World History

Fragment of fallen ceiling in the open air storageof the lovely Temple of Tod complex, south of LuxorFieldwork Penn curator Joe Wegner continues excavations at mortuary complex of Pharaoh Senwosret III, Abydos.Penn Artifactlab http://bit.ly/11a1cnf ResearchHand in Hand with Politics: The Challenges of Egyptian Studies in Serbia by B. An?elkovi?. Friends of ASOR Newsletter. http://asorblog.org/?p=4490 Heritage Management and LootingEgypt’s poor management of ancient monuments draws threat from UNESCO. Daily News Egypt http://bit.ly/19WhtLS Minister for Antiquities says that UNESCO is not threatening to remove 6 sites from World Heritage List. Ahram Online http://bit.ly/11Vvw6J Archaeologists denounce “disgraceful” plundering of the city of Antinopolis, built by Emperor Hadrian. The Art Newspaper http://bit.ly/164Sxpk and Past Horizons http://bit.ly/18g5wBSBooks Ancient Egyptian Literature Theory and Practice. Edited by Roland Enmarch and Verena M. Lepper. OUP http://bit.ly/184k21N Extended edition of Anubis, Bibliography on Mummies, Mummification and; Related Subjects. C.de Vartavan and I.Waanders http://bit.ly/10S3K4F From Old Cairo to the New World: Coptic Studies Presented to Gawdat Gabra. Colloquia Antiqua 9. Peeters http://bit.ly/184krkP ConferencesThe British Museum continued its support of Sudanese archaeology with an international conference. Sudan Vision Daily http://bit.ly/ZdItHt Czech Inst. of Egyptology announces international conference: Profane landscapes, sacred spaces. miroslav.barta [at] ff.cuni.cz Museums and exhibitionsAlexandria plans for a new maritime museum at site of Qaitbay citadel. Archaeology News Network http://bit.ly/13NhuSj Call for general public volunteers (14-65 yrs old) for the new Petrie Museum website to appraise work done so far: Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology http://bit.ly/16b4PfU Free online/ open accessAncient Egyptian Architecture Online provides vetted, standardized architectural drawings of a selection of buildings http://dai.aegaron.ucla.edu MUDIRA: Joint project to digitize and provide access to the collections of images held at two Munich institutions. http://bit.ly/168xGBq Short article: "Archaeology after the Arab Spring" by Jesse Casana. Friends of ASOR Newsletter http://asorblog.org/?p=4417 Short article in Spanish about the Turin papyrus that shows a Ramesside map of the Eastern Desert goldmines. Ushebtis http://bit.ly/Zabio1 Journals, Magazines and NewslettersDamqatum, the CEHAO newsletter, 2012, nº 8, in English: UCA http://bit.ly/10VjbJj Job OpportunitiesJob: British Museum: Curator, Department of Ancient Egypt & Sudan, with responsibilities for research and outreach. http://bit.ly/10iJ7hX Miscellaneous Northampton faces legal challenge over Sekhemka statue sale from Marquis of Northampton. Museums Journal http://bit.ly/10U7Vgf The Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA) archives now officially registered with the Library of Congress. AERA http://bit.ly/13LfZkl Zahi Hawass, long-reigning king of AE antiquities was forced into exile but is now plotting a return. Smithsonian Mag http://bit.ly/16a12PH For fun. This really made me laugh (and a good moral in the tale too). How NOT to hand in your PhD. The Thesis Whisperer http://bit.ly/192trWM Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

In which the Young King is praised for his chivalric qualities and we receive an impression of the hurley burley of a tournament.The Marshal returned to his lord, the young King, a man of such worthiness that no man was his equal as regards valour and liberality. Never did Arthur or Alexander, whose lives were noted for their noble deeds, perform so many in such a short time. If God, by his command, had allowed him to live a long life, he would have quite surpassed these two in valour and noble deeds.He gathered so many worthy men around him that no emperor, king, or count ever had such an experienced company, nor would such have been found at any time, for there is no doubt that he had the pick of the bravest young knights in France, Flanders, and Champagne. He did not haggle with them, but he acted in such a way that all the worthiest men came and joined him. I have no wish to name them all here, for it would be a difficult task to bring them together and tell you the names of each, and by so doing I would spoil my tale. But one day I shall list them for you and name them, every single one.The King did so much in his life that all worthy men desired to have his wisdom and his prowess, his virtues and his generosity. Every man would have liked to be him, for he made the whole world tremble in the battles in which he took part. Many a time it happened that, when he spurred on, so the companies with him spurred on too, so vigorously as they advanced that those riding towards them from the other side could not withstand their charge. And it often happened that the other side had far more men than they, and yet they was soon thrown into disarray by the mighty power of the King’s companies. For, when the latter charged as one band, they found nobody prepared to await their charge, nobody who dared stretch out his hand towards them, nobody bold enough to engage with one of them, so much so that the King had no one to charge at, for those spurring forward in front of him had chased on so far ahead that the King was left without a target to strike at. Often you would see it happen that he was left with very few men, and also, often he would go and join battle with some group from outside, and found it difficult to leave the the fray. Despite his rash forays, the Marshal was there to the rescue; he stuck so close to him and was ever pulling him away from the press of battle at times when he was near to being captured. The Marshal, responsible for enhancing the King’s reputation, was constantly rescuing him and so sending his enemies on their way; he was always under the Marshal’s wings. For these exploits and similar ones the King loved him dearly, far more than any other knight he knew in any land or any he had ever had in his company. So the King travelled about for a long time, a man so wealthy and courtly, more generous than any other Christian, and who surpassed all the princes on earth in his sheer handsomeness, honourable conduct, and loyalty. Things turned out for him so exceedingly well that everywhere he went there was no talk or report of noble deeds if they were not about him. And, of course, was that not bound to be the case? After all, he had the best instructor in arms that there ever was in his time or since, according to the story that is my source: that is, of course, the Marshal, who devoted himself utterly to the King and never once failed him. And the pains he took were well employed, for through his worthiness the King came to have Generosity as his bride. He did not use her as a concubine, for their marriage was a very good one: as long as he lived he loved her as a true lover, and she him, I have no doubt, as a true and perfect lover.Forgetfulness, who is as blind as a bat, soon deflects from the path he is following a man who is sunk in his thoughts, diverting him from his course. However, memory puts me back on the right road so that I can tell you what I forgot to tell. Blessed be memor

An international team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology have identified the strain of Phytophthora infestans that caused the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1852. In the thick of blight, botanists classified it as a mildew-causing fungus of the Botryotinia genus. In the 20th century it was reclassified as Phytophthora but was thought to be a strain called US-1 which is still widespread today. By analyzing dried specimens collected between 1845 and 1896 that have been kept in herbaria at Kew Royal Botanical Gardens in England and the Botanische Staatssammlung Munchen in Germany, researchers were able to find trace amounts of Phytophthora infestans DNA, map its genome and identify a previously unknown strain they’ve named HERB-1. (Full pdf study here.) “Both herbaria placed a great deal of confidence in our abilities and were very generous in providing the dried plants,” said Marco Thines from the Senckenberg Museum and Goethe University in Frankfurt, one of the co-authors of this study. “The degree of DNA preservation in the herbarium samples really surprised us,” adds Johannes Krause from the University of Tübingen, another co-author. Because of the remarkable DNA quality and quantity in the herbarium samples, the research team could evaluate the entire genome of Phytophthora infestans and its host, the potato, within just a few weeks. They found that HERB-1 is related to US-1 more than it is to any other modern strain, but it is unique. Phytophthora infestans originated in Toluca Valley, Mexico, among the potatoes that grow wild there. It was already endemic when Europeans arrived in America and brought the potato back, and yet, hundreds of years would pass before any Phytophthora strain made its way across the ocean. Scientists believe the US-1 and HERB-1 strains diverged in the Americas in the early 1800s. The newly individual HERB-1 hitched a ride on a trading ship and landed in Europe in Antwerp, Belgium, in the summer of 1845 before rapidly spreading to the Low Countries and other countries in Western Europe. Then it made the sea voyage to England and, most disastrously, Ireland. Ireland was hit the hardest because more than a third of its population was dependent on potatoes as the sole source of nourishment. Irish Catholics were prohibited by law from owning land. Instead, the became tenant farmers who paid rent and worked the property of absentee English or Anglo-Irish landlords producing crops and cattle for export. This was a hand to mouth existence. Potatoes had the most bang for your caloric buck and could grow in the marginal land which was all the tenant farmers had left once the export crops and cattle pastures got the choicest bits. By the early 1800s, the potato was the sole staple of the Irish farmer. Not only was it their only food, but almost all of the potatoes grown in Ireland were one breed: the Irish Lumper. The profound dependence on the potato coupled with a lack of genetic variety geometrically expanded the impact of the late blight when it arrived. HERB-1, used to the challenges of tough wild varieties, just slaughtered the cultivated potato crop. Author and scientist E.C. Large wrote in his seminal work The Advance of the Fungi that the blight “spread faster than the cholera amongst men.” Over the seven years of the Famine, HERB-1 destroyed crops so thoroughly that the Irish Lumper breed was almost driven to extinction. (It’s back now as an heirloom potato.) The population of Ireland was more than decimated. In 1845 the population was more than eight million. By 1852, there were only five million people left in Ireland. One million of them died from starvation and the diseases that ravage the hungry. Two million emigrated to the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. Ireland’s population today at just 4.5 million has yet to recover from the devastation of The Great Hunger. HERB-1 may

September 1942. "New York. Drinking fountain in Central Park on Sunday." Photo by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information. View full size.

As criminals go, the Lennie mutineers were neither organized nor gifted. Indeed, they likely did not fancy themselves mutineers when they perpetrated a triple-murder of the officer corps on board the vessel during high seas. Matteo Cargalis, Pascalis Caludis, George Kaida, and Giovanni Carcaris were hanged on this date for that “atrocious conspiracy” in Newgate prison’s largest mass execution behind closed doors. As they say, you get what you pay for, and Captain Stanley Hatfield apparently didn’t pay too well. His ragtag crew of multinationals — Turks, Greeks, Dutch, Belgians, and possibly others (Hatfield himself was a Canadian) — was in it for the money when the vessel left Antwerp bound for New Orleans on 24 October 1875. The circumstances of the mutiny’s start are hazy, but what is clear is that the entire ship’s complement excluding first officer, cabin boy, and steward were on deck in heavy seas about 10 days out. What seems to have been a minor labor dispute resulted in Hatfield and Second Mate Richard Macdonald being summarily dispatched by stabbing; the first mate, Joseph Wortley, was sought out below and shot in his quarters. Since the crew was all in now, the murderers and a small group of associates pressed the remainder of the deckhands into service. The two remaining persons belowdecks were now let out. The Belgian steward, Constant von Hoydonck (spelled in various ways, but Anglicized in what seems to be the most popular way), and the cabin boy, Henri Trousselot, were given the option to join the rest of the crew. To the now-leaderless and ill-educated rebellious deck crew, Von Hoydonck’s literacy made him was the best hope of finding safe harbor, and Von Hoydonck hammed it up like Mark Hamill going on about Tosche Station. Trousselot was worth little (though he was also literate), and he gamely followed Von Hoydonck’s lead and elected to join the mutineers. The rest of the tale reads like a Hardy Boys story, with an implausible plot built around incompetent characters. Apparently, one of the Greek crew members knew someone back home that he felt would be interested in the vessel, so the crew now had a “plan”. All they needed was a quick trip through the Strait of Gibraltar followed by a trip across the Mediterranean, and they were home free! Von Hoydonck volunteered to navigate the course to the Strait, but rather than head southeast, he led the ship straight back toward the French coast. The details of the voyage, embellished and colorfully littered with age-appropriate judgments about Greeks, were handled by the newspaper “The Age” in 1958: When France was sighted he brazenly told them it was Spain, and sailed along the coast. When they asked why he hugged the shore, he told them it was to avoid the chief traffic routes and the consequent danger of being hailed by another ship… By November 14 he had navigated the Lennie between the Isle of Rhe and the French mainland. In spite of rough seas he brought the ship almost within hailing distance of the short and then calmly ordered the anchor to be let go. This was carried out promptly enough by the slow-thinking mutineers, but after some ten minutes what intelligence they had started to function, and they swarmed round remanding to know why they were at anchor. [Von Hoydonck] surveyed them coldly and pointed out that that the coast of Spain (which, of course, was some 250 miles away) was rocky and dangerous, and as they could not risk standing out into the traffic lanes they must anchor here until the heavy sea subsided. The mutineers were not satisfied with this explanation and angrily threatened to send him after the ship’s officers. [Von Hoydonck], playing his part superbly, indignantly informed them that as they seemed to have so little faith in his handling of the ship they could sail her themselves. He then went below, slamming the companion do

September 1942. Continuing our backstage tour of the New York Times. "Newsroom. Copy readers at the telegraph desk, which handles all dispatches from the U.S. outside New York City. Man wears hat because of draught." Photo by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information. View full size.

Caped crusaders in mufti: Adam West and Burt Ward in 1966, snapped on the "Batman" set in L.A. by Richard Hewett for Look magazine. View full size.

September 1942. "New York. Looking downtown from the Third Avenue elevated railway in the 'Fifties'." A platform on the long-vanished El. Medium format nitrate negative by Marjory Collins for the Office of War Information. View full size.

Marilyn Monroe and Navy pilot snapped by Charlotte Brooks in 1952 for the Look magazine assignment "Helicopter View of L.A." Also, a nice lei. View full size.

On this date in 1942, this happened: The young man striking the dramatic pose is Stjepan Filipovic, an anti-fascist partisan hanged in the city of Valjevo by the Serbian State Guard, a collaborationist force working with the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia. Filipovic is shouting “Death to fascism, freedom to the people!” — a pre-existing Communist slogan that Filipovic’s martyrdom would help to popularize. Smrt fašizmu, sloboda narodu! … or you can just abbreviate it SFSN! In the city where Filipovic died, which is in present-day Serbia, there’s a monumental statue in his honor replicating that Y-shaped pose — an artistically classic look just like our favorite Goya painting, poised between death and victory. (cc) image from Maduixa. Filipovic was a Communist so we’re guessing that he would not have had a lot of truck with the ethnic particularism that’s latterly consumed the Balkans. Times being what they are, however, the national hero to Tito’s Yugoslavia has become a post-Communist nationalist football. That Valjevo monument — it’s in Serbia, remember — calls him Stevan Filipovic, which is the Serbian variant of his given name. But as Serbia is the heir to Yugoslavia, he at least remains there a legitimate subject for a public memorial. Filipovic himself was Croatian, but his legacy in that present-day state is a bit more problematic: in his native town outside Dubrovnik, a statue that once commemorated Filipovic was torn down in 1991 by Croat nationalists; its vacant plinth still stands sadly in Opuzen. (Opuzen’s film festival, however, awards its honorees a statuette replicating the destroyed monument.)