Antiquities and Ancient Art

Israeli Lifeguard Uncovers Rare 5th Century BC Marble Discus

A young lifeguard swimming near Palmachim beach south of Tel-Aviv discovered a rare marble discus, known in Greek as an ophtalmoi, dating to 5th Century BC. according to reports out of Israel tonight.

The 20cm discus, which would have been fastened to the hull of an ancient ship with a bronze nail, was a good luck token that represented the pupil of an eye and would have adorned a combat or cargo ship.

To date, only four such items have been found in the world – two of them here in Israel, one recovered from the Mediterranean Sea off the coast at Carmel in addition to this one at Yavne-Yam, according to the Israeli Antiquities Authority.

Click here for the full story in Arutz Sheva and more photos.

The Concept of a Global Museum and the Politics of Repatriation

Following are excerpts from a fantastic article in the Times Online:

"The visitors pouring through the doors of the British Museum represent the triumph of an idea born in the white intellectual heat of the Enlightenment - as valuable today as it was 250 years ago when the museum first opened, but now under attack, despite its fabulous success, as never before.

"That simple, brilliant idea is now under assault from the concept of “cultural property”, part of a worldwide struggle over ownership of the past. In the past half-century, but gathering pace in recent years, so-called “source countries” have successfully begun to reclaim and repatriate artefacts from museums around the world.

"The governments of Italy, Greece, Egypt, China, Cambodia and other geographical homes of ancient civilisations argue that antiquities in foreign museums are national property, vital components of national identity that should be returned “home” as a matter of moral urgency.

"Yet the cultural property movement is complex and deeply flawed. Italy, as a state, is a comparatively modern creation, but the objects it claims date back up to 1,200 years. Who, for example, “owns” the Alexander Sarcophagus, created in the tradition of Greek sculpture, discovered in Lebanon in the 19th century and brought to Turkey when Lebanon was still part of the Ottoman Empire? Many of the demands for restitution are bound up with narrow nationalism and a political agenda, an attempt to lend historical credibility to modern states that did not exist when the objects were created. Some nations asserting cultural property rights are culturally, religiously and even ethnically distinct from the civilisations whose artefacts they now claim.

"Antiquities are not national symbols but elements of a shared global inheritance, best displayed in the encyclopedic museum imagined by our Enlightened forebears, “a museum dedicated to ideas, not ideologies, a museum of international, indeed universal aspirations”. To some, encyclopaedic museums such as the British Museum are mere treasure houses of imperial plunder. But in their inception such institutions set out to create public places where we might discover and understand other peoples, and thus find out about ourselves.

"A shared heritage implies greater sharing, a new sort of philosophy in which individual museums do not merely gather, preserve and display artefacts from across the world, but borrow, lend and swap in a global exchange of objects and ideas."

Read the full article in The Times.

Final Week to See Finds from Land of 'Jason and the Golden Fleece' in NY

Wine, Worship, and Sacrifice: The Golden Graves of Ancient Vani, the inaugural exhibition at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, features spectacular finds from four graves excavated at Vani, a major administrative and religious center of ancient Colchis (present-day Republic of Georgia) and the setting for the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece. The exhibition, which opened in March, concludes its run on June 1.

More than 100 objects from these graves, which date from the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., are on display and include an impressive array of locally produced jewelry as well as imported goods from its Greek and Persian neighbors. Together, these objects create a clear picture of Vani as a crossroads city, providing compelling testimony to the complex interrelations that occurred in this region throughout its rich history.

Click here for exhibition highlights, conference information, and directions.

Hours: 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. | Friday: 11 a.m. - 8 p.m. | Closed Monday.

Marble Portrait Head of Important Roman Ruler Fished Out of French River

In this battle with the Helvetii in 58 BC, Julius Caesar famously burned a bridge over the Rhone to force his enemy to take a lethal diversionary trek. Today, archaeologists announced that they have fished out of the Rhone River a treasure trove of Roman artifacts including a stunning marble portrait of Caesar depicting him as a middle-aged man.

The finds were made near the well-preserved Roman city of Arles in southern France. In addition to the Caesar portrait bust, scientists found a marble statue of Neptune, nearly 6-feet tall, and two bronze statues nearly 2-1/2 feet high dating to the 2nd-3rd Century BC.  The French Culture Ministry believes that the underwater site contains more treasures and further excavations are planned this summer. The archaeological team that made the discovery doesn't yet know how, why or when the objects were thrown into the River.   

The Roman bust of Caesar is remarkable in that it is believed to date from the founding of the city of Arles in 46 BC. This suggests that the bust was created just 2 years before his assassination on March 15, 44 BC, making it the oldest know representation of Caesar actually made during his lifetime. The portrait is sculpted in a realistic style with furrowed brow, deep facial creases and prominent chin.

Who's Digging Holes at Stonehenge and Why?

For the first time in more than a generation, they're digging at Stonehenge again. The diggers are not modern druids performing some ancient ritual, rather archaeologists working to unearth the socket holes from the first stone circle in the hope of fine tuning their theories about the original date.  They are also hoping to find evidence that the site may have been known in the Bronze Age as a healing center for the seriously ill.  Some have called it a sort of Bronze Age Lourdes.   

The digging will be confined to a trench about 12 feet long and 3 feet deep.  Scientists will be examining the strata for organic material, such as pollen grains, snail shells, and fragments of tools and bones, to apply new analysis techniques that were not available when last excavated.

Before there were stones at Stonehenge around 5000 years ago, scientists believe the site was pretty much a run-of-the-mill henge, i.e. a large circular mound and ditch.  Then, around 2,500 BC, at least 80 "blue stones" (actually made of Dolomite) weighing between 2000 and 6000 pounds each were hauled from Wales and set up at the site. The Welsh have believed that blue stones held special healing powers up through modern times. 

Some time later, local sarsen stones -- the massive grey stones that we come to associate with Stonehenge were set up in the circle which given the site its distinctive outline. But it is the original bluestone foundation that may yield the greatest secrets from the builders who devoted their energy to creating such an enduring and mysterious monument.

Click for daily video of the excavations.

Which Museum Exhibitions of Antiquities were Hottest in 2007?

It is interesting to analyze museum exhibition attendance each year because it offers a broad, though admittedly imperfect, reflection of the public's current appetite and relative interest in the different cultural segments of antiquities.

Not surprisingly, the heavily promoted blockbuster Egyptian exhibition entitled Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs which moved to Philadelphia and Chicago topped the charts again this year, each drawing more than one million visitors.   This is significantly more than the third most attended exhibition, Ancient Peru Unearthed, held at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, which managed 369,699 attendees.

But total attendees can be a false barometer because it is a function of the length of an event. By comparing average number of attendees per day, the two Egyptian mega-events still top the list at 5,375 (Phila) and 4,771 (Chicago) visitors each, but the Praxiteles exhibition held at the Louvre was the third most popular bringing in 2,223 attendees per day, with Ancient Peru Unearthed dropping to fourth place at 2,077 attendees per day.

Oddly, Egyptian antiquities captured only three slots this year -- #1,2 and 10 -- which is unusual given its propensity to draw visitors and dominate the rankings. Also Asian art had but one entrant in the Top Ten -- the Angkor: Sacred Heritage of Cambodia -- exhibited in Bonn, and Pre-Columbian antiquities were represented in two of the Top Ten.

In what is one of the most interesting aspects of the Top Ten this year, no less than four exhibitions of ancient Greek and Roman antiquities, including The Perfumes of Aphrodite, The Capitoline Wolf and A Bronze Horse for Many Knights, all of which were held during the year at the Capitoline Museum in Rome.   

Ancient St Augustine Manuscript Unearthed in German Library

Not all spectacular discoveries are the result of digging through dirt with a trowel. Scholars from the Austrian Academy of Sciences "digging" through the Bibliotheca Amploniana in Erfurt, Germany, made a remarkable discovery when they turned up six previously unknown sermons attributed to St. Augustine.   

The sermons, dating to the 12th century, were concealed in a medieval parchment manuscript they were studying.  Some of the sermons were know only by their titles cited in Possidius' Indiculum.

Three sermons are on the topic of brotherly love and alms-giving, one is on martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas, and another on the martyr Cyprian who condemned alcoholic indulgence on saints' feast days. Another sermon discusses resurrection of the dead and biblical prophesies.

The manuscript, which may have originally been produced in England, was part of an enormous collection of 630 books donated in 1412.  Click for more color images of the manuscript.

Israeli Archaeologists Announce Coin Find Related to Second Temple Head-Tax

According to the Jerusalem Post, Israeli archeologists have unearthed a coin in Jerusalem's City of David that, they now believe, was used to pay the head-tax in the Second Temple period. The find was announced by the Antiquities Authority.

The rare silver coin was discovered in an archeological excavation outside the walls of the Old City in what was Jerusalem's main drainage channel 2,000 years ago.

Archeologists earlier uncovered thousands of nondescript small bronze coins that were used in every day life, said Prof. Ronny Reich of the University of Haifa.

"A drainage pipe is, not surprisingly, a place where you find lots of history," he said.

In the book of Exodus, Jews over age 20 are commanded to contribute half a shekel each year to pay for public sacrifices and the furnishings of the Temple.

Israeli archeologist Eli Shukron said the coin found at the dig was probably dropped in the drainage ditch by accident.

"Just like today when coins sometimes fall from our pockets and roll into drainage openings at the side of the street, that's how it was some two thousand years ago - a man was on his way to the Temple and the shekel that he intended to use for paying the half shekel head-tax found its way into the drainage channel," Shukron said.

The shekel weighs 13 grams, and shows the head of the chief deity of the city of Tyre on one side, and an eagle upon a ship's prow on the reverse.

Despite the importance of the half-shekel head-tax to the economy of Jerusalem in the Second Temple period, only seven other shekel and half shekel coins have been found in archeological excavations in Jerusalem.

Strange Case of a Forged "Egyptian "Antiquity" that Cost a UK Museum Nearly $1M

As the old adage proves time and again, if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. Such is the case with an "ancient" Egyptian fragmentary figure with no head, arms or legs that cost the Bolton Museum in the UK nearly $1-million ... and is a modern forgery.

The forgery was produced by the notorious Greenhalgh family, which include the 84-year-old wheelchair-bound father George, his wife Olive (83), and their son Shaun (47). The parents were given suspended sentences in January for health reasons, and the son nearly five years in prison after their conviction in the UK courts. The Greenhalghs apparently had a uncanny talent for faking works of art that ranged from antiquities to modern painting and stretched over a 17 year period.

While fakes and forgeries exist in every segment of the art market, it is ironic that the highest end of the market, where one assumes the greatest access to scientific and art historical expertise, is no less susceptible. In fact, it is at this level, that the intense competition and the allure of discovering a great new masterpiece can cause a blind spot fooling the the few experts privileged to quietly examine the object in private (for fear of tipping off potential competitors) to accept it as "authentic" when it surely would not have stood the test of time when opened to public scrutiny by the wider global community of curators, dealers, art historians and scientists.

In the specific case of the Bolton Museum's 'Amarna Princess', as the discredited alabaster torso has been called, here are some of the opinions that were offered along the way and led to the purchase of the statue for  £440,000 in 2003:

In 2002 a London auction house valued the statue at £500,000.

Bolton Museum and funding bodies involved in the purchase sought and received additional independent advice and those experts concluded that it was an authentic figure from the Amarna period.

There were few comparable objects to compare the statue to, apart from a statue in the Louvre Museum in Paris. For this reason the statue’s provenance (ownership history) played an important part in the authentication of the statue

Experts at the British Museum also concluded that it was a genuine piece, according to a statement from the Bolton Museum.

In a copy of the British Museum's original report recently acquired under the Freedom of Information Act by The Art Newspaper, the report described the statue as a "fine example" from the Amarna Period and "the quality of the sculpture and the presence of the side-lock indicate that it must depict one of the daughters of Akhenanten himself." The report goes on to say that "the rarity of sculptures of this size and quality from the period makes this one of the most important Egyptian antiquities to come to light for many years."

According to The Art Newspaper, the BM report did make one ominous statement about the object: "On the back of the figure are areas of white deposit on the surface, the origin of which is not clear. Scientific testing could almost certainly indicate whether this deposit is ancient or modern."

Its not clear what the result of such tests would have revealed. What is clear is that in pursuit of the object Bolton never ordered such tests. 

Greek and Roman Museum Gallery Tops 1-Million Visitor Mark in 10 Months

In an age of newsbytes, youtube, and Britney Spears, it is easy to despair over the state of our cultural health. Popular taste seems a never-ending obsession with the temporal and the inconsequential. One wonders whether at the current pace, our appreciation for the classical heritage that lives at the root of modern society will wane from the distraction.

At least one data point offers hope. On February 21, the one-millionth visitor walked into the newly renovated galleries of Greek and Roman art at the Metropolitan Museum. That's a fairly impressive showing since the galleries were opened to the public just 10 months ago.  On average, more than 3,700 people daily walked through the marble sculpture gallery, or more than one out of every four that entered the Met.

The Met's galleries house one of the finest assemblages of Greek, Hellenistic, Etruscan, South Italian and Roman art collections in the world. The new galleries doubled the number of objects on public display, including 5,300 objects that were gratefully removed from storage. The centerpiece of the new galleries is the majestic Leon and Shelby White Court - a monumental, peristyle court with soaring two-story atrium bathed in natural light. In an era when the classical collections in some museums have been delegated second-tier status in money, resource and attention to more sensational exhibits, it is worth hoping that perhaps the Met's success with spark a new, more widespread revival in the classical past.