Unruly History in the News #17
Power Outage Edition
The power is out at my house and has been since Friday night, so this week’s list is going to be much shorter than usual since I’m doing it from my phone! Hope wherever you all are, you’re warm and dry and have electricity.
This week, in history acting unruly…
Archaeologists have discovered residential structures in the Mayan city of Chichén Itzá. Apparently, the buildings are “the first residential group where a ruler lived with his entire family.” The complex includes “the House of the Snails, the House of the Moon and the so-called Palace of the Phalluses.”
However, there are equally claims that this place has been known to archaeologists for over a hundred years. Basically, it’s their fault if they forgot about it.
Speaking of (re)discoveries, a temple dedicated to the god of springtime thunder was just found in Iraq. The Sumerian temple is at least 4,500 years old.
And, a Medieval synagogue hidden beneath a Spanish nightclub has just been discovered. The synagogue in Seville predates the Inquisition, and is a rare surviving example of Jewish life in Medieval Spain. (So if you watched Uncharted and thought, “Puh-lease, the Spanish government would have noticed a huge treasure complex under Barcelona.” Well. 👀 )
For the first time ever, hundreds of slides, photographs, and negatives from antarctic exhibitions are available for viewing by the public online, thanks to the National Archives of Australia.
At Beinecke Library, a 1,250-year-old print of Buddhist prayers is going on display. It is the earliest known printed text in human history. They were mass-produced in Japan between 764 and 770 CE by Empress Regnant Shōtoku.
Archery arrived in Europe earlier than we thought! Archaeologists found evidence in France that hunters 54,000 years ago used bows and arrows to hunt bison or deer.
A few weeks ago, I mentioned that a 52-foot-long Book of the Dead on preserved papyrus had been discovered in Saqqara, Egypt. Now photos are available!
On the left is hieratic text. On the right, an image probably shows Osiris, the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld. (Image credit: The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.) The Waziry papyrus, as the above is being called, was unveiled in the newly renovated wing of Egypt’s Grand Egyptian Museum.
The US is repatriating several Yemeni artifacts… sort of. The Yemeni ambassador to the US, Mohammed Al-Hadhrami, has stated that the “repatriated” items will remain in the Smithsonian’s care due to ongoing unrest in Yemen. “But they belong to Yemen, we swear”—sort of what it sounds like, right?
Speaking of repatriation—gold jewelry worn by Cambodian rulers has been returned to Cambodia. The ancient pieces of gold worn by rulers were initially taken from ancient temples and burial grounds between the 1970s and the 2000s, during a period of unrest in Cambodia.
This small, smooth, wooden object found at a Roman fort in England was probably a sex toy. It’s on display at the Vindolanda museum.
A very rare 1908 Harley Davidson motorcycle was restored and sold at auction for nearly a million dollars. The bike still has a lot of its original parts and says a lot about how far our restoration capabilities have come in the last couple of decades.
We now have evidence of trepanation (a type of skull surgery) dating back 3,400 years. In the Canaanite city of Tel Megiddo, two brothers suffered from a series of debilitating illnesses but received several treatments, including the removal of part of the skull. (The city, by the way, was the site of many battles and gave its name to another biblical disaster: Armageddon.)
