Innholdsfortegnelse for May - June 2017 i National Geographic History

305 B.C. Ptolemy, former bodyguard and general under Alexander the Great, founds the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. Circa 69 B.C. Cleopatra VII is born. She will ascend to the throne and co-rule Egypt with her younger brother Ptolemy XIII in 51 B.C. 48 B.C. After being forced by her brother to flee to Syria, Cleopatra raises an army and returns to battle for power. Julius Caesar arrives in Alexandria to broker a peace. 47 B.C. After becoming Julius Caesar’s lover, Cleopatra returns to power. She will later give birth to their son, Caesarion. 44 B.C. Cleopatra makes a state visit to Rome with Caesarion. While she is there, Julius Caesar is assassinated. 41 B.C. Mark Antony summons Cleopatra to meet him at Tarsus in modern-day Turkey. The pair become lovers.…

When crime novelist Agatha Christie wrote, “We found the woman in the well! They brought her in on a piece of sacking, a great mass of mud,” she was not describing the murder victim in her latest mystery. The detectives trying to identify the woman were not the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot nor the English dowager Jane Marple. The woman in question was not a person at all, but an artifact retrieved as part of an archaeological dig. Christie was describing the ivory mask, now nicknamed the Mona Lisa of Nimrud, which was discovered in 1952 during the excavations that were being carried out in the ancient Assyrian capital of Calah in modern-day Iraq—known now by the name of Nimrud. Christie’s second husband, Max Mallowan, was the lead investigator, and…

Christie’s experiences in Syria and Iraq directly inspired the 1936 thriller Murder in Mesopotamia. Her friend Katharine, the wife of Ur archaeologist Leonard Woolley, served as the model for the murder victim, Louise, who is the wife of the fictional excavation director. The services of Poirot are called for when Louise is found dead—a possibly unnerving plotline for Katharine, who had developed a close friendship with Christie. In a subsequent Christie novel, Death on the Nile (1937), Poirot explains how archaeology inspires his sleuthing: “In the course of an excavation, when something comes up out of the ground, everything is cleared away very carefully all around it. You take away the loose earth, and you scrape here and there with a knife until finally your object is there, all alone,…

The hydraulic screw probably developed long before the time of Archimedes. Some authors have argued that a similar device was used as far back as the seventh century b.c. to water the gardens of Sennacherib in Nineveh, the Assyrian capital. Even so, it seems likely that Archimedes set his inventive mind to work on refining the mechanism, perhaps having witnessed its use in agriculture when he was studying at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. In any case, the term “Archimedean screw” has stuck. The architect Vitruvius, writing in the first century b.c., describes the importance of the screw in the Roman world, used extensively in agriculture, water storage, and in draining mines. 1 Irrigating Crops In Egypt, where Archimedes is thought to have come up with, or at least…

Encircled by thick jungle, Palenque is one of the most impressive and mysterious of all Mexico’s ancient Maya sites. Known by the ancient Maya people as Lakamha, and today a UNESCO World Heritage site, the ruins of Palenque lie in the lush basin of the Usumacinta River in the modern Mexican state of Chiapas. Palenque’s heyday was the seventh century A.D., when, under the reign of K’inich Janaab’ Pakal I (King Pakal the Great), the city was transformed from relative obscurity into a powerful Maya capital. Its imposing palaces, extensive administrative buildings,and temples filled with expressive bas-relief sculptures set Palenque apart from other Maya sites in Mexico, and it even rivals the grandeur of Tikal in modern-day Guatemala. Its secrets have been slowly unveiled by archaeologists, including the resting place…

OCTAVIAN ROME’S COMEBACK KID THE FIRST ROMAN EMPEROR is remembered for his iron grip on power, but it was Octavian’s resilience that enabled him to survive the turmoil following Julius Caesar’s assassination. Tested by a string of disasters—including his near death at the hands of a Roman mob and his fleet’s defeat by a powerful rival, Sextus Pompey—Octavian was able to bounce back again and again. In 36 B.C. Octavian’s brutal counterattacks would ultimately lead to the Roman world coming under his control. CAVE OF WONDERS: THE ANCIENT ART OF ALTAMIRA IN 1879 a father and daughter were exploring a cave in Spain when the girl noticed the ceiling was covered with paintings of animals. Many of the first scholars to study them declared that works of such quality were…

Circa 1495 Cuauhtémoc, son of Emperor Ahuizotl, is born. In 1502 his uncle (or cousin) Moctezuma II becomes ruler of the Aztec Empire. 1519 Moctezuma admits Cortés’s troops into Tenochtitlan. Cuauhtémoc, then a military leader, is angered by the Spanish presence. 1520 Moctezuma dies, and the Spanish are driven out. Soon after, Cuauhtémoc is appointed emperor as Spanish forces regroup. 1521 Tenochtitlan is taken by Hernán Cortés, and the Aztec Empire falls. Cuauhtémoc tries to escape by canoe but is captured. 1521-25 Cuauhtémoc governs, in name only, the Aztecs before Cortés imprisons and ultimately executes him for treason.…

CLEOPATRA AND ANTONY struggled for a decade against Octavian over control of Egypt, only to be defeated at the Battle of Actium in 31 B.C. When Octavian’s forces entered Alexandria the next year, Antony took his life. Cleopatra barricaded herself in her mausoleum where she would, it is said, take her own life by snakebite. In his play, Shakespeare includes the detail that her body was reunited with that of Mark Antony: “She shall be buried by her Antony,” Octavian orders. “No grave upon the earth shall clip [embrace] in it / A pair so famous.” Archaeologists have not yet found this famed tomb—but not for lack of trying. Excavations have occurred off the shores of Alexandria, where much of the old city has been submerged, and at the temple…

CIRCA A.D. 390 The last verifiable Egyptian text is written in hieroglyphics. The rise of Christianity causes the ancient writing to fall out of favor because of its association with the old Egyptian religion. FIFTH CENTURY Horapollon, a Greek Egyptian, writes the Hieroglyphica, which offers interpretations of 189 hieroglyphs. Some have been proved correct, while most miss the mark. 15TH CENTURY Horapollon’s treatise is discovered in modern-day Greece and taken to Florence, where it will be translated into Latin and other languages. 17TH CENTURY Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit, suggests there is a relationship between hieroglyphs and the Coptic language, an insight that will greatly aid scholars’ understanding of hieroglyphs. 1799 The Rosetta Stone is discovered in Egypt. It bears the same text in hieroglyphic, Demotic, and Greek, and will prove…

1929 Following her divorce, the bestselling mystery writer Agatha Christie travels to Iraq. She visits the Ur dig and becomes friends with Leonard Woolley, the director of the site, and his wife, Katharine. 1930 On a second trip to Iraq, Christie meets the young archaeologist Max Mallowan, who is working as an assistant to Leonard Woolley at the archaeological excavations in Ur. Christie and Mallowan get married just a few months later. 1932-33 Mallowan takes his first position as director of excavations at Tall Arpachiyah, Iraq, accompanied by Christie. She writes much of the novel Murder on the Orient Express on the dig itself. 1935-37 Mallowan and Christie work in Syria at the settlements of Chagar Bazar and Tall Birak. In her memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live, Christie…

Many of the 6,000 or so of Nimrud’s ivories found to date were made by craftsmen from Phoenicia (an area centering on modern-day Lebanon) and brought to Nimrud as tribute or booty. Following Mallowan’s excavation, many were destined for yet another long journey. In 1963 a major portion of the hoard was sent to the United Kingdom and stored as part of the collection of the British School of Archaeology in Iraq (now the British Institute for the Study of Iraq), the body that sponsored Mallowan’s project. In 2011 two-thirds of these ivories were bought by and donated to the British Museum. The remainder are still in the hands of the institute, in the hope that, one day, they might be returned to Iraq. The institute is understandably cautious. Nimrud…

Circa 287 B.C. The son of an astronomer, Archimedes is born in Syracuse, Sicily. He studies at the Library of Alexandria with other luminaries of the age. 214 B.C. During the Second Punic War the troops of the Roman general Marcellus besiege Syracuse. Archimedes develops ingenious war machines to defend the city. 212 B.C. The siege is renewed by the Romans. Following the fall of the city, Archimedes reportedly perishes at the hands of an enemy soldier. Circa A.D. 800-900 In Constantinople, various works containing texts by Archimedes are written in Greek, some of which find their way to western Europe. 900-1000 Archimedes’ works spread widely in the Islamic world, where he is called Ersemides or Arsamithes (among other names) and greatly respected. 1450 Pope Nicholas V promotes a new…

Shortly before his death in Bethlehem in A.D. 420, St. Jerome remembered a childhood episode, when he and his friends snuck beneath the ground to explore the catacombs in Rome: “These are excavated deep in the earth and contain, on either hand as you enter, the bodies of the dead buried in the walls . . . Only occasionally is light let in to mitigate the horror of the gloom, and then not so much through a window as through a hole. You take each step with caution as, surrounded by deep night, you recall the words of Virgil: ‘Everywhere there is horror, at the same time the silence itself terrifies the mind.’” Consisting of winding passages containing thousands of tombs, Rome’s catacombs once housed the remains of early Christians…

IN 1849 THE ARCHAEOLOGIST Giovanni Battista de Rossi made a sensational find: the Catacombs of St. Callixtus on the Appian Way. There, in the so-called Crypt of the Popes, nine pontiffs had been laid to rest. Elsewhere in the complex, Rossi found the remains of three African bishops who had died during their trip to Rome, the tomb of St. Cecilia (patron saint of music), and a huge variety of art. The sensational find prompted Pope Pius IX (depicted here) to visit in 1854, believed to be the first pontiff to enter these galleries for over a millennium. Deeply moved by the experience, he was heard to murmur in awe: “Are these the tombstones of my predecessors?”…

1163 The first stone of the cathedral is laid with Pope Alexander III in attendance. 1182 Bishop Maurice de Sully celebrates the first Mass after the high altar has been consecrated. 1240-1345 Incorporating Gothic elements, several different builders guide the cathedral to completion. 1789 French revolutionaries cause major damage to the building, especially the statuary. 1831 Publication of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre-Dame sparks a campaign to restore the cathedral. 1844 Viollet-le-Duc is appointed to lead a complete restoration of Notre-Dame.…

IN SIR THOMAS MALORY’S Le Morte D’Arthur, Owain, a knight of the Round Table, hails from Rheged and is the son of King Urien and Morgan le Fay, King Arthur’s half sister. “Sir Owain of Rheged journeyed many a day until at last he reached the valley of which Sir Kynon had told . . . And with the dawn, Sir Owain of Rheged rose, mounted his horse, and rode forward until he had found the fountain. Then he dashed water on the marble slab and instantly there burst over him a fearful hailstorm, and through it there came pricking towards him the Black Knight on the black steed. In the first onset, they broke their lances and then, drawing sword, they fought blade to blade. Sore was the…

THE TLAXCALA, who had allied with Cortés against the Mexica (the Tenochtitlan-based Aztec ruling class) depicted the surrender of Cuauhtémoc in an illustrated history known as the Linen of Tlaxcala. In this later copy of the linen (right) produced in the 19th century, Cortés, seated, receives the captured emperor. Above them is written in Náhuatl: “With that, the Mexica were finished.”…

Hollywood legend says that when the American director Cecil B. DeMille offered the actress Claudette Colbert the title role in the 1934 film Cleopatra,he asked her: “How would you like to be the wickedest woman in history?” DeMille’s harsh assessment is just one of the many scathing judgments of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt from 51 to 30 B.C., and last of the Ptolemaic rulers. Dante placed her in the second circle of hell for carnal lust, and George Bernard Shaw dubbed her “a silly little girl.” Perhaps the most famous depiction of Cleopatra was created by William Shakespeare, whose 1607 play Antony and Cleopatra paints her as a sinister marvel of seductive eloquence, capable of destroying great Roman leaders and vast empires. Shakespeare’s primary ambition was to write captivating drama…

DESPITE BEING ONE of history’s first sex symbols, nobody knows for certain what Queen Cleopatra looked like. Archaeologists have found no true-to-life depiction of her face. Egyptian likenesses are idealized, and Roman coins with her profile are unflattering, each creator revealing their own bias toward Egypt’s last pharaoh. As Plutarch described her, Cleopatra was beguiling, but her looks were not “the sort that would astound those who saw her; interaction with her was captivating, and her appearance, along with her persuasiveness in discussion and her character that accompanied every interchange, was stimulating.” Perhaps it is this “blank canvas” that compels artists to try to depict Cleopatra: To date, she has been the subject of five ballets, seven films, 45 operas, 77 plays, and hundreds of paintings.…

THE NAME HORAPOLLON is a combination of the names of the Egyptian god Horus and the Greek god Apollo. It was a common name in fifth-century Egypt, which has given rise to intense scholarly debates regarding the identity of the author of the Hieroglyphica. A 10th-century Byzantine lexicon written in Greek mentions two men called Horapollon: a writer who lived in the first half of the fifth century and a philosopher documented in the second half of the same century. SCHOLARS do not agree on which of these men may have penned the Hieroglyphica. The scarcity of information has given rise to a third theory: that the book was written entirely by Philippus, who is presented as the Greek translator of the text in the treatise’s full title.…

In the fifth century A.D. the mysterious author known as Horapollon presented meanings for Egyptian hieroglyphs by framing each symbol as a specific idea. Sometimes he got it right, and other times, he was very wrong. Several editions of his treatise, rediscovered by an Italian collector in 1419, were published in the 16th century and featured illustrations in the form of elaborate tableaus, like the three shown here from a 1543 French edition. The Lion: Symbol of Strength? The Hieroglyphica Answer When they want to express “courage” the Egyptians paint a lion, as that animal has a large head, fiery eyes, a round face, and a mane like lightning. To write “physical strength” they draw the front part of the lion because his forelegs are his most vigorous limbs. The…

In her memoir, Come, Tell Me How You Live, Agatha Christie recounted her experiences in Syria with her husband, the archaeologist Max Mallowan. The writer applied good humor to describing the numerous discomforts that they endured during the expedition, one of these being their lodgings at the Syrian settlement of Chagar Bazar. On arriving at the house they had rented there, Christie and Mallowan found it “innocent of whitewash, highly unclean,” and still occupied by several families and their animals. After a lot of talking, “women, children, hens, cats, dogs—all weeping, wailing, screaming, shouting, abusing, praying, laughing, meowing, clucking and barking—depart slowly from the courtyard like some fantastic finale in an opera.” But settled into their quarters that same night, hoards of rats skulked around them. They stopped up the…

THE IDENTIFICATION in 1906 of a manuscript containing several of Archimedes’ works, including Method of Mechanical Theorems, is almost as remarkable as its contents. In the 1840s a visiting scholar to the Metochion of the Holy Sepulchre in Constantinople (now Istanbul) glimpsed traces of mathematical symbols written underneath the text in a prayer book. Several transcribed lines were cataloged as part of the library’s collection. After learning of the text, Archimedes scholar Johan Heiberg traveled to see the manuscript and later identified it as Archimedes’ work, much of it previously considered lost, in 1906. The manuscript then disappeared, reappearing in 1998, when an anonymous buyer acquired it at auction for two million dollars and donated it to the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, where it has been restored and…

First Century Martyred during the Christian persecution under Emperor Nero, the Apostle Peter is said to be interred in the public necropolis on Vatican Hill. Second Century Still a persecuted minority in Rome, Christians begin to bury their dead in communal underground burial sites, later known as the catacombs. Fourth Century Constantine the Great is the first Roman emperor to profess Christianity. Pope Damasus I attracts pilgrims to the catacombs. Sixth Century Following the transfer of saintly relics to Catholic churches, knowledge of many of the catacombs’ locations becomes forgotten. 16th Century Rome’s fight against Protestantism reawakens interest in the early church. The catacombs are the subject of a study by the scholar Onofrio Panvinio. 1632 Roma Sotterranea (Subterranean Rome) is published three years after the death of author Antonio…

MOST OF ROME’S catacombs are of Christian origin, but six are exclusively Jewish. The Monteverde Catacomb was rediscovered in the early 1600s, and the rest were identified in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The most recent was found in 1918 to the northeast of Rome on the Nomentan Way: the Catacombs of Villa Torlonia, a complex of galleries richly decorated with Jewish symbols, including representations of a menorah. Cubicle C of the Jewish Catacombs of Vigna Randanini on the Appian Way (left) is adorned with colorful vegetable and bird motifs. Discovered in 1859, it was in use from the second to the fourth centuries. The tombs used by Rome’s Jews are known in Hebrew as kochim, and similar structures have been found in and near Jerusalem.…

THIS ENGRAVING from the mid-16th century (right) offers a retrospective of a Paris that was similar to the layout of the city between the 12th and 14th centuries, the period in which Notre-Dame was being built. The city was still enclosed by its 13th-century walls, later extended at the end of the 14th century. The River Seine divided the city into three main areas that were connected by four bridges. The two closest to Notre-Dame were constructed at the end of the 14th century. The Île de la Cité, the original population center, formed the religious and political hub, bringing together the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the Palais de la Cité, the permanent residence of the kings of France until the 14th century. The second main area was situated around…

AS AN ARCHITECTURE STUDENT, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879) was fascinated by all things Gothic. Learning his trade as a restorer of medieval Carcassonne in southern France, he landed the commission of his career in 1844 when he was awarded the project to restore Notre-Dame. A little later, he was also appointed restorer of France’s other jewel of Gothic architecture, the Basilica of Saint-Denis. The aim of restoration, Viollet-le-Duc believed, was to return the building to its “original” state, even if this meant adding elements that had been planned but never built, typified by the famous Notre-Dame gargoyles (right). His vision of what was authentically Gothic was highly subjective. Although accused of destroying elements that did not conform to his “unity of style,” he was a landmark figure who did much to…

Circa 1454 Amerigo, the third son of Lisa di Giovanni Mini and the notary and well-to-do trader Nastagio Vespucci, is born in the Republic of Florence. 1492 Vespucci is working in the Spanish city of Seville for the Medici family (then rulers of Florence) when Columbus sets sail for the New World. 1497-98 According to his accounts, Vespucci sets off on his first expedition to the New World. However, historians doubt the veracity of this story. 1499-1500 Vespucci travels to the New World under a Spanish flag as part of the expedition commanded by Alonso de Ojeda. They sail along the coast of present-day Venezuela. 1501-02 Vespucci sails from Lisbon as a navigator, this time on a Portuguese expedition. They explore much of the South American Atlantic coastline, from Brazil…