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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Another episode in the cameraman's film career describes shooting Dr Joann Fletcher finding what might turn out to be Nefertiti's elusive burial site, not in a grand pyramid but a dusty cave alongside two other mummies. The plan was to compare the presumed Nefertiti mummy with the bust excavated in 1912 at Amarna in a dig led by a German archaeologist, Ludwig Borchardt (1863–1938) which reminded me about the unresolved query re the bust's authenticity.
The only written account of the discovery of the bust is in Borchardt's diary. According to the entry for 6 December 1912, it coincided with a much-anticipated royal visit
| At 12:30 scouts were sent out to inform us of the arrival of the “Indiana†of the Hamb[ur]g.-America line, on which Prince Joh[ann]-Georg of Saxony with wife and sister-in-law, along with Princess Mathilde of Saxony will arrive. [….] Borchardt dashes off to meet them. When he gets to the ship he learns that the ladies and gentlemen have already headed inland. He dashes back. In the wadi he receives a note from Ranke, which informs him that ‘something good is coming out’. At the very same moment the royal company arrives. |
Writing about oneself in the third person seems odd but anyway we get the picture. In fact there are pictures as Prince Johann Georg was a keen amateur photographer.
The specific findspot was the remains of a house and workshop belonging to Thutmose, who is said to have been Pharoah Akhenaten's official sculptor. The archaeologists worked out it was Thutmose's pad thanks to a piece lying in the dirt nearby signed by the very same, perhaps ensuring the neighbours didn't forget the name or profession of the person banging away next door.
| the building was identified as that of Thutmose based on an ivory horse blinker found in a rubbish pit in the courtyard inscribed with his name and job title.[3] Since it gave his occupation as "sculptor" and the building was clearly a sculpture workshop, the determination seemed logical and has proven to be accurate. | |
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I'm not sure who the Ranke mentioned in Wiki is but the most famous name in German history is Leopold von Ranke. He died in 1883 but maybe his son? Your cousin seems to keep awesome company. I'm very surprised he gives you the time of day. Or me, I suppose, I have met him.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Rather than criticise Buffy St Marie, we should be learning from her.
It has been a good example of faking it.
For those who are not up to speed, Buffy Sainte-Marie was (sic) an Indigenous Canadian-American singer with, as they say, a large and devoted following, who won a Best Song Oscar for “Up Where We Belong.†and had been awarded a prestigious Order of Canada honour. All was good until a CBC TV investigation in 2023 revealed that the white parents she for decades claimed were her adopted parents were in fact her real birth parents. In short they have her birth certificate: she was born in 1941 in Massachusetts. She is “Beverly Jean Santamaria†and her parents listed as white. CBC said it had the document authenticated by the Stoneham town clerk, Maria Sagarino.
The fraud dates back to the early sixties and the launch of Buffy/Beverly's music career, at that time reports have her as "Algonquin, full-blooded Algonquin, Mi’kmaq, half-Mi’kmaq, and Cree.†She seems to altered her story as she went along.
There is no doubt that the Buffy/Beverley music career both benefited from and aided Indigenous people. She has been worshipped by fans in part because of her fascinating invented backstory, which caught the spirit of the times. It is just she wasn't Indigenous, or.....even Canadian.
She was an American hippie chick.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I didn't know about dear Buffy, a favourite of the long ago. Though in my own defence I didn't know she was claiming to be native American at the time. She was just a folk singer, and they're always a bit weird. You'll be telling me Joan Baez is Latino next. Or 'chicano' as we called them at the time. I used the term myself in America but was much mocked for pronouncing it to rhyme with Chicago.
This is quite a popular ruse nowadays. A white novelist said she was black and won some prize or other quite recently. And of course there's the equally mocked (Democrat) Senator Elizabeth Warren and her Cherokee ancestry. It stems from 'you're not allowed to ask' and is all highly ironic because 'a touch of the tarbrush' had previously been a deadly insult.
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Wile E. Coyote
In: Arizona
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Buffy created a back story leaving the odd flag.
This might be of interest.
Firstly she faced the record problem. People want a written record, they want proof. Buffy had an explanation, lost records.
| Buffy wrote: | | “that six years of birth records were destroyed at the hospital that would have been servicing Piapot Reserve at the time in Craven.†|
The problem is that the records for servicing the Piapot Reserve were not held at a hospital, they have been held in secure gov offices. None are known to have gone missing. Missing records like birth certificates or social service or school records are a common claim of folks with a made up ancestry, often they take the form of courthouse or house fires, sometimes the loss is placed on the goverment deliberately destroying these records.
Sounds familiar. No?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Yes, the Burning Books book I mentioned in the TV thread is really eloquent on the advantage of destroying stuff. Especially stuff that never existed in the first place. This segment is the one to listen to https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000m56c The author, Richard Ovenden, is head librarian of the Bodleian so believes the full fairy story.
Which reminds me, it is narrated by Anthony Head, the librarian in Buffy (the vampire slayer, not the not-the-not French-Canadian-folk singer).
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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Another runestone of international importance, brought to our attention by the Megalithic Portal
Berezan' Runestone
Country: Ukraine Topic: Early Medieval (Dark Age)
Discovered in 1905 by Ernst von Stern, on Berezan' Island (also known as the Island of St. Aitherios) where the Dnieper River meets the Black Sea. The runestone is 48 cm wide, 47 cm high and 12 cm thick, and kept in the museum of Odesa. Pictured is a faithful replica currently on display at the Historiska Museum in Stockholm. The original was made by a Varangian trader named Grani in memory of his business partner Karl. They were probably from Gotland, Sweden. |
The discoverer, Ernst von Stern, seems to have been a well-respected academic, in Baltic circles at least
| Ernst Wallfried (E.R.) von Stern (1859-1924), born in Livonia, was professor at the Novorossiya University (1886-1910) director of the Imperial Museum at Odessa (1895-1910), professor of Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Halle, (1911- ), Rector (1921- ). |
But whether it was von Stern or 'a worker' who located the runestone is unclear from Wiki's comments
The runestone was discovered during the excavations of a kurgan from the 6th century BC. After its construction, the kurgan had been used for 48 additional burials of different types and at various depths. None of the bodies appeared to have been incinerated; some had been carelessly buried without any grave goods, while others had received wooden coffins or had at least been put on planks before the inhumation, while some had been inserted into stone coffins made of flat slabs of stone.
On June 9, 1905, von Stern's crew discovered a lidless stone coffin in the eastern part of the kurgan containing a skeleton whose skull was resting on the runestone. The runestone was discovered by von Stern just as a worker intended to throw it on a pile of stone. The runestone was probably not discovered in its original location, and it is likely that it was originally located at one of the minor barrows in the vicinity |
So no verified findspot which means no stratigraphical evidence. The Megalithic Portal consulted English and German Wiki and provides a translation of the runic inscription (from Swedish)
Translation (Swedish): Grani made this vault in memory of Karl/Káll, his partner.
Dating: 725–1100 |
Not much information to go on but the MP poster produced a plausible-sounding tale with a bit of human interest though to my ears claiming the rarity of runes in Eastern Europe was due to lack of stone, rings hollow
Few runic inscriptions have been discovered in Eastern Europe because stone material was scarce. It may also have been due to the tradition of inscribing runes on wooden poles that were erected on the barrows, something which was described by Ibn Fadlan who met Scandinavians on the shores of the Volga. By the time the raising of runestones became fashionable in the 11th century, most Scandinavian settlers in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine had been assimilated by the Slavic majority, and the influx of new settlers had ceased.
It is difficult to determine from where Grani and Karl came. In runic inscriptions, the Old Norse word hvalf ("vault", "coffin") only appears in Gotland, and in some late inscriptions from Västergötland (both being regions in present-day Sweden). There are no special traits in the inscription that suggests that it was written in the Old Gutnish dialect of Old Norse, but the shape of the runestone and its placement are usually found on Gotland.
It is likely that the Gotlanders Grani and Karl were on their way to, or from, Constantinople but that Karl died and so Grani prepared his last resting place on an island that had always been visited by sailors.
The runestone's description of Karl as the félag of Grani indicates that they were operating in a mercantile partnership, but it has been suggested that it could have referred to them as members of the same retinue. |
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=62433
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I didn't spot any money changing hands. Reminding us all that academics are sometimes crooks but not necessarily money-grubbing crooks.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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I've been reading a post on Twitter/X admiring 'the famous Albani Antinous' sculpture in the Villa Albani and complaining about the 'outrageous entrance fee'. Turns out the Villa Albani in Rome was built 1747-67 and belonged to Cardinal Alessandro Albani, described by Wiki as "a leading collector of antiquities, dealer and art patron in Rome" but even more interestingly
| He supported the art historian, Johann Joachim Winckelmann and commissioned paintings from Anton Raphael Mengs. |
Winckelmann was a widely respected art historian employed by the Cardinal to catalogue and curate the Albani collection. His work would have been cut out for him as it appears the collection was continuously changing and expanding, so much so that the Cardinal had the Villa Albani built specifically to house
| his evolving, constantly replaced and renewed collections of antiquities and ancient Roman sculpture, which soon filled the casino that faced the Villa down a series of formal parterres. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Albani
Winckelmann was also a friend of Mengs a painter who worked with Giovanni Battista Casanova (another friend of Winckelmann’s). Mengs was a Neoclassical painter and managed to convince him that a fresco of Jupiter and Ganymede was painted by Raphael. Winckelmann, completely deceived, bought it for the Albani collection, boasting about it in letters to friends as well as including it in his book on Classical art, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764). He only discovered the forgery in 1766.
Another 'friend' of Winckelmann's was a prolific 'renovator' and plagiarist of antiquities called Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, who was the conservator of Cardinal Albani's collection and according to Wik
| Much of his work was in restoring antique Roman sculptures, making casts, copies, and fakes of antiques.. |
We came across Cavaceppi as the owner and presumed sculptor of 'The Jennings Dog', now displayed in the British Museum
| its first modern owner was the sculptor, restorer and dealer in antiquities Bartolomeo Cavaceppi.[1] Henry Constantine Jennings saw it in a pile of rubble in Cavaceppi's workshop in Rome between 1753 and 1756, bought it from him for 400 scudi, and took it back to Britain. |
Cavaceppi reportedly produced copies of antique statues en masse and Albani's patronage would surely have put him in pole position to cater to the foreign, mainly British, tourists passing through Rome on their Grand Tour travels.
Either way it seems his restoration talents were well known in Europe as his clientele included Frederic the Great, Empress of Russia Catherine the Great and Goethe.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Hatty wrote: | | I've been reading a post on Twitter/X admiring 'the famous Albani Antinous' sculpture in the Villa Albani and complaining about the 'outrageous entrance fee'. |
Not so famous that I've heard of it. Not that I would admit that if someone started talking about it. Though Villa Albani strikes a distant chord.
| Turns out the Villa Albani in Rome was built 1747-67 and belonged to Cardinal Alessandro Albani, described by Wiki as "a leading collector of antiquities, dealer and art patron in Rome" |
That's settled its hash then.
but even more interestingly
He supported the art historian, Johann Joachim Winckelmann and commissioned paintings from Anton Raphael Mengs. |
I never commission paintings from people whose parents gave them middle names of Renaissance Masters. It's as if they guessed their little cherub would grow up to be a painter.
Winckelmann was a widely respected art historian employed by the Cardinal to catalogue and curate the Albani collection. His work would have been cut out for him as it appears the collection was continuously changing and expanding, so much so that the Cardinal had the Villa Albani built specifically to house
his evolving, constantly replaced and renewed collections of antiquities and ancient Roman sculpture, which soon filled the casino that faced the Villa down a series of formal parterres.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Albani |
I'm sure we've put the boot into these folk, haven't we?
| Winckelmann was also a friend of Mengs a painter who worked with Giovanni Battista Casanova |
Good grief.
| (another friend of Winckelmann’s). Mengs was a Neoclassical painter and managed to convince him that a fresco of Jupiter and Ganymede was painted by Raphael. Winckelmann, completely deceived |
I doubt that very much.
| bought it for the Albani collection, boasting about it in letters to friends as well as including it in his book on Classical art, Geschichte der Kunst des Altertums (1764). He only discovered the forgery in 1766. |
'Sorry, boss, how was I to know?'
Another 'friend' of Winckelmann's was a prolific 'renovator' and plagiarist of antiquities called Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, who was the conservator of Cardinal Albani's collection and according to Wik
Much of his work was in restoring antique Roman sculptures, making casts, copies, and fakes of antiques..
We came across Cavaceppi as the owner and presumed sculptor of 'The Jennings Dog', now displayed in the British Museum |
Are you trying to upset me deliberately?
| its first modern owner was the sculptor, restorer and dealer in antiquities Bartolomeo Cavaceppi.[1] Henry Constantine Jennings saw it in a pile of rubble in Cavaceppi's workshop in Rome between 1753 and 1756, bought it from him for 400 scudi, and took it back to Britain. |
It's all set out in RevHist pp 264-7. Set out, blown up, never to be seen again. I wish.
| Cavaceppi reportedly produced copies of antique statues en masse and Albani's patronage would surely have put him in pole position to cater to the foreign, mainly British, tourists passing through Rome on their Grand Tour travels. |
He looks to be the go-to geezer all right. A lot of them are still in situ, mostly owned by the National Trust. I'll write to them about it, they're always keen to write millions off their bottom line.
| Either way it seems his restoration talents were well known in Europe as his clientele included Frederic the Great, Empress of Russia Catherine the Great and Goethe. |
I've heard of them.
[Could you send me the original Twitter exchanges?]
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