The history of archaeology is fascinating as much as for what it tells us about our shared past as for the stories of archaeology itself. It is full of false starts, the sublime, ridiculous and the downright terrible. Please enjoy this small selection of Tales from the Trenches.
mummy unwrapping parties
Tourism is not something new. From classical times (and likely earlier) the wealthy and powerful would brave the storms, shipwrecks, bad roads and even worse food to see the world around them.
In 1882, the British military occupation of Egypt sparked a new tourism trend. A souvenir industry popped up to address the demand for photographs, trinkets and of course mummies. The unrolling of Egyptian mummies became a popular spectacle in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. In hospitals, theatres, homes and learned institutions Egyptian mummies were opened and examined in front of rapt audiences. The cost of purchasing an ancient mummy from Egypt was negligible for those who had the means to travel overseas. Surgeon Thomas Pettigrew is well known to have made a lot of money through ticketed unwrapping parties. The event would involve a lecture on Egyptian history and religion before Pettigrew would gradually remove the mummy’s case and wrappings, and any artefacts found within, which were passed around the group for inspection.
Archaeological Hoaxes
The temptation for fame or fortune in archaeology has led to many ‘finds’ being proven to be fakes. One of the most famous and well known was the 1912 Piltdown Man. Charles Dawson, an amateur archaeologist, claimed to have found the missing link between man and apes. It wasn’t until 1952 that his discovery was proven to be a forgery that combined an orangutan jaw bone, chimpanzees teeth and medieval human skull.
It wasn’t just the quest for scientific legitimacy that drove fraudsters. Two brothers, Pio and Alfonso Riccardi created three iconic Etruscan statues between 1915 to 1918. They sold the three statues, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York shortly after. Each work is about two metres tall. A sculptor named Alfredo Fioravanti, who helped the brothers, confessed to the scheme in the early 1960s.
A last instance of archaeological forgery came about just to win an argument. The Cardiff Giant was a ten-foot tall stone man discovered on a farm in Cardiff New York in 1869. Rather than being a petrified giant, it was carved at the behest of New Yorker George Hull to disprove that a race of giants once roamed the Earth, and the bible shouldn’t be taken literally.
Accidental Discoveries
Archaeology is a highly scientific study; however, a lot of finds are sheer fluke. Sometimes these accidental finds are of little value, sometimes not.
In July 1799, a stone was found in the city of Rosetta (modern el Rashid) by French soldiers during Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Napoleon’s forces were constructing fortifications when the large inscribed stone fragment was uncovered by officer Pierre François Xavier Bouchard. He immediately recognized the significance of the juxtaposed Greek and hieroglyphic scripts, predicting correctly that each script represented a translation of a single text. This guess was corroborated upon translating the Greek description of how the stela’s text was to be promulgated: This decree shall be inscribed on a stela of hard stone in sacred (hieroglyphic), native (Demotic), and Greek characters. Named after the city where it was discovered, the Rosetta Stone is currently at the centre of controversy regarding whether it should be repatriated back to Egypt.
In 1974, farmers drilling a well in Shaanxi, China discovered a subterranean chamber. Inside was a terracotta army of some 8,000 life-size terracotta soldiers and horses. Alongside the terracotta army were richly adorned chariots of wood (now disintegrated) and bronze; iron farm implements; bronze and leather bridles; objects of silk, linen, jade and bone; and weapons such as bows and arrows, spears, and swords, cast from an unusual 13-element alloy. Since its discovery, over 2,000 warriors and horses have been excavated from three different burial pits with about 6,000 still buried underground.
Archaeologist getting it wrong
Newsflash, archaeologists sometimes get it wrong. One of the most famous case is Heinrich Schliemann excavating right through the layers he was searching for in his excavations at Hisarlik, the site of the city of Troy.
In 1922, Dr Henry Osborn was informed of a tooth discovered in the Upper Snake Creek beds of Nebraska along with other fossils typical of North America. The conclusion amongst Osborn and his colleagues was that the tooth had belonged to an anthropoid ape more closely related to humans than to other apes. Only a few months later, an article was published in Science announcing the discovery of a manlike ape in North America, Hesperopithecus. Further field work on the site revealed that the tooth was incorrectly identified. The tooth belonged neither to a man nor an ape, but to a fossil of an extinct species of peccary called Prosthennops. The misidentification was attributed to the fact that the original specimen was severely weathered. The earlier identification as an ape was retracted in the journal Science in 1927.
Located in Sweden, Runamo is a dolerite dike covered in a series of strange, vertical lines. In the 12th century, the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus claimed that the lines were ancient runes. It wasn’t until 1833 that Icelandic runes expert Finn Magnussen, on behalf of the Royal Danish Academy, investigated the site. He concluded that the Runamo Runes were a poem that recorded the victory of the 7th century Harald Wartooth, against the Swedes. By 1844, after examination of the site by geologists and archaeologists, it was widely accepted that the runes were nothing more than natural cracks in the rock.
The Wrong
Today archaeologists apply scientific methods to their excavations. More than this there is a certain amount of respect for the sites they excavate and the people these sites are important to. Unfortunately, this was not always the case. Michael Fourmont was a priest and scholar sent in 1728 by King Louis XV to search out surviving Byzantine manuscripts. Here is an extract from one of his letters regarding his work in Sparta. Enough said! Oh and he also forged most of his results.
For more than 30 days, 40 to 60 workers are, destroying the city of Sparta. I am still left with four towers to destroy. At the moment I am engaged with the destruction of the last ancient monuments of Sparta. You understand how happy I am. Mantinia, Stimfalia, Tegea, Nemea and Olympia are also worth annihilating. I have travelled extensively looking for ancient cities of this country and I have destroyed some of them. Among them are Trizina, Ermioni, Tiryns: half of the acropolis of Argos, Fliasia and Fenesia. For six weeks I have been busy with the total destruction of Sparta: destroying walls, temples and not leaving one stone on its place making the site unrecognisable in the future so that I can make it famous again. In this way I will give glory to my expeditions. Is that not something?
And the Cool
I wanted to give the last word to Nanni a 4th millennium BC merchant who was having a hard time with one of his suppliers. It seems that poor service and customer complaints are not anything new. At around 4000 years old, this Babylonian tablet records the earliest recorded customer complaint.
Tell Ea-nasir: Nanni sends the following message:
When you came, you said to me as follows : “I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots.” You left then but you did not do what you promised me. You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Sit-Sin) and said: “If you want to take them, take them; if you do not want to take them, go away!”
What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt? I have sent as messengers gentlemen like ourselves to collect the bag with my money (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times, and that through enemy territory. Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with Telmun who has treated me in this way? You alone treat my messenger with contempt! On account of that one (trifling) mina of silver which I owe(?) you, you feel free to speak in such a way, while I have given to the palace on your behalf 1,080 pounds of copper, and umi-abum has likewise given 1,080 pounds of copper, apart from what we both have had written on a sealed tablet to be kept in the temple of Samas.
How have you treated me for that copper? You have withheld my money bag from me in enemy territory; it is now up to you to restore (my money) to me in full.
Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots individually in my own yard, and I shall exercise against you my right of rejection because you have treated me with contempt.
