Category: owenjarus - Part 12

Ritual Pottery Find at Terrace of the Great God at Abydos

When Egyptologist Kei Yamamoto excavated The Terrace of the Great God at Abydos he came across a collection of curiously-fashioned goblets. Were these bottomless vessels evidence of the builders’ reverence to a remarkable place of ancient worship?

3,800 years ago, during the Middle Kingdom period in Egypts history, there was a temple to Osiris at Abydos. Nothing of it survives today, but based on the location of later temples, archaeologists have a rough idea of where it would have stood.

They also know that just in front of the Osiris templewas an area known in the Middle Kingdom as the Terrace of the Great God.

This area contained numerous chapels built by private citizens (not royal kings) for worship. People wanted their chapels to be as close to the Osiris temple as permitted and as such numerous chapels were bunched together on a narrow stretch of land.

Its like being at a concert,Egyptologist Dr. Kei Yamamoto said, you want to be (in) the front seat.

Dr. Yamamoto has excavated three of these private chapels as part of his PhD dissertation work and is trying to raisefunds to continuethis work. He has discovered evidence of an ancient ritual underneath one of the chapels. He has alsofound evidencethat an Egyptian king, Senwosret I, engaged in some bulldozing in an attempt to create a new road for religious processions.

Dr Yamamoto presented his findings at a lecture at the University of Toronto campus two weeks ago, and kindly granted Heritage Key a follow-up interview, where he discussed his work in more detail.

A Ritual Based on Goblets

Chapel two, the remains of which are pictured above, had an altar, a small mud brick arch-dome and a mud plastered floor.

It dates back nearly 3,800 years to the 12th dynasty of Egypts Middle Kingdom.

The most important finds were underneath the surface. When Dr. Yamamoto excavated the areaunderneath the mud plastered floors he discovered nearly 50 broken goblets with stoppers. They were all buried in a layer of sand.

One of the goblets is pictured here with its stopper on top. Each of the goblets would have held some sort of liquid which has long since evaporated.

Dr. Yamamoto believes that all the goblets were deliberately placed in this layer of sand when the chapel was being built. It was done for some sort of ritualistic reason possibly as an offering to protect the chapel from destruction.

If that is the case the ritual ironically worked, at least in a sense.

Chapel two is one of the best preserved of the Middle Kingdom chapels today and its state of preservation is one of the reasons why Dr. Yamamoto dug it up.

Why Were the Goblets Made by Hand?

Another aspect of this discovery is the unusual nature of the goblets themselves. Their construction is such that they are not very practical as cups – you can’t put one down on a flat surface without the contents spilling out. The only way to preventthisis to stickit in the soil. These gobletsare found in abundance at Abydos, but are rarely found outside of that site.

Another odd thing is that all the goblets Yamamoto found were made by hand in a rather crude way. This is unusual because, by the Middle Kingdom era, Egypt had a sophisticated pottery tradition. They had the potters wheel and an industry where specialists (mostly men) devoted their working hours to making pots. If the goblets were made by these specialists, they could have made them in a more aesthetically pleasing way.

Dr. Yamamoto told Heritage Key that he cannot rule out the possibility that the decision to make them by hand has something to do with the ritual they were used for.

(Its) hard to get into the mind of ancient Egyptians, he pointed out.

A more likely scenario, and the simpler one, is that they did it for economic reasons. Perhaps the people who built this chapel could not afford to have these goblets professionally made and did the work by themselves or by someone else who did it more cheaply.

In any case the people who built this chapel were determined to carry out this ritual, even if that meant making the goblets by hand.

Other Examples of Foundation Deposits

Dr. Yamamoto said that it is extremely rare to find this sort of foundation deposit in a private chapel. There is only one other case on the terrace, dug up decades ago, that resembles it.

Foundation deposits are more common in royal buildings that is structures built by the pharaoh. These deposits generally have higher quality goods such as properly made pots, scarabs and other ceremonial items. It is believed that these royal deposits were used to protect buildings from harm.

Ancient Bulldozing

When Dr. Yamamoto explored the surface beneath the remains of the other two chapels he found evidence of what appears to be ancient demolition.

These chapels date to the late 12th/early 13th dynasty and, as such, are slightly younger than the chapel with the goblets underneath. When Dr. Yamamoto probed the subsurface of these chapels he found that they stoodon top ofabout 1.5 meters of rubble brick remains.

To find out what these brick remains originally were – Yamamoto broke some of the bricks apart so that he could get to the scraps of pottery inside them.

The pottery that he recovered dated to the early 12th dynasty. He also found that the bricks were of a non-royal type (bricks used for royal projects in Ancient Egypt have a specific measurement).

His conclusion the rubble layer underneath the two chapelsare the remains of older private chapels that had been destroyed.

Furthermore these destroyed chapels originally existed slightly to the north.The remains were dumped on the current site. Just likehow a construction worker today, while demolishing a building, would move the rubble toa different location.

Who Destroyed These Chapels… and why?

The most likely candidate for the destroyer of these chapels is Senwosret I – the Middle Kingdom Pharaoh who reigned in the 20th century BC.

I believe that he was clearing the area just outside the temple precinct so that he could build a new, nicely paved, mud plastered road that was going to be used for the procession of the god Osiris,” said Yamamoto.

He added that evidence for the road has been found archaeologically and Senwosret Iis known for being heavily involved in the cult activities at Abydos.

Over time sand encompassed this rubble layer and, long after Senwosret I was dead, people built new chapels over it.

Is this Mastodon a victim of an ancient comet explosion?

Two ancient mastodons recently discovered in Northern America suggest that the Clovis people of the region, thought to have brought about their own extinction, may have been blasted by a massive exploding comet from outer space.

The mastadons – one from a site in Upper New York State, the other in the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM)in Toronto Canada – reveal evidence that a comet may have exploded above Northern America 12,900 years ago.

The Clovis people, who inhabited Northern America at the time, were big game hunters. Until recently, it had been thought that they had contributed to their own destruction by over-hunting. Some of their techniques were uneconomical to say the least, and it was widely thought that they had hunted the mastadons and other game to extinction.

But recent findings of so-called ‘black mats‘ (thick, black, organic layers) in the region have suggested that most large animals in the region were wiped out instantly and similtaneously, and that temperatures plummeted shortly after this event.

After the explosion the surviving humans would have had to adapt to their new environment changing their tools to hunt smaller game such as caribou

These findings suggest that a comet may have exploded over North America 12,900 years ago. This comet explosion would have put particles into the atmosphere that cooled the environment, causing mastodons, and other Pleistocene megafauna, to become extinct. After the explosion the surviving humans would have had to adapt to their new environment changing their tools to hunt smaller game such as caribou. The cooling temperatures, and lack of big game, would have caused hardship, with some studies suggesting that there wasa population decline in the Americas.

This comet theory first appeared in2007 when a team of scientists published evidence that soil strata at several Clovis sites had traces of iridium and nanodiamonds – strong evidence for a comet explosion. Since that time scholars have been trying to find more proof that it occurred and get a better sense of what impact the comet explosion had on the ancient people of the Americas.

Dr. John (Jock) McAndrews, a botanist and Senior Curator Emeritus at the ROM, has been trying to find evidence on mastodon tusks to confirm this theory.

Crystal, but as yet Unclear

The two tusks that Dr. McAndrews studied date from the exact time the explosion is believed to have occurred -12,900 years ago. Both tusks have magnetite crystals on them.

Hetold Heritage Key that the comet would have exploded in the atmosphere over Northern North America.They would have had a fluffy composition of water, dust, iridium and other elements that would have showered anyone, or anything, unfortunate to be in the way of the explosion.

The ROM mastodon had these crystals on the upper-half of its tusk. It would have been walking around (or lying dead) when this debris rained down on it, causing crystals to form on that one part. Its hard to say how much harm this would have done to the animal, or to any humans in the area. Most of the debris would have impacted the skin which, unfortunately, has not survived.

Dr. McAndrews was careful to point out that this isnt a sure thing yet. Magnetite crystals do form on earth. Theres a test that determines if magnetite crystals have an extraterrestrial source. He told me that he is getting his samples looked at in a lab in California, and is awaiting results.

If McAndrews tusks check out it will provide hard to repudiate proof that this comet explosion occurred (mastodons didnt walk around with extraterrestrial minerals on their tusks).

Recurring Problem?

Unfortunately, the supposed Clovis comet is not the only natural catastrophe to have shaped human history. McAndrews pointed out that a small comet, not much bigger than a human, hit Siberia nearly 100 years ago (the Tunguska event). It flattened the landscape, felling forests. Fortunately it was a little bitty comet and hit an area with few people. A similar-sized comet appears to have slammed into ancient Egypt at some point too – King Tut has a conversation-starting piece of jewellery to testify to that.

Friedrich von Bissing’s Dramatic Attack of Hitler’s Nazi Egyptology

Nazi Egyptology is a complex subject. As Professor Thomas Schneider said, there is no uniform ‘Nazi Egyptology’ discipline. Instead there are a number of German Egyptologists who were thrown into the academic hole of the Third Reich – who each reacted to it in their own way.

An interesting story that I didnt put into the article The Real Story of Nazi Egyptology, forbrevity reasons, is that of Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing. Bissing was a professor at Munich. He is perhaps most noted for his work at Abu Ghurab, done at the turn of the century, where he excavated the sun temple of King Niuserre.

Professor Schneider writes that Bissing was a deeply religious man who was torn between his faith and National Socialism, concerned about the increasing number of repressive actions exerted by the Nazis.

In July 1945, George Steindorff, an Egyptology professor at Leipzig, who had been forced to flee to the United States, wrote that Bissing:

Joined the Nazi party in its beginning. He was a very good friend of Rudolf Hess, to whom he dedicated his History of Egyptian Art. He was decorated by Hitler with a golden party-symbol, but later he sent it back and left the party.

After the pogrom he came personally to see me to show his sympathy and was very sorry not to be able to improve my situation with the help of his former party-colleagues. Belonging to an old Prussian family, a grandson of Mathilda Wesendonck, a man of great culture, he detests the low level of the Nazi ideology. However, he is very nervous and hysterical and not young enough to play much further part in politics.

This relationship between Bissing and Hess is interesting in itself. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, Hess was deputy leader of the Nazi party. He had an interest in the occult, something that may have made him gravitate to the Egyptologist. Like Bissing he supported Nazism at first, but turned against it later, defecting to Britain in 1941.

Bissings break with Nazism came on September 18, 1934, almost 75 years to this day, in an almost Hamlet-like episode.

“Satan has grabbed hold of him, God alone can help!”

Professor Schneider writes that,

He wrote a letter of complaint about what he considered to be the abandonment of the true values of National Socialism (that was) directed to a representative of the Catholic church and confidant of Adolf Hitler, Abbot Schachleiter.

Bissing wrote to Schachleiter that:

What one misses is a feeling of responsibilty on the part of the Fhrer who totters like the blind man in the painting of Brueghel. (…) People say that he suffers from incurable megalomania.

Adding…

Satan has grabbed hold of him, God alone can help!

Bissing was kicked out of the Nazi party shortly thereafter but was spared further punishment. Hess tried to help Bissing get reinstated in the party to no avail.

Hess, would of course become a household name in 1941 after he defected to Britain. He did it by flying a plane to Scotland saying, when he landed,that he was in Britain to negotiate a peace. After the war he was tried as a war criminal and spent the rest of his life in jail, committing suicide in 1987.

Bissing survived the war and died in 1956. His removal from the Nazi Party, which was spurred by his letter, helped keep his reputation(at least to some degree)intact.

Scholar Thomas Beckh has published a book about Bissing and his work, available in German.

Capitalism is evil: Michael Moore Movie Echos Ancient Beliefs

If you want to keep up with celebrity news a Toronto newspaper is a good place to get it.

The Toronto International Film Festival is in full swing, with its long list of celebrities and accompanying red carpet antics.

But theres one story in particular that might be of interest to archaeology fans out there.

Michael Moore (of Fahrenheit 9/11 fame) is out with his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story. He held a 45 minute press conference in Toronto to publicize it and hes given a number of media interviews about his ideas.

The movie, from what Ive read, can best be summed up by this quote- capitalism is evil. His idea being that our economic system, with its social inequities and corporate influence, is serving many of us poorly and we need to move to a system that is more egalitarian.

In one interview, on Larry King Live, pictures were shown of an automotive plant in Flint Michigan, where his dad worked, which has recently been torn down.Michigan has been going through aperiod ofeconomicupheaval the past decade. Its unemployment rate, (about 16 percent) is among the highest in the United States.

I expect that given the timeliness of Moores argument (big businesses are not the most fashionable institutions in North America at the moment) his movie will do well.

But, Moore’s idea goes back into Michigan’s history… possiblyas far back as 1,000 years. How this can be is a bit complicated so read on.

As this article summarizes, 1,000 years ago there was a revolution of sorts in the Great Lakes area (including the area around Flint). The people who lived there, whom we callIroquoian,began to depend on farming for survival and moved into year round settlements to support it.

As time goes on these settlements become bigger and people build large communal houses known as longhouses. This continues for nearly 600 years, until Europeans arrive in large numbers.

One thing that doesnt happen is that we dont see the arrival of what we would consider a capitalist society. Society continued to be egalitarian. Indeed the longhouses, where numerous families live in one home, are a symbol of this. There are no palaces or super-rich burials or even monumental architecture.

I asked several prominent Great Lakes archaeologists ifcities, monuments and a ruling class, thethings associated with capitalism,would have appeared in the Great Lakes if Europeans had just stayed away. I got a number of interesting responses including one from Professor David Smith, of the University of Toronto Mississauga, who told me about this gem of an idea.

“Iroquoians purposely kept their society as egalitarian as possible – they knew all about it – they knew what they were doing.”

The Iroquoian people theyre tribal peoples and what that means (is that) in the villages, that their social relations, their political formations, that they believe very strongly in egalitarianism, he said.

Bruce Trigger – one of Canadas foremost archaeologists, unfortunately he died just a little while ago, wrote extensively about this. He has a paper that makes the argument that Iroquoians purposely kept their society as egalitarian as possible – they knew all about it – they knew what they were doing.

Whether Bruce Trigger was correct is another matter (I should add that Triggerdid extensive research on Ancient Egypt as well). But the idea is certainly intriguing.

Ron Williamson pointed out to me that the people of the Great Lakes were aware of a larger world that we dont often give them credit for.

He explained that people in the Great Lakes would have been aware oflife at least as far south as Florida. As such they would have had some contact with Mississippian people in the Midwest who builtmonumental earthworks, created elaborate burialsand evenbuilt a city calledCahokia.

In addition to knowing of these projects to the south, might ancient people in the Great Lakes have also been aware of a gap between the rulers and ruled?Might they also have decided not to go down this road?

Its impossible to prove for sure. But If Trigger is correctit is anirony that thisdecision to remain egalitarian happened in theGreat Lakes. Aregion where modern-day American civilization is facing a difficult challenge and a modern day filmmaker is calling for a return to a economic system similar to that used, in his ownstate,1,000 years ago.

Does Shamanism Explain the Similarity Between These two Crowns?

As this is being written, New Yorkers and out of town visitors are taking in,Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul, now on display at the Met.

As Heritage Keys Helen Atkinson writes,the exhibit isa real treat.

But, while youre looking at the artefacts, heres an ancient mystery you may want to consider.

The crown on the top is on display at the show. As the caption notes its from Afghanistan and dates from the 1st century AD. Now, take a look at the second photo. This crown dates from between the 3rd and 5th centuries AD but was found in South Korea, nearly 5,000 kilometres away. It was used by a queen of Old Silla, one of the kingdoms in the area.

The similarity is pretty obvious.

In an interview (soon to be published) with Heritage Key, Professor Sarah Milledge Nelson, the archaeologist who literally wrote the book on Korean archaeology, says that, its more than a co-incidence. She recalled when the Afghanistan crowns were being uncovered decades back.

When a site in Afghanistan, from the first and second centuries BC, was excavated everyone in Korea got really excited because the crown looked a lot like the shaman crown of Korea, she told me.

(It was) made with gold, with little dangling things with little trees on it and so forth. Not identical but they had little things dangling down around the face to.

So what did Afghanistan and South Korea have in common nearly 2,000 years ago? The answer appears to be shamanism – the practice by which a person communicates with the spirits using rituals and various methods.

The practice can be found in antiquity throughout East and Central Asia. Crowns, similar to these two, have also been found in Siberia, where shamanism has been practiced up until recent times.

Professor Nelsonbelieves that the practice made its way into the ruling class in Silla, embedding itselfin its legends.

“The queens are descended from mountain goddesses and mountains are shamanic and still are as far as we know always were,” she said.

“So the mountain goddess was presumably a shaman and her daughters therefore inherited this ability to be shamans.”

It stands to reason that shamanism played some sort of role in Afghanistan rulership too.

Just as dragons transcend China and Western Europe, these shaman crowns appear to have transcended Asia – a little extra something to consider when attending the exhibition at the Met.

The Real Story of Nazi Egyptology

Thomas Schneider is exploring a subject that has never been studied before. The University of British Columbia professor is examining the history of German Egyptology during the Nazi era. The period that lasted from when Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933 – until he committed suicide in his bunker in 1945.The research is a work in progress and Professor Schneider continues to receive new archival documents and information. He plans to turn his work into a book length manuscript. While popular fiction, such as the Indiana Jones trilogy, depicts action packed films about this topic, the real story is far more complex. Professor Schneider generously took the time to talk about his research with me. He also provided me with detailed written notes, that outline his research, to help me write this story.

From Biological Weapon to Organic Viagra: the Craze for ‘Mad Honey’

Mad Honey, more scientifically known as grayanotoxin, is a toxic substance humans have been dealing with for thousands of years.

The way how it is created is quite simple. A bee takes nectar from a toxic rhododendron plant (available in Turkey, the United States, British Columbia and the UK). The toxic substance is then deposited at a beehive.

The odds of getting any ill-effects from this substance, from the honey at your local grocery store, are pretty much nill. By the time commercial honey is diluted the amount of material from a rhododendron is extremely low or non-existent.

However, if you buy honey from a local beehive that happens to be near a large amount of rhododendron, the risk goes up.

Mad Honey Versus the Roman Legions

Ancient records record that mad honey was used as an early biological weapon in the Black Sea region of Turkey. It’s believable – the effect of mad honey could bring down an army. In 401 BC, Xenophon, an Athenian military commander fighting against the Persian King Ataxerxes II, encountered the substance. He wrote:

“Here, generally speaking, there was nothing to excite their wonderment, but the numbers of bee-hives were indeed astonishing, and so were certain properties of the honey. The effect upon the soldiers who tasted the combs was, that they all went for the nonce quite off their heads, and suffered from vomiting and diarrhea, with a total inability to stand steady on their legs.

A small dose produced a condition not unlike violent drunkenness, a large one an attack very like a fit of madness, and some dropped down, apparently at death’s door. So they lay, hundreds of them, as if there had been a great defeat, a prey to the cruelest despondency.

But the next day, none had died; and almost at the same hour of the day at which they had eaten they recovered their senses, and on the third or fourth day got on their legs again like convalescents after a severe course of medical treatment.

Now, this particular case doesnt sound like an intentional biological attack (although the Persians were probably glad the honey had the effect that it did). But in 67 BC there is a record of it being used intentionally in warfare by King Mithradates IV of north-east Anatolia, Turkey against a Roman army led by Pompey the Great.

As paraphrased in an article in the modern day journal Clincial Toxicology what happened is: On the advice of his chief adviser, the Greek physician Kateuas, Mithradates IV made a tactical retreat leaving mad honey containing honey combs in the path of the advancing Roman troops who consumed the honey. The Romans, thus incapacitated, were easily overcome.

Mad Honey Sex

“A small dose produced a condition not unlike violent drunkenness, a large one an attack very like a fit of madness, and some dropped down, apparently at death’s door.”

This brings us to today and a rather unusual article brief I just read in the journal, Annals of Emergency Management. It seems as if the substance is, again, being used intentionally. But not to stop an army.

In an article titled Mad Honey Sex: Therapeutic Misadventures From an Ancient Biological Weapon, a team of scientists from Gazi University in Turkey writes that between 2002 and 2008 they have seen 21 cases of mad honey poisoning at their hospital.

Patients are overwhelmingly men, they said, andmiddle aged(average age 55 years); something which left them puzzled, until they talked to 10 local beekeepers and found out why this might be. Local beekeepers ranked sexual performance enhancement as the most common reason for therapeutic mad honey consumption in men aged 41 through 60 years.

The scientists conclude, A dietary and travel history should be included in the assessment of middle-aged men presenting with bradycardia and hypotension. A mad honey therapeutic misadventure may be the cause.

Somewhere out there, in the Ancient Greek afterlife, Xenophon must be scratching his head.

Interactive Cahokia

The city of Cahokia is the latest ancient site to go virtual, thanks to a reconstruction and online map published.

Ancient Cahokia was a Mississippian city that flourished between 1000 -1400 AD. At its peak, in the early 13th century, it had a population between 10,000 and 20,000and covered nearly six square miles. This makes it larger than London ca. 1250 AD.

It had about 120 mounds during this time, some used for burial, others for religious purposes. It also had palisades, communal plazas, houses and fields full of crops.

The Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, has an interesting online tool that let you explore it virtually. Theyve created an online map that shows you the site. You can click on an architectural feature to get a detailed explanation of what it is and what it was used for, along with pictures.They havent got details for the whole city yet, and youll notice that some of the mounds further out from the core dont have a text entry.

Still, if you cant get out to Cahokia, it gives you a good sense of what the site looked like.

For more interactive fun check out King Tut Virtual, Digital Karnakand the Virtual Museum of Canada.

A museum full of shoes

One of Torontos most unique cultural getaways is a place dedicated to one small, but important, facet of human culture shoes. The Bata Shoe Museum, as its name suggests, is a museum dedicated to the history of shoes. It shows shoes ranging from 4,500 years ago to the modern day. Youcan find shoes worn by Anasazi, the ancient Egyptians and, yes, even Pamela Anderson all in the same building.

Shoes in the ancient world are rare archaeological finds.An archaeologist can excavate a decent sized city and not find a single pair. As such the bulk of the museums collection postdates the ancient world.

But, there are a number of treats for those of us interested in ancient shoes. The museum has a pair of 2,000 year old yucca leaf sandals from the Anasazi culture, from the American Southwest, which are remarkably well preserved.

Another 1st century AD favourite of mine is a bronze statue of a caliga, a sandal boot worn by Roman soldiers. The Romans legionnaires clearly have a lot of respect for this footwear to make a statue of it!

But, perhaps the museums most precious artefact is a pair of silver embellished ataderos (ankle boots) from the Chimu Culture (12 to 15th century AD) of Peru. According to the museum these boots were likely intended for an elite burial. Silver, in the Chimu culture, was a luxury item limited to the upper classes.

These boots are the only known surviving pair that may have actually been worn. The three others, known to exist, are all miniatures.

Asfor the Egyptians, the museum has a few examples from ancient times – including a pair of red leather shoes with gilded embellishment that date to the Coptic period (4th century AD) of history. In all likelihood they were worn by a woman and would have been considered quite stylish in there day.

They also have a pair of ca. 2,500 BC wooden sandals, which would likely have been used as grave goods. Wood is not a very practical material to wear. Another pair the museum has is a Ptolemaic period pair of papyrus sandals (they used it for more than writing!). Again these were likely grave goods and wouldnt have been used for everyday wear.

Discovery of Tablets in Dark Age Temple at Tayinat

An archaeological team, led by University of Toronto professor Tim Harrison, has uncovered a cache of tablets in a temple thatwas built duringthe ‘Dark Age’ period, after the collapse of several Bronze Age civilizations.

The temple is at the site of Tayinat in southeastern Turkey.

Tayinat has a long history, which stretches from the early Bronze Age (nearly 5,000 years ago) to the end of the Iron Age, about 2,500 years ago.

The ‘Dark Age’ is a period that begins around the 12th century BC It sees the simultaneous collapse of several civilizations in Europe and the Middle East.

In the Aegean, the sites of the Mycenaean civilization became abandoned after 1,200 BC, with all traces of it disappearing by 1,000 BC. In Anatolia the Hittites fell at almost the same time. Meanwhile in Egypt the New Kingdom ended in the 11th century B.C with the country heading into the ‘third intermediate period.’ It would not re-emerge as an independent, unified state, for several centuries.

So a temple constructed around the 10th century BC, during this ‘Dark Age,’ is a rather unusual find and suggests that, at least at this one site, life was continuing on with some sense of normalcy. It was partially uncovered in 2008 and the archaeologists, as I write this, are continuing their excavations. They announced just recently that they have found a cache of tablets.

“The tablets, and the information they contain, may possibly highlight the imperial ambitions of one of the great powers of the ancient world”

These tablets are a very recentdiscovery and its uncertain which of them date from when. Its likely that many of them post-date thisDark Ageperiod of collapse. The team said that in 738 BC a re-emergent Assyrian empire paid a visit to Tayinat (wrecking destruction of course) and turned it into a provincial capital. If the tablets date to this time then they will provide an invaluable look into life at the edge of the Assyrian empire.

The tablets, and the information they contain, may possibly highlight the imperial ambitions of one of the great powers of the ancient world, and its lasting influence on the political culture of the Middle East,” Professor Harrison said in a news release.