On this day in 1922, archaeologist Howard Carter and team, sponsored by patron George Herbert, Earl of Carnavon, discovered the first step leading down to the tomb of Tutankhamun, inspired to continue the search after other burial goods were discovered bearing the name of the pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt were found by excavators contracted by Egyptologist Theodore Davis in ancillary chambers before the Great War. Digging proceeded at pace throughout the month, reaching the antechamber and unsealing the vault on 26 November, exceeding all expectations and lending heretofore unknown insight into royal funeral rites. The media frenzy following that gripped the public imagination was known as “Tutmania,” influencing styles and decorative arts as well as informing Egypt’s struggle for independence from Britain by reconnecting it with its past.
Friday 4 November 2022
Tuesday 25 October 2022
ฯฮญฮธฯ ฮผฮฝฮฟ (10. 249)
We had intended to pay a visit to Rethymno (corresponding to the ancient cities of Rhithymnia and Arsinoe, chiefly known as a mint in antiquity with coins bearing a double dolphin insignia that’s the modern city’s symbol) along with Knossos but it was already too much to see and so made a return trip with a couple extra stops along the way. First we came to the resort village of Georgioupoli (ฮฮตฯฯฮณฮนฮฟฯฯฮฟฮปฮท)—originally a fishing community and identified with Amphimalla on ancient atlases with an islet connected to the mainland hosting the church of St Nicholas.
Monday 24 October 2022
๐๐๐ฐ (10. 248)
With evidence of human occupation for the past one hundred and fifty thousand years and settled some five millennia past in the early neolithic period, we visited the archaeological site and partial, creative reconstruction of King Minos’ palace compound at Knossos, considered the oldest city in Europe and with the Minoan culture the origin of the first intelligible writing system with Linear B.
Tuesday 11 October 2022
proto-zoetrope (10. 212)
Via Messy Nessy Chic, we are directed to an artefact found in sizable archaeological Bronze Age settlement of Shahre-e Sukhteh (ุดูุฑ ุณูุฎุชู, Persian for Burnt City) found amongst of treasure of the Helmand culture including an artificial eye, the oldest known board-game with playable pieces and dice, a human skull displaying evidence of successful brain surgery and this earthenware goblet, all items approaching five millennia in age, that depicts was researchers consider to be first animation—see previously. When the vessel is rotated, it reveals a leaping goat taking a bite off a leaf.
Sunday 25 September 2022
muography (10. 168)
BLDGBLOG’s Geoff Manaugh, contributing correspondent for the Financial Times, introduces use to the physics of the elementary particle called the muon (ฮผ), how like the more elusive and slippery neutrino penetrates temple and turnpike alike (and even volcanos or exploring ruins) and gives civil engineers a new inspection tool to assess the internal state of infrastructure, a sort of structural x-ray, to help triage, prioritise repair and upgrades and identify imminent failures.
catagories: ๐บ, ๐งฒ, architecture
Sunday 21 August 2022
8x8 (10. 075)
west eigg: via property scout Messy Nessy Chic, this lighthouse and keeper’s quarters on Pladda island in the Firth of Clyde
oled: a clever tinkerer makes dynamic LEGO computer consoles—see previously
calling card: the true story of football pioneer, journalist, stock-broker and mermaid-hunter Arthur Pember—via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dumpcinetimes: a free film and documentary aggregator with a familiar streaming-service interface—via Nag on the Lake’s Sunday Links
sad beige werner herzog: a master of the bleak-harvest aesthetic
รงiftetelli: more on “Misirlou”—see previously
the dolmen of guadalperal: drought in Europe reveals the “Spanish Stonehenge”—a circle of one megaliths almost always submerged
fresnel lens: a LEGO ideas kit allows one to create one’s own well-appointed beacon
Wednesday 10 August 2022
7x7 (10. 050)
smokin’: Bill McClintock remixes Clarence Carter’s “Strokin’” (That’s What I Be Doing) with Boston’s “More Than A Feeling”
s morgenstern’s classic tale of true love and high adventure, the ‘good parts’ version: wildly divergent book covers for The Princess Bride, via Super Punch
we’re walking in the air: author and illustrator Raymond Briggs (previously) has passed away, aged 88development purgatory: more titles and properties never released by movie studios—see also—via Things Magazine
scarborough faire: housing developer agrees to rebury unique Roman villa for future conservation a year after it was discovered
the seventh seal: AI designs movie posters
seona dancing: Ricky Gervais’ synth-pop group from 1983
Friday 29 July 2022
arbeia (10. 024)
Command-and-control for attempted incursions on Scotland, Fort Arbeia ultimately became a logistics base to supply activities along the frontier and preventing Pictish infiltration and once hosted over six hundred troops. The western gate is a modern reconstruction (see also) and contains a museum of artefacts found here and an education centre.
catagories: ๐, ๐ด๓ ง๓ ข๓ ณ๓ ฃ๓ ด๓ ฟ, ๐บ, Middle East
Tuesday 31 May 2022
6x6
not to put words in your mouth: Google’s collaborative incubator discreetly withdraws from deepfake research—via Slashdot
mermay: a month-long (didn’t get the memo but for next year) sketching challenge to draw merfolk with daily prompts
bubasteion: necropolis sacred to Ancient Egyptian feline goddess yielded a trove of two-hundred and fifty perfectly preserved sarcophaginow listen to my heart—it says ukrainia: the Scorpions update their lyrics to Winds of Change to stop romancising Russia
joueur-animateur en direct: French ministry of culture reforms guidelines on gaming jargon to combat anglicisation—see previously
monk tone scale: Google adopts a better classification system for skin pigment to combat baked-in biases (see previously) for its algorithms and artificial intelligence
Wednesday 18 May 2022
7x7
conservation of momentum: a Newton’s Cradle performs Psy’s K-Pop classic
the tweter: a sweater for two
the elephant: an Ames inspired trainer—see previously
trust-fall: a collection of Italian ex-votos (previously) depicting divine intervention during a stumble
the bond bug: a three-wheeled two-seater produced by Reliant Motor Company—via Pasa Bon!
amphorae: Ukrainian soldiers digging trenches outside of Odesa discover ancient Greek artefacts
bill medley: the ending sequence of Dirty Dancing set to the theme of The Muppet Show—via Boing Boing
Sunday 8 May 2022
himmelsscheibe
Saturday 2 April 2022
6x6
un robot quadrupede al servizio dell’archeologia: SPOT to patrol ruins of Pompeii and protect the site from looters—also raising a quandary for future archaeologists
dans l’ombre du star wars kid: the National Film Board of Canada’s documentary on the internet phenomenon
entrรฉe: a family-run Tbilisi-based artisanal bakery expands into East London
the atlantean: after Dallas (debuting on this day in 1978), Patrick Duffy appeared as a merfolk-hybrid hero
intonarumori: Luigi Russolo’s experimental sound machines
Monday 14 March 2022
7x7
be kind, rewind: the miniature dioramas of Marina Totino—via Waxy
doobly doo: recreating a Hallstatt period hair-style
wck: more on Josรฉ Andrรฉs’ World Central Kitchen (previously) and its work in Ukraineit is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it: solace from the Stoics and other timeless words of wisdom—via Messy Nessy Chic
blogoversary: Kottke turns twenty-four
the wife of ฯ: a Pi Day (previously) round-up—plus this one
family pictures: artist Martha Naranjo Sandoval reanimates antique stereoscopic photos
Thursday 10 March 2022
7x7
stacy’s dad has got me down bad: a Fountains of Wayne cover from a different perspective
imperial trans-antarctic expedition: the shipwreck of Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 exploratory mission discovered
beachcomber: eighteenth-century seaweed pressings speak to fecklessness and romanceithaca: an new AI model is helping scholars decipher and date ancient inscriptions
x-wing: Star Wars space craft size comparison
snowmen: David Lynch’s haunting images—evocative of Eraserhead from Boise, Idaho in the early ‘90s
there’s a doll, inside of doll, inside a doll, inside a dolly: Robbie Williams’ 2016 Party Like a Russian was inspired by an encounter with the inner-circle of oligarchs when asked to perform at a New Year’s Eve party
Tuesday 25 January 2022
milia passuum
Usually during lunch, I make a circuit around the neighbourhood of Mainz-Kastell and though I pass it every day, it still strikes me as a marvel and privilege that this ancient Roman milestone—among other archaeological artefacts—from 122 CE is just basically someone’s garden gnome. The highly abbreviated inscription reads as a dedication to “Emperor Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus, Son of the deified Traianus Parthicus, Grandson of the deified Nerva, Pontifex Maximus in the sixth year of his tribunician [veto] power, Father of the Fatherland. Six miles (M·P VI) to Aquae Mattiacorum.” A near identical inscription (a decade older) was discovered near the Damascus Gate of Jerusalem during an excavation in 2014, Hadrian being in power during the Revolt of Roman Judea—the rebellion and the effort to suppress it framed as Expeditio—expedition (see also) Judaica by the other side.
catagories: ๐, ๐บ, Hessen, Rheinland-Pfalz
Friday 26 November 2021
7x7
limerent limerick: help in recognising unhealthy obsessions and how to work one’s way out of intrusive thinking—hopefully through bawdy rhymes
there and back again: Gene Deitch’s animated short The Hobbit—the first such adaptation
roll for perception: a collection of resources, a florilegium from a Society for Creative Anachronism member for the LARP community—via Mx van Hoorn’s cabinet of hypertext curiosities
avenue of the sphinxes: a restored promenade between Luxor and Karnak opened with fanfare
opiate for the masses: drug use in Antiquity
mlhavรฝ: Martin Rak’s fog-draped forests in Saxon-Bohemia—see previously
here’s mud in your eye: a select glossary of beer and imbibing terminology—via Strange Company’s Weekend Link Dump
Sunday 7 November 2021
facce di bronzo
Via the always superb Everlasting Blรถrt, we are not only introduced to the sensational discovery of the so-called Riace bronzes in the early 1970s but how the Italian mayor of the namesake town is planning a museum and further excavations on the fiftieth anniversary of their recovery from the waves off the Calabrian coast to see if there are more Greek warrior statues yet to be uncovered. Made in the fifth century BCE using the lost wax casting technique are among the few surviving examples of Greek artistry, most being melted down, and were found by accident by a snooping chemist called Stefano Mariottini in 1972 and are conjectured to be either anonymous Delphic soldiers as part of an ensemble monument to the Battle of Marathon or possibly as depictions of Erechtheus, foster son of Athena and legendary king of Athens, and Eumolpus, son of Poseidon and inventor of viticulture.
Thursday 21 October 2021
newfoundland
The clue possibly lying in the name of the province, researchers, using new dating techniques and studying the remnant of an ancient solar storm, have pinpointed the first transatlantic crossing and settlement of Viking explorers to exactly a millennium hence, nearly five hundred years prior to the voyages of Christopher Columbus, marking the first encounter and reunion with inhabitants of the New and Old World, the aboriginal population having migrated the long way around. A known flare event in the year 992 unleashed a burst of high-energy cosmic rays that left a marker in the growth rings of trees, felled twenty-nine years after the storm whose timber was used for construction of shelters, sod longhouses (reconstruction pictured in L’Anse aux Meadows), demonstrating that the encampment was set up in 1021. The Viking chronology suggested their journey took place in the eleventh century (see also) but before there was no corroborating evidence—which makes one wonder what other truths might be in the epic sagas.
Thursday 7 October 2021
cyrus charter
Though in possession of the British Museum, the ancient clay cylinder bearing the declaration of king Cyrus the Great, outlining his genealogy and conquest of Babylonia as favourite of the god Marduk and documentation of the end of exile of the Jewish people and allowing them to resettle within the empire was loaned to Tehran on this day in 1971 for a period of sixteen days for the gala celebration of the two-thousand-five-hundredth anniversary of the founding of Persia—see previously, beginning mid-month ten days later. The artefact recovered in 1829 (in Mesopotamia, in modern day Iraq) is considered by many historians as the pioneering attempt to administer and multicultural state with universal human rights and was made the official symbol of Iran in absentia.
catagories: ๐ฌ๐ง, ✡️, ๐บ, 1971, libraries and museums, Middle East
Sunday 19 September 2021
iceman
Discovered on this day in 1991, the human, natural mummy named รtzi (previously) was found by a pair of German tourist on the east ridge of the รtztal (Venoste) Alps spanning the Italo-Austrian border believing that this five thousand year old corpse was the remains of a more recently departed mountaineer and immediately summoned the authorities, the forensics department turning the case over to the archeologists. Frozen and exquisitely preserved, scientist were able to study his clothes, shoes and tools as well as the contents of his stomach, bodily composition, toxicity and glean a lot of about his civilisation’s lifestyle, diet and technical prowess.