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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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| 1) He was so chronically dissatisfied with his work any form of excitement was a welcome distraction. |
Maybe things can be a bit boring. But what is this in the Guardian?
An illegally trafficked, incredibly rare 2,000-year-old marble statue of a Greek goddess has been returned to Libya after a long-running repatriation case involving experts at the British Museum.
The well-preserved marble statue, dating from the second century BC and probably depicting Persephone, would have been fixed to a tomb in a cemetery in the ancient Libyan city of Cyrene. She has snake bracelets carved into her wrists and is holding a small doll, making it, the museum said, “one of the rarest of the Cyrenaican funerary statues”.
The museum first became involved in 2013 when UK customs asked for help in identifying the statue seized by Border Force officials at Heathrow airport.
Peter Higgs, a curator, recalled going to Heathrow and knowing straight away what it was and where it was from.
“It is stunning,” he said. “It is a beautiful, three-quarter-length statue, very well preserved with just a few fingers missing. It is technically brilliant in the way it has been carved, with very sharp details, and the face is very well preserved considering many Greek statues have lost noses." |
| “It is just lovely to be part of a story which has a happy ending,” said Higgs. “It will go back to Libya and stand in one of its museums as a star piece, it is a lovely feeling to be part of that.” |
Hartwig Fischer, the director of the British Museum, said: “An important part of the museum’s work on cultural heritage involves our close partnership with law enforcement agencies concerned with illicit trafficking.
“This case is another good example of the benefits of all parties working together to combat looting and protect cultural heritage”. |
Happier times........
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This is the fabbest part of the whole gis-our-heritage-back movement. We fake the stuff in the First World, then provide it with a provenance by saying it's been looted from the Third World, so the Third World naturally demands its looted heritage back. The Oxus Treasure added a few wrinkles to the trade:
1. It is faked in the Third World (India)
2. For First World crooks in the Third World (British Indian Army soldiers)
3. It is sent to crooks in the First World (directors of the British Museum and V & A)
4. It is copied by competing crooks in the First World (the Louvre)
5. The (Third World) President of Tajikistan demands it back
6. The (First World) British Museum refuses but sends him some replicas
7. President puts them in the national museum
8. Et voila Tajikistan has some instant heritage
9. The (First World) Mick Harper points all this out
10. All the First World and Third World museums ignore him.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Just been reading a book by an archaeologist and right at the end it describes the state of the resting place of Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890) beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010.
Two years before, on the Feast of the Guardian Angels 2008, an attempt was made to exhume Newman's remains. The plan was to translate his bones to a shrine in the Birmingham Oratory. However, nothing of Newman himself was found. The Fathers of the Birmingham Oratory released a statement:
"During the excavation the brass inscription plate which had been on the wooden coffin in which Cardinal Newman had rested was recovered from his grave. Brass, wooden and cloth artefacts were found. However, there were no remains of the body of John Henry Newman.
In the view of the medical and health professionals in attendance, burial in a wooden coffin in a very damp site makes this kind of total decomposition of the body unsurprising."
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Shades of St Cuthbert and his incorrupt remains. According to the Birmingham Daily Post, 1890, decomposition had been hastened by the addition of 'black earth' covering the coffin. Either way, according to the author, Richard Morris,
| The relics recovered from the attempted exhumation were a modest collection: the brass inscription that had been screwed to the coffin, some pieces of cloth and bits of coffin wood. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I wonder if that is actually true. I can sort of understand why everyone would say it was but my instinct says it's a bunch of bollocks. Since Newman was different from St Cuthbert in actually existing, we are presented with rather more interesting questions: who half-inched the Cardinal's body, why and where is it now?
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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The senior archaeologist at Cornwall Archaeological Unit, Carl Thorpe, posted on Time Team's Facebook page about the Copplestone Cross
This monument is situated at a busy road junction on the A377 in the village of Copplestone, Devon. It is a boundary stone that marks the meeting place of 3 parishes, Crediton Hamlets, Down St. Mary and Colebrooke.
It is believed that the cross was raised in as a memorial to Bishop Putta who was murdered travelling between Crediton and Bishop's Tawton in AD 906. As a landmark, it was mentioned in a charter of King Eadger in AD 924 and also in a charter of AD 947 which described it as a boundary of an area known as the Nymed. |
TME replied
It is claimed that Copplestone Cross marks the exact centre of Devon. Either way, it's a fine example of a standing stone, reminiscent of Dartmoor's standing stones, converted to stone crosses by Benedictine monks. The stone's location, at a road intersection on a main coast-to-coast route (now the A377), suggests it was erected to function as a route marker, and perhaps a toll point.
No-one has been able to scientifically date the carvings, "thought to date from the tenth century" and there is no written reference to the Copplestone cross until the sixteenth century (in the Codex Wintoniensis, officially dated twelfth century, though regarded as 'a suspicious source', even 'full of lies', by a slew of manuscript scholars). The dating difficulty is compounded by not having similar carvings for comparison or context as, according to Historic England, 'the interlaced decoration is unique in Devon'. |
to which Carl responded
It is mentioned by name in two Anglo-Saxon Charters..
As a landmark, it was mentioned in a charter of King Eadger in AD 924 and also in a charter of AD 947.. |
He is simply repeating what other people have said, par for the course except that in this case there is no 'AD 924 charter' mentioning Copplestone and the later charter appeared out of the blue in 1870, as TME pointed out
There is a King Edgar charter granting 3 hides of land at Nymed, Devon, of 974 but it doesn't mention Copplestone. There appears to be only one charter mentioning Copplestone and claimed to be tenth century. However the charter's existence was unknown before 1870 when it was presented to the Public Record Office by a gentleman from Kent. The provenance of the charter cannot be traced.
The earliest record of the carvings are drawings dated 1876. |
Another contributor to the Time Team page even posted
| Wish we could preserve the original away from the weather. So much has been lost. |
It so happens Copplestone has a Church of St Boniface (Grade II listed), constructed 'circa 1870 and later C19' as a chapel of ease, later a church, in a 'Mixed Gothic'.style, according to the Historic England listing.
Might the architects have perhaps turned their attention to decorating Copplestone's famous landmark standing stone? This would appear to be a good example of nineteenth-century Gothic being somehow interpreted as tenth-century Anglo-Saxon carvings.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Stone stuff that cannot be explained tends to be grouped under the wood loving Anglo Saxons.
This really does not look like a cross.
It's a carved decorated square column with a niche at the top, best guess would be for a statue. I would imagine that the statue might have been the giveaway as to what it was.
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