Category: owenjarus - Part 7

The big mystery the new Tut research did not solve – Amarna Art

Akhenaten and Family - limestone The King Tut results are in and right now everyone is going gaga over the fact that malaria appears to have played a role in the boy king’s death. While this is an interesting find, there is another discovery – King Tut looked fairly normal, or at least he did not have a significantly bizarre or feminine physique – which also carries major implications for Ancient Egyptian research.

First a bit of background.

During the reign of Akhenaten(who is probably Tut’s father)Egyptian art became, well, very weird.

The formal prose that the Egyptians had followed for thousands of years was thrown out the door. Figures were depicted with long cone shaped heads, spindly fingers and distorted bodies. Intimate scenes involving the ruler, such as Akhenaten kissing his daughter, were depicted for the first time.

This art style, referred to as Amarna Art, was prominent throughout Akhenatens reign and a few years afterwards. By the time of King Tut it had largely died out.

Why Egyptian art appears this way, for such a short period of time, is a mystery. About a decade ago Egyptologist Alwyn Burridge proposed that Akhenaten and other members of his family suffered from Marfan Syndrome – a condition that leads to an appearance similar to that shown in Amarna Art.

Burridge emphasizes that while this condition affects ones appearance, it has no impact on intelligence. Indeed Abraham Lincoln had Marfan Syndrome and is regarded as one of the most successful presidents in American history.

Another theory, published last year in the Annals of Internal Medicine, is that Akhenaten had a form of Antley-Bixler Syndrome or a combination of aromatase excess syndrome and sagittal craniosynostosis syndrome.

All of thesetheoriesoperate on the idea thatAmarna art is so unusual because Akhenaten and his family suffered from a medical condition that affected their physical appearance.

New findings dispute feminine physique

The problem is that researchers ruled out Marfan Syndrome in the new findings. They also say that the physical appearance of Tut andAkhenatenwasprobablynot unusual.

They say that the heads of Akhenaten and Tut display no sign that they were cone shaped, although Tuts great-grandfather, Yuya, displays some evidence of distortion. Akhenatens fragmented pelvis also displayed no signs of a physically altering condition.

Tutankhamun shortly after the discovery of KV62, photographed by Harry Burton. - Image copyright Griffith Institute

The researchers conclude that – Therefore, the particular artistic presentation of persons in the Amarna period is confirmed as a royally decreed style most probably related to the religious reforms of Akhenaten. It is unlikely that either Tutankhamun or Akhenaten actually displayed a significantly bizarre or feminine physique.

A royal decree?

So is it time to stop chasing medical explanations and believe that, for some unexplained reason, Akhenaten decided that he just wanted the people in Egyptian art to be drawn in a way never before seen?

I talked to Burridge over the phone yesterday. Given that the news has just broke, she needs some time to study the medical results before deciding how this affects her Marfan Syndrome theory. Its also possible that other medical researchers could challenge the results. Although media reports travel fast, it takes time for scientists and scholars to create a reasoned response to complicated research.

In some ways a royal decree based on his own whims doesnt seem so far-fetched for Akhenaten. Aside from the art there were other things he did that were pretty off base for a pharaoh. He focused Egyptian religion around the worship of the Aten, a sun-disc. In doing so he unleashed an iconoclasm that saw the names of other gods desecrated. Evidence for this has been found as far away at Tell el-Borg, a frontier fortress in the Sinai Desert.

He also decided to build an entirely new capital called Amarna, out in the desert. It was only in use for a short time and became a ghost town not long after his reign. Heritage Keys Malcolm Jack interviewed the sites excavator, Professor Barry Kemp, recently.

If the new research holds up, Egyptologists looking to answer the riddle of Amarna art are going to have to look into Akhenatens mind for the answers. This will be a process that, I daresay, will be a great deal more difficult then looking for a physical medical condition.

Looted Artefacts Sold to Tourists in Israel Antiquities Scam

Dr Morag Kersel A researcher has uncovered evidence of a widespread scam in Israel that results in tourists buying recently looted artefacts without their knowledge. Buying antiquities in Israel is legal if they were found before 1978, the year a major antiquities law was passed. There are numerous dealers in Israel, who are required to register with the Israel Antiquities Authority and keep an inventory of the artefacts they have for sale. Dr. Morag Kersel, of Brown University in the United States, has been studying the illegal antiquities trade in Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories.

Dr Kersel has been conducting interviews with anyone involved in antiquities who would agree to talk to her, including dealers, collectors, residents engaged in looting, government officials and archaeologists. These interviewees are guaranteed anonymity so that they can speak freely about the situation in the region. Dr. Kersel told me that she interviewed 36 antiquities dealers in Israel. Out of these dealers roughly half admitted to engaging in an elaborate scheme that allows recently looted artefacts to be sold to tourists.

Loophole in the Law

Heres how the scheme works. While dealers have to keep an inventory of everything they sell, those inventories are often kept vague. A listing that says that a dealer owns a pot dated to the Bronze Age doesnt mean very much, since many pots of that era will be in their shop.

A tourist who buys the artefact will get a certificate of authenticity but will often forget something important an export permit.

Lots of people who purchase artefacts dont know that theyre supposed to ask for an export permit the law doesnt require the sellers to offer you an export permit, said Dr. Kersel at a presentation at the University of Toronto in Canada.

Without the export permit the sale isnt officially registered and the dealer can take the registry number and use it on a new and often looted antiquity. Since the inventory descriptions are kept vague it isnt hard to find an artefact that looks similar to the one that was just sold.

Material that was looted as recently as last week was illegally entering the legal market through an exchange of registry numbers, said Dr. Kersel.

The tourist could, of course, be caught trying to take the antiquity out of the country without a permit. But even if they are, it’s hard to fault the dealer. After all they are under no obligation to let tourists know that they need an export permit.

Why Did the Dealers Confess?

Perhaps the most striking thing about this research is how many dealers admitted to it more than a dozen of them. Dr. Kersel told me that the reason they admitted to this is that they are fed up with the practice and the system that makes it easy to carry it out.

Many of them told me they probably wouldnt do it if the guy next door wasnt doing it, she said. As far as they’re concerned the system as it currently stands doesnt really work.

Kersel said that the Israel Antiquities Authority is aware that this scam is taking place but lacks the resources to clamp down on it. She pointed out that therewere 65 registered dealers in Israel while she was in the country andonly 2.5 officers dedicated to enforcing Israels antiquity laws. There simply are not enough people to go around.

The Looters

Dr. Kersel also talked to people engaged in looting andlearned a bit about what theirmotives are. Not surprising is the fact that many of them do it for money.

Poverty is certainly not a stranger in the Middle East. Just recently the Jerusalem Post reported that nearly one in three children in Israel lives below the poverty line. As of 2002 the general poverty rate in Jordan was reported at 14.2%. The West Bank economy has been hit hard by political conflict and poverty is rampant there.

However, there are some other motives for looting that you may not have guessed. One of them is believe it or not recreational.

People are very interested in getting out on the weekend in the land and its just something that they do, Dr. Kersel said in an interview. They take their families out, have a picnic and dig around on their Tell.

A Tell is a man-made hill that many modern day communities, in the Middle East, are situated on. If people have been living in the same place for thousands of years, the debris from that time will pile up, forming this hill.

Kersels research also revealed the presence of something more insidious a practice termed ‘resistance looting’. That is people looting to try and remove evidence of foreign occupation. So far she has found evidence for this in the West Bank, but not in Israel or Jordan.

People looted to find and destroy any evidence of occupation on their land, she said in at the Toronto lecture. Anything with a Jewish motif or anything with a Christian motif… it just so happens that those things are (worth hundreds) of dollars on the market.

She said that she hasnt found evidence that ‘resistance looting’ is being carried out in an organized way in the West Bank. It seems to be more ad-hoc and not so organized.

I also asked her whether there is any evidence of terrorist groups being involved in the trade in Israel/Jordan/Palestine. She said that that she has found no evidence of that so far.

Telling the Truth

The most obvious question this research begs is: how do we know people are telling the truth?

Its something I grappled with, said Dr. Kersel. The anonymous format of the study means that there is no way for other people, such as this reporter, to check with individual people. Even the transcripts cannot be publicly released and must be destroyed after a few years.

Dr. Kersel admits that she cannot be certain that every person told the truth, every time. But there are patterns more than a dozen antiquities dealers in Israel admitted to taking part in this scam, making that find almost impossible to dismiss. Several people said that resistance to occupation played a role in their decision to loot, making this motive difficult toignore as well.

Why Looting Matters

Another question that may be asked is: why does this matter? If people, especially impoverished individuals, choose to loot for money then why should they be stopped?

In short the looting of sites means that archaeologists lose valuable information needed to reconstruct the past. Once an artefact has been removed from context, without proper note-taking, then archaeologists cannot say where it came from and what material it isassociated with. This note-taking is very important and archaeology students have it drummed in their heads to record every relevant detail.

Museums are full of artefacts that were taken without excavation. The Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto Canada has a sculpture which they believe to be of Cleopatra VII – the last ruler of Egypt. They acquired it in the early 20th century but, because they don’t know what site it’s from, didn’t make the identification until just after the year 2000.

Mysterious Ancient East Asian Body in Vagnari Could be the Son of a Concubine

Who is the man in this picture? How did this fellow, whose maternal ancestry is East Asian, end up in a modest grave in southern Italy about 2000 years ago?

Its an enticing question and one that has been in the news ever since Heritage Key announced the story of this mans discovery.

Just a quick recap; a team of scientists based at McMaster University in Hamilton Canada have found that this man, buried in a Roman cemetery at Vagnari, in southern Italy, is of East Asian ancestry on this mothers side.

They determined this through mitochondrial DNA testing.

The DNA tests cannot tell us where in East Asia his ancestors were from, or who his father is. The tests also can not determine how many generations removed he is from East Asia. This means that he could be the first person in his family to leave East Asia, or it could be that an ancestormoved westbefore he was born.

Archaeologists can say, from the one meagre pot buried with him, that he was buried sometime in the first or second century AD. This was the time of the early Roman Empire when it was at its military apex.

His grave was modest to say the least. His surviving grave goods consist of one pot, and someone else was later buried on top of him! The site of Vagnari was used for the production of textiles and iron implements. Its possible that this fellow was a slave, but archaeologists cannot be sure.

This appears to be the first time that a person with East Asian ancestry has been found in the Roman Empire. But the discoverers caution thatvery little of this sort of DNA research has been done on the Ancient Romans. Its possible that there could be many more people with an East Asian ancestry waiting to be found from the Roman Empire.

Is he the son of a concubine?

Dr. Raoul McLaughlin, of Queen’s University Belfast, has studied Sino-Roman relations extensively.

He has noted that there is not a lot of evidence of direct contact between China and Rome. While the silk trade flourished during the Early Roman Empire, the trade itself was conducted by middlemen roaming an 8,000 kilometre route between China and Rome.

After the articles appeared, Dr. McLaughlin emailed me and generously sent me a paper describing some of the possibilities on how this man ended up in Italy. He offered a number of possibilities but there is one that I found particularly intriguing.

Concubines were often offered as gifts in eastern diplomacy, Dr. McLaughlin wrote, adding that there is no evidence that the Chinese ever sent a royal concubine to the Roman court.

But perhaps the kings of inner Asia followed this practice in their diplomatic dealings with the Roman Empire.

A Concubine Sent to Augustus?

Emperor Augustus received ambassadors from Saka kings who had conquered the Indus from their homeland deep in Central Asia. These kings sent gifts from the East that conveyed the power and scope of their distant realm, wrote Dr. McLaughlin.

Augustus was given slaves including an armless youth that the Greeks proclaimed a living Hermes; a symbol of commerce and distant communications. Strabo also mentions that the Saka ambassadors brought servants dressed only in loin-cloths besprinkled with sweet-smelling odours. So perhaps the [individual] is the descendant of a slave sent from a court in inner Asia, possibly an exotic concubine given to the imperial household.

Ancient trafficking

There are more scenarios by which a concubine from East Asia might come to the Roman Empire.

In this era merchants became involved in trafficking concubines overland between royal courts, wrote Dr. McLaughlin.

The writer Philostratus, who lived ca. AD 170-244, writes about a moral philosopher named Apollonius who was questioned by a tax collector when leaving the Empire on a journey from Roman Syria to the court of a Parthian king. The tax collector asked Apollonius what he was taking out of the country and Apollonius replied, I have nothing to declare but my virtues and he began to recite a list of his virtues such as Grace, Faith, Charity, Discipline, and so on. The tax collector was immediately interested as he believed these were the names of valuable female concubines accompanying the philosopher.

Concubines were also trafficked overseas.

A Roman merchant report called The Periplus of the Erythreaen Sea describes trade opportunities for Roman businessmen involved in commercial voyages between Egypt and India. The author records how Roman traders offered the Saka courts beautiful Mediterranean concubines and expensive slave musicians. This explains why female Roman attendants appear in the earliest Sanskrit plays as companions to Indian kings.

A concubine might also explain why this particular fellow was born into slavery. Asian concubines sent to the Roman court did not achieve high influence and as a consequence their children were born into slavery. Within a few generations their descendants could have lost much of their distinctive physical appearance.

Was his Ancestry Based in the Tarim Region?

Theres another interesting possibility, could this person be from the Tarim region? The place which is famous for its mummies?

Dr. McLaughlin wrote: a Roman writer named Florus suggests that Augustus received representatives from the Seres, or Silk people who inhabited the Tarim kingdoms. If the Emperor did receive representatives and gifts from this distant region, it was not an official embassy. Augustus makes no mention of the Seres in his memorial Res Gestae when he boasts about his most distant diplomatic dealings. Consequently the East Asian female ancestor of the Vagnari burial could have been a trade commodity.

Could he Have Been the First Person in his Family to Leave East Asia?

What if this fellow was the first person in his family to leave East Asia? Dr. McLaughlin wrote of a scenario that would make this possible.

Male slaves were also imported into the Roman Empire from the distant East. Horace indicates that these individuals were seen serving at Roman feasts.

Dr. McLaughlin continues-

Other evidence indicates that the Roman government imposed a high custom tax on eastern goods imported through Egypt and Syria. Some scholars suggest that the government seized a share of these goods rather than demand the monetary equivalent. If so, then a significant number of Asian slaves would have passed directly into the hands of the imperial government, he wrote.

These individuals could have entered the workforce on nearby imperial estates, been sold in regional retail markets, or even shipped onward to Italy for redeployment there… Another link is the fact that Alexandria in Egypt was a major centre for reworking eastern textiles. The key to understanding the Vagnari find could lie with the manufacturing business conducted at the site.

Kushan Diplomats at Trajans Victory Games

There is yet another interesting possibility:

By the reign of Trajan, the Roman government was in contact with a powerful Asian realm called the Kushan Empire, who ruled territories from the edge of the Tarim kingdoms to the Indus region. The Kushan came from a homeland in East Asia on the outer edge of the Chinese Empire, but had moved west into Bactria. At this time Kushan diplomats were seen seated with senators at Trajans victory games in celebration of his Dacian conquests.

Of course the DNA is maternal (mother to offspring) so you have to allow for them bringing someone with them who is female.

A Sad Meeting Between East and West

However this fellow, or his maternal ancestors, arrived in the Roman Empire, it doesnt seem he enjoyed good working conditions. From the evidence so far, it does not seem as if Vagnari was at all a pleasant place to work. One of the textiles has a marking saying that it was made by Gratus – a slave of the emperor.

The landscape was treeless, providing little shelter from the Italian summer. The work, making iron implements and textiles, would have been gruelling in the heat.

Given this information, and the extreme modesty of this mans burial, its difficult to envision a plausible scenario where this man came here willingly.

Ancient Meteorite Hunting in the Arctic! Did the Thule People Rush East in Search of Alien Rocks?

Did the ancestors of todays Inuit race across the arctic 750 years ago in search of meteorites?Canwest News Services has just published an intriguing story that suggests just that. According to the news service, Dr. Robert McGhee, curator emeritus at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, recently published this theory in a new book, The Northern World: AD 900 to 1400.

Basically the idea works like this. 10,000 years ago a meteorite crashed into west Greenland, its known today as the Cape York meteorite. Mining in the arcticwas quite difficult (even today) so an iron meteorite was very handy for anyone wanting to make metal tools.

The Thule people are the ancestors of todays Inuit and in ca. AD 1000 they were based in Alaska. Around AD 1250 the Thule realized, through whatever means, that there was a huge source of iron out east that was there for the taking. They moved eastward and occupied Greenland in a matter of years.

By this time the Norse were operating in the region. Trade with them would have provided another source of metal.

Greenland, with its meteorite remains, was the main target of this migration.

It would seem plausible to suggest that metal – meteoric iron from the Cape York meteorites and metal goods traded from the Norse – may have been the magnet that drew ancestral Inuit eastward from Alaska,” Dr. McGhee told Canwest News.

Hisidea is supported bydates that indicate that the Thule settlements in Greenland are older than those in other parts of the Canadian arctic. This suggests that Greenland, with its meteorite remains, was the main target of this migration.

Other theories in the past have suggested that climate change (the medieval warm period ended around AD 1200) may have played a role in the Thule migration.

It has also been suggested that this movement of Thule people marked theendfor theDorset people who had inhabited the arctic beforehand.

If you want to learn more about arctic adventuresHeritage Key published an interview with Dr. Patricia Sutherland, of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, where she argued that the Dorset people made first contact with the Norse.

Also our own Malcolm Jack hasinterviewed Professor Gregory Reinhardt on excavations in Alaska.

The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army Exhibition at the ROM – Full Details

News of this exhibit has been leaking out in bits and pieces for weeks. But today the official announcement of it was made and full details have been released.

The exhibit will be hitting the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto Canada starting in late June. The precise exhibition start/end dates are being arranged.

As reported earlier the exhibit will be stopping at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and the Royal BC Museum in Victoria BC. A stop in Montreal was announced several months back.

Also, as hk previously reported, this will be the biggest Terracotta Warriors exhibition ever to hit North America. We now know that it will include about 250 artefacts in total.

Now for the new info:

There will be 16 human terracotta figures coming to Toronto.These will include two generals (one of which is pictured here), an acrobat, a cavalryman, a charioteer and a mix of armoured soldiers, archers and lower ranking officers.

Generals are, of course, very rare among the warriors and would have commanded the emperors army in the afterlife. Archaeologists are hoping to come across more generals and senior officers in the digs that have just resumed at the terracotta site.

This exhibit will also have some treats for animal lovers. There are going to be two terracotta horses coming to Toronto. Horses played an important role in the first emperors army, being used for cavalry and the all-important chariots.

There is also going to be wait for it a terracotta dog! Albeit one that dates to the Han Period, after the Emperor Qin Shi Huang andhis warriors were already buried.

The exhibit is going to go well beyond the tomb of the first emperor. Its going to start with the story of the rise of the Qin Empire. The first section will show how a family – that ruled a small bit of territory on the western frontier of China – came to control the entire country, unifying the land for the first time. Among the treasures that will illustrate this section is a jade pendent worn by the Duke of Qin. He used it 350 years before Emperor Qin came to power.

Among the artefacts in this display will be a war painting that exhibit curator Dr. Chen Shen says is the is the oldest Chinese war-painting discovered so far. It dates to the 3rd century BC. Unfortunately a picture of it isnt available for release. If this is the oldest war painting in China its pretty remarkable that it was created at such a late time.

War reliefs can be found at much earlier dates in Mesopotamia and Egypt. In fact one of the earliest art examples in Egypt shows King Narmer about to beat an enemy with a mace! Although I suppose that wouldnt qualify as a painting.

The exhibit is also going to show terracotta figurines from before and after the time of the famous warriors. Human figurines were not new when the Qin emperor came to power. What the Qin emperor did was blow them up to life size and mass produce them in a way that meant that no two look alike.

No one in China would ever attempt this again. After the emperors death terracotta figures reverted to smaller sizes.

The Han figurines (produced after the Qin emperors death) will show the aforementioned terracotta dog and other animals including pigs, chickens, sheep and goats. There will also be multi-coloured warriors and terracotta ladies.

It should be noted that the Han Dynasty is detached from the Qin. After Qin Shi Huangs death his empire disintegrated and man named Liu Bang (Emperor Gaozu) came to power. He was born a peasant and there is a story that his revolt against the Qin started when his conscripted workers deserted him while heading to work on the first emperors tomb.

Embassador or Slave? Researchers Mystified by East Asian Skeleton Discovered in Vagnari Roman Cemetery

A team of researchers annouced a surprising discovery during a scholarly presentation in Toronto last Friday. The research team, based at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, has been helping to excavate an ancient Roman cemetery at the site of Vagnari in southern Italy. Led by Professor Tracy Prowse, theyve been analyzing the skeletons found there by performing DNA and oxygen isotope tests.

The surprise is that the DNA tests show that one of the skeletons, a man, has an East Asian ancestry on his mothers side. This appears to be the first time that a skeleton with an East Asian ancestry has been discovered in the Roman Empire.

However, it seems like thiscontact between east and west did not go well.

Vagnari was an imperial estate during this time. The emperor controlled it and at least some of the workers were slaves. One of the tiles found at Vagnari is marked Gratuswho is aslave of the emperor. The workersproduced iron implements and textiles. The landscape around them was nearly treeless, making the Italian summer weather all the worse.

The man with East Asian ancestry may wellhave been a slave himself. He lived sometime in the first to second century AD, in the early days of the Roman Empire. Much of his skeleton (pictured here) has not survived. The mans surviving grave goods consist of a single pot (which archaeologists used to date the burial). To top things off someone was buried on top of him – with a superior collection of grave goods.

Much of the cemetery has yet to be excavated, but indications so far suggest that his contemporaries were mostly local individuals. Archaeologists have dugup 70 skeletons from the Vagnari cemetery andoxygen isotope tests have shown that more than 80 per cent of the people were born at or near this estate.

How this particular individual ended up down in Vagnari is an intriguing story and thats what makes this find very exciting, said team member Dr. Jodi Barta, who analyzed the DNA.

DNATesting

The researchers determined his ancestry by analyzing his mitochondrial DNA material that is passed down from mother to offspring.

As DNA is passed down from generation to generation there are mutations. People who are related to each other will have similar changes allowing researchers to put them into broad haplogroups, that tend to relate to geographical areas.

This technique has been used to map the spread of humans throughout the world.

The man found in the cemetery has DNA that belongs to what scientists called haplogroup D. The haplogroup itself has this East Asian origin, its not something thats found in past European populations – the origin of this haplogroup is East Asia, said Dr. Barta.

This technique does have limitations. Because it only tests DNA from his mother’s side, his paternal ancestry is not known. The team also cannot say where specifically in East Asia his mums ancestors are from. There is absolutely no way that you can put that fine a point on it with the evidence at hand said Barta. Unless we can extract nuclear DNA and add that to the line of evidence that weve got, said Professor Prowse.

Also the scientists cannot say how recently he, or his ancestors, left East Asia. He could have made the journey by himself, or it could be that a more distant ancestor, such as his great-grandmother, left the region long before he was born.

We have no way to put a clock on that, said Barta.

Trade Between China and Rome

At first glance its tempting to link this fellow to the silk trade that flourished between China and Rome. The trade picked up during the 1st century BC, with traders following an arduous 8,000 kilometre route across Central Asia.

However, while the silk was made in China, its generally believed that the people who plodded this route were intermediaries. In fact there is not much evidence that anyone from China, or the areas nearby, ever got to Italy in ancient times.

Dr. Raoul McLaughlin, of Queens University Belfast, has studied ancient Sino-Roman relations and wrote in the publication History Today that-

The surviving Classical sources suggest that the Romans knew very little about the ancient Chinese. Most of what they knew came in the form of rumours gathered on distant trade ventures.

Adding, as far as we are aware, they never realized that on the edge of Asia there was a vast state equivalent in scale and sophistication to their own.

There are references, however, to a people called the Seres whom some scholars believe could be Han Chinese or people from nearby areas. Plinius’s association between the Seres and silk production adds weight to that theory. He wrote: ‘Send out as far as to the Seres for silk stuff to apparel us’.

Why would he be working on an imperial estate? Did he make a really bad impression on Augustus?

Strabo also wrote about the Seres, describing their incredible longevity: “The Seres who, they say, are long-lived, and prolong their lives even beyond two hundred years”. According to Florus, ambassadors came from this land to meet Augustus.

It seems unlikely thatthe manfound at Vagnariwas any kind of ambassador if he was why would he be working on an imperial estate? Did he make a really bad impression on Augustus?

I asked both Prowse and Barta if they knew of any other skeletons with East Asian ancestry near Rome. They both said that they dont.

Most of the research that has been done… is really related to early population development, such as humans out of Africa, the migrations of humans from Asia to North and South America, said Professor Prowse.

To my knowledge I dont know of any specific example of this kind of haplogroup.

Prowse is hopeful that more DNA research will come out as people realize its value.

It may actually prompt other people to start looking through, and not just rely on the archaeological remains but also trying to look at the skeletal remains to try and answer some of these questions.

The Warrior Emperor and China’s Terracotta Army Exhibition: Toronto, Calgary and Victoria Look Likely Venues

The official announcement is coming a week today (January 27) but news continues totrickle out about the exhibition of the Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang, set to hit Toronto in June.

Officials have been tight-lipped about this exhibit so what we’ve been hearing has been in drips and drabs.

Last week we learned that the Toronto show is going to be the largest Terracotta Warrior’s showever to hit North America. We also learned that it will likely be one of four Canadian stops -with Toronto coming up first.

There will be a Canadian tour, Montreal has already signed up on the tour (and) were waiting for two other venues to finish negotiations and sign as well, said Dr. Dan Rahimi, vice-president of Gallery Development for the Royal Ontario Museum.

Today we have learned that the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta and the Royal BC Museum in Victoria, British Columbia appear to be the other two stops. We know that because the ROM sent out a media invitation today -for the January 27 announcement -with the Glenbow and Royal BC listed as “Canadian national tour partners.”

The invite also stated in the fine print:

This exhibition was organized by the Royal Ontario Museum in partnership with the Shaanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau and the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center, People’s Republic of China, with the collaboration of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Glenbow Museum, Calgary, and the Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria.

This is pretty strong evidence that the Terracotta Warriors, at some point, will be making their way to Western Canada.

Asecond bit of news from theinviteis that this exhibition now has a name The Warrior Emperor and Chinas Terracotta Army. Catchy I daresay!

Only one week till the announcement….

London Exhibition of Shaun Greenhalgh’s Fakes and Forgeries

Amarna Princess by Greenhalgh. Photo courtesy of Metropolitan Police Service. This Saturday the Victoria and Albert Museum in London will open a show that is all about a fake, in partnership with Scotland Yard. The exhibit, Metropolitan Police Service’s Investigation of Fakes and Forgeries, will explore the work of counterfeit mastermind Shaun Greenhalgh, and reveal some of the techniques used by the police to spot fakes.

Over a 17 year period Greenhalgh created fake art pieces that fooled museum experts and sold for sums as high as six figures. Sentenced in 2007 he is currently serving a four year prison sentence. His parents Olive and George Greenhalgh, who assisted in his activities, were given suspended sentences they were both in their 80s when tried.

Shaun Greenhalghs fakes encompassed both the ancient and modern worlds. These include Assyrian reliefs, Thomas Moran paintings and a Barbara Hepworth sculpture.

The Greenhalghs melted down genuine Roman coins in order to create a forged Rizley Park Lanx – a Roman serving plate described in detail by William Stuckley. The art world tentatively accepted it as an original, and the lanx was sold at auction in 1992 for 100,000, before being donated to the British Museum.

But perhaps his most remarkable criminal achievement is that of the so-called ‘Amarna Princess‘ that was sold to the Bolton Museum in 2003 for 440,000. Its a headless 52 cm alabaster statue that shows what appears to be an Egyptian princess.

Now, this is no ordinary fake. Amarna art is a very unique artform in Egyptian history. It was only practiced for about 20 years during and shortly after the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten (ca. 1352-1336 BC).

As pharaohs go Akhenaten was a total rebel. When he came to power he threw out Egypts polytheistic religion, focusing Egyptian beliefs around the worship of one entity the Aten, a sun-disc. He built an entirely new capital calledAmarna out in the desert and he brought in a new and utterly strange style of Egyptian art.

Unlike the formal prose of earlier pharaohs, art from his reign shows the human body with long spindly fingers,coneshaped headsand intimate scenes such as Akhenaten kissing one of his daughters. Two years after

Akhenatens death Tutankhamun came to the throne and art returned to its traditional formal style which is seen so beautifully in the artifacts from King Tuts tomb. It has been suggested that Akhenaten suffered from a medical condition, such as Marfan’s syndrome, that affected his appearance and caused him to bring in this new art-style.

So the fact that Greenhalgh was able to create such a convincing fake of a royal from such a unique time period of Egyptian art history is quite remarkable.

The Bolton Museum said in a statement that the rarity of the item actually made it more difficult to out as a fake:

There were few comparable objects to compare the statue to, apart from a statue in the Louvre Museum in Paris. For this reason the statues provenance (ownership history) played an important part in the authentication of the statue, they said in a release on their website. Experts at the British Museum also concluded that it was a genuine piece.

To help peddle the fake, Greenhalghs father played the role of front-man. The elder Greenhalgh told the museum a story about how it had been bought by his great-grandfather at an 1892 auction of items from 4th Earl of Egremonts collection.

Shaun Greenhalghs Slip-up

The success of the Amarna Princess appears to have gone to Greenhalghs head. In 2005 his father (again playing front-man) tried to sell three faked Assyrian reliefs to the British Museum. They depicted ancient battle scenes and at first glance appeared to be genuine. But the work that Shaun Greenhalgh had done on the details was sloppy.

The errors were numerous. The artwork showed what appeared to be 20th century harnesses on the horses, and there was a spelling mistake in the cuneiform inscription. To top it off, this time theGreenhalgh’s cover story about how they came about the artefacts didn’t add up.

Museum curator John Curtis told the journal Art and Antiquites that the condition of the reliefs just didn’t fit the story that the piece had been hidden in their garage for decades.” While Iraqi deserts may help preserve Assyrian reliefs, car garages in northern latitudes dont.

Scotland Yard was called and before long the Greenhalghs were exposed.

Their story of fakery was widely reported in the pressand the BBC dramatized it in 2009 with a play called the The Antiques Rogues Show.

A World Full of Fakes

Fake artefacts are a constant problem in the museum world with the Greenhalgh case presenting one extreme example. In Toronto, Canada, a show just opened at the Royal Ontario Museum on this topic. Its called Fakes and Forgeries: Yesterday and Today and examines both fake ancient artefacts and modern day goods.

Heritage Key interviewed exhibit curator Paul Denis a month back and he admitted that his museum had been taken

The artwork showed what appeared to be 20th century harnesses on the horses, and there was a spelling mistake in the cuneiform inscription

inby fakes as well albeit much further back in the past. The museum has a collection of hundreds of Zapotec artefacts (the Zapotec are a culture in Mexico that dates from 500 BC to present). Out of this collection about half are fake. They were bought in the early 20th century by Charles Currelly one of the founders of the museum.

Currelly also obtained a supposed Minoan ivory statuenamed “Our Lady of Sports.”It showed a women in a dress, with her breasts exposed, engaging in what looked like some sort of athletic activity. It was outed as a fake in 2001, after being on displayat the museum for nearly70 years.

Now, speculation of fakery surrounds the Neues Museum‘s showpiece piece, the Bust of Nefertiti, and, less famously, the bust of Hatshepsut. With such high-profile items seemingly impossible to determine as being either genuine or fake, you have to wonder which, if any, of the world’s treasures on display are actually the work of accomplished fakers. Worried curators should head along to the exhibition at the V&A to get tips from the police on how to tell the real from the replica.

The Metropolitan Police Service’s Investigation of Fakes and Forgeries runs from 23 January 7 February 2010 at the V&A Museum, rooms 17a & 18a. Admission free.

Ontario Culture Minister Aileen Carroll Dumped After Ministry’s Mistreatment of Artefacts

Ontarios Minister of Culture, Aileen Carroll, wastossed out of cabinet today as part of a larger shuffle.She will now become a backbench member of the legislature.

The decision caught members of the media off-guard. The National Post said that, Ms. Carroll’s demotion is perhaps the most surprising. A former federal minister, the Barrie MPP was considered a high profile candidate in 2007.

The Toronto Star writes that she may have made a decision not to run in the next general election. In Canadian politics it is not unusual for retiring ministers to get dumped from cabinet before they actually retire. Her replacement is going to be Michael Chan, who is moving from the Citizenship and Immigration post.

Artefacts in the Bin

The culture ministry has come under fire over its handling of the provinces ancient artefacts. Dr. Ron Williamson told Heritage Key in an interview last summer that the province hasnt been making provisions to store artefacts properly with the result being that some of them have ended up in garbage dumps.

This is not a new problem, but rather one that Carroll inherited. New facilities are now being built in Hamilton and London Ontario to alleviate the situation.

Her tenure as minister saw a number of positives. The arrival of the Dead Sea Scrolls and King Tut in Toronto were major coups. The Art Gallery of Ontario completed a major expansion and the Royal Ontario Museum is adding new Roman and Byzantine galleries.

The province is running a deficit of more than $20 billion (CDN) and, at some point, will likely have to cut spending to balance its books. If the cuts hit, it will be up to Chan to mitigate howtheyaffect the ministry.

The ROM expands: Roman and Byzantine Galleries to open in Toronto – Nubia gallery is likely

Yesterday was an exciting day for those in Toronto who are interested in archaeology.

Heritage Key learned that the Terracotta Warriors exhibit, coming to Toronto in June, will be the largestwarriors exhibitever to hit North America. No terracotta spectacle on this scale has ever come to these shores!

But thats not all. Earlier in the day there was an announcement made by Canadas infrastructure minister John Baird.

He said that the Canadian government will commit $2.75 million towards the construction of new Roman and Byzantine galleries at the Royal Ontario Museum.It will also be usedinrevamping thebat cave,” – a facsimile of a bat cave that is geared towards children.

The Roman and Byzantine galleries went off-line when the museum was expanded around the year 2005. Plans have been in place to build new and expanded ones but the money hasnt been there.

That is until now.

The federal governments pledge, combined with the museums fundraising, means that construction can begin on these two galleries with an opening expected next year.

Heritage Key has also learned that the museum is pushing hard for construction to start on a new Nubia gallery. They also hope to start work on a gallery dedicated to the Eastern Roman Empire.

The museums vice-president for gallery development, Dr. Dan Rahimi, said that he wants both Eastern Rome and Nubia to open up at the same time as Rome and Byzantine. I hope to open both those galleries at the same time that we open the Roman galleries… I cant commit to that yet but the museum is really trying to do that and well see if we can make them (the galleries) on the same schedule.

Dr. Marie Bountrogianni, president and executive director of the museums board of directors, said that the museums fundraising is strong and she is very optimistic that galleries for Nubia and the Eastern Roman Empire will eventually be built. She isnt sure, however, when that will be.

Paul Denis was also gun-ho on this. He has curatorial responsibility for the Eastern Roman Empire exhibit. Im sure we can bridge it because it would be great to build them all at once, be he added that he cant make any promises.

What will be on display?

In short, wonderful things the new gallery space will let the museum take artefacts out that were previously in storage. It will also let them put back old favourites that were on displaybefore the renovations. It’s estimated that only 5 percent of the museum’s artefactsare being viewed by the publicright now.

The centrepiece of the Roman gallery will be the museums collection of 19 Roman marble portraits. They are, absolutely fabulous portraits of living Romans at the time – fabulous marbles, said Denis. One of them is of the emperor Lucius Verus (AD 130-169) seen in a pictureat the top ofthis article.

The Byzantine gallery will have a 12 feet by 20 feet, mosaic Denis said – that will be a key part of the Byzantine gallery.

Its got geometric patterns around the border and then it has baskets and fruit and then in the centre it has a Rooster surrounded by a vine scroll.

It was created around AD 325-350, around the time that the emperor Constantine founded Constantinople.

Unfortunately I dont a picture of it yet. The museum is searching for one that we can use on Heritage Key. As soon as one is available Ill post it.

The Eastern Roman Empire exhibit will feature artefacts east of Italy that date to before Byzantine times. These will include jewellery and ceramics. Its the first time the museum has had a gallery dedicated especially to this element of Roman history.

A Nubia Gallery at the ROM

The Nubian gallery will have its own treats – once it gets the go-ahead.

The museumis only two or three galleries in North America that has Nubian material, said Dr. Rahimi. Readers may remember Heritage Keys story about Dr. Pamela Rose and her discovery of an ancient dark age settlement at Qasr Ibrim. She flew into Toronto specifically to examine the museums collection – which is how I got the interview.

Only two or three galleries in North America (have) Nubian material

Dr. Rahimi said that the Nubian gallery will cover the full stretch of the regions history, from prehistory onwards. This will includesthe timeperiod of Taharqa a 25th dynasty pharaoh of Egypt whose one ton statue was found recently deep in Sudan.

Artefacts from the kingdom of Meroe (3rd century BC 3rd century AD) will also be presented. Epigraphers studying the language used at this time (Meroitic) often go to the ROM to study its collection. We have a lot of inscribed rocks and things that people come here to study, said Rahimi.

As Nubia entered medieval times the people converted to Christianity in large numbers. Nubia was a very early Christian empire, said Rahimi. We show that with artefacts that are from church contexts.