Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - Interesting History Things #2

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March 23, 2015 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

13:29

Interesting History Things #2

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	Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of Interesting History Things.
	To begin then, a huge tomb of a Celtic prince unearthed in France.
	Exceptional 2,500 year old burial chamber reveals stunning treasures.
	As a lover of the classical era, I find this very very exciting.
	The exceptional grave of this Iron Age Celtic prince is crammed with Greek and possibly Etruscan artifacts, Etruscans being pre-Roman Italians.
	was discovered in the business zone on the outskirts of Lavaux in France's Champagne region.
	The prince is buried with his chariot at the centre of a huge mound, 130 feet across, which has been dated to the 5th century BC.
	So we are talking about presumably a very wealthy and powerful Gallic man, probably a chieftain of some kind, probably around 400 years before Caesar's conquest of Gaul.
	The article goes on to say that this discovery could shed light on Iron Age European trade, and that there is a 14 meter square burial chamber that they haven't yet opened, which is very interesting.
	I just want to stress that we do already know quite a lot about pre-Roman Celtic culture, and it was surprisingly advanced.
	I mean they had roads, they had trade networks.
	The city of Marseille was originally a Greek colony, and so we know that they had plenty of trading relations with the Greeks, so it's no surprise that they've got Greek and Etruscan artifacts there, really.
	It's not, I'm not trying to dismiss it or anything like that, but it's not a groundbreaking discovery.
	It is however quite an epic one.
	Look at the size of this site.
	And I'd love that he was buried in this chariot.
	We know that the Celts absolutely adored their chariots for hundreds of years after they fell out of fashion in the East.
	If I recall correctly, they were probably used as battle taxis.
	They weren't very heavy, and so you couldn't really expect to mow down ranks of infantry with them.
	But they would have been very useful to have delivered the nobles to the battlefield fresh and with a great deal of pomp and sort of impressiveness to awe the enemy.
	Some of the goods that they found are a cauldron, which apparently had eight lioness heads decorating the edge, and inside was a ceramic wine vessel called an onicho, which I'm probably pronouncing completely wrong.
	The cauldron is apparently the most exciting find so far and appears to have been made by Etruscan craftsmen from what is now Italy.
	And the grave also contained a ceramic wine pitcher of Greek make.
	And something I find really interesting is the remains of the chariot were an iron wheel, which actually makes me think that maybe this was more of a battle chariot rather than a transport.
	But again, I don't know, it's just one iron wheel and they don't provide us with further information.
	You might think that these things are maybe slightly underwhelming, and it's because they are, they're quite mundane.
	But that's probably because they haven't actually opened the main chamber.
	I can only speculate, of course, but there's probably going to be something quite nice in there.
	And of course, as already said, the pieces are evidence of the exchanges that happened between the Mediterranean and the Celts.
	So nothing radically new yet, but we'll see when the excavations are complete.
	I will try and keep an eye out for any further information.
	The Hammer of Thor has been found.
	This isn't actually a recent development, as you can see by the date, but it's something that I've only recently learned about, and this isn't meant to necessarily be topical, it's meant to be interesting.
	So yes, the Hammer of Thor has been found.
	This is of course not an actual hammer, but in fact a pendant, that is in the shape of a hammer.
	Over a thousand of these hammer-shaped pendants have been found, but it was never really actually known what they represented.
	It was always assumed that they were a symbol of Thor and the Aesir pantheon, and they date from around the time of the Christianisation of Scandinavia, at the end of the Viking Age.
	It was always presumed that it was worn for protection, and you often found these either alongside or in the same community as people wearing the Christian crosses.
	As much as they were doubtless worn for religious reasons and for protection, it seems that they were also worn to make a public statement of one's faith.
	This is a wonderful discovery because we finally actually know that they do depict Thor's hammer because up until now it was speculation.
	But thankfully this one was discovered with a runic inscription that clearly reads, this is a hammer.
	So that seems to put that debate to rest.
	Here's a picture of the back and the front of the hammer amulet.
	You can see that it's small, it's only a few centimeters long and it was cast in bronze and then plated with silver or tin to make it shiny and appealing.
	I can't see but I'm assuming that the part highlighted is hollow and would allow a chain to run through it so this could be worn around the neck.
	I might be wrong and if I am please do correct me in the comments.
	Some interesting facts about this are that the runes range in height from 3 to 7 millimeters so it required precision to inscribe them onto the object.
	It took some time to comprehend the actual meaning of the inscription partly because the runes are so small and partly due to the surface corrosion on the 1100 year old amulet and also because of the imperfect runic inscription itself.
	I'm no expert on Elder Futhark so I can't really give you any extra information at this point but I've left a link in the description to the Wikipedia article on the runes.
	I'm sure it's going to be interesting further reading.
	So the runes translate into modern English as hammer is where the X indicates the separator between two words which apparently translates more properly into this is a hammer.
	Apparently this could indicate the inscriber wasn't totally literate but nevertheless managed to make the inscription fit into a tiny space.
	Apparently this find points to a society where written literacy is respected so the fact that the creator of the amulet was able to write at all probably provided him or her with extra status.
	This is without a doubt true, I don't actually know what the literacy rates of medieval Scandinavia were, but I can't imagine they were very high.
	But what is interesting about the Vikings is that they did highly respect intelligence.
	They absolutely did.
	They had a great deal of respect for it.
	Interestingly, Harold Haldrada's career is made all the more remarkable that his victories are really down to his cleverness and his ingenuity rather than his brute strength.
	And speaking of the Vikings, we know that they got around.
	Why was a 9th century Viking woman buried with a ring that says Fo Allah on it?
	So this ring was discovered in the grave of a 9th century woman.
	It's made of silver alloy and contains a stone with an inscription written in Kufik Arabic script widely used between the 8th and 10th centuries, which would have been around the time of the Abbasid Caliphate.
	The inscription reads For Allah and is the only known Viking Age ring with an Arabic inscription to be found in the entire of Scandinavia.
	That's not very well written, but okay.
	Exactly how the woman got the ring wasn't clear.
	She was found wearing typical Scandinavian dress, so presumably the ring arrived through trade.
	Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, the ring was scanned with an electron microscope and discovered that the stone in the ring was actually coloured glass, a material that the Vikings couldn't produce, but had been made for thousands of years in the Middle East and North Africa.
	Apparently the ring displays a remarkable lack of wear, leading the authors to speculate that it had few, if any, owners between its creator and its Viking owner.
	And it does appear to show direct contact between Viking society and the Abbasid Caliphate that dominated much of the Middle East and North Africa.
	The authors write, it's not impossible that the woman herself or someone close to her might have visited or even originated from the Caliphate or its surrounding regions.
	And it's absolutely not inconceivable that's the case.
	It's just highly unlikely.
	At least highly unlikely that they originated from there.
	Personally, I think it's entirely likely that it was just transported through trade.
	As the article goes on to point out, the Vikings were not afraid of long distances.
	They, in fact, discovered the New World by the 11th century after finding Canada and calling it Vinland.
	Apparently due to the wild grapes they found growing there.
	And the Vikings definitely found Constantinople and possibly Baghdad when travelling the other way.
	And we even have an account of an Arab emissary to the Northmen called Ibn Fadlan, who was the inspiration for Michael Crichton's book Eaters of the Dead and the film 13th Warrior, incidentally, who left a very detailed and fascinating account of how disgusting the Vikings were, calling them the filthiest of all Allah's creatures, because apparently they were.
	Ibn Fadlan's account is actually absolutely compelling and I definitely would recommend people read it.
	It's a really fascinating story by a contemporary Muslim of an alien culture.
	He was originally, I think, an emissary to the Khazars because they wanted to go to the Volga Bulgars and build mosques, I think, if I recall correctly.
	It was giving them money to build mosques and along the way they encountered the Vikings.
	Like all of these sort of ancient stories there, it's a thrilling adventure to read.
	Thoroughly recommended.
	So just check the Wikipedia article about it and apparently it was a fortress and not a mosque that Ibn Fadlan was supposed to have or expected to have brought money to build.
	But honestly, I'm remembering it wrong.
	Since we're on the subject, our old friends at ISIS are at it again.
	Bulldozing ancient Assyrian site near Mosul.
	Islamic state fighters have looted and bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud.
	Ah, fuck's sake.
	Nimrud was a one-time capital of the Assyrian Empire.
	Nimrod was quite an ancient Assyrian city, built around, I think, 13th century BC by Shalmaneser I.
	The capital was moved there from Asher by Asha-Naspol II, and it remained there until Sargon II built Dur-Sharikinu, the city of Sargon, to become the new capital of the Assyrian Empire.
	And I am so glad to hear that what was once a colossal city in the ancient world, with probably over 100,000 inhabitants, is now being bulldozed by ISIS savages.
	Anyway, apparently a tribal source from the nearby city of Mosul said that the Jihadis, who dismiss Iraq's pre-Islamic heritage as idolatrous, idiots.
	I mean, it is, but only if you are a believer in Asher.
	If you're not, then they're hardly your idols, are they?
	And you'll notice that they are in museums and not temples.
	This latest bout of barbarism comes a week after the releasing of a video showing the ISIS forces smashing museum statues and carvings in Mosul, much to the displeasure of basically everyone else in the world, especially Iraq's Tourism and Antiquities Ministry.
	Seriously, just I probably say this every time I talk about this, but I had fantasies of one day visiting Iraq, one day going on some sort of giant historical tour around all the great ancient sites and just taking photos, cataloguing it, enjoying it, you know, just standing on those places where human civilization first really reached notable heights.
	Luckily for me though, most of the famous surviving monuments were removed years ago by archaeologists, including colossal winged bulls which are now in London's British Museum, which I have been and seen and taken photos of and one day I'm going to go through the stacks and stacks of photos and create just kind of like a compilation image video so people can see it too.
	And also hundreds of precious stones and pieces of gold which were moved to Baghdad.
	Thank fuck.
	Anyway, the local tribal source apparently confirmed that the attack had taken place.
	Islamic State members came to the Nimrod archaeological city and looted the valuables in it, then proceeded to level the site to the ground, the source told Reuters.
	They used to be statues and walls as well as a castle that the Islamic State has completely destroyed.
	This is of course absolutely awful, but I say apparently because there is actually some good news to come of this.
	When the Islamic State fighters thought that they were destroying historic statues in Iraq, it turns out that they were actually destroying replicas.
	And apparently the reason that they were crumbling so easily is that they're made of plaster and they had iron bars inside which I actually didn't notice.
	So thank fuck for that.
	You know the Islamic State they have just pissed more people off obviously without doing much in the way of actual historical damage.
	It's not all smiles and sunshine though because they did actually do some damage.
	They destroyed the stone Lamasu statues that was undoubtedly an original.
	So all in all, it could have been better, but it certainly could have been worse.

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