Innholdsfortegnelse for March - April 2017 i National Geographic History

“Who Wants to Live Forever” by Queen was a constant presence in my mind while working on this issue. The song is featured in the 1986 movie Highlander, the story of a secret race of immortal warriors who live among us on Earth. Immortality is a staple of a lot of science fiction and fantasy, but the quest to live forever is also a dominant motif in history. Immortality factors heavily in this issue’s cover story on the mummies of ancient Egypt, which details the extreme lengths to which people have gone to overcome death. For thousands of years, Egyptians practiced complex mummification rites and rituals to ensure that their bodies and souls would live on in the afterlife. While measuring their spiritual success is challenging, it is certain that…

THE MEDIEVAL nautical chart known as a portolan served as a basis for the planisphere’s design. Portuguese for “concerning ports or harbors,” the portolan was useful for close-to-shore navigation. A key aspect was the wind rose network: 32-point circles that defined sailing courses, of which there are numerous examples on the “Cantino Planisphere.” During the 15th century, as Portuguese ships ventured ever farther south along the coast of Africa, their pilots developed a return route in the open ocean that avoided unfavorable winds. With horizons expanded to include the New World, and inclusion of latitude lines to assist with open-ocean navigation, the “Cantino Planisphere” marks a key moment in the evolution of maps from a local to a global perspective. 1 Brazilian coastline Discovered by Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral…

WHEN GREEK HISTORIAN Herodotus toured Egypt in the middle of the fifth century B.C., he took a keen interest in mummification techniques, which he described in some detail in his Histories. His account also mentions a curious anecdote about “wooden models of corpses” at high society banquets. “IN SOCIAL GATHERINGS among the rich, when the banquet is ended, a servant carries round to the several guests a coffin in which there is a wooden image of a corpse, carved and painted to resemble nature as nearly as possible, about a cubit or two in length [17 to 34 inches]. As he shows it to each guest in turn, the servant says, ‘Gaze here, and drink and be merry; for when you die, such will you be.’ ”…

ONCE MUMMIFICATION was complete, the deceased would be carried to his or her final resting place. A large procession set out from the home. Servants and relatives carried offerings of food, flowers, and furniture. The chest bearing canopic jars containing the dead person’s internal organs was carried on one sled and a casket containing the mummy was pulled on another. AFTER REACHING the tomb, the procession was received by muu dancers, hired to perform at funerals. The casket was placed upright before the tomb by a priest wearing the mask of Anubis. Before the burial began, a funerary priest addressed the corpse, as part of the solemn ritual known as the Opening of the Mouth: “Your mouth now works, I have opened your mouth for you, I have opened your…

During the 1700s, a European Grand Tour was a rite of passage for the sons of wealthy families. Lasting for up to three years, and taking in Switzerland, Paris, and Rome, the high point of this secular pilgrimage for most travelers was Greece. On arriving in Athens, the first sight these young tourists would look for was the Acropolis and its crowning glory: the pillared Parthenon, dedicated to the warrior goddess Athena. Yet even as the Grand Tour became increasingly popular, laying the foundations for modern tourism, this great monument, studded with the work of the great Athenian sculptor Phidias, was at risk of disappearing entirely. Since the 15th century, Greece had been ruled by the Ottoman Empire, whose troops had converted the Acropolis into a garrison, and whose sultan,…

Negotiations for the sale of the Parthenon sculptures to the British crown unleashed a blazing controversy about the artistic value of the pieces. Should they be bought with public money? And was it even legal to take them out of Greece in the first place? LOSING THEIR MARBLES 1 Here’s a bargain for you, Johnny? Only £35,000!! I have bought them on purpose for you! Never think of Bread when you can have Stones so wondrous cheap!! 2 I don’t think somehow that these here Stones are perfect! And had rather not buy them at present. Trade is very Bad and provision very Dear, and my Family can’t Eat Stones! Besides, they say it will cost £40,000 to build a place to put them in—As the Turks gave them to…

IN DECEMBER 1945 farm workers near the Nile were digging to find sabakh, a type of soil used as fertilizer, when they came across a large clay jar. The discovery took place near Nag Hammadi, around 350 miles south of Cairo. At the foot of the mountain known as Jabal al Tarif, laborer Muhammad Alí al-Samman hesitated before breaking the jar because he was frightened that he might set free a jinn, or evil spirit. Finally, curious to see if it contained treasure, he cracked it open to find 13 leather-bound codices (very early types of bound books) each of which was later found to contain several writings. Some of the pages may have been burned for fuel at Muhammad’s home before he sold the rest on the antiquities black…

By the end of 1430 the rulers of England and France, who had been locked in a war for decades, became increasingly preoccupied by the fate of an 18-year-old peasant girl. In December the faculty of the University of Paris wrote a letter to the king of England, who controlled Paris at that time: “We have recently heard that the woman called The Maid is now delivered into your power, (and) . . . must humbly beseech you, most feared and sovereign lord . . . to command that this woman shall be shortly delivered into the hands of the justice of the Church.” The Maid was Joan of Arc, whose role in liberating the city of Orléans in 1429 had put courage back into the hearts of the embattled…

BEGUN IN THE 12TH CENTURY and crowned one hundred years later by its distinctive twin towers, the Gothic masterpiece Notre Dame tells the story of France’s rise to glory. Through good times and bad, no age left it untouched. During the French Revolution, it was vandalized and then repurposed as a “temple to Reason.” Regarded as an outmoded hulk by the early 1800s, the church was beloved by the Romantics, led by Victor Hugo, who helped restore France’s respect for one of Paris’s most iconic landmarks.…

While probing the depths of the Black Sea last year, a team of scientists made a surprising discovery, one that they weren’t even looking for. The group had been investigating the effects of sea-level change on early human societies, but after their underwater cameras probed the depths of the Black Sea they quickly saw why the Greeks nicknamed it the “Hostile Sea.”In its deep, dark waters,ancient shipwrecks are scattered across the seafloor. Submerged Surprises At first, wreck-spotting was far from the minds of the Maritime Archaeology Project (MAP) team, who started surveying the seabed off the coast of Bulgaria. Partnering with maritime archaeologists from across Europe and the United States, MAP’s mission was to study how sea-level change affected early human societies around the end of the last ice age,…

The 16th century was an age of exploration in all senses of the term, a period when colossal advances in art, science, and geography reshaped Europeans’ understanding of the world. In the early 1500s, as explorers probed the New World, some of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance were being created, such as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, completed in 1512. As the century was ending, the plays of Shakespeare were exploring the human condition, while in Padua, a young professor named Galileo Galilei began to open up the secrets of the solar system. At first, Hamlet and the planets seem far removed from table manners. But social historians see close links between the Renaissance outlook and the rapid development of codes of behavior at the table. In her 1954 book…

1 Dinner service The highly valuable decanters and vessels were often marked with the owner’s monogram or initials. 2 Cake Extravagant desserts were made for banquets, such as this cake, which bears the Habsburg pennant. 3 Tablecloth Napkins were used to protect the magnificently embroidered tablecloth and the diners’ attire. 4 Bread The appropriate way to break bread was to cut it with a knife—not to tear it apart with one’s bare hands. 5 Cutlery Personal use of cutlery together with a plate began during the Renaissance. Each guest here has a three-pronged fork.…

Throughout the 1800s, the new archaeological discipline of Egyptology fed a keen public appetite for stories about pyramids and mummies. An 1869 story by Louisa May Alcott,“Lost in a Pyramid,”recounts an archaeologist bringing down a curse on himself when he destroys the mummy of a young girl. “I sometimes wonder if I am to share the curse,”recounts his assistant later, “For I’ve a vein of superstition in me, and that poor little mummy haunts my dreams still.” Mummies have haunted popular culture ever since. By the time of Howard Carter’s discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, the idea of a “mummy’s curse” was already well established in early cinema. Mummies have been Hollywood staples since horror superstar Boris Karloff starred in The Mummy in 1932. The 1999 movie The Mummy…

1 NATRON AND OINTMENTS Natron was the main ingredient used to dry out the dead body, but embalmers applied oils such as cedar, and perhaps juniper oil, to maintain the suppleness of the flesh. 2 RESIN The importance of resin was mentioned in the Admonitions of Ipuwer, a text from the Old Kingdom: “None shall sail northward to Byblos today; what shall we do for cedar trees for our mummies?” 3 LICHEN AND ONIONS Onions were sometimes used to fill the body’s cavities, often serving as false eyes. Lichen has been found in the abdomens of Siptah and Ramses IV. 4 SAWDUST, STRAW, SAND, AND RAGS . . . All of these materials were used to fill the body’s cavities during the 21st dynasty. Sawdust was also spread on the…

IN THE EARLY 1880S, officials in Luxor suspected that mummies were being sold illegally, and following an investigation, they stumbled on a cache that shocked Egyptologists. In 1881, tipped off by a local dealer, the German archaeologist Emil Brugsch entered a cave set into a cliff face near Deir el Bahri. By the light of his candle he found the “many famous personages of whom we never expected to know more than their names,” including the remains of two of the most powerful New Kingdom pharaohs: Ramses II and Thutmose III, whose mummy was badly damaged by grave robbers. The mummies were later taken to Cairo where they were unwrapped before onlookers by Brugsch and other Egyptologists. The two great kings now rest in the collection of the Egyptian Museum…

Romancing the Stones Elgin’s workmen removed a total of 15 metopes from the Parthenon. They also took 247 feet—just under half—of the total frieze, as well as removing one of the caryatids (female sculptures) from the nearby portico of the Erechtheion, and four fragments from the frieze of the temple to Athena Nike. ANY ANSWER TO this question, one which has bedeviled British-Greek relations for years, is based on interpretation of the document at the heart of the affair: the firman, the decree issued by Sultan Selim III to Elgin, which was used as a justification to take the marbles. Despite the ambiguity of the language in the firman, the landmark 1967 study by British historian William St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles, concludes that the sultan did not…

An edition of the Penny Magazine from November 3, 1832, reports on the inauguration of the Elgin Room at the British Museum. Mingling with spectators in the illustration, local artists are shown sketching the Parthenon friezes and sculptures, by then regarded as among the greatest artistic works of humankind, and the embodiment of ideal classical beauty from the ancient world. 1817: The First Elgin Room This 1819 painting by Archibald Archer depicts the exhibition of the marbles in their first, temporary space in the British Museum. 1832: The Elgin Room A space in the west wing of the British Museum was specially adapted to house the treasures. 1962: Duveen Gallery After the Second World War, the marbles were moved to the Duveen Gallery of the British Museum, consisting of a…

1 As Caesar debates whether to cross the Rubicon, an otherwordly figure appears, wearing a yellow tunic and playing a flute. 2 Caesar and his soldiers follow the figure. Caesar believes the gods are on his side, encouraging him to proceed into Italy. 3 The mysterious being snatches a trumpet from a Roman soldier and plays it as he crosses the river, followed by Caesar’s army. 4 On reaching the other bank, Caesar (in a blue toga) inspires his soldiers with a speech before continuing their march. 5 The plebeian tribunes supporting Caesar surround him, aware of the momentousness of the occasion, and plan their next movements. 6 Caesar leads his army to Rome, shown here surrounded by strong walls, to take what is his by force.…

Sometime in the fourth century A.D., 13 bound papyrus books were placed in a clay jar and buried in a remote spot in Egypt. They remained hidden for centuries until 1945, when local Egyptians uncovered the vessel near the town of Nag Hammadi. The documents were in Coptic, an ancient Egyptian language written using the Greek alphabet, and dated to the time of the birth of Christianity. Further analysis revealed that the Nag Hammadi library, as it came to be known, also contained a treasure trove of knowledge about one of the early branches of Christianity: Gnosticism. Until the 19th and 20th centuries, knowledge of the Gnostic movement was very limited. As the early Christian faith began to organize in the centuries following Jesus’ death (around A.D. 30), the teachings…

1337 The Hundred Years’ War begins. Successive French and English kings will battle for decades to be the rightful rulers of France. 1415-1420 England’s King Henry V invades France and becomes heir to the French throne. Much of France is loyal to Charles of Valois, the disinherited son of Charles VI. 1425 Born in 1412 in Domrémy, France, Joan of Arc begins hearing divine voices instructing her to fight for Charles Valois. 1429 Joan meets Charles and convinces him to let her lead the French forces. On July 17, 1429, Charles VII is crowned king of France. 1430-31 Joan is captured by the English. Imprisoned in Rouen, she is tried and found guilty of heresy and witchcraft. She is burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. 1453-56 France wins…

JULY 1, 1916, WEST OF THE SOMME RIVER, northern France: In the dawn light, British and French artillery opened up, firing nearly a quarter million shells on the enemy’s entrenched positions—the final barrage before the “Big Push.” At 7:30, the first Allied officers, the great majority British Expeditionary Force, led their men out of the trenches and “over the top.” After eight days of bombarding German forward positions, they expected to advance across no-man’s-land virtually unopposed, so they were surprised to see German barbed wire still in place. Still, they kept moving forward. Then, a hundred yards from the enemy line, they were mowed down by the Germans, whose deep concrete bunkers and machine guns had remained virtually unscathed. The day remains the single bloodiest in the history of the…

Knowledge is power—and no knowledge was more assiduously coveted by European nations in the early 16th century than the information recorded on nautical maps. Coastlines, harbors, rivers, resources: Details about these features could give a nation a distinct advantage in trying to stake a claim to new lands. The “Cantino Planisphere,” completed in 1502, is the second known chart to have depicted the New World. It included unpublished information on Portuguese trade routes and the ongoing discovery of the coastline of modern-day Brazil. At a time when knowledge of new territories lent expanding nations great strategic and commercial superiority, such maps were guarded as state secrets. Spies would do anything to get their hands on them. Comprising six pieces of parchment attached to a large canvas measuring about four by…

ONCE THE MUMMY WAS FINISHED, it was placed in a casket, which was in turn placed inside a larger sarcophagus. This page shows two Third Intermediate Period sarcophagi, both of which are in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The sarcophagus on the left was found at Deir el Bahri in 1891. It is dated to the 21st dynasty (1069-945 B.C.) and is believed to have belonged to a priest named Pakhar. It consists of an outer sarcophagus and an inner sarcophagus designed to look like the completely wrapped body from which the face and hands are protruding. The sarcophagus on the right dates back to the 22nd dynasty (945-715 B.C.). It belonged to Djedhorefankh, an altar supervisor at the temple of Amun-Re who lived around 930 B.C. during the reign…

1 The Body Arrives After mourning, the body is taken to one of the mummy workshops, which arose in Egypt from the Middle Kingdom (ca 1938 B.C.). 2 Meeting the Priests The priests greet the dead person’s relatives to help them select the appropriate type of preservation for their loved one. 3 Washing the Body The body is undressed and washed, sometimes by priests or even by the dead person’s relatives themselves. 4 Preparing the Remains Next is the wabet (“pure place”), where mummification begins. The brain is discarded, and the lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines are removed. 5 Storing the Natron Large quantities of natron (hydrated sodium carbonate), a natural substance found near salt lakes, are stored in the workshop. Natron rapidly dries out human tissue. 6 Drying Out…

Defenders of Lord Elgin argue that the removal of the marbles ensured their preservation. His critics point out that British attitudes to conservation were not always historically sensitive. For many centuries the marbles had been covered with a dark patina, the remains of the decoration applied in antiquity. The current appearance of the sculptures owes much to the highly controversial restoration carried out in the 1930s, in which aggressive cleaning methods overwhitened the pieces and even altered their surfaces. 1 Frieze The interior decorative frieze was partly hidden and ran around the whole temple. It was 520 feet long and made up of bas-reliefs representing one of the most important religious festivals in Athens, the Panathenaia, in honor of Athena, the city’s patron goddess. It is one of the best…

On January 10, 49 B.C., on the banks of the Rubicon River in southern Gaul (near the modern-day city of Ravenna), Julius Caesar and the soldiers of the 13th Legion waited and weighed their options. The Rubicon is, in reality, little more than a stream. Its significance to Rome lay in its location, marking the official border between Italy and Cisalpine Gaul, the region south of the Alps governed by Julius Caesar. Despite its appearance, crossing this humble river would have serious consequences. According to the law of the Roman Republic, any provincial governor leading troops across the border back into Italy would be declared a public enemy. It was, quite simply, an act of war. Huddled against the biting cold, many of the soldiers of the 13th Legion of…

1 After crossing the Rubicon into the Roman Republic near Ravenna in early January, Caesar marches his forces south to Ariminum. Pompey and his allies abandon Rome for Capua. 2 Caesar sends the tribune Mark Antony with five cohorts of the 13th Legion to occupy Arretium. He sends another three cohorts to the coastal cities of Pisaurum, Fanum Fortunae, and Ancona. 3 Caesar advances south, easily taking the cities of Pisaurum, Fanum, and Ancona. Some of his troops are dispatched west to the city of Iguvium; these forces easily take the city. 4 Cingulum opens its gates to Caesar’s troops without any bloodshed. Pompey’s garrison at Asculum leaves their post before the arrival of Caesar’s forces as they move down the coastline. 5 Caesar makes his camp in Apulia. His…

FROM THE MOMENT that Joan of Arc was incorporated into Charles’s army, her Anglo-Burgundian enemies unleashed a war of words against her. As well as the charge that she was inspired by the devil, Joan would endure attempts to slander her sexually for the rest of her life. While her allies emphasized her purity, her enemies denounced her as a “harlot,” who spent all her time surrounded by soldiers. ACCORDING TO ONE account, during the siege of Orléans Joan composed a passionate message to the English soldiers, warning them to retreat. She tied her letter to an arrow and had an archer fire it into the English camp. On receipt of the letter, a great cry could be heard from the enemy lines opposite: “News from the whore of the…

Last months Loan of Arc had been incarcerated in a room in the castle of Rouen since the first days of her trial. The conditions of imprisonment were, by most accounts, very harsh. As she had attempted to escape on various occasions, her English captors restricted her movements with a long chain attached to her feet (1) and watched her every move. According to one witness, she was also restrained on herbed at night, observed closely by three guards inside the cell (2) and two others outside (3) , all English. According to another witness, the jailers “were wretched brutes who wanted the death of Joan and taunted her mercilessly.” During the brief period in which she had recanted and agreed to wear a dress, Joan claimed her guards had…

A COUPLE OF GUNSHOTS probably never before formed a connection between such a line of complicated causes and such an infinite variety of possibly still more complicated effects.” That was the New York Times’s prescient take on what had happened in faraway Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the day before—June 28, 1914. During an official visit to inspect the Austro-Hungarian army, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated by Bosnian peasant 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip. The killer was one of three assassins dispatched to Sarajevo by the Black Hand, a national terrorist group pushing for independence from Austria-Hungary for Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first attempt on the archduke’s life—a grenade thrown at his car—had failed, and the assassins disbanded. Hours later, Princip happened to be at a café…

JOHN J. PERSHING WAS BORN into an America still recovering from its own great war—the Civil War. He grew up in Missouri and then became a teacher, for a time of African Americans. When he was 22, he entered a competition for West Point appointment, not because he wanted to be a soldier but because it meant a free, quality education. After graduation in 1886, he fought the Apache and Sioux, and his nickname probably came from his time as a young officer with the Tenth Cavalry, a black regiment. During the Spanish-American War, Pershing saw action in Cuba, fighting alongside Teddy Roosevelt and the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, also known as the Rough Riders. It was in the American colony of the Philippines, though, that he established his…

IN 1961 archaeologists digging at the site of Enkomi in northern Cyprus found a concentration of terra-cotta figures a few feet away from the city’s bronze and copper workshops. Two years later, the spot was revealed to be a shrine, named for the extraordinary bronze statue of the horned god unearthed there. The picture shows the statue as it was found, contemplated by Claude Schaeffer’s Cypriot colleague, Porphyrios Dikaios. Some 22 inches high, and dating from the 12th century B.C., the god has been identified as a Cypriot version of Apollo, a deity associated with youth, fertility, and creativity.…