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Meetings with Remarkable Forgeries (British History)
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Hatty wrote:

The first recorded carpets, or Turkey work, in Britain belonged to Cardinal Wolsey, apparently a gift from the Venetian ambassador. Or not. Could have been a Tudor pun/invention based on the Cardinal's name. According to Wiki woven carpets were introduced in the sixteenth century by 'Flemish Calvinists fleeing persecution'.


Show me a English carpet in a portrait before Henry VIII. It don't happen. You don't get giant embroidered tapestries like the Bayeux hanging in the background either. Maybe the churches were decked out with carpet and Henry pillfered them during the dissolution.
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Hatty
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In: Berkshire
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'Yetholm-style' bronze shields have surfaced on Twitter

Dr Toby Driver wrote:
The remarkable Late Bronze Age (1200-900BC) Rhos Rydd shield was pulled from a bog nr #Aberystwyth in the C19th & is now on display in the @britishmuseum.

A Yetholm-type, fewer than 30 are known from Britain 🤯 - possibly all made in the same workshop.

Rhos-Rhydd bog is in a quiet valley away from the coast, an area virtually devoid of recorded prehistoric settlements or any military presence.

Largely forgotten today, the Rhos-rydd or Glan-rhos shield was discovered in 1804 in a bog near Blaenplwyf, between Aberystwyth and Llanrhystud. It is considered to be one of the finest Late Bronze Age shields yet recovered from Wales. Dating to 1100-900 BC, not long before the earliest Iron Age forts began to be erected in Ceredigion, this glorious and finely-made shield was too thin to have provided any practical protection in battle. It was probably reserved for ceremonial use before being cast into the bog as a votive offering

All the shields have been recovered from watery places, i.e. bogs or rivers, bar one which was found in a ditch at South Cadbury hillfort

The South Cadbury specimen was laid in a ditch and stabbed three times with a wooden stake.[4] Its discovery prompted metallurgical analysis of this and other examples by Peter Northover, strongly suggesting that, rather than the accepted range of 1000 to 800 BC, these shields were manufactured in the 12th century BC. Carbon dating implied that the South Cadbury example was deposited in the mid 10th century BC.[5]

Trying to date when bronze artefacts were deposited is problematic of course but this amount of uncertainty seems unusual, even carbon dating can only be brought in to 'imply' a date it seems.

The actual number of Yetholm-style shields varies depending on who you ask but Wiki's estimate is more conservative than Toby Driver's

Twenty two examples are known, although some of these are fragmentary, and a further seven or eight are known from written sources but are lost today.[1] The shields vary significantly in size, but are otherwise similar.

Several troubling questions but first off, why 'Yetholm'? There are two Yetholms, Town Yetholm and Kirk Yetholm, on the border between England and Scotland. An entirely unremarkable village apart from the 'Yetholm Gypsies' who made Yetholm their headquarters in 1750

There are various legends about why Scottish Romanys first settled in Yetholm in the early 1700s, but the village had become the home of the Faas, hereditary monarchs, by the mid-1700s. The first Faa, ‘Lord and Erle of Littil Egipt', appears in Scottish records in 1540. By 1800 it is said there were over 100 Romanys or ‘gypsies’ living in Kirk Yetholm. They made a living as itinerant traders – selling, among other goods, pottery mugs (‘muggers’) and tinware (‘tinkers’). The roads on both sides on the upper green in Kirk Yetholm were known as ‘Muggers Raw, or ‘Tinkers Raw’.

Itinerant tinkers, eh. Well, well.
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Mick Harper
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My first thought is that they are not shields at all. Even the academics concede they are not in the sense of describing them as ceremonial shields. However, if they are, as you seem to be implying, the product of tinkers, and we assume that tinkers are not in the ceremonial shield business -- or ceremonial anything business -- then these must presumably be crucibles or something of that nature.

But then we are faced with tinkers losing/leaving/burying dozens of crucibles which hardly seems likely either. If the dates were later one might suspect that the tinkers were in the ceremonial shield business after all -- fake ones being peddled to museums and collectors -- but I hardly think a market for these would have existed at that time.

More research is needed! (Also some pics would be handy.)
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Mick Harper
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The Selus Stone Country: England Topic: Early Medieval (Dark Age)
The Selus Stone at St Just, Cornwall. Inside St Just's Church there is a 5th or 6th century pillar stone with a Latin inscription and a chi rho cross. It commemorates St Selevan or Levan, the brother of St Just (Jestyn). Originally it was built into the church wall near the altar, but in 1824 it was stood up-right. Standing at 5 foot 5' tall, on a large square base, it is a Romano-Christian stone. http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=26747

Run that one past me again. They took it out of the wall -- not an important wall, the one near the altar -- and stood it inside the church on a plinth. The bonus is that you can now see through a five foot five inch hole in the wall during morning service.

"Looks like rain."
"Thank goodness, what with this drought and all."
"Jestyn time, you might say."
"Ooh you are a wag."
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Somebody "solved it" on the twitter stream, by posting up that it looks like a Welsh Buckler shield. Common era 15th century.

https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-2645.html

Rather than state the obvious, this was put down to the Welsh maker being inspired by the Bronze Age, or left as a coincidence.
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Mick Harper
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When they're right, they're right. When they're wrong, they're also right. In the very near future nobody will admit to not knowing exactly what it was all the time.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Part of the problem is that there is no stratigraphy when it comes to so-called votive finds, so there is no way of really knowing, bronze is not carbon dateable so you are looking to date something organic attached to the find. Anyway, if it's found in a peat bog, it tends to end up being classified as "votive" and "celtic" as far as I am aware. My favourite finds are the "celtic war trumpets", the carnyx.
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Mick Harper
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I'll give you the co-ordinates of the peat bog where you will find your AEL commemorative Celtic ear trumpet. If you live in town it will probably be a garden centre.
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Mick Harper
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This popped up on medium.com which had me flexing my fingers on a post-holiday exercise session.

They were
1. The Ancient Books of “Breathing”
2. The Tale of Two Lovers
3 The Assassin’s Cabinet of Poisons
4. The Theatre of Lesser Living Creatures
5. The Book of Kells
6. A Little Book for Little Children

I contented myself with this comment

I have my doubts about all these but the only one I have studied in detail is the Book of Kells which I showed in my Meetings with Remarkable Forgeries to be an English fake.

If I get any comeback I may need more ammunition. So get to it!
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Hatty wrote:
Yes, it was an illuminating exchange while it lasted. There isn't much investigative scholarship around. For instance, the Legenda aurea is attributed to Jacobus de Voragine but nothing is known about him, apart from his presumed authorship of edifying works. The only source of information is from Voragine himself!


The Golden Legend was one of the first books printed by Caxton and remains in print today. It chronicles "events", as Hats remarked, a thousand years or so after "Voragine" lived. Wiley restumbled across Jacobus recently whilst looking at a critical moment

One critical moment occurs when on the slow shift between polytheism and monotheism a ruler decides that he is the "Sun God." This moment is the excuse for continuity and existing traditional norms to be abandoned, much to the annoyance of priestly castes, and a decision to switch the capital. Akenhaten, you mutter. You are right, but we are actually thinking of Constantine, a worshipper of "Sol Invictus" who switched his capital from Rome to a place Byzantium, which he renamed Constantinople.
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Wile E. Coyote


In: Arizona
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Whilst the Sun God was away, it was left to his mother Helena Augusta to "Christianise" the old capital Rome. Constantine might have stopped Christian persecutions, but it was mum who visited the Holy Land, found the True Cross and embarked on a Christian church building programme. How we do know this? Well, it's all in the Golden Legend. The Helena part is an explanatory description of how Rome was transformed from the place famous emperors were given divine honours into the place where saints were to be canonised. No wonder "de Voragine" was later beatified.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Withn Nova Roma, the new capital, the sun-worshipping emperor started a building programme.

The Column of Constantine (Turkish: Çemberlitaş Sütunu; Greek: Στήλη του Κωνσταντίνου Α΄; Latin: Columna Constantini) is a monumental column built for Roman emperor Constantine the Great to commemorate the dedication of Constantinople on 11 May 330 AD. Built c. 328 AD, it is the oldest Constantinian monument to survive in Istanbul and stood in the centre of the Forum of Constantine. It occupies the second-highest hill of the seven hills of Constantine's Nova Roma, the erstwhile Byzantium, and was midway along the Mese odos, the ancient city's main thoroughfare.

The base of the statue is still intact, it is made of Egyptian porphyry, a highly prized imperial purple stone. While it is now almost 35 meters tall, it might have been up to 45 meters tall according to some. The remains consist of cylindrical block drums joined together by a hoop imitating a laurel crown. There is still dispute over the exact nature of the statue at the top, the column was set within a circular forum.

Why did all of this happen? It's 300 years or so after the death of Christ, a Sun worshipping (Sol invictus) emperor moves the capital east to Constatinople and, thanks to Helena Augusta, according to the Golden Legend, Christianity jumps westwards to set up in Rome.
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Wile E. Coyote


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The Donation of Constantine (Latin: Donatio Constantini) is a forged Roman imperial decree by which the 4th-century emperor Constantine the Great supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the Pope. Composed probably in the 8th century, it was used, especially in the 13th century, in support of claims of political authority by the papacy.[1] In many of the existing manuscripts (handwritten copies of the document), including the oldest one, the document bears the title Constitutum domini Constantini imperatoris.[2] The Donation of Constantine was included in the 9th-century collection Pseudo-Isidorean Decretals.

Lorenzo Valla, an Italian Catholic priest and Renaissance humanist, is credited with first exposing the forgery with solid philological arguments in 1439–1440,[3] although the document's authenticity had been repeatedly contested since 1001.[1]


So the ancient argument is that Constantine donated Rome to the pope. (a forgery)

A more modern argument is that Constantine indirectly contributed to the setting up of Christianity as he stopped the persecution of Christians, had a deathbed conversion to Christianity, set up the council of Nicaea, but it was Helen who brought back relics, eg The True Cross, from the Holy Land and so on.

The coin evidence is clear. Constantine, the inventor of the solidus(sic)(sol deus) (sun god)... was a sun worshipper.

We need to unravel why, within Rome, worhip of a sun god became the worship of the son of god. Why did worship of the sun god move East

The archaeology, going on the stratigraphy, would place Constantine as 1st not third century, according to Gunnar Heinsohn. There are no Christian buildings in the 300 years following Christ's death. Except a possible Armenian exception.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia the Cenacle (the site of the Last Supper) in Jerusalem was the "first Christian church."[1] The Dura-Europos church in Syria is the oldest surviving church building in the world,[2] while the archaeological remains of both the Aqaba Church and the Megiddo church have been considered

Christianity survives and grows by word of mouth for 300 years or so. It's a very mysterious, mystery religion.
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Mick Harper
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If we apply my own working hypothesis that Christianity is a Norman-era invention for the purpose of confronting Islam, what does that produce? Off the top of my head

1. Constantine has no relationship to Christianity but is (presumably) a real Roman emperor of the fourth century
2. The Donation of Constantine could not therefore be a Norman-era concoction but presumably part of post-1453 machinations by the Papacy to extend its sway over the Greek Orthodox regions of eastern Europe, now up for grabs.
3. Or it could be earlier as part of the complications put into train by the Crusades, especially the Fourth Crusade when Italians took control of Constantinople.
4. A sub-hypothesis is that the Normans are responsible only for Papal Christianity and Orthodox Christianity is, as its name implies, something of a real deal. Where that puts the Donation is something else.

My problem is that I haven't done enough work on any of this to be even hypothetically confident about very much. All I establish in Revisionist Historiography is that Christianity never existed in Wales before the Norman era. You can extrapolate quite a lot from that but nothing like the whole story.
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Ishmael


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Wile E. Coyote wrote:
A more modern argument is that Constantine indirectly contributed to the setting up of Christianity as he stopped the persecution of Christians, had a deathbed conversion to Christianity, set up the council of Nicaea, but it was Helen who brought back relics, eg The True Cross, from the Holy Land and so on.


For the record, I accept none of this history.

"Constantine" was probably the same character elsewhere called Ghengis Khan, and he conquered the Capital of Europe, uniting west and east, when Britain switched sides. The British called him St. George. The British were then granted special privileges in the New Empire.

Among those privileges, I speculate, may have been the adoption of the British Religion---an odd sect of Judaism in which the followers identified, with God, a mystical, heavenly figure known as the Christ. But how did the British (or the British leadership class) come to have this odd religion?

All this is, of course, speculation. And increasingly speculative with each successive sentence.

But I am convinced the "Constantine" event occurred much more recently in time than is believed. Possibly very recently.
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