Tag: Entertainment

Ticket sale starts for ‘Secrets of the Silk Road’ at the Penn Museum – Exhibition Preview

We all know the face of the Xiaohe Beauty, but what about the Yingpan Man? His clothed mummy - excavated at Yingpan, China - dates to the 3rd to 4th century AD. - Image copyright Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology Tickets go on sale today for “Secrets of the Silk Road” a landmark exhibition from China making its only East Coast stop at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum) in Philadelphia February 5 through June 5, 2011. The exhibition aims to reflect the wide extent of the Silk Road trade and cultural interchange (see some of the highlights in this slideshow).

Despite of what its name suggests, the Silk Road isn’t one single route. Rather, it is an extensive interconnected network of maritime and overland trade routes extending from Southern Europe through The Arabian Peninsula, Somalia, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Java-Indonesia, and Vietnam until it reaches China.

This travelling exhibition of materials from half way around the world is opening new doors providing visitors with an unparalleled opportunity to come face to face, literally, with life in East Central Asia, both before and after the formation of the fabled Silk Routes, noted Victor Mair, University of Pennsylvania scholar, and curatorial consultant and catalogue editor for the exhibition.

‘Secrets of the Silk Road’ Preview

Click one of the images to see a larger photograph.

The Secret of Silk

Although recent archaeological evidence a small ivory cup carved with a silkworm design as well as spinning tools, silk thread and fabric fragments is dated to between 4000 and 5000 BC,it is still generally assumedsilk production started in China somewherein thelate 4th millennium BC.

About 500 years later, the domestication of pack animals (we wouldn’t learn to ride until the 1st millennium BC) and the development of shipping technology increased the capacity for prehistoric peoples to carry heavier loads over greater distances; trade started to develop rapidly.

It were not just goods that were exchanged along the first trade routes. Over the centuries, many different peoples controlled parts of the Silk Routes, all using it to spread their technology, ideas, believes and art.

Even before the 1st century AD, the earliest evidence ofsilk reaching Rome, Alexander the Great took the Greek culture into Central AsiawithGraeco-Buddhism as result.

Yet the well-guarded secret of sericulture or silk production did not spread at all.(Recent research does show the possibility that silk production started independently in the Indus Valley, around 2000BC.)

Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote in his Natural History in 70 BC that “silk was obtained by removing the down from the leaves with the help of water”.

The secret of silk production reached the Middle East only in the 6th century AD, when two monks appeared at Emperor Justinian’s court hiding silkworm eggs in their hollow sticks.

And Europe? It wasn’t until the 13th century that Italy began that Italy began silk production with the introduction of 2000 skilled silk weavers from Constantinople (once Byzantium, modern day Istanbul).

Even then, high-quality silk textiles woven in China would continue to be highly valued in the West, and the trade along the Silk Route continued as before.

TheBeauty of Xiaohe

The appearance of the 3,800 year old Beauty of Xiaohe, one of two strikingly well preserved ‘caucasian’Tarim mummies and their associated artefacts travelling from China, makes “Secrets of the Silk Road” an exhibition that reaches back well beyond the historic period of the Silk Road to tell a tale of long-forgotten peoples and cultures along the worlds legendary trading route.

Tall in stature and fair in complexion, the Beauty was excavated in 2003 (listed as one ofour’Top 10 Most Important Archaeology Finds in China… ever‘). She is one of hundreds of spectacularly preserved mummies, many with surprisingly Eastern European and Mediterranean features, buried in the harsh desert sands of the vast Tarim Basin of Central Asia, in the Far Western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.

The Beauty of Xiaohe, will be shown along with a bundled baby mummy dated to the 8th century BC, and the complete trappings of Yingpan Man, a six-foot six-inch mummy, from the 3rd to 4th centuries AD.

The Wide Extent of the Silk Road

Besides the mummies, the exhibition features a wide range of objects, 700 to 3,800 years. Objects include well-preserved clothing, textiles, jewellery, gem-encrusted gold vessels, wood and bone implements, coins and documents even preserved foods (2,500-year-old fried dough and flower-shaped desserts).

Organized by the Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, California in association with the Archaeological Institute of Xinjiang and the Urumqi Museum, “Secrets of the Silk Road” began its U.S. tour at the Bowers Museum (March 27 to July 25) before traveling to the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences, where it is on view through January 2, 2011.

Timed tickets for the Secrets of the Silk Road exhibition at the Penn Museum can be purchased online at www.penn.museum/silkroad or by phone: (877)77-CLICK. Discounted group tickets are available by phone: (215)746-8183, or by email: grouptickets@museum.upenn.edu.

Teacher programs, including a Thursday, November 4 Educators’ Evening, 4:30 to 6:30 pm, are available through the Museum’s Community Engagement Office: (215)898-4015. Teacher materials will be available online starting December 15.

Sandro Vannini’s Photography – King Tutankhamun’s Senet Game Board

Four Senet boards were found inside the tomb of King Tutankhamun and suggests that the boy king was a keen player of the ancient game. In Ancient Egyptian society, senet was regarded as much more than just a game, however – it was a matter of life or death. The game involves throwing casting sticks or knucklebones, and over time became regarded as talismans for the journey into the afterlife with luck being a key deciding factor in the game.

Those who would win games of senet were believed to be blessed by powerful gods such as Osiris, Ra and Thoth. Senet boards were also often placed in graves, and they are specifically mentioned in the Book of the Dead. The Senet boards of King Tut are on display in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo and are a subject of Dr Janice Kamrin’s tour of the museum in a video for Heritage Key (Watch the video). They are also a few of the many artefacts from KV62 which were photographed by Egyptology photographer Sandro Vannini, who’s images are brought online each week by Heritage Key.

‘Senet Board’ Slideshow

Heritage Key is working with Sandro and bringing his extensive catalogue of beautiful photography of Egyptian antiquities onto the internet, which we’re sure will fascinate even the most hardcore Egyptologist! To watch a slideshow of the Canopic Chest, simply click any of the thumbnails below.

See it for yourself in King Tut Virtual

But it doesn’t stop there, as you can also visit King Tut Virtual and see digital recreations of many of the famous artefacts from KV62, walk through the Valley of the Kings, explore the banks of the River Nile in Ancient Egyptian times and even see more of Sandro Vannini’s photography in the virtual gallery.

Sandro Vannini’s Photography

Over a decade of experience in photographing the magnificent artefacts and tombs of Egypt has honed the skills of Sandro, and given him the experience required to capture the beautiful details of the senet board. The equipment used to take the photographs obviously plays a key role too, and Sandro used a Hasselblad ELD Ixpress 528C camera to take these images. You can also see more of Sandro’s fantastic photography in his new book with the Director of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr Zahi Hawass, “The Lost Tombs of Thebes:Life in Paradise” as well as reading about Sandro’s experiences of shooting the photographs in Thebes on Heritage Key, and watching the video about the Lost Tombs of Thebes featuring Dr Zahi Hawass and Dr Janice Kamrin (Watch the video).

But for those of you who cant make the trip to the Cairo Museum to see the amazing artefacts, Heritage Key offers these stunning photographs by Sandro Vannini which capture the senet boards from the Tomb of King Tutankhamun. But there’s more: you can visit virtual replicas of many of Tutankhamun treasures in the Heritage Key VX King Tut exhibition, which features a digital recreation of many other breath-taking artefacts such as the Golden Mask of King Tutankhamun.

Don’t miss out on new treasures!

This post is part of a series focussing on amazing photographs from ancient Egypt. Keep checking back as well keep adding new images by Sandro Vannini. To make sure you don’t miss out on any of the updates, simply subscribe by email to receive notifications when new images are uploaded. For the more digitally advanced, there’s also an RSS feed with updates available.

See More Amazing Photography by Sandro

Have a look at some of the other stunning photographs by Sandro Vannini here at Heritage Key:

Ask Sandro

We’ll be sitting down with our favourite photographer for an extended chat soon, so if you have any questions for Sandro we’ll send the answers straight to you!

King Tutankhamun’s Senet Game Boards

Of the ceremonial senet boards found in King Tut’s tomb (KV62), the most beautiful was an ivory version dated to 1333BC which was found by the great explorer Howard Carter. The ivory senet board is today on display in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum.

The box contains a drawer in which the pieces of the senet board would have been kept. The pieces included two ivory knucklebones, five red ivory reels and five white ivory pawns. The drawer was fastened with bolts, although upon discovery in 1922, these bolts were missing. It is thought they were made from a precious metal such as gold or silver, and may have been stolen by grave robbers.

The ivory box is inscribed with yellow-pigmented etchings depicting King Tut and describing his as The Strong Bull, beautiful of birth, image of Ra, precious offspring of Atum, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, ruler of the nine bows, lord of all the lands, and possessor of might Nebkheperura. Around the drawer, Tut is described as The good god, lord of the Two Lands, lord of crowns whom Ra created and Beloved of all the gods, may he be healthy, living forever.

On one end of the box is inscribed an image of King Tutankhamun and his queen Ankhesenamun in a roughly carved etching depicting her offering a lotus flower. It’s entirely possible the Amarna royal pair would cosy up on summer evenings and play a game or two of senet!

Senet was played on a board of 30 squares, and the underside of the box features a grid of 20 squares. This side of the box was used to play another game called Tjau, which translates to “Robbers”. Although historians have attempted to make educated guesses as to how the two games were played, it is not clear on the rules that were adhered to in ancient times. Although the game features on tomb walls and papyri, it is assumed the rules of the game would have been passed on through word of mouth.

HD Video: Tutankhamun’s Burial Treasures: Lifestyle Objects

(Read the transcript on the video page)

You can watch more fantastic videos on Heritage Key’s Video Page including Zahi Hawasss insights into the death of King Tut, as well as a look at the new Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. Additionally, you can find out more about Ancient Egypt on Heritage Key, as well as being able to explore the Valley of the Kings and the fascinating KV62 – King Tutankhamun’s tomb – in 3D in our exciting virtual experience! Also be sure to keep up to date on all new postings about Sandro’s photography from Egypt by subscribing to our feed, simply by entering your email address above.

Mel Gibson Demands Realistic Pillaging and Old Norse For New Viking Movie

Actor and Director Mel Gibson is working on a Viking-themed film that is going to star Leonardo DiCaprio, who will have to brush up on his Old Norse. The script is in the hands of Oscar-winning screenwriter William Monahan, and will chronicle the Viking raids on England and Scotland in the ninth century.

When asked about the Viking project at a recent press event, Mel Gibson told Collider.com: I think its going to be English – the English that would have been spoken back then – and Old Norse. Whatever the 9th century had to offer. Im going to give you real.

Gibson certainly has some previous experience when it comes to realism in ancient world movie-making: The Passion of the Christ contained Aramaic, Hebrew and Latin, and of course, there is *coughs* Braveheart.

I want to see somebody who I have never seen before speaking low guttural German who scares the living shit out of me coming up to my house.

Will this movie give you the real Viking experience? If it is up to Mel, definitely: I want to see somebody who I have never seen before speaking low guttural German who scares the living shit out of me coming up to my house.

The Vikingsused their famed longships to travel as far east as Constantinople and the Volga River in Russia, and as far west as Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. This period of Viking expansionforms a major part of the medieval history of-and lead to a seriousexpansion of the gene poolin– Scandinavia, Britain, Ireland and the rest of Europe in general.

Hopefully, shooting for this Viking epic will start this year. I’m definitely looking forward to this one! Regardless if this ‘edutainment‘ will teach me anything beyond Old Norse grunts and Viking fashion sense or not.

Hidden Rome: The Stadium Underneath Piazza Navona

Go to Rome’s Piazza Navona on a Saturday night in July and you’ll find yourself having to pick your way through the crowds of locals and tourists, some standing in large semi-circles watching a unicyclist juggle with fire or a guitarist play his Led Zeppelin back catalogue, others perusing the displays of gaudy paintings on wooden easels and trying to avoid buying a rose from street sellers. It’s one of the main hubs of Roman night life: the area’s bars and granita vendors are usually thronged and groups of barefoot college students jostle with each other around Bernini‘s famous Fountain of the Four Rivers. It’s a lively place to take an evening stroll and there is enough people-watching to last several beers at one of the piazza’s pricey cafs.

Piazza Navona has long-been a hive of Roman social life and entertainment. It’s popularly believed that its name derives from its shape (Navona = big ship). And the square’s association with water doesn’t end there: strange though it sounds, between 1652 and 1866 the piazza was regularly flooded and used as a centre for water games by the Pamphilj family.

The square’s importance as a centre of spectacle and popular entertainment actually goes back much further than the Renaissance, but to find out about that you have to avoid the crowds and find a small doorway to the north of the square in piazza di Tor Sanguigna. Passers-by can look down over the railings and see part of the northern entrance to the Stadium of Domitian about eight metres below street level and this is about as much as you can usually see of the structure that was built shortly after the Colosseum and once rivalled it as one of ancient Rome’s premier entertainment venues. But as part of Rome’s summer initiatives to open up archaeological sites usually closed to the public, guided tours are taking place at weekends during July, August and September (see below for more info).

The stadium was built in 86 AD, less than a decade after the Colosseum, during the reign of Domitian the third Flavian emperor, second son of Vespasian. It was built on the Campus Martius, near to the thermal baths of Nero. Made of travertine stone, it is the only example of a stone stadium from the Roman empire. It was 275m long and 106m wide and was to form a blueprint for Piazza Navona, which follows the shape of Domitian’s stadium beneath it. The piazza is superimposed over the ancient racetrack, while the stadium’s terraces form the foundations for the baroque buildings that surround the modern piazza.

Domitian built it as a gift to the people and as a venue for a sporting event called the Certamen Capitolino Iovi, dedicated to the Capitoline Jupiter, which included games inspired by the Greek Olympics, such as wrestling (pancrazio), discus, javelin, horse racing and athletics (the word stadium comes from the Greek unit of measurement, stadion, which was the standard distance for short sprints). The stadium was known as the Circus Agonalis (meaning competitive games circus) and it is more likely that the modern piazza’s name is actually a derivation of this (from ‘in agone’ to ‘navone’, to ‘navona’).

Unfortunately, Domitian‘s love of Greek games was not shared by the plebeians of Rome. When he built his stadium, the cultured, educated emperor simply hadn’t figured on the people’s taste for violence, blood and sensation. By the latter half of the third century AD, his grand 30,000-seater stadium fell into disuse, while the Colosseum, with a crowd capacity of 70,000, continued to attract the hoards with its cruel gladiatorial battles, wild animals and condemned victims forced to fight for their lives. (The ancient venues don’t compare badly with super-modern stadiums such as 90,000-seater Wembley in north London or the Millennium Stadium in Wales which seats 74,500).

Today the only part still visible of Domitian’s stadium is the north curve. As with modern stadiums, the terraces were divided and each section had its own entrance. Part of the steps up onto the terraces can still be seen, as well as the supporting walls with their niches that once contained statues. The stadium was built with two levels of arches (it was slightly lower than the Colosseum) and would have been embellished with hundreds of statues of athletes in each niche. Most of these statues have been lost in time, but one example (just the torso remains) is thought to be the work of the famous Greek sculptor Praxiteles and depicts the god Apollo.

Opening Times

The entrance to the Stadium of Domitian (Stadio di Domiziano) is at Piazza di Tor Sanquigna, 13.
Open on the following dates at 21:00 and 22:00:
Fridays: 17, 24, 31 July; 7, 21, 28 August; 4, 11 September.
Saturdays: 18 July; 1, 8, 29 August; 5, 12 September.
Sundays: 26 July; 23 August.
Entrance is 5, free for children up to 6 years old.
For further information contact: Cooperativa Archeologia +39 06 4893 0393

Other summer initiatives include:
The Moon on the Colosseum – Flavian Nights
Summer Archaeology (opening of the House of Gryphons and Livia’s House in the Roman Forum)