The ability to peel away layers of wrappings in a totally non-destruc-tive way has also thrown light on an enigmatic mummy dating to the Roman period. The mummy, whose name is unknown, is a favourite of the visiting public, having been on display since it entered the British

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6. 3D visualisation of the skeleton of Tamut, also showing amulets placed on various parts of the body.

7. 3D visualisation of the feet of Tamut, showing the metal covers on her toenails and a large (probably silver) amulet of the god Khepri in the form of a winged scarab beetle.

5. 3D visualisation of the remains of Tamut, with the wrappings entirely removed, showing the excellent preservation of the soft tissues.

Exhibition

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Museum in the 1830s, but proba-bly few people realise that it is very unusual. It represents the person as if alive, with arms, legs, fingers and toes separately wrapped, and facial features painted on a ‘skin’ of linen, and dressed in imitation gar-ments and sandals. There was some ambiguity about the gender of this person: a beard painted on the face contrasts with prominent breasts and plump, almost feminine thighs. The scans con-firmed that the body is actu-ally that of a man, and that

the breasts and thighs were deliber-ately enhanced with linen paddings, but the reason is still unclear. What is certain is that this man suffered from appall-ing dental illness and that he was probably overweight when he died.

To help place all these mummies in context sections of the exhibition describe dif-ferent aspects of liv-ing and dying along the Nile. Samples of ancient bread, fruits and barley mash from tombs give us insights into diet and nutrition, and can be compared with evidence for den-tal wear from the mummies them-selves. A rare papyrus with medical prescriptions and a healing statue, cov-ered with inscriptions and images, reflect the Egyptians’ dual response to sickness, in which both phar-maceutical remedies and magical spells played their parts. There is also a section on the cultural significance of hair, with grooming implements, such as a razor and a comb, sam-ples of hair found in graves and a rare example of an ancient Egyptian wig dating from circa 1350 BC – a

fascinating but fragile object which will be on public view for the first

time in several decades.A key aim of Ancient

Lives, new discov-eries is to enable the

visitor to encounter these mummies as dis-tinct human beings,

each with his or her story to tell. It also seeks to give

hands-on experience of the process of discovery. In

their depth and rich detail, the digital images hold the potential for more discoveries to be made, and in this

innovative exhibition it is entirely possible that some of those discover-ies will be made by the visitors themselves. n

• Ancient Lives, new discoveries (sponsored by Julius Baer, with

technology partner Samsung) is on show at

the British Museum (www.britishmuseum.org) until

30 November. An accompanying book Ancient Lives, new discoveries: Eight mummies, eight stories by John H Taylor and Daniel Antoine, is published in paperback by the British Museum Press at £19.99.

8. The vast Theban necropolis where the mummy of the adult male (below) was discovered. © Vandenbeusch.

9. Mummy of a man (aged 35 plus, name unknown), wrapped in linen bandages, found at Thebes, 26th Dynasty (circa 600 BC).

10. Three wedjats, or Eye of Horus amulets, made of obsidian, jasper and serpentine.

All images unless otherwise marked

© The Trustees of the British

Museum.

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On a Sunday afternoon, 26 November 1922, a small group gathered at the end of a descending

underground passage in the Valley of the Kings, in the southern part of Egypt on the west bank of the River Nile opposite Luxor. The doorway in front of them was little more than a rectangular opening cut in the rock and closed by stone blocking, overlaid with plaster and covered in seal impressions. The passage was only 1.68 metres wide and 2 metres

high, and in the prevailing dark-ness it was not easy to see exactly what the man nearest the door was doing. He was the archaeologist Howard Carter and the rest of the party consisted of Lord Carnarvon, the financial backer of the project, Carnarvon’s daughter Lady Evelyn, and Carter’s friend of long stand-ing, Arthur Callender. The two reises (foremen), Ahmed Gerigar and Hussein Abou Owad, were in atten-dance. Some of the seal impressions bore the name of the little-known

king Tutankhamun. The period that preceded his accession to the throne was one of the most turbulent in the history of ancient Egypt, dur-ing which many religious conven-tions were overthrown. Was this the tomb of Tutankhamun himself, or of another member of the royal family, or was it a cache of funer-ary equipment transferred from Amarna, the residence of his father, the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten?

With some trepidation Carter made a small breach in the top

Discovering Tutankhamun: the inside storyAn exhibition on the finding of the boy-king’s tomb opens at the Ashmolean Museum in July but, asks Dr Jaromir Malek, why did Howard Carter, the man who revealed its treasures to the world, receive no real academic recognition or honour from his country?

1. Howard Carter and an unnamed Egyptian assistant inspect the innermost coffin of Tutankhamun, 1925. Photograph by Harry Burton.

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left-hand corner of the doorway. A lit candle was produced and with this rather pathetic illumination he peered inside. A stunning sight of a room full of the most amaz-ing objects presented itself to him. Those behind him waited patiently until, finally, Lord Carnarvon broke the silence and asked ‘Can you see anything?’ to which Carter replied with ‘Yes, wonderful things’. These are the immortal words quoted in the first volume of The Tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen. Or maybe it was ‘Yes, it is wonderful’, as he wrote in his jour-nal closer to the occasion. Or it could have been the third version, ‘There are some marvellous objects here’, as remembered by Lord Carnarvon.That is how myths are made – even in archaeology.

Whatever the words uttered, the discovery of a practically intact

royal tomb with its glitter of gold and array of perfectly preserved objects (which, in Carter’s words, reminded him of ‘the property-room of an opera of a vanished civilisation’) caused an immediate sensation. The boy-king’s gold mask and other gilded artefacts aroused people’s feelings to the point of frenzy. Ancient Egypt was brought to the forefront of public conscious-ness as never before and examples of ‘Tutmania’, sometimes border-ing on the bizarre, erupted in many spheres of culture and commerce.

For Carter, though, it was the ful-filment of 30 years of dreams and aspirations and, of course, hard work – the vindication of his often contrary attitudes and beliefs. For Egyptology, the tomb represented a treasure trove of well-dated items and a source of information

concerning the aftermath of the Amarna period.

Howard Carter was born in London on 9 May, 1874, into the family of a fairly successful com-mercial artist, but his youth was spent in the small market town of Swaffham in Norfolk, the birth-place of his parents. Samuel John Carter specialised in paintings of children and animals and this, in a somewhat fortuitous way, led to his son’s interest in ancient Egypt.

Lord Amherst, whose family lived at Didlington Hall, near Swaffham, possessed one of the largest private collections of Egyptian antiquities in England. Carter senior was, no doubt, called there in his profes-sional capacity, so young Howard, who accompanied him, had his first taste of the lure of ancient Egypt. The son inherited his father’s artis-tic ability, which was brought by Lord Amherst to the attention of the Egyptologist PE Newberry, who was in charge of an epigraphic expe-dition sponsored by the London-based Egypt Exploration Fund working in Middle Egypt. So it was that, late in 1891, the 17-year-old Howard joined the expedition.

Not long after this, he had his first taste of archaeology working with Flinders Petrie at Amarna. Carter’s epigraphic abilities were quickly recognised and, in 1893, he was put in charge of the recording of reliefs in the temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri.

In 1899 he took the decisive step to move from being an art-ist to an archaeologist when he was appointed Chief Inspector of Antiquities for Upper Egypt in the Egyptian Antiquities Service. One of his responsibilities was the Valley of the Kings, with which he became intimately familiar. But the posi-tion in which he revelled came to an abrupt end when in 1904, fol-lowing an internal reorganisation of the service, he was posted as Chief Inspector of Lower Egypt to Tanta in the Delta. He felt shunted out of the area that was his main inter-est and was unhappy. Following an altercation between Egyptian site guardians and a group of intoxi-cated European tourists at Saqqara, he sided unambiguously with his employees – and, in 1905, he resigned in protest at the official attitude concerning the incident. We may put various interpreta-tions on his motives. Although in many respects a man of his time, Carter was remarkably modern in

the inside story

2. The world-famous face of Tutankhamun adorned with its iconic funerary mask and hands made of sheet-gold, holding the flail and the crook, the symbols of kingship, 1925. Photograph by Harry Burton.

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his attitude towards his Egyptian staff, so was this a principled stand? Was it the ill-considered reaction of a man notoriously bad at control-ling his temper? Or was it a calcu-lated opportunistic decision that exploited the situation as a pretext for leaving a post that he disliked? Whatever the truth of the matter, it was an important signpost on the road that eventually led to the tomb of Tutankhamun.

During the following years Carter stayed in Egypt for much of the time and was eking a fairly precarious existence by odd-jobbing for other archaeologists, selling his water-colours to tourists, and helping vari-ous museums to acquire antiquities. His second chance came when an English aristocrat, Lord Carnarvon, who had come to Egypt while con-valescing after a serious car accident, became interested in excavating and required a reputable archaeologist to take charge of the work. He hired Carter. The co-operation between these two men, worlds apart in their social standing, wealth and edu-cation, began in 1909. They were keen to work in the Valley of the Kings, but the right to excavate there was held by the American amateur archaeologist Theodore M Davis. It was not until 1914 that Davis relin-quished his concession, but then the First World War intervened.

Carter wanted to start work in the Valley of the Kings as soon as pos-sible and he had a short excavation season there in 1915, followed by others in 1917-18, 1919-20, 1920-21 and early in 1922. His intuition based on knowledge and experience told him that there still were royal tombs to be discovered.

But by 1922 Lord Carnarvon’s enthusiasm was flagging and Carter had to use all his persuasive powers to be able to continue the work. It was at this moment of crisis, early into the excavation season that began on 1 November, 1922, that he found the tomb of Tutankhamun.

The wealth of material (there were 5,398 objects) presented an immense challenge. AR Callender was Carter’s close assistant, and the Egyptologist AC Mace and the pho-tographer Harry Burton were dele-gated by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to help with the clearance of the tomb and the recording. Alfred Lucas, a chem-ist employed by the Antiquities Service, was in charge of conser-vation and restoration. This was a very small team but specialists, such

as Alan H Gardiner, JH Breasted and PE Newberry, were called upon when needed. Discovering the tomb was a remarkable achievement but completing the recording of its con-tents was just as impressive.

In the last years Carter was almost alone, with only Burton and Lucas staying with him. Had it not been for his dogged determination, often bordering on sheer bloody-minded-ness, the task would not have been

finished. Faced with many obstacles and enormous pressures – some, admittedly, self-inflicted – a lesser man would have given up. By 1932, the work in the tomb was com-pleted, by which time Carter was physically and mentally exhausted. His health deteriorated and he died of lymphoma in London on 2 March, 1939.

In his lifetime, his achievements remained largely unrecognised by


3. Arthur Mace, above, and Alfred Lucas work on the conservation a lifesize statue of Tutankhamun that guarded the entrance to the king’s burial chamber, 1925.Photograph by Harry Burton.

4. Lunch in the tomb of Ramesses XI (KV 4) in 1923. The diners, from left to right, are James Henry Breasted, Harry Burton, Alfred Lucas, Arthur Callender, Arthur Mace, Howard Carter and Alan Gardiner. Photograph by Lord Carnarvon.

5. The outermost gilded wooden coffin of Tutankhamun, 1925. Photograph by Harry Burton.

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members of the British academic community among which he had few close friends. He was, after all, a man who learned his archae-ology on the job, not at a univer-sity. Envy, no doubt, also played a part. The tragic early death of Lord Carnarvon only some five months after the discovery of the tomb deprived Carter, a man from an ordinary background, of some-one who would have been able to facilitate his introduction into influ-ential social circles within British society. At Carter’s funeral the only British Egyptologist present was GA Wainwright.

Yet although it is the most famous discovery in the history of Egyptian archaeology, Tutankamun’s tomb and its contents have not yet had proper scholarly evaluation. So far only about 30 per cent of the mate-rial has been fully studied and pub-lished. Carter had nobody to help him with its publication or to con-tinue his work. The sheer volume of the material presents a huge

challenge and its study in Cairo is not always easy – especially nowadays. Modern research requires the cooperation of various specialists and needs specific skills not always found among pure Egyptologists.

Almost all the objects found in the tomb are in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo – soon to be displayed in the new Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza. It is unlikely that the most spectacu-

lar items, such as the gold mask, the coffins and the shrines, will ever be allowed to travel and be exhibited abroad again. So it may be useful to mention an excellent travelling exhibition of faith-ful replicas of the objects, entitled Tutankhamun: His Tomb and His Treasures. Organised by Semmel Concerts GmbH of Bayreuth, it is currently on show in Kansas City.

A visit to Tutankhamun’s tomb has long been a ‘must’ for tourists but their numbers present a seri-ous threat to its preservation. An accurate facsimile copy of the paint-ings in the burial chamber, pre-pared by Factum Arte in Madrid, has recently been installed on the approach to the Valley of the Kings next to ‘Castle Carter’, the house in which he lived during his work on the West Bank from 1911.

Howard Carter’s documentation of the tomb and its excavation is in the Archive of the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford, to which it was presented by his niece, Phyllis

Walker. This material is now freely accessible on the institute’s website. The Griffith Institute opened in 1939, thanks to an endowment by Francis Llewellyn Griffith, Oxford University’s first Professor of Egyptology. In addition to its Egyptological archive – the largest of its kind in the world – it adminis-ters two projects of fundamental significance for the subject: the Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts and the Online Egyptological Bibliography. The Griffith Institute has also published important works, among them concise monographs dealing with various categories of objects found in the tomb.

Discovering Tutankhamun, which opens at the Ashmolean Museum in July, will show many of the records made by Howard Carter and his team while working in Tutankhamun’s tomb. These pro-vide an absorbing insight into the working methods of this remark-able archaeologist. This exhibi-tion also celebrates 75 years of the founding and work of a unique institution, the Griffith Institute. ■

6. George Edward Stanhope Molyneux Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon, reading on the verandah of ‘Castle Carter’, Howard Carter’s house at Elwat el-Dibbân on the Theban West Bank in 1922. Photograph by Harry Burton.

All images © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford.

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• Discovering Tutankhamun: The Inside Story opens at the Ashmolean Museum on 24 July and runs until 2 November (for details visit www.ashmolean.org). • The complete original excavation records of Tutankhamun’s tomb can be seen at www.griffith.ox.ac.uk/tutankhamundiscovery.html.• Holt Festival pays tribute to Howard Carter 75 years after his death (www.holtfestival.org).Howard Carter (1874-1939): Artist, Naturalist & Archaeologist, four illustrated lectures by Lee Young and John Wyatt, who are cataloguing Carter’s watercolours at the Griffith Institute and at The Egypt Exploration Society. 24 July, 11am-5pm, at the Old School Hall, Gresham’s Pre-Prep, Holt, Norfolk NR25 6BB. Tickets: £45 (including coffee, light lunch and tea). To book call 01263-711284. Egypt Through The Artist’s Eye, a free exhibition of paintings by various artists, including Howard Carter, David Roberts and Edward Lear, ancient artefacts, original film footage plus rare voice recordings of Howard Carter. 19-27 July, 11am-5pm, The Meeting Room, St Andrew’s Church, Holt, Norfolk.

Celebrating Carter

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1. Sandstone yogini, circa

AD 1000–1050. 86.4 x 43.8

x 24.8cm.San Antonio

Museum of Art.

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For many people, yoga is an activity that they have inte-grated into their lives for health reasons to help them

relax and as a form of exercise. In the last decades the interest in yoga has mushroomed. In the United States alone there are an estimated 20 million practitioners at various levels. But in its country of origin, India, yoga embraces an entire and ancient system whose key elements were based around controlling the mind by regulating the body, thereby transcending the suffer-ing inherent in life. There are many ways of depicting the perfect state, the so-called ‘yogic’ body.

Yoga: The Art of Transformation, the fascinating exhibition currently on show at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, has brought together over 100 exhibits including temple sculpture, devotional icons, illus-trated manuscripts, photographs, books and films – dating from the 3rd century BC to the early 20th century – to illustrate the long and detailed history of this intricate philosophy and its physical practice.

The exhibition is divided into three parts: the first covers the early history of yoga according to various religious traditions. These include Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Islam (Sufism) with Sikhism notable

by its absence. There are records that its founder Guru Nanak (1469-1539) had many dialogues with yoga practitioners but, in the end, he rejected its austerities, rites and rituals, whereas most other reli-gious traditions in India incorpo-rated them.

When yoga is mentioned in the Vedas, which were written in Sanskrit circa 2000-1000 BC, its literal meaning is ‘to attach’. It can refer to the yoking or harnessing of animals, as well as expressing broader meanings, such as ‘employ-ment’, ‘use’, ‘application’, ‘perfor-mance’ also ‘exertion’, ‘endeavour’,

‘zeal’ and ‘diligence’. But although words can convey the philosophical aspects of yoga, visual representa-tions are required to understand the physical side of its practice.

In fact yoga may have pre-Vedic origins as is evidenced in images on seals, dating to the mid-3rd millennium BC, from the Indus Valley civilisations of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro. Several seals are engraved with figures seated cross-legged on the ground, their arms outstretched in a position resem-bling a common yoga posture, or asana. Other seals bear images of standing figures in contemplative

The art oftransformationMurray Eiland is impressed by the many philosophies embraced, postures assumed and practices advocated in the first major exhibition to cover the art and practice of yoga

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2. Three Aspects of the Absolute (from Nath Charit), opaque watercolour, gold and tin alloy on paper, 1823. 47 x 123cm. Mehrangarh Museum Trust.

3. Terracotta tile showing emaciated ascetics, 5th century. 40.6 x 33.6 x 4.1cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

4. Marble jina, 1160. 59.69 x 48.26 x 21.59cm. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

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poses. Some scholars interpret these images in the light of later yogic practice; others suggest that because the textual evidence is from a much later date, it is unwise to stretch the evidence too far.

While there may never be cer-tainty regarding the origin of yoga, it seems that ascetic practices, such as meditation and physical postures used by Vedic priests before and during the ritual of fire sacrifice, may have influenced yoga.

Pre-philosophical speculations about yoga begin to emerge in texts dating from between 500 and 200 BC but it was not until between 200 BC and AD 500, when organised schools of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism were forming, that a coher-ent philosophical system known as yoga began to emerge. But many yogic groups from this period did not survive. One example is an influ-ential group of early ascetics called the Ajivikas (3), who were known for their intense austerity but who, unlike their contemporaries the Jains and Buddhists, left no written texts.

The most important written source for the philosophy of yoga is contained in the Yoga Sutras com-piled by Patanjali between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD. These 196 sutras, or aphorisms, constitute an important text for Brahmins.

Jains have their own literature on yoga and their own art, both of which differ from that of the Hindu tradition. The Jain faith is focused upon Jinas (victors) or Tirthankaras (humans who helps others to attain enlightenment).

The origins of Jainism are unclear; we do not even know who founded this religion. But what we do know though is that, during the 5th cen-tury BC, Vardhamana Mahavira became one of the most influential teachers of this faith. Parsva, his predecessor, is the first Jain figure for whose existence there is some historical evidence – he may have lived some time between the 9th and 7th centuries BC.

Due to the resurgence of Hinduism and the growth of Islam, however, this religion has been in decline since the 8th century AD in India, and there are estimated to be a little over four million follow-ers. Jinas are invariably represented meditating (4), thus providing a model for devotees. Various artis-tic conventions, such as a tendency towards symmetry and abstraction, make Jain art easily recognisable.

Yoginis, the female embodiments

of yogic power, are depicted in vari-ous different ways according to each religion. Hindu deities, for example, are often portrayed as flying god-desses. They can bestow powers upon humans, such as the ability to fly, or immortality. As their role is connected with power rather than transcendence, they are classed as Tantric. Yoginis often combine two aspects: the first, which is alluring, is that of a lithe, full-breasted, slim-waisted figure, while the second, less pleasant aspect portends danger – their smiles can reveal fangs, their foreheads can be furrowed in anger and their hair is often portrayed as wild and unkempt.

Many yoginis have four arms, sig-nifying their superhuman powers, and they are shown holding skull cups and exotic weapons. These figures are designed to be visually shocking – such as the yogini seated on an owl clutching a host of weap-ons and who inserts her fingers into her mouth to whistle (1). She would have been in a temple that would have housed 42, 64, 81 or 108 yogi-nis of similar size.

By the late 9th century AD, every-one from kings to commoners went to placate yoginis at special temples with open roofs, often located close to orthodox temples, and although Hindu kings had stopped construct-ing yogini temples by the 12th cen-tury, it was still thought that their assistance was needed in securing victory in battle – even Indo-Islamic sultans sought their protection.

The three main sects of Hinduism are devoted to the dei-ties Brahma, Vishnu and Siva. The last two are well represented throughout this exhi-bition but not Brahma, perhaps because he is found less often in a physical, than a writ-ten, form.

Vishnu, the supreme god of Vaishnavism, can appear in the guise of many differ-ent avatars, including a half-man / half-lion called Narasimha. Yet although in this form he represents divine anger, Narasimha is commonly depicted sitting calmly in a yogic posture (8).

In his role as the all-pervading essence


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5. Garbhasana (Persian) folio from the Bahr al-Hayat, or Ocean of Life, opaque watercolour on paper, 1600-1604. 22.7 x 13.9cm (folio), 10.6 x 7.8cm (painting). The Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.

6. Vishnu Vishvarupa, watercolour and gold on paper, circa 1800-1820. 38.5 x 28cm.Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

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Many of these present yogis prac-tising together in paradisiacal landscapes. However, in reality prac-titioners of yoga literally engaged in battle, sometimes for what appears to be quite trite reasons. During the 16th and 19th centuries, for example, bands of armed yogis often battled over bathing rights at sacred rivers.

Today it can still be a cause of con-troversy in certain Islamic countries. In 2008, for example, Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council’s chairman, Abdul Shukor Husin, stated that many Muslims fail to understand that yoga’s ultimate aim is to be one with the god of a religion that is not Islam. A year later, Turkey’s head of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, Ali Bardakoglu, discounted per-sonal development techniques such

as yoga, no doubt because he felt that they might undermine Islam.

The final part of the exhibi-tion covers how yoga was intro-duced to the West, starting in the 19th century. In 1851 NC Paul published his Treatise on Yoga Philosophy. Eastern mysticism greatly influenced New England Transcendentalists such as Emerson (1803-1882), who drew on German Romanticism. Authors, such as Hegel (1770-1831), Max Mueller (1823-1900), and Schopenhauer (1788-1860), were all fascinated by Eastern cultures. Thomas Edison’s film Hindoo Fakir (1902), the first American movie about India, which is being screened as part of the cur-rent exhibition, uses trick photography to convey the magical elements of yoga.

By the early 20th century, how-ever, scientific and medical inter-est was aroused as the health benefits of yoga were understood. The emphasis in yoga in the West was shifting at this point towards body- conditioning techniques, which fit-ted in well with the popular empha-sis on physical culture. By 1920, when Albrecht Jensen published his Massage and Exercise Combined, the general public was fascinated. WK Kellogg – he of breakfast cereal fame – heartily endorsed the book, which explored psycho-physiologi-cal methods of muscle control.

Yoga crossed the world, from East to the West, although over time Western yoga focused less on spiri-tual practice and incorporated more exercises designed to strengthen the body, so that today many health clubs offer yoga classes. Nevertheless it is surprising that this is the world’s first major art exhibi-tion about the subject. Given the public response, there is no doubt it will not be the last. n

• Yoga: The Art of Transformation is on show at the Cleveland Museum of Art (www.clevelandart.org) until 7 September.

of all beings, and the Lord of Time, ruler of the past, present and future, Vishnu can also be depicted as a cos-mic figure (6). In many Vaishnavite temples only lifelong celibates may serve as priests.

On the other hand, Shiva, the supreme god of Shaivism, can be depicted as Bhairava (Sanskrit for ‘horrific’) and his devotees are often shown imitating him by inhabiting cremation grounds, carrying skull cups and smearing their bodies with ashes. Skulls, representing a cele-bration of death, are often seen in these sculptures.

The second part of the exhibition covers the places where yogic prac-tices took place, including monas-teries and along pilgrimage routes. Many of the objects in this gal-lery were commissioned by Islamic rulers. It is significant that while most scholars do not suggest that Sufism and yogic practices from India share a common origin, there was clearly considerable cross- cultural exchange. Several yoga manuscripts were translated into Arabic and Persian from the 11th century onwards, although what results is not a synthesis but rather a juxtaposition of different prac-tices. The exhibition includes 10 folios from the earliest known treatise to systematically illustrate yoga postures (5).

It also includes a treasure trove of other illuminated pages.

7. The Chakras of the Subtle Body, from the Siddha Siddhanta Paddhati by Bulaki, opaque watercolour and gold on paper, 1824. 122 x 46cm. Mehrangarh Museum Trust.

8. Yoga Narasimha (Vishu in the form of his half-lion/half-man avatar), bronze, circa 1250. H. 55.2cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

9. Group of yogis, albumen print, Colin Murray for Bourne & Shepherd, circa 1880s. 22.2 x 29.2cm. Collection of Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck.

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If you have ever thought of vis-iting Mongolia, midsummer is the time to go. The winters are brutal. You still get snow

in May and September. But in sum-mer, the grass is high and the sheep are as sleek as the horses. We are talking about the countryside, of course, away from the smog and high-rise buildings of the capital, Ulaanbaatar. Out in the grasslands lies old Mongolia, an adventure-tourist’s playground of vast land-scapes, no fences, scattered tents and no roads to speak of, except that the whole country is an open road – well, a series of tracks. You

follow the paths of others, or you make your own.

Each July (this year from the 11th to the 13th) you can see Mongolia at its most exotic, because that is when Naadam, the country’s national festival, is celebrated. In every area events are held: traditional wrestling, archery contests and long-distance horse racing, in which the jockeys are children, riding bare-back for 25 kilometres.

A few years ago, I needed to go outside Mongolia’s summer play-ground, because I was researching the key to much of Asian history: namely, Genghis Khan. Starting in

the late 12th century as a nobody – his father was murdered and his mother and her six children were cast out by the clan and hunted by rivals – he not only survived but turned into a leader of genius, driven to build a social network that would never, ever let him down. The result was first a nation – Mongolia pretty much as it is today – and then something completely new.

United under Genghis and lured by loot galore, the Mongols exploded outwards, across the Gobi, into north China, then westwards into the world of Islam. His leader-ship and political unity gave them a

Genghis Khan

In the footsteps of

John Man goes in search of the grave of the infamous founder of the mighty Mongol Empire

1. Close-up of the head of the gigantic equestrian statue of Genghis Khan that overlooks the grasslands to the east of Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia. It exemplifies his status as the nation’s founder and hero.

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superb army. But also the time was just right: a few decades later, gun-powder would have stopped them. As it was, once they had taken the first major city (Beijing, as it hap-pens, in 1215), hostages, turncoats, enslaved populations and citified siege weapons turned the Mongol army into a juggernaut. Tribes, cul-tures and khanships tumbled. All China fell to Genghis’ grandson, Kublai Khan – he of Xanadu and Coleridge’s ‘stately pleasure dome’.

A century after the birth of Genghis, his family ruled the world’s greatest land empire, which was, would you believe, one sixth of

all the land on Earth. A major fac-tor in their success was an ideology – that Heaven had given the world to the Mongols, for ever. Since they had no idea of the world’s size or complexity, Genghis and his fam-ily could believe that it was their divinely ordained duty to make everyone else on Earth accept this astonishing fact.

It was Kublai’s misfortune to dis-cover that the idea was crazy. The Empire’s sub-rulers bickered, went native, and fought their way to col-lapse. By the late 14th century, it was all over. Well, almost. Genghis survives in folklore as a monster,

a hero, even a saint (yes, he’s wor-shipped by some). Local khans in the Crimea were still claiming to rule in the name of Genghis under the Russians in the 19th century. And today’s China owes its bor-ders not to a Chinese ruler, but to a Mongol – Kublai – who declared himself a Chinese emperor.

This huge canvas has several holes in it, mainly to do with Genghis, which was why I went stalking him. One problem was where he died – in north China, in 1227, on the verge of destroying a recalcitrant empire called Western Xia, which at the time was very much not part

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2. Blue Lake, Khentii, where, according to tradition, a young man named Temujin was given a new title, Genghis Khan.

3. Beside the Blue Lake stands an iconic portrait of Genghis on a slab of rock, which records his elevation in the ‘Heaven-sent year 1189’. The carved wooden pillars behind portray his heirs – all 34 of them.

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of China. He fell ill, from typhus probably, and died somewhere in the Liu Pan mountains. His gener-als and family faced a problem: if the news got out, all would be lost. So his death remained a state secret. The campaign went on, followed by victory and terrible destruction: Western Xia – its Tangut people, its rich Buddhist culture – almost van-ished. Outside Yinchuan, you can see remnants of it: imperial tombs stripped of their tiled roofs, look-ing like the nose cones of battered rockets.

And then what? More secrecy. Genghis’ body was spirited back across the Gobi to his homeland in northern Mongolia, to the Khentii mountains, where he had spent his youth and unified the tribes. Here, somewhere, he was buried.

And so we come to one of the great unsolved mysteries of archae-ology and history, with implications for today and tomorrow. Genghis was more than just a Mongol ruler and founder of his nation. His grandson, Kublai, having reinvented

himself as emperor of China’s Yuan Dynasty, declared Genghis as the Yuan’s founder, which, in Chinese eyes, makes Genghis also a Chinese ruler. Mongolia, independent for almost a century, was once part of the Yuan – that is, Mongol – empire. Imagine the claims and counter-claims should his grave be found.

What might his tomb contain? Tomb-raiders like to assume he was an Asian Tutankhamun, or a match for China’s First Emperor, Terracotta Army and all. On the other hand, Genghis liked to por-tray himself as a simple nomad. ‘Heaven has wearied of the sentiments of arrogance and lux-ury,’ he proclaimed. ‘I return to

simplicity. I have the same rags and the same food as the cowherd or the groom.’ Would his heirs have ignored his implied will? More likely, they would have kept the burial quick and simple.

I went looking, not in the hope of finding his tomb, but of some-how engaging with the mystery. The obvious place to start is a moun-tain on which Genghis had many life-saving adventures, which he said he and his offspring would worship for ever. In the sources – Mongol, Chinese, Persian – it is called Burkhan (Holy) Khaldun. Mongolians believe – they would say they know – that this mountain is the one that is now called Khentii


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4. An ovoo, or rock shrine, halfway up Kentii Khan, with the distant summit in the background.

5. This patch of stones (one of many) looks like a grave and led researchers to assume Genghis is buried on the mountain. In fact they are natural formations concealing nothing but peat.

6. The grass plains of Mongolia stretch as far as the eye can see.

7. The author resting in front of the Western Xia imperial tombs in Ningxia, northern China.

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Khan, and that Genghis is buried on it. Many Mongolians go up it reg-ularly, with an official government trip every four years.

This pilgrimage to the mountain is to find the spirit of Genghis, not his tomb. But where might the tomb be? And what might it contain? The few sources are not much help. The Mongol ‘foundation epic’, The Secret History of the Mongols, says only that its hero ‘ascended to Heaven’. Chinese sources are lit-tle better. Two envoys visited what they thought was the site within 10 years of his death, but did not identify the place. Horses had been driven over it to disguise the spot; and anyway they were not allowed

past a line of guards and guard-posts that were set well away from the grave.

Time for some ground truth, as archaeologists say. Only some 200 kilometres from Ulaanbaatar, Khentii Khan is easy to get to for Mongolian horsemen with time to spare, not so easy for impatient for-eigners in 4x4s. It is in the notori-ously inaccessible Khentii National Park, and visitors need permission.

This is the domain of deer, moose, bear and wolf, the same species that inhabit the Siberian taiga stretching away northwards. To get there you must travel down a rough 48-kilo-metre approach track, and negotiate several peat bogs, a steep ridge and

a river. Whether you arrive there or not all depends on the weather and the state of the bogs. The closer you get, the greater the problems, the main one being that there is no certainty that Khentii Khan is in fact Burkhan Khaldun. Names shift with time. Today’s mountain does not fit with details in The Secret History. Perhaps Burkhan Khaldun was a dif-ferent mountain, or a whole range, or one of many, each claimed by a different clan. No one really knows. They just think that they do.

There is evidence, of a sort, for belief. Firstly, on the lower flanks of Khentii Khan is the site of a temple, possibly built by Genghis’ great-great-grandson, Kamala, who was in charge of the tomb. Secondly, collections of stones on the middle slopes look like graves, suggest-ing that this is a cemetery not only for Genghis, but for some of his heirs as well. As one of the greatest Mongolists, Igor de Rachewiltz, of

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‘United under Genghis and lured by loot galore, the Mongols exploded outwards, across the Gobi, into north China, then westwards into the world of Islam’

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8. The Mausoleum of Genghis Khan in Inner Mongolia (part of China) holds Buddhist and shamanistic rites in his honour.

9. An enormous (40-metre) steel statue of Genghis Khan on horseback stands to the east of Ulaanbaatar. A stairway leads up the horse’s mane to a viewing platform where visitors can survey his homeland.

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the Australian National University, wrote to me about his own climb: it is ‘plausible, and indeed most likely [that] here… the Mongol emperors lie buried’. Thirdly, a vast mound of stones on the mountain’s sum-mit looks like an enormous ovoo, as Mongolians call the rock shrines that mark high places. One scientific paper actually calls it ‘an ancient tomb… [which] may be the tomb of Genghis Khan’.

Yet all of this ‘evidence’ evapo-rates on close inspection, as I have seen in three expeditions to the mountain. In theory, it’s only three hours to the top, up a trail through fir forest, out over bare uplands to the bald summit. Like many sacred mountains, Khentii Khan is not a tough climb for fit pilgrims – if the weather is good. If.

My first attempt was a disaster. I was with an overweight ex-tank commander named Tumen (which means ‘Ten Thousand’). It was the first time on the mountain for both of us. We took a wrong valley (my fault), got lost, turned back, and had another go, only to be stymied by fog. The second time was with a film crew and we ran out of time halfway up.

Finally, in 2009, when I was lead-ing a small group of adventure tour-ists, we made it to the top, though briefly, because the weather closed in and I hardly had time to take in what was on top of the rock-mound – a fine ovoo, complete with a Genghisid horse-tail war-banner,

and countless minor ovoos. But each attempt produced its own discovery. I gathered some tiles from the tem-ple-site, and had them dated: they were probably made between 1400 and 1700, too late to be anything to do with the heirs of Genghis.

The ‘graves’ are not graves. I had assumed as much, after a lit-tle research into cold-climate geol-ogy, but to prove it I had to dig up a couple. What if I was wrong, and found bones? In minutes, though, apprehension vanished: beneath the stones there was nothing but peat. The ‘graves’ are all stony circles, as geologists call them, made by rain, frost and time acting on streams of stones moving downhill immeasur-ably slowly.

The stones all come from the top – a dome of rocks so regular that it looks artificial. Measuring 250 x 200 x 30 metres, it weighs about 630,000 tonnes. A time-and-motion study suggested that, in theory at least, it could have been built in a year by 2,000 men with a good supply of ox-wagons. But it makes no sense. How would they be supplied? Where would they live? Anyway, Mongols did not build mounds for royal graves, and the sources speak only of a secret grave. It is inconceivable that

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such a vast and visible project should have left no traces in official histo-ries, literature or folklore, or on the actual earth itself.

The clinching argument comes from geology, which suggests a far better explanation. Go back in time, when there was a tor-like peak, cov-ered with ice several times in the last 50,000 years. Ice breaks down rock. Some 13,000 years ago, the last ice-cap dropped its rocky detritus to form the vast, neat oval, much as it is today, except that cold, ice, melt-water and rains continued to eat it away, breaking the rocks and carry-ing them downhill in slow-motion streams. Men could have built it up. But they didn’t. Ice broke it down.

I climbed the mountain in search of some sort of enlightenment, and found it, after a fashion. I’m pretty sure Genghis is not up there. It seems likely that the worship of the mountain and the tales of the tomb developed when Buddhism came, long after the great khan’s time. So, the mystery of the tomb remains.

This is no great surprise, though, as if the khan’s family, the masters of half Eurasia, wished the loca-tion of their hero’s grave to be kept secret, the chances are that they could have arranged it. n

• The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan, His Heirs and the Founding of Modern China by John Man is published in hardback by Transworld at

£19.99 but readers of Minerva can buy it for the special price of £17 (including free p&p in the UK and Northern Ireland). To order a copy please call 01206-255800 and quote the reference ‘MINERVA’.

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10. On the summit of Kentii Khan is an ovoo (rock shrine) crowned with a copy of the horsehair war standard of Genghis Khan, Buddhist prayer-sheets and silk scarves.

11. Travelling across Mongolia presents few logistical problems that cannot be solved.

12. A local herdsman relaxes on his bed inside his ger or tent.

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‘Genghis survives in folklore as a monster, a hero, even a saint (yes, he’s worshipped by some)’

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Dan Snow is standing, flanked by soldiers in camouflage, on a wide expanse of heathland at Browndown, near Gosport in

Hampshire. He, for one, is thrilled by the discovery that this place was once a First World War practice battlefield.

‘Much of the archaeology relating to the War is overseas and people think it was happening somewhere else, but it was happening right here,’ he declares, gestur-ing to the land around, scarred by ditches and carpeted in yellow gorse. ‘This is a very faithful re-creation of the trench systems found on the Western Front. The troops would have been engaged in mock conflicts here. For young men, it must have been daunting. It’s vital evidence of the intensive training they received – they weren’t simply given a rifle and sent into the maelstrom.’

Little is known yet about the history of this site, which was only identified as a training ground in October 2013. It was Rob Harper, Conservation Officer at Gosport Council, who made the discovery while he was scour-ing an aerial photograph of the area, taken in 1951, looking for Second World War pill-boxes. Harper noticed there was a pattern to the ditches not evident at ground level and soon realised, with some excitement, that he was looking at a trench system.

This large site (the size of 17 football

pitches) greatly expands our knowledge of how British troops were prepared for the Front. As Snow says: ‘There are few coher-ent First World War trench-style practice grounds in the country and what remains now are mostly only fragments of the original sites. This one appears to be not only the most complete but the most extensive: there are two sets of Front Line trenches, support lines, communication trenches and a no-man’s-land in between. It’s close to the real thing.’

The centenary of the outbreak of the First World War falls on 28 July, so the identifi-cation of this practice battlefield could not have come at a better time. Earlier this year the Council for British Archaeology (CBA), together with English Heritage, launched The Home Front Legacy 1914-18 campaign with the aim of unearthing and recording the physical remains of the First World War on home ground. People around the country are encouraged to join in and do their bit.

Volunteers can access an online record-ing tool-kit from the CBA’s website, includ-ing an app on which they can record their observations and finds on a tablet or mobile phone. These will then be uploaded on to a map that everyone can access and form part of the CBA’s records. Individual research can also be aided by the English Heritage website, which provides information on

buildings and sites associated with the war. Snow is optimistic about the project:

‘We’re hoping it will change the way people collect and share information about our country’s physical past. It’s a really ambitious, really well-built platform that will enable us to harness all our knowledge and help us preserve the results for ever.

‘Now we can all be archaeologists. When you’re out walking the dog you can also be observing things, making notes and taking pictures. People’s findings can then be for-warded to the CBA. Material will then be sent to local record offices and can be used to protect historic sites.’

He hopes that more sites like Browndown Training Camp (which is still occasionally used by the Ministry of Defence today) will be found and believes the public may be both surprised and moved by such discoveries.

‘So much effort is concentrated on the First World War sites in France and Belgium, and there has been little archaeological work on the conflict here at home. But what has been found at Gosport is a powerful reminder of the energy being expended here at the time.’

As he points out, vital preparations were being made all over the country: ‘This island was at war. Shells and rifles were being manu-factured. A million horses were being sent to the Front. When this ground was created this part of the country would have been teeming

Your country needs you!The historian, television presenter and President of the Council for British Archaeology, Dan Snow explains to Diana Bentley how everyone in Britain can help record the archaeology of the First World War in this, the centennial year of the ‘Great Conflict’


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with activity. Many troops were trained here and there was also a fear of German inva-sion, so it made sense to have them in this area.’

The centenary of the First World War this year presents a unique opportunity to recover our history, says Snow. ‘Some great con-flicts, like the Napoleonic Wars, have faded from personal memory. But now we have the chance to preserve personal accounts and stories of the First World War like never before. We still have a direct link to what occurred then and we need to preserve every-thing from the time to learn from it. This is the idea behind the Home Front project. We’re saying to people, “Get out there. We need your help!” We have the next four years to work on the project.’

Snow, who went on digs with the CBA when he was a student, was delighted to be asked to become its President. ‘It was a great honour to be approached by the CBA to do this and I leapt at the chance,’ he tells me.

Founded in 1944, the CBA is an edu-cational charity dedicated to promot-ing knowledge about archaeology and safeguarding the nation’s archaeological heritage. This is achieved through initiatives such as The Home Front Legacy 1914-18 project, the publication of an impres-sive array of books, and national forums. It has 70 branches nationwide. During July the CBA holds its annual Festival of Archaeology featuring more than 1,000 events, ranging from excavations, open days, guided walks and lectures.

Securing Dan Snow as their President seems to have been a particularly canny achievement. The writer and presenter of a range of television programmes on historical subjects, especially battlefields, and the author of numerous books, he is widely known and respected as someone with a compelling passion for archaeology.

Raised in London, Snow was infused with a keen sense of history from both par-ents. His father is the veteran broadcaster,

journalist and historian Peter Snow, and his mother, Ann MacMillan, recently retired as Managing Editor of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s London Bureau. One of his great-great-grandfathers was Lloyd George, Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922, and one of his great-grandfathers was Thomas D’Oyly Snow, a British general who served on the Western Front in the First World War.

Asked when history first fired his imagi-nation, Snow recalls: ‘The past was every-where in our lives. My grandparents, parents and the rest of my family talked and thought about our history all the time. It was inextri-cably linked with where we were and why we were there. Weekends were spent at castles, battlefields and museums. Stories around the dinner table were of gramp’s wartime experi-ences. We couldn’t escape the past – and we didn’t want to.’

Snow went on to read modern history at Oxford and, a keen sportsman, he rowed twice in the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. He arrived on our television screens in 2002, shortly after he graduated, initially co-presenting programmes on military history with his father.

Later he branched out on his own, gain-ing acclaim as the presenter and writer of programmes such as Hadrian, Empire of the Seas: How the Navy Forged the Modern World, Rome’s Lost Empire and China’s Terracotta Army.

In his television programmes Snow has covered a wide array of subjects including ancient and modern history and both mili-tary and social history. Military history, how-ever, remains a constant source of interest. Snow insists that many of our historic mili-tary sites, battlefields in particular, retain a potent individual atmosphere and that they are open to further study and interpretation.

‘Culloden is always fascinating, thanks to its mythical status and the emotions it still stirs. The trenches of Northern Italy are appalling in their extremity, and the jungles

of Vietnam are very resonant of what went on there. The Civil War battlefield of Naseby is intriguing because archaeologists have recently rewritten the book of what hap-pened there,’ he notes.

Snow has had plenty of exciting moments in his work but believes that the most dra-matic digs tend to be Second World War excavations, because there is still so much left to find. Technology is aiding dramatic new discoveries too. Working with Sarah Parcak, Space Archaeologist and Egyptologist from the University of Alabama, on one of her remote sensing projects for the television documentary Rome’s Lost Empire was elec-trifying he recalls: ‘I was there when Sarah found the remains of the Roman lighthouse at Portus. That was quite amazing.’

It is surprising to hear that his first love is the 18th century – although it is not a period he has had much opportunity to explore. ‘It can be a struggle to get broadcasters to let me work on that as much as I’d like,’ he admits.

Far from being a subject that only appeals to an elite, Snow insists that, nowadays, history is extremely popular. ‘You can see a massive interest in the past when you look at the number of people that visit heritage properties and museums – millions of us. I think the interest is always out there, perhaps latent. But now the web allows us to pump a bit of oxygen into those embers.’

Meanwhile, when not in use by the MoD, the Browndown Training Camp is a popular place for locals to walk their dogs and get some fresh air. If you stand still and take in the network of trenches, knowing that they were once occupied by young men destined for the Front, the ‘Great Conflict’ becomes eerily present. ‘There seems to be nothing in the records about this ground being used during the First World War,’ says Snow, looking about. ‘But then the site hasn’t been surveyed yet. It will be properly investigated, of course, then hopefully protected.’

The CBA and its members are doing all they can to discover, monitor and collate more of our historical heritage, Snow tells me, and he hopes that the techniques used in The Home Front Legacy 1914-18 project will be applied to all periods of our history.

‘We’ve got the opportunity to pass on a broader legacy of our history to future generations – this could be a game-changer,’ he says, standing in the place where many young men spent their final days on home ground before going off to fight in a war from which they never returned. n

• For more about The Home Front Legacy 1914-18 project and how you can take part visit these websites: www.homefrontlegacy.org.uk/wp/ or www.english-heritage.org.uk/caring/first-world-war-home-front/. • The CBA’s Festival of Archaeology runs throughout the UK from 12 to 27 July; visit www.archaeology.uk.org for further details.

Interview


‘Now we can all be archaeologists. When you’re out walking the dog you can also be observing things, making notes and taking pictures.’

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Born in 1860 into a wealthy banking family in Cologne, Max Freiherr von Oppenheim could have fol-

lowed a predictable path by suc-ceeding his father in the family business. Instead he chose to pursue a passion he had developed as a boy after reading tales from the Arabian Nights, a passion for what was then called the Orient, or the Near East.

By the middle of the 19th century the Orient had become a potent magnet for European aspirations, fantasies and desires, symbolis-ing everything exotic, sensual and adventurous – a refreshing change from the stiff etiquette and rigorous

moral restraint of European society. Oppenheim was one of those

drawn inexorably to the East and, by 1896, he was living in Cairo. As an attaché to the German con-sulate-general he pursued a diplo-matic career, gathering information and reporting back to the Reich Chancellery. But, at the same time, he followed his Arabian dream by going native and mingling with local people, ranging from high-ranking clerics and Arabian princes to Bedouin tribesmen. In other words he enjoyed the best of both worlds. By this time he had trav-elled extensively throughout North Africa and the Near East, published

his observations and experiences in several volumes and was regarded as an expert in the region. Being fluent in Arabic and genuinely interested in the local point of view, he also met supporters of the pan-Islamic movement, which aroused the sus-picion of both British and French representatives and earned him the reputation of being ‘the Kaiser’s spy’. In fact the German Foreign Office was obliged to withdraw him from a mission in which he was sup-posed to find the best route for the Aleppo–Mosul leg of the Baghdad railway in order to avoid an inter-national incident. However, as his caravan was already organised and

The lure of theOrient

Ulrike Dubiel tells the tale of Baron Max von Oppenheim and his discovery of Tell Halaf, the subject of an exhibition she curated that is on show at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn

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1. Composite picture showing Max von Oppenheim in Oriental costume in front of a plaster replica of the façade of the Western Palace with Tell Halaf in the background. © Max Freiherr von Oppenheim Foundation Archives, Sal. Oppenheim Jr & Cie, Cologne, and a photograph from G Mirsch © Tell Halaf Excavation Project of the Vorderasiatisches Museum, VAM, SMB – Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

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Minerva July/August 2014 45

OrientUlrike Dubiel tells the tale of Baron Max von Oppenheim and his discovery of Tell Halaf, the subject of an exhibition she curated that is on show at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn

ready to set off, Oppenheim decided to embark on the journey anyway – not as an official German envoy, but as a private explorer – little know-ing that this would lead him to the pivotal point in his life: the discov-ery of Tell Halaf.

Travelling through Upper Mesopotamia, he encountered a group of Bedouins near Ras el-‘Ain (in today’s Syria) who aroused his curiosity when they told him about some terrifying stone sculptures they had found while digging a grave. The place turned out to be an old settlement mound called Tell Halaf and, though he lacked an excava-tion licence, Oppenheim decided to have several test trenches dug. Just beneath the surface were a number of monumental relief slabs and stat-ues; although mesmerised by their archaic style, he could not attribute them to any culture or period. On his way back home he arranged with

the Ottoman authorities to have the site reserved for future excavations, yet despite these extraordinary finds, he did not return to Tell Halaf until 1911. By then he had finally recognised that his diplomatic ambi-tions would never be fully realised, as there was prejudice against him because of his Jewish background. So, at the age of 50, he reinvented himself and from then on commit-ted all his professional efforts and financial means to the exploration of Tell Halaf.

Oppenheim’s first archaeologi-cal campaign, which lasted until late 1913, revealed the remains of ancient Guzana, capital of the Aramaean kingdom of Bit Bahiani, dating from the early 1st millen-nium BC. His excavation focused mostly on the citadel, but the lower town, with residential architecture and workshops, was only selectively investigated. The test trenches from

1899 had exposed the entrance area of a complex later named the ‘Western Palace’.

Its ground plan shows that it cor-responds to an architectural type that Assyrian sources call a bit hilani, a large structure accessed from a forecourt by a broad flight of stairs leading to a columned entrance and a sequence of broad rooms. The entrance was set in a niche lined with large-sized basalt panels depicting lions, mythologi-cal creatures and hunting scenes. Three columns once supported the entrance of which the bases, in the shape of a lion, a bull and a lion-ess, were found in situ as well as two flanking sphinxes. The back and side walls of the Western Palace were embellished with a frieze of smaller relief slabs alternating dark basalt and red-dyed limestone. The excavators unearthed about 180 orthostats (stone slabs set at

2. Max von Oppenheim working in his travel tent, Jebelet el-Beda, Syria, 1929.

3. A room in Max von Oppenheim’s house in Cairo decorated in the ‘Oriental style’, circa 1900.

4. Max von Oppenheim on his horse, Ubaijan, Syria, in 1899.

5. A local workman squats by a statue of a seated woman as it emerges from the ground at Tell Halaf on 12 March 1912. Oppenheim was so fond of this statue that his workmen dubbed it his ‘bride’.

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the base of a wall) of an estimated 250 original pieces, showing a wide array of motifs including flora and fauna, humans, hybrids and gods.

In later times, when Bit Bahiani no longer existed as an Aramaean kingdom but had become a prov-ince of the Assyrian Empire, Guzana was the residence of an Assyrian governor who had his official seat in the Northeast Palace, also situated in the citadel. In close proximity to the citadel gate the archaeolo-gists discovered several tombs, one of which contained a larger-than-lifesize sculpture of a seated woman. Oppenheim grew so partic-ularly fond of her that his workmen dubbed her ‘his bride’.

Another remarkable find was an architectural structure thought to be a ‘cult room’, a place for ances-tor worship with an altar-like instal-lation, in which sculpture and small objects, such as cylinder seals and beads, were found. In the deeper trenches the excavators found sherds of fine handmade painted pottery with polychrome decora-tion that proved to be Neolithic, from the 6th and 5th millenium BC; Halaf is the name given to this hitherto unknown Neolithic culture.

Equipped with state-of-the-art technology, self-financed and independent of any institution, Oppenheim’s archaeological ven-ture generated resentment among his contemporaries. German expe-ditions to Babylon and Assur, com-missioned by the Museum of the Ancient Near East in Berlin and funded by the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft (German Orient Society – known as DOG) were directed by trained archaeologists and archi-tects, whereas Oppenheim was deemed an amateur. Nevertheless his excavation produced a plethora

of monumental sculptures, while neither those at Babylon nor Assur yielded the quantities of artworks the museum executives expected. Around the same time a British team, including Leonard Woolley and the young TE Lawrence (later known as Lawrence of Arabia), excavated a neo-Hittite residence at Carchemish. By now the inter-national rivalry to explore the most promising archaeological mound and claim the most exciting finds had reached Upper Mesopotamia.

It was late in 1913 when Oppenheim’s excavation came to a halt and, during the First World War, archaeological excavation

throughout the Near East ceased. An ardent patriot, just like Woolley, Lawrence and many other archae-ologists, Oppenheim was willing to use his expert knowledge of the region to help his country’s cause. As it turned out, his strategy to initiate a Muslim insurrection against British, French and Russian colonial rule by means of propa-ganda failed, whereas the British effort in connection with the Arab Revolt proved decisive in the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

It was not until 1927, after Germany had joined the League of Nations, that he could finally return to Syria. At Tell Halaf he found his expedition house in ruins, destroyed during heavy fighting between French and Turkish forces, and the ancient sculpture exposed and van-dalised. Still, he was able to arrange a division of finds with the admin-istration of the French Mandate, which granted him about two-thirds of all objects. For the pieces that were to remain in Syria, he set up a small museum in Aleppo that would eventually become the National Museum.

It had always been Oppenheim’s aspiration to see his archaeological collection exhibited in the stately Pergamon Museum in the cen-tre of Berlin. But his negotiations with the authorities failed as his proposed endowment came with a price tag. By this time, due to the economic crisis and hyperinfla-tion, Oppenheim had lost all of his

Exhibition

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6. The archaeologist and his ‘bride’, an ancestor statue, in the Tell Halaf Museum, Berlin, c1930.

7. Basalt lion panel from the Western Palace, Tell Halaf, 10th-9th century BC. 150 x 193 x 23cm. Photo: Jirka Jansch. © Max Freiherr von Oppenheim Foundation, Cologne at the Vorderasiatisches Museum Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz

8. Basalt sculpture of couple from the Cult Room, Tell Halaf, early 9th century BC. 81 x 94 x 45cm. Photo: Olaf Tessmer.

9. This plaster replica of an eagle impressed Samuel Beckett when he saw it in the Tell Halaf Museum.

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as ‘superbly daemonic, sinister and implaca-ble’. Agatha Christie, on the other hand, was thoroughly bored by a visit that she describes in her memoirs. While her archae-ologist husband Max Mallowan and Oppenheim engaged in a long discussion about chronology, she exam-ined with ‘lack-lustre eyes… the various extremely ugly statues’. All she wished for, she said, was to find somewhere to sit down.

In November 1943 the Tell Halaf Museum received a direct hit during an air-raid. An incendiary bomb set the building ablaze and all the objects made of limestone or wood were destroyed by fire and, when cold water was used in an attempt to extinguish the flames, the basalt sculptures suffered a thermal shock and exploded into thou-sands of pieces.

Luckily, Oppenheim never saw the devastation with his own eyes – he had already been bombed out of his Berlin apartment and had moved to Dresden. He therefore contacted Walter Andrae, Director of the Museum of the Ancient Near East, and begged him to organise a rescue mis-sion. Andrae obliged and over the following months the fragments were salvaged

from the debris and brought to the Pergamon Museum.

Oppenheim died in 1946 with his life’s work lying in ruins, yet despite this he never stopped believing that one day his stone sculptures would be reassembled. In the years follow-ing his death the remains of the Tell Halaf statuary were held in limbo

since the Max von Oppenheim Foundation was based in

West Germany, while the basalt frag-ments were stored in the basement

of the Pergamon Museum in East Germany.

There, they were con-sidered to be ‘foreign property’, while in the West the collec-tion was regarded as a total war loss. It

was not until German Reunification in 1990 that

conditions allowed a fresh approach to this unique archaeological material.

In 1999 the Museum Island Master Plan, delineating the ren-ovation and reor-ganisation of the

museums in the for-mer East Berlin, was drawn up. It included the

idea of reconstructing the entrance façade of the Western Palace from Tell Halaf as the entryway to the Museum of the Ancient Near

Exhibition

personal assets and depended on credit and financial support from his family. Still, he followed his motto, ‘Head high! Chin up! Keep smiling!’ and managed to reach his life’s achievement by setting up the Oriental Research Institute in 1922 and, in 1929, the Max Freiherr von Oppenheim Foundation.

The Technical University offered him the premises of a former iron foundry to house his archaeo-logical collection. So he opened his private Tell Halaf Museum in Berlin-Charlottenburg on 15 July 1930, his 70th birthday. But he always regretted that his wonder-ful finds were displayed in such an industrial environment and referred to the museum as ‘a violet that flourishes in obscurity’.

His museological concept was remarkably modern: he presented the original sculptures in one room as individual pieces of art com-plemented by plaster replicas as ‘visual aids’ if required because of their state of preservation. A sec-ond room was dedicated to true-to-scale architectural reconstructions of both the back and the entrance façade of the Western Palace, with plaster replicas showing the sculp-tures in their functional context as architectural decoration. Both the restoration of the artworks and the production of the plaster casts were realised by a Russian artist called Igor von Jakimow (1885-1962).

Stunning in its archaic vigour yet strangely modern in its Cubist execu-tion, the ancient sculpture attracted an illustrious audience, includ-ing artists such as Max Beckmann and Emil Nolde, while author and playwright Samuel Beckett described the statue of an eagle

10. Basalt sculpture of an eagle (Oppenheim called it ‘dickybird’), Tell Halaf, Syria, 10th-9th century BC. 184 x 70 x 70cm. Photo: Olaf Tessmer. © Vorderasiastisches Museum Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

11. Stone tripod bowl, Tell Halaf, early 1st millennium BC. H. 12cm. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

12. Reconstruction of the entrance façade of the Western Palace, Tell Halaf Museum, Berlin, 1930s.

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East that, today, forms part of the Pergamon Museum. With financial support from the German Research Foundation and the foundations of the Cologne-based bank Sal. Oppenheim Jr & Cie, the Museum of the Ancient Near East embarked on the biggest restoration proj-ect since the reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate and Processional Way from Babylon.

In 2001 a small, but extremely efficient, team of archaeologists and specialist restorers set out to under-take the task. Nobody had ever attempted to piece together a three-dimensional balsalt jigsaw puzzle with 27,000 parts. First of all the fragments were spread out on 300 wooden pallets in a huge ware-house, then they were cleaned, stud-ied and sorted over and over again until they could be assigned to their original object.

Max von Oppenheim’s exten-sive photographic documentation proved essential in the identifica-tion process. Arranged into bigger segments, with the help of straps and hot glue, joined-up fragments were handed over to the restorers who had to piece together an enor-mous number of basalt bits while avoiding bonding seams. The larger sculptures each consist of roughly 1,000 fragments. Another challenge for both restorers and archaeolo-gists was to assess the shape of lost sections, at times a lengthy process achieved by art-historical compari-sons as well as trial and error. In the end the results far exceeded expec-tations and, in nine years, more than 30 sculptures and architectural

elements were reclaimed from 80 cubic metres of basalt rubble.

While Max von Oppenheim’s leg-acy is now being celebrated in a large exhibition at the Bundeskunstalle, the cycle of creation and destruction, of recollection and oblivion contin-ues. The tragedy that is unfolding in Syria, with the annihilation of both people and cultural heritage, leaves us aghast. According to the latest reports the exhibition halls of the National Museum in Aleppo are

empty and the exhibits have been put into store. For the sculptures from Tell Halaf it seems that the last chapter in their history of destruc-tion has not been written yet. n

• An Oriental Adventure: Max von Oppenheim and the Discovery of Tell Halaf is on show at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn (www.bundeskunsthalle.de/) until 10 August.

Exhibition

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13. Sorting hall of the Tell Halaf Restoration Project, showing the thousands of pieces of basalt on wooden pallets waiting to be reassembled into sulpture. Photo: Stefan Geismeier. © Vorderasiatisches Museum Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

14. Portrait of Max von Oppenheim by Egon Josef Kossuth, 1927. Photo: David Ertl.© Max Freiherr von Oppenheim Foundation at the Rautenstrauch Joest Museum, Cologne.

15. Walls of sandbags protect the National Museum of Aleppo’s entrance, June 2013.

All images (unless otherwise marked) © Max Freiherr von Oppenheim Foundation Archives, Sal. Oppenheim Jr & Cie, Cologne.

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m a rt i n r a n d a l l t r av e l

Archaeology around the World, brought to life by experts.Martin Randall Travel has a wider range of cultural tours and events than any other specialist. Among them are around fifty itineraries which feature some of the outstanding archaeological sites in the world, in Britain and Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, India, China and the Americas.At the heart of each tour is the expert lecturer, chosen for his or her depth of knowledge, and passion to inspire and enlighten.

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Lands of the MayaMexico & Guatemala

26 January–11 February 2015 with Professor Norman Hammond

Jordan Revisited12–21 April 2015 with Jane Taylor

Walking Hadrian’s Wall7–13 September 2014, 11–17 May 2015 & 6–12 September 2015 with Graeme Stobbs

Athens & Rome3–10 October 2015 with Professor Roger Wilson

Cliff Dwellings & Canyonsin the American South West

10–21 October 2015 with John M. Fritz

Roman Algeria13–21 October 2014 & 2–10 November 2015 with Barnaby Rogerson 29 October–6 November 2014 & 5–13 October 2015 with Anthony Sattin

Eastern Turkey9–24 May 2015 & 3–18 October 2015 with Rowena Loverance

‘A beautifully organised, thoroughly enjoyable, culturally uplifting and educationally enriching tour: all we had hoped for and so much more!’

Left: Hieroglyphs in Palenque, Mexico, after a drawing by F. Catherwood, c. 1840.

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Nov/Dec 2013

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• What adorns Artemis’ chest • Augustus founder of the Roman Empire• A trek through the desert to visit Petra • The art and architecture of Aphrodisias• Gambler and collector Evan Gorga

Jul/Aug 2013

65_IBC_Ap_ad.indd 1 07/04/2014 12:02

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The April antiquities sales in London offered relatively few major works of art. The cover piece of Christie’s 2 April sale catalogue showed a

Roman marble statue of a cherubic young Hercules draped in a lion’s skin (1), circa 2nd century AD (H. 80cm). It came from the collection of the well-known, pro-vocative French novelist Roger Peyrefitte (1907-2000), who had acquired it in the 1950s. Estimated at £100,000-£150,000, it brought in £182,500 (US $303,498) from an American private collector.

An Elymaean silver-gilt bowl (2), circa 2nd century AD (H. 7.5cm; D. 11cm) depicted a pair of masks of a silene and a maenad flanked by a panther and a hound and, on the other side, satyr and maenad masks flanked by a lion and a boar. Elymais was a local dynasty in south-western Iran. The cup bears a lengthy Elymaean inscrip-tion, a variety of Aramaic, which includes the name of ‘King Orodes Phraates’. A private collector won the cup, originally acquired in Iran in 1964, for £206,500,

within the estimate of £180,000-£220,000. A fine pair of Egyptian alabaster canopic

jars for Tau-iert-iru (3), 26th Dynasty, 664-525 BC (H. 44cm each), were purchased in Alexandria by a French diplomat in the 1840s and have remained in his family since then. Each human-headed jar contains a four-line hieroglyphic inscription to the lady Tau-iert-iru. The estimate of £50,000-£70,000 was quickly surpassed with a win-ning bid of £96,100 by a European collector.

A sensitively sculpted Roman marble head of Dionysus wearing a wreath of ivy and berries (4), circa 1st-2nd century AD (H. 20.5cm), purchased by a French col-lector in the 1970s, was inadvertently esti-mated at just £18,000-£22,000, but finally, after a prolonged battle, sold for £84,100 to the American collector who had purchased the young Hercules (1).

An Attic black-figure lidded amphora, attributed to the Painter of Berlin 1686 (5), circa 540 BC (H. with lid 40cm), depicts the battle of Achilles and Memnon over the fallen body of Antilochus on both sides. It

was with Dr Elie Borowski in Basel in the 1970s. Bearing an estimate of £50,000-£80,000, it finally went to a British collector for £62,500.

The sale of 123 lots totalled £1,868,200, with only 63% sold by number of lots and 68% by value. All five of the top lots were purchased by bidders on the telephone.

It was pointed out that all of the major lots were acquired by collectors, not museums or dealers, and that 27% of the lots in the sale were either bought or directly underbid on their website ‘Christie’s Live’.

It should be noted that Christie’s cata-logues now have an artistic tendency to include a large number of pages printed on flush solid black backgrounds, very often running consecutively, offering no oppor-tunity for the client to make notes or mark bids and results.

Bonham’s, on the other hand, often leaves a wide white border around their black pages, which is extremely use-ful. Hopefully Christie’s will take note. (All prices noted include the buyer’s premium.)

Who won the cup?Dr Jerome M Eisenberg reports on Christie’s and Bonham’s April antiquities sales held in London and on a record-breaking cylinder sold at Doyle in New York in the same month

IN the sALeroom ChrIstIe’s LoNDoN

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2. Elymaean silver-gilt bowl, circa 2nd century AD. H. 7.5cm. D. 11cm. (Lot 35: £206,500).

3. Pair of Egyptian alabaster canopic jars, Late Period, 26th Dynasty, circa 664-525 BC. H. 44cm. (Lot 53: £96,100).

1. Roman marble statue of the young Hercules, circa 2nd century AD. H. 80cm. (Lot 97: £182,500).

4. Roman marble head of Dionysus, circa 1st-2nd century AD. H. 20.5cm. (Lot 95: £84,100).

5. Attic black-figure amphora (Type B) with lid attributed to the Painter of Berlin 1686, circa 540 BC. H. 40cm. (Lot 68: £62,500).

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In the saleroom Bonham’s lonDon

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Heads you winA smiling, life-sized Roman rosso antico marble head of a satyr (1), late 1st century AD (H. 30.5cm), after a Hellenistic proto-type, was the cover piece of Bonham’s cata-logue for the London antiquities sale held on 3 April. Mounted on a much later coloured marble socle, it was originally acquired by one of the Earls Spencer, of Althorp House, in the late 18th or early 19th century. Estimated at £200,000-£300,000, it brought in £194,500 from a private American collec-tor bidding on the telephone.

An over-life-sized Roman marble portrait head of the Emperor Septimius Severus (2) (r. AD 193-211), H. 41.3cm, sold at Christie’s New York, 11 December 2003, for $186,700. Now estimated at £120,000-£150,000, it sold for £206,500 to a private European collector.

A monumental (H. 42cm) Roman mar-ble portrait head of the Emperor Trajan (3)

(r. AD 98-117) was purchased by a German collector in the 1960s. With an estimate of just £50,000-£70,000, it brought £56,250 from another phone bidder, who was also a European collector

A heroic Roman marble nude statue of a young man (4), headless, circa 1st century AD (H. 61.5cm), came from an Ascona, Switzerland collection formed in the 1940s. With an estimate of £60,000-£80,000, it sold for £86,500 to the buyer of the Trajan head.

Another, much larger (H. 132.1cm) Roman marble headless statue, most prob-ably Asclepius, the god of medicine and healing (5), circa 1st-2nd century AD, was purchased by a New Jersey collector in 1968. Estimated at £40,000-£60,000, it brought in £76,900 from the buyer of the rosso antico satyr head (1).

A Roman marble lidded cinerary urn (6),

circa earlier 1st century AD (H. 33cm), had a distinguished provenance. It had pur-portedly been found in Cuckfield, Sussex, in 1703, and entered into the Timothy Burrell collection at that time; then, in the middle of the 19th century, it went

1. Roman rosso antico marble head of a satyr, Flavian Period, late 1st century AD. H. 30.5cm head only; with socle, 62.2cm. (Lot 50: £194,500).

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2. Roman marble portrait head of Emperor Septimius Severus, circa AD 194. H. 41.3cm. (Lot 67: £206,500).

3. A monumental Roman marble portrait head of Emperor Trajan, circa AD 98-117. H. 42cm. (Lot 56: £56,250).

4. A heroic Roman marble nude statue of a young man, circa 1st century AD. H. 61.5cm. (Lot 51: £86,500).

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IN the sALeroom BoNhAm’s LoNDoN

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into the J Fearon collection. Estimated prop-erly at £20,000-£30,000, it appears that its history drove the final price up to £60,000, which was paid by a British dealer.

A Sasanian silver-gilt royal hunting scene plate (7 and 8), early 4th century AD (D. 23.3cm), depicts a king, probably Hormizd II, as a young prince on horseback, at a flying gallop, drawing a bow at a flee-ing ostrich or great bustard. The base bears a Pahlavi inscription. It is from a European

collection formed in the 1970s and 1980s. It sold for £182,500 to another English dealer, within its estimate of £150,000-£250,000.

An important monumental Neo-Assyrian partial black basalt royal stele of Adad-Nerari III of Assyria, circa 805-797 BC,

5. Roman marble figure of Asclepius, circa 1st-2nd century AD. H. 132.1cm. (Lot 49: £76,900).

A very rare and important Babylonian baked clay barrel cylinder (L. 20.8cm) from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 604-562 BC), the great King of Babylon, estimated at $300,000-$500,000, was sold to an anonymous phone bidder on 9 April at Doyle, New York, for the record price, including the buyer’s premium, of $605,000. Nebuchadnezzar II is famed for building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, for the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, and for the exile of the Jews from Babylon. The two-column text of about 35 lines describes the rebuilding of the Temple of Shamash in Sippar by Nebuchadnezzar. Sippar, in Iraq, was the cult site of Shamash, the Akkadian sun-god. This cylinder was acquired by one Archie P Johnston in California in 1953. A similar one, though smaller (13.3cm), with only 18 lines of text describing the same event, and also from an American collection, was sold at Bonham’s London, 13 April 2011, for £264,000 ($440,000).

DOYLE, NEW YORK

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the top section of which is in the British Museum, was withdrawn.

The 187-lot sale realised £1,804,525, with just 64.2% sold by num-ber of lots and 74.7% sold by value. (All prices noted include the buyer’s premium.) n

6. Roman marble lidded cinerary urn, circa earlier 1st century AD. H. 33cm. (Lot 60: £60,000).

7. Sasanian silver-gilt royal hunting scene plate Iran, circa early 4th century AD. D. 23.3cm. (Lot 107: £182,500).

8. Detail (from 7) showing a king, probably Hormizd II, as a young prince drawing a bow as he gallops along on horseback in pursuit of a fleeing ostrich or great bustard.

BABYLONIAN CYLINDER BREAKS RECORD

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bookreviews

The Complete Cities of Ancient EgyptSteven SnapeThames & Hudson240pp, 242 illustrations, 193 in colourHardback, £24.95

Thames & Hudson have already published gorgeously illustrated volumes entitled The Complete Temple of Ancient Egypt and The Complete Valley of the Kings; now it is time for The Complete Cities of Ancient Egypt. And who better to write it than Dr Steven Snape, a lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Liverpool whose speciality is settlement archaeology? And, as he also leads the excavations at the Ramesside for-tress town of Zawiyet Um el-Rakham, he has hands-on experience of the subject.

First, Dr Snape gives a general intro-duction to urban life in Ancient Egypt. Then the book divides into five sections. In Part I he describes the rise of the city and, in the next two, the different kinds of cit-ies built for specific purposes – those for kings and for the gods, and those for peo-ple. He then moves on to the Classical city of the Graeco-Roman period, examining Alexandria, the Faiyum and Middle Egypt.

Subjects covered include: building, popu-lation, palaces, fortifications and temples, as well as administration, daily life, essential supplies, distribution, transport, schools, crime, leisure and public facilities.

In Part V, a Gazetteer of the Cities and Towns of Ancient Egypt, no stone is left unturned as we travel from Elephantine and Aswan in the south up to the Nile Delta, which is divided into five categories. Certain areas, such as Northern Sinai, the Oases, the Mediterranean coast and Nubia, are dealt with in separate sections. Dr Snape concludes with a brief epilogue on lost cities and then a concise glossary of special-ist terms used.

Each city mentioned in the Gazetteer is richly illustrated not only by photographs,

including stunning aerial views, but by clearly readable plans and maps. The author gives us further pieces of informa-tion, placed in grey panels, which add an extra dimension to the story. These include the discovery that there were Jewish merce-naries living on Elephantine, circa 525 to circa 400 BC. Antique travellers are also called upon to describe the scenes they wit-nessed, ranging from Pliny the Elder, who lists the branches of the Nile in the Delta (Natural History, 5.11), to Herodotus, who gives a detailed description of the Temple of Bubastis (Herodotus II, 137-38).

Ancient Egyptian sources are also used: as in the Tale of Wenamun, a travelogue osten-sibly written during the last years of the New Kingdom, by an official of the temple of Karnak at Thebes who travels to Byblos to obtain timber. En route he passes through the Eastern Delta and visits Tanis. Juicy morsels such as these enliven a book that is already a feast of facts for any Egyptophile.

Any serious traveller venturing along the Nile Valley today should take this book with them, while those who pre-fer armchair travelling will gain much pleasure from learning about these ancient cities without having to stir from home.

Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost GenomesSvante PääboBasic Books, New York275pp, 23 figuresHardback, £16.75

If Neanderthals are constantly in the news these days it is largely thanks to Svante Pääbo and his team in the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. Like Vikings, Neanderthals seem to be in a per-manent state of rehabilitation; from shuf-fling ape man to skilled hunters and caring family types, only a synapse or so short of full humanity.

Pääbo’s book is not a detailed, up-to-date account of what we know about Neanderthals – for that see Neanderthals Rediscovered by Mike Morse (2013) – rather, it is an exciting, approachable and very personal insight into the life scientific;

The Egyptian Myths: A Guide to the Ancient Gods and LegendsGarry J ShawThames & Hudson224pp, 100 illustrationsHardback, £12.95

This almost pocket-size volume is another useful book to take to Egypt if you are plan-ning a trip. This may sound like a mad idea to some readers, but I am told that, with the numbers of visitors being so small,

now is the perfect time to visit the Land of Pharaohs.

Most books on mythology present their material as archaic stories and that’s that. But this author gives us the background to the myths and then explains how they were integrated into every aspect of the ordinary Egyptian’s existence from birth to death – and beyond. Illustrations, diagrams and drawings, together with many extraordi-narily powerful quotations from papyri, paint a picture of the dynamic forces that the gods represented and how their lives were played out in the various myths.

Garry Shaw is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Liverpool and has taught at the American University in Cairo. He is Managing Editor and staff writer for Al-Rawi: Egypt’s Heritage Review and he also teaches at the Egypt Exploration Society. Lindsay Fulcher


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Thinking Big: How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human MindClive Gamble, John Gowlett & Robin DunbarThames & Hudson224pp, 14 illustrationsHardback, £18.95

This book brings back memories – at least for me. In 1960 I was 13 years old and had developed an obsession with early man thanks to the Leakey discoveries in Olduvai Gorge. For Christmas I was given a large illustrated book called Prehistoric Man, written by Professor Josef Augusta from the University of Prague, but most distinctive for its 52 superb colour plates by the Czech art-ist and illustrator Zdenek Burian. Those of us who are old enough will remember that 1960 did not feel like the 1960s – it was still part of the late 1950s.

However, there were some changes afoot. In publishing, the Berlin-born Jewish émi-gré Paul Hamlyn had started to break down barriers, producing popular books on sub-jects like cookery, with lashings of colour, available in new stores called supermarkets. Hamlyn sought out Czech printers whose colour techniques were then advanced and economical. Hence he came upon the Czech publisher Artia, who had produced Burian’s Prehistoric Animals, a series on dinosaurs

and later Prehistoric Man. Hamlyn recog-nised the quality and dynamism of Burian’s illustrations and had the book translated into English. Naturally, after 50 years Burian’s work has dated a little but it still stands up remarkably well. The emphasis on the social life of hominins within landscapes, with illustrations of hunting techniques, craft skills and the emergence of the modern mind as reflected in art is bang up to date. If Burian had illustrated Thinking Big it might help to capture the audience the book deserves.

For the publishers Thames & Hudson (who also pioneered beautifully illustrated archaeological publishing in the 1960s) this is a somewhat austere offering. The title, however, is double-edged. It reflects the ambition of the authors – two archaeolo-gists and a neuroscientist – and the principal evolutionary trait of hominins. This is a big subject: how did the evolving brain and the social lives of hominins interact to produce humans, a species of dubious merit that has nevertheless gone on to conquer the world?

Thinking Big has emerged from a major research project, Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain. In 2002 the British Academy, the UK’s national body for the humanities and social sciences, announced a competition for a research proj-ect to mark its centenary. ‘Lucy’ emerged on top. With such origins we might expect a magisterial monument to academic com-plexity. Fortunately Thinking Big retains the Thames & Hudson tradition of thinking clearly, and writing well.

The first part of the book principally reflects the contribution of Robin Dunbar, well known for his influential 1996 book Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language (1996). Or why we stopped pick-ing lice and fleas off each other and started chatting about the weather and complaining about our friends and family. He established the size of the social network the human brain can cope with, the Dunbar Number, namely 150 people. Humans have about three times as many friends as the average chimpanzee and this number remains con-stant even with social media.

A brief review cannot do justice to a book that tackles such a major theme – how did our large brain evolve and how did we become human? The archaeological chapters reflect the amazing growth of the subject – literally in terms of evidence and in terms of ambition. In the 1960s Palaeolithic studies consisted mainly of stones and bones adrift in a universe of dark matter. With Gamble, Gowlett and Dunbar’s multidisciplinary approach, so-called ‘cognitive archaeology’ comes of age. I mean it as a compliment when I say that the text has finally caught up with Burian’s illustrations. You will not read a more important book this year. It could make us a little wiser about ourselves.David Miles

and workaholic, with multinational teams as competitive as world-class football clubs.

This book provides a fascinating glimpse into the normally enclosed laboratory. If you have intelligent children in your family, give them a copy. It is a wonderful antidote to the media’s facile obsession with celebri-ties and party animals as shallow as a petri dish. Pääbo proves that it is the geeks who just wanna have fun!

one of the best accounts of how scientists work since the most famous example of the genre, James Watson’s The Double Helix. Or I would compare it with the more mod-est and charming book by Watson’s col-league, Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery, also published by Basic Books in 1998.

It is salutary to realise how rapidly ancient DNA studies have evolved. In the early 1990s an Oxford-based geneticist, Erika Hagelberg, called into my office at the Oxford Archaeological Unit. She explained that all claims to have found ancient DNA up to that point had proved to be false. Researchers had simply found their own DNA, or that of archaeologists and cura-tors who had previously handled the sam-ples. She was looking for ancient burials in good condition, still in the ground unsullied by sticky-fingered moderns, free of contami-nants. I told her she had come to the right place, as we were in the process of uncov-ering hundreds of human skeletons in deep alkaline soils at Abingdon Abbey. Erika and her colleague JB Clegg took their samples, cracked the contamination issue for the first time, and published their successful results in Proceedings of the Royal Society in 1991.

Svante Pääbo’s interest in the past began as a 13-year-old, when he was taken to Egypt. As a student he worked in the Egyptian department at the Mediterranean Museum in Stockholm. Fortunately, as he bluntly states, ‘the discipline of Egyptology was moving too slowly for my tastes’. Instead he boarded the roller-coaster of genetics, and applied it to his fascination with the past.

Pääbo’s work achieved world fame with the announcement that his lab had recov-ered Neanderthal DNA in 1997. Since then he and his colleagues have regularly hit the headlines in the world’s media: sequencing the Neanderthal genome in 2010, announc-ing that early modern humans, recently out of Africa, interbred with Neanderthals (after first suggesting the opposite).

Playboy magazine devoted four pages to this announcement of prehistoric sexual activity, posing the question ‘Neanderthal Love: would you sleep with this woman?’ alongside an image that was definitely not a Bunny Girl.

More importantly, Neanderthal genes might have strengthened our resistance to the Eurasian diseases encountered by mod-ern humans in their trans-continental jour-neys. And did moderns encounter another of Pääbo’s breakthroughs, for instance the newly discovered hominins the Denisovans, surviving in Siberia?

Like all good science writers Pääbo makes complex subjects appear relatively simple. He allows his readers to feel intelligent, unlike many lesser academic researchers, who try to make their readers feel dumb. Pääbo’s scientific world is inventive, creative


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UNITED KINGDOM.BANFF, ScotlandDürer’s FameThe work of Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), one of the most important artists of the Northern Renaissance, has comes to Scotland. Prints of such powerful images as Melancholy, Saint Jerome in his Study and Knight, Death and the Devil are on show.Duff House+44 (0) 1261 818 181 (www.duffhouse.org.uk)Until 13 July.

DERBYJoseph Wright of Derby: Bath and BeyondExperts have previously considered the time that Joseph Wright spent in Somerset (1775-1777) to be a professional low point, when his failure to win enough commissions for portraits led him to pack up his paintbrushes and head back to Derby after only 18 months. The museum sets out to challenge this assertion, suggesting instead that this ‘difficult’ period was actually formative, and even crucial to his later success. This exhibition compares his paintings before, during and after his stay in the South-West to show what effect it had on his work. Visitors will see that his stint in Somerset gave him time to experiment with new techniques and work on subjects he had studied during a previous two-year trip to Italy, such as the painting Vesuvius in Eruption (above).Derby Museum and Art Gallery+44 (0) 1332 641 901(www.derbymuseums.org)Until 31 August.

EDINBURGH, ScotlandMing: the Golden EmpireProduced by Nomad Exhibitions in association with the Nanjing Museum, this will be the only UK venue for an internationally significant exhibition. Under the

Ming Dynasty remarkable cultural, technological and economic advances were made in what is traditionally regarded as the beginning of modern China. This period of social transformation is beautifully illustrated through luxury objects from the imperial court, such as Gold Cicada on a Leaf of Jade (below), which was used as a hairpin. Called jin zhi yu ye, which is a homonym with a famous Chinese idiom meaning ‘one of noble birth’, the item was given to young women as a token of praise.National Museum of Scotland+44 (0) 3001 236 789 (www.nms.ac.uk) Until 19 October.

KENDAL, CumbriaBarbara Hepworth: Within the LandscapeLakeland Arts have worked with the Hepworth Estate to bring together some of the artist’s most significant works, including the iconic Moon Form, 1968 (above). The focus of the exhibition is Hepworth’s lifelong relationship with the British landscape, of which she once said, ‘I, the sculptor, am the landscape. I am the form, I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour.’ Set alongside her sculpture, her photographs, commentary and ephemera from her life give an insight into what inspired her, and how she came to a particular perception of the landscape. Abbot Hall+44 (0) 15 39 72 24 64(www.abbothall.org.uk)From 5 July until 28 September.

KINETON, WarwickshireMoore RodinHenry Moore and August Rodin, two of Europe’s most celebrated modern sculptors, come together in the beautiful country-house setting of the grounds of Compton Verney to complement its own collection of sculptures. Visitors can also explore the parallels between the two sculptors’ treatment of the human figure through a carefully curated exhibition of preliminary models and sketches. In addition, rarely seen archival documents and photographs taken by Moore provide insight into the evolution of his relationship with Rodin’s work. The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with The Henry Moore Foundation and the Musée Rodin, Paris.Compton Verney+44 (0) 1926 645 500(www.comptonverney.org.uk)Until 31 August.

LONDONKenneth Clark: Looking for CivilisationKenneth Clark (1903-1983), patron, collector, art historian, impresario and broadcaster, was a man who sought to bring art to a mass audience. The exhibition illustrates how he changed the course of British art in the 20th century through various initiatives founded on his belief in the social value of art and in everyone’s right to have access to it. The exhibition features more than 270 works by artists that Clark championed, as well as those from his own eclectic collection, which he described as the ‘diary’ of his life. He

collected works from Ancient Rome and Tang Dynasty China, ceramics from the Far East and Renaissance Italy, paintings by French artists such as Seurat and Cézanne, paintings by English masters such as Constable, and sculptures such as Rodin’s Eve, 1881 (below).Tate Britain+44 (0) 207 887 8888(www.tate.org.uk)Until 10 August.

Henri Matisse: The Cut-OutsInstantly recognisable as the work of Henri Matisse, Icarus (below) from 1943, is one of the artist’s 120 works from cut paper made between 1936 and 1954 and now on display at Tate Modern. Initially a by-product of his ill-health, which prevented him from painting, working with cut paper soon became Matisse’s medium of choice. These magnificently bold, colourful

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to become artists and quickly turned to Rossetti, the leader of the recently disbanded Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848-1853), for guidance. Their working relationship created fresh goals and ideas, which evolved into what is now known as the ‘Second Term’ of Pre-Raphaelite painting. The

museum presents a varied group of paintings and objects from this key period (1868-1877). Furniture, textiles, stained glass and paintings highlight the group’s desire to emulate the vividness and sincerity of art from before the time of Raphael. Classical themes feature in the paintings throughout – as in Lord Leighton’s Lachrymae, Latin for ‘tears’ (above), which reflects the artist’s interest in funerary art.Metropolitan Museum of Art+1 21 25 35 77 10 (www.metmuseum.org)Until 26 October.

AUSTRALIAMELBOURNEWilliam BlakeAn artist and poet of outstanding originality, Blake used drawing and print media to express his own visionary universe, as well as that of authors, such as Dante and Milton. Because of the material’s sensitivity to light, his works are not often exhibited, and this exhibition provides a rare opportunity to see works spanning his full career, from his earliest to his latest years. They include 36 of the 102 watercolours (from the gallery’s own collection) Blake painted in the 1820s to

and joyful works are the last chapter in the career of a true modern Master.Tate Modern+44 (0) 207 887 8888(www.tate.org.uk)Until 7 September.

Empire, Faith and Kinship: The Sikhs and the Great WarAccounting for less than 2 percent of the population of British India at the time of the First World War, Sikhs made up more than 20 percent of the British Indian Army. The Brunei Gallery, in collaboration with the UK Punjab Heritage Association, presents the story of how one of the world’s smallest communities played a disproportionately large role in the Great War. Brunei Gallery+44 (0)207 898 4915(www.soas.ac.uk/gallery)From 9 July until 20 September.

OXFORDDiscovering Tutankhamun; The Inside StoryThe discovery of the boy-king’s tomb in 1922 is one of the most significant archaeological finds of the 20th century, and the story of how it was found by Howard Carter, backed by Lord Carnarvon, is a fascinating one. This exhibition brings together objects, photographs and archive material from the Tutankhamun archive of the University of Oxford’s Griffith Institute, which this year celebrates its 75th anniversary. Many of the exhibits have never been displayed before. Harry Burton’s photographs and Howard Carter’s watercolours of Egyptian tomb paintings, such as this one of a vulture (above), must be seen. For our feature on this exhibition see pages 28 to 31.Ashmolean Museum +44 (0) 1865 278 002(www.ashmolean.org)From 24 July until 26 October.

UNITED STATES.STANFORD, CaliforniaSympathy for the Devil: Satan, Sin, and the UnderworldThis exhibition explores the ever-evolving visual representation of the Devil and his realm. A variety of prints, drawings, sculpture and paintings – including works by Albrecht Dürer, Hendrik Goltzius, Jacques Callot, Gustave Doré, and Max Beckmann – reveal how artists visualised Satan and his infernal Hell, and draw inspiration from religious sources and accounts by Homer, Dante, Virgil and Milton. Visitors will learn that during the period from about 1500 to 1900, the Devil evolved from the bestial adversary of Christ to a rebellious, romantic hero or a shrewd villain. In the 20th century this long tradition of graphic representation largely disappeared, as Hell came to be seen as an aspect of this world and its denizens as ‘other people’. Look out for Auguste Rodin’s masterwork The Gates of Hell, and Jackson Pollock’s Lucifer, which now reside permanently at Stanford.Iris & B Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts+1 650 723 4177(museum.stanford.edu)From 20 August until 1 December.

WILLIAMSTOWN, MassachusettsCast for Eternity: Ancient Ritual Bronzes from the Shanghai MuseumDrawing on the core of the Shanghai Museum’s exceptional bronze vessels and bells dating from the late Xia to the Western Han Dynasties (circa 1800 BC – circa AD 8), this exhibition presents a range of artistic expression and variety of sculptural forms realised during China’s Bronze Age. Many of the pieces feature animals, as seen on the 2nd-1st century container for cowrie shells, which depicts seven carefully crafted yaks on the lid.Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute+1 413 458 2303(www.clarkart.edu) From 4 July until 21 September.

NEW YORK, New YorkDivine Felines: Cats of Ancient EgyptFelines played an important role in ancient Egyptian imagery for thousands of years. Thought to have been first domesticated in ancient Egypt, cats were revered for their fertility, associated with royalty and a number of deities, and valued for their ability to protect homes and granaries from vermin. This exhibition explores the role of the feline in Egyptian mythology,

kingship and everyday life. Almost 30 different representations of cats, lions and other feline creatures from the museum’s renowned Egyptian collection will be on display, and a gilded Leonine Goddess will be on view for the first time. Also included are furniture and luxury items decorated with feline features. +1 718 638 5000 The Brooklyn Museum(www.brooklynmuseum.org)Until 31 December.

NEW YORK, New YorkFor a Love of His People: The Photography of Horace PoolawHorace Poolaw (1906–84) was a rare American Indian photographer who documented Indian culture from the 1920s until the late 1970s. Poolaw photographed his friends and family, and important events throughout their lives, providing a comprehensive first-hand record of 20th-century Native American culture in the Southern Plains. The photographs of his people at weddings and funerals, going on dates and playing baseball create a fascinating visual history.National Museum of the American Indian+1 202 633 66 44 (nmai.si.edu) From 9 August until 15 February 2015.

NEW YORK, New YorkLost Kingdoms of Early Southeast Asia: Hindu-Buddhist Sculpture 5th to 8th CenturyRare international loans from Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Burma make this a magnificent survey of Southeast Asian Hindu-Buddhist art from the first millennium. Of the 160 sculptures on display, many are considered national treasures of their respective countries. This landmark exhibition has been organised thematically into seven sections, representing the major narratives that have shaped the region’s distinct cultural identities.Metropolitan Museum of Art+1 212 535 7710 (www.metmuseum.org)Until 27 July.

NEW YORK, New YorkPre-Raphaelite Legacy: British Art and DesignThis show is an exploration of the creative dialogue between Edward Burne-Jones, William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. In 1855, Burne-Jones and Morris, who were then students at Oxford, abandoned their theological studies

compiled by Raphie Varley

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illustrate Dante’s Divine Comedy. Visitors will enjoy familiar scenes, such as Dante Running from Three Beasts (above), in which Virgil has come to rescue Dante and lead him to Beatrice.National Gallery of Victoria+61 3 8620 2222 (www.ngv.vic.gov.au) Until 31 August.

AUSTRIASALZBURGSeduction: Alluring Beauty, Fatal CharmAn exploration of seduction involves both the seducer and the seduced, as well as the objects used for temptation. Artists’ depictions of tales, such as those of Adam and Eve and Samson and Delilah, highlight the fatal consequences of encounters with seduction. Works by Hans Makart, Frans Francken II, Jean-François Millet, the School of Rembrandt, Francesco Solimena and Ignaz Stern encompass and illustrate the passion, mystery, temptation and consequences that seduction can bring in its wake.Residenzgalerie+43 662 8404510(www.residenzgalerie.at) From 18 July until 1 November 2015.

CANADATORONTOForbidden City: Inside the Court of China’s EmperorsBeijing’s Imperial Palace was at one time the world’s largest, comprising 980 buildings. For 500 years, from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty, its gates were closed to all but the emperor and his entourage. More than 200 treasures from the Beijing Palace Museum give visitors the opportunity to cross over this threshold and learn about the everyday lives of all those who

paid the price of living inside the Forbidden City. The exhibition includes fine jade and silver objects, furnishings, textiles and paintings.Royal Ontario Museum+1 416 586 8000 (www.rom.on.ca) Until 1 September.

FRANCELYONSThe Invention of the Past: Histories of the Heart and SwordThis exhibition examines the role played by European artists between 1802 and 1850 in representing history through anecdotal and historically themed works in the wake of the French Revolution and the development of Romanticism. Some 200 paintings, drawings and sculptures show how artists across Europe depicted notable figures from a ‘national’ past, which had previously been neglected in favour of referencing antiquity and mythology. Although the artworks are characterised by their attention to historical detail in terms of place and object, the actual events were often reinvented or renewed to fit the artist’s agenda to create a more moving narrative. Artists were effectively rewriting history. Visitors are reminded that these pictorial visions of 19th-century artists still influence our perception of historical events today. Works by Paul Delaroche, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and François Fleury-Richard bring to life tales of love and tragedy featuring figures from Henry IV to Joan of Arc. Musée des Beaux-Arts+33 4 72 10 17 40 (www.mba-lyon.fr) Until 21 July.

VALENCIENNESThe Vikings in the Frank EmpireThe Frank Empire was one of many to succumb to Viking pillage from the late 8th to the early 11th centuries. This exhibition brings together nearly all the Viking-related artefacts found north of the Loire. Medieval manuscripts, archaeological remains and contemporary reconstructions are used to analyse the Viking legacy in Carolingian society.Musée des Beaux-Arts+33 3 27 22 57 20 (www.valenciennes.fr) Until 28 September.

CASSEL, NordIn the wake of Rubens, Erasmus QuellinusErasmus Quellinus II (1607-1678), one of Rubens’ pupils, is considered one of the precursors of Classicism in Flemish painting. Through 50 of his most symbolic works, this retrospective sets out to restore Erasmus Quellinus II to his rightful place among the painters of the 17th century, all of whom were, of course, eclipsed by the art of Rubens. Quellinus’ interest in Greek mythology is reflected in his painting The Rape of Europa (below), which depicts the tale of Europa’s abduction by Zeus in the form of a white bull.Musée de Flandre+33 3 59 73 45 59 (www.museedeflandre.lenord.fr) Until 7 September.

GERMANYBERLINPride and Passion: the Male in Mughal PaintingBetween the 16th and 19th centuries, men depicted in Indian painting were shown as powerful, proud and passionate figures. Under increasing European influence, the portrayal of the masculine form reached its apex

with the introduction of portraits to the Islamic Mughal court in the 17th century. This exhibition focuses specifically on miniatures, one of the dominant forms of the 17th and 18th centuries. The miniatures come exclusively from the museum’s own holdings, and many will be on display for the first time. Visitors will enjoy rich, colourful depictions of Mughal rulers taking part in ritualistic elephant processions, entwined with their lovers in the palace garden, or standing alone as proud hunters.Museum für Islamische Kunst+49 30 266424242 (www.smb.museum) Until 5 October 2014.

DRESDENTo Egypt! The Travels of Max Slevogt and Paul KleeThe Impressionist artist Max Slevogt visited the River Nile in 1914, and the Bauhaus artist Paul Klee was there in 1928. Both were fascinated by the country’s rich culture and history and were inspired to create work in response to their time spent there. The two contrasting sets of work are presented alongside each other for the first time in this exhibition. Visitors will appreciate seeing Paul Klee’s abstract works, such as Citronen-Ernte (Harvest of Lemons, above), placed alongside examples of the pieces of ancient Egyptian art that inspired them.Albertinum Dresden+49 35 149142000 (www.skd.museum)Until 3 August.


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London Art Week unites Master Drawings, Sculpture Week and Master Paintings Week. This collaboration, launched in 2013, unites some 50 specialist dealers across the fine art disciplines, as well as three major auction houses, showcasing the extraordinary range and quality of art and antiquities for sale. A good example is this majestic Egyptian bronze cat (above), dating from the Late Dynastic Period, from Rupert Wace Ancient Art.

Auction Dates:Tuesday 8 July Christie’s (King Street): Old Master & British Paintings 6.30pm

Wednesday 9 July Christie’s (King Street): Old Master & British Paintings, 10.30am

Sotheby’s: Old Master & British Drawings, 10.30am

Bonhams (New Bond Street): Old Master Paintings & Drawings, 2pm Sotheby’s: Old Master & British Paintings, Evening Sale, 7pm

Thursday 10 July Christie’s (King Street): Old Master & British Paintings, 10.30am

Christie’s (King Street): Old Master Drawings, 2pm

Sotheby’s: Old Master & British Paintings, Day Sale, 10.30am

Friday 11 July Christie’s (South Kensington): Old Master Pictures Sale, 10.30am

(www.londonartweek.co.uk) From 4 to 11 July 2014

LONDON ART WEEK

ISRAELJERUSALEMFace to Face: The Oldest Masks in the WorldThis exhibition, the culmination of nearly a decade of research, showcases 12 extraordinary Neolithic stone masks, all originating in the same region in Israel roughly 9,000 years ago. Based on similarities with other cultic skulls of ancestors found in villages of the same period, the masks, believed to represent the spirits of dead ancestors, were used in religious and social ceremonies and in rites of healing and magic. All of them share striking features such as a gaping mouth and large eyes holes (above). The Israel Museum+972 2 670 8811 (www.english.imjnet.org.il) Until 13 September.

ITALYROMEThe Etruscans and the MediterraneanStaged in conjunction with the Musée du Louvre-Lens, this show focuses solely on the Etruscan city of Cerveteri, which occupied a leading position both because of its size and because of its relationship with other Mediterranean centres. Covering almost 10 centuries of its illustrious history, we see how what were initially separate communities gradually merged to form a city, how that city facing the sea rose to become one of the leading powers in the Mediterranean, how it vied in importance with Rome itself, and how it was ultimately absorbed into the embryonic Roman Empire in the course of the 1st century BC. Materials from recent excavations never seen before are a highlight.Palazzo delle Esposizioni+39 06 3996 7500 (english.palazzoesposizioni.it) Until 20 July.

MONACOMONACOARTLOVERS, stories of art in the Pinault CollectionSome 50 pieces from the Pinault Collection, a third of which have never been shown before, feature in this exhibition which is brought together under the theme of ‘storytelling’. Artists range from Richard Prince and Jeff Koons (whose sculpture Bourgeois Bust is pictured below) to Zhang Huan and Rachel Whiteread. Grimaldi Forum+377 99 99 20 00 (www.grimaldiforum.com) From 12 July until 7 September.

RUSSIAST PETERSBURGAt the Court of the Russian Emperors: 18th- and Early 20th-century Costume in the Hermitage CollectionThe Hermitage costume collection contains many garments that once belonged to the Russian Imperial family. Visitors can follow the development of fashion, which was

closely connected to changing artistic styles, from the mid-18th to the start of the 20th century. Clothes from the wardrobe of Catherine the Great are a highlight and include the so-called ‘uniform’ dresses she wore during parades and festivals of guards regiments. These were made of fabric the colour of officers’ uniforms and decorated with formal chevrons and buttons, combining French fashions with elements of old Russian dress.State Hermitage Museum+41 44 25 38 484 (www.hermitagemuseum.org) Until 21 September.

SWITZERLANDZURICHThe Torches of Prometheus: Henry Fuseli and Javier TellezA video installation by contemporary Venezuelan artist Javier Tellez is set alongside work by Henry Fuseli (1741-1825). Both reference the titanic figure of Prometheus. For Fuseli, the ancient myth of the theft of fire became the quintessential embodiment of humanity’s striving for self-determination. It is a universal message that lives on to this day in the Olympic flame. Yet the discovery of fire was also a curse; it is this that Tellez’s installation focuses on. The camera slowly circles around two sculptures: the nude male Prometheus by the National Socialist Arno Breker and the ‘degenerate’ hermaphrodite figure by the ‘outsider’ artist Karl Genzel. These two works of art were originally exhibited in Munich in 1937, one year after the Berlin Olympics. Kunsthaus Zurich+41 44 253 84 84(www.kunsthaus.ch) Until 12 October.

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SPECIAL READER OFFERWADDESDON MANOR BuckinghamshirePredators and Prey: A Roman Mosaic from Lod, IsraelThe fabulous Lod Mosaic (right) is on show in the Coach House at Waddesdon Manor until 2 November. Visitors usually pay £18 for admission to Waddesdon but subscribers to Minerva can get a ticket for the special price of £13. This includes entrance to the Lod exhibition, the house and the gardens. A timed ticket system is in place (for the house only) from 12pm to 4pm, Wednesday to Friday; from 11am to 4pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Call the booking office on 01296-653226 and quote ‘MINERVA’ . Please note that this offer cannot be booked online (for any other information on Waddesdon, please visit the website: www.waddesdon.org.uk).

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