Innholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2018 i National Geographic History

The Congress of Vienna, a meeting of diplomats and rulers in late 1814, had one goal: to put Europe back together after Napoleon tore it apart. The four major players—Austria, Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom—bickered for months over how to achieve it. But then something happened in 1815 that smashed through the bureaucracy: Napoleon’s return. When word of Napoleon’s escape from Elba reached Vienna, the delegates wasted no time. Before he reached Paris, Napoleon was declared an outlaw. Just 15 days later, the four major powers each pledged 150,000 men to fight “until Bonaparte shall have been rendered absolutely unable to create disturbance, and to renew his attempts for possessing himself of the Supreme Power in France.” Their speed paid off: A few months later, they would defeat Napoleon…

Numerous garum factories sprang up along the coasts of North Africa and Spain, such as the one at Baelo Claudia (above), near modern-day Tarifa. The Roman-era garum factory at Cotta in Morocco (right) was another production center where fish were harvested, turned into garum, and shipped out for sale. 1 PREPARING In the long hall workers clean the daily catch, saving the fish innards for garum production. 2 FERMENTING Located in the center of the factory are several rectangular vats where the mix of fish guts and salt will be left for several months to ferment in the sun. 3 BOTTLING Following fermentation, the mixture is strained to obtain the garum sauce, which is decanted into amphorae of a variety of sizes, especially made for the product. 4 STORING Ready…

Heroes in ancient Greek myth might have had adventures on land or at sea, but sooner or later they all ended up in the same place: the land of the dead. Ruled by Hades, brother of Zeus and Poseidon, the underworld held an important place in Greek myth, appearing in tales of Hercules, Theseus, Orpheus, and Odysseus—heroes who all made it to hell and back. Rulers of the Dead After the six children of Cronus and Rhea overthrew their tyrannical father, the three brothers drew lots to determine who would rule each realm. Zeus won the sky, Poseidon, the sea, and Hades became lord of the underworld. Hades resembles his brothers—mature, bearded, regal—but remains aloof, cold, and distant. Hades, which means “the unseen one,”was also known by the names Pluto…

THE SOULS OF THE DEAD were transported from the tomb to the entrance of the underworld by the god Hermes in the role of psychopompos, or soul guide. On the banks of the River Styx, they waited for the decrepit ferryman Charon to transport them across the river. Son of Nyx (Night) and Erebos (Darkness), Charon was often depicted as an old, bearded man carrying a pole. After paying the ferryman (the dead were often buried with a coin in their mouth for Charon), they crossed the river. Next they would appear before the three judges of the dead, all sons of Zeus: Aeacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthus. These three had been mortal and were granted their positions after death as reward for their wisdom and fairness in life. The trial…

IN A WEALTH OF GREEK MYTHS, many brave and clever heroes must find their ways into and out of the realm of Hades—some to retrieve a lost love, others to gain secret knowledge, and others to achieve an impossible task. Classical scholars call this perilous journey the katabasis ("a going down"). The musician Orpheus travels there to reunite with his dead wife, Eurydice. The trickster Odysseus must seek the advice of the dead prophet Tiresias. Along with Orpheus and Odysseus, the mighty Hercules ventured into Hades’ kingdom to carry out his 12th labor: the capture of the many-headed hound of hell, Cerberus. Hades attempts to prevent the hero from entering, but Hercules is so powerful that he wounds the immortal Hades, who then has to be taken to Mount Olympus…

n the early 1800s Napoleon Bonaparte stormed across Europe, swallowing up territory for his French Empire and challenging the supremacy of Britain on the seas. From 1804 to 1814, the Napoleonic Wars raged, as Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia all fought to hold back the fiery emperor of France. In 1814 it looked as though they had succeeded. Napoleon had abdicated and was exiled to the island of Elba. In France the Bourbon king Louis XVIII had been restored to power. Then, in late February 1815, Europe received a shock: The audacious Napoleon had left Elba and set sail for France. It is hard to overestimate the dismay and fear provoked by this news. Napoleon’s banishment the year before had been achieved after years of momentous and costly battles on…

Recovered from Nineveh in the mid-19th century, shattered clay tablets covered in indecipherable writing held one of the world’s greatest treasures. Locked within the characters lay the Epic of Gilgamesh—now considered by many to be the world’s oldest epic poem, but hidden to scholars at that time. The tale of the demigod Gilgamesh could have been lost, except for theunrelenting curiosity of an unlikely scholar, George Smith. Climbing the social ladder in Victorian England was difficult. For many, the prospect of a career at the prestigious British Museum was unthinkable, but George Smith overcame the odds. Born in 1840 to a modest London family, George Smith not only became an expert in the cuneiform script of ancient Mesopotamia, but also made a discovery that turned contemporary notions about ancient history…

They saw the Europeans arriving and drew them: men on horseback and figures in Spanish dress. Long before then—as early as 4,700 years ago—the hunter-gatherers of the Southwest had been painting scenes from their lives on the canyons where the Pecos River meets the Rio Grande. Filling the walls with pictures of people and animals, these ancient inhabitants of southwestern Texas inscribed the stories of early America. Dammed and Saved Since the 1930s, when documentation of these mysterious sites was first made, there have been huge strides in deciphering the vivid narratives within the murals. But this unique chronicle of thousands of years of human history, which holds the key to the worldview of ancient American societies, is increasingly under threat. Many sites were lost when the Rio Grande was…

Although human mummies have fascinated people for centuries, it is only relatively recently that mummified animals have begun to catch the attention of the public. There is certainly no lack of specimens: Millions of artificially preserved bodies of animals survive from antiquity. Found in museum collections all over the world, they include a broad range of creatures, ranging from beetles to bulls. Animal mummies typically fall into four major categories: pets, victual (or food) animals, animals worshipped as gods, and animals intended as divine offerings. Mummification of people—including the bodies of pharaohs—in Egypt had become an established custom by the time of the Old Kingdom in the third millennium B.C. Technology was always evolving and often varied among embalming houses,but the same basic principles underpinned the practice. The process transformed…

SINCE ANTIQUITY, writers’ descriptions of Hades’ kingdom have inspired artists to sketch what the landscape of the Greek underworld might look like. The 1850 French illustration, above, is one example. In the minds of the Greeks, the underworld was an actual physical place that had geographical features such as rivers, fields, and caverns. A The entrance to the underworld lay outside the realm. According to Greek authors, five rivers existed in the underworld. The most famous, the b River Styx, bounded it and could only be crossed with the help of the ferryman, Charon. A common death ritual was to place a coin in the mouth of the deceased to pay for the journey. Some myths claimed that if the fee went unpaid, the souls had to wander the shore…

Hadrian’s architects set out to create a structure resembling nothing that had been built before, using techniques that amaze engineers today. Twenty-seven B.C. was an important year for Rome. In January Octavian proclaimed himself Augustus, becoming the sole ruler of Rome. His son-in-law, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, marked the event by laying the foundation for what would become one of Rome’s most famous monuments: the Pantheon. Damaged by fire in 80 A.D., it was restored to glory by 128 and went on to achieve lasting architectural fame. There is some confusion over what Agrippa’s original Pantheon looked like, what it was for, and even whether it was called the Pantheon at all. Agrippa had accrued a colossal fortune from his military campaigns under Augustus, and he decided to spend it…

IN SEARCH OF TUT’S TOMB BY 1922 THE PATRON of archaeologist Howard Carter, Lord Carnarvon, was ready to call off the search for a missing young pharaoh of Egypt’s 18th dynasty, Tutankhamun. Carter secured one last try and began digging in the Valley of the Kings. On November 5, 1922, he found a tomb’s undisturbed entryway bearing Tut’s seals. He sent for Carnarvon, who arrived three weeks later. When Carter first peered inside the tomb, Carnarvon asked if he could see anything. “Yes,” he said. “Wonderful things!” From that moment, Tut’s tomb and its treasures captured the world’s fascination, and never let go. DAVID FAIRCHILD, BRINGER OF THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS A FOOD HUNTER for the United States, David Fairchild searched the world for exotic plants. While visiting Japan in 1902,…

ARTIST, ARCHAEOLOGIST, and Shumla founder, Carolyn Boyd (right) first encountered the rock art of the lower Pecos in the late 1980s. She was particularly struck by a mural known as the White Shaman, a white figure surrounded by multicolored forms, which she is observing in the image. When a civilization disappears, the meaning behind its art is lost, and scholars must piece the meanings together. Some archaeologists theorize that the array of images are unrelated, but Boyd was convinced they all played a role in a unified story—if only she could crack the code. She started spotting patterns at other sites in the lower Pecos region, including antlered humanlike figures. Boyd later studied a modern painting of antlered figures and deer antlers decorated with mysterious dots, the work of an…

MARCUS GAVIUS APICIUS, a wealthy Roman epicure, lived in the first century A.D. and is associated with one of the oldest cookbooks in ancient history. Most likely compiled in the fourth century, De re coquinaria (On the Subject of Cooking) contains many recipes that list garum and other fish sauces as essential ingredients, like in this recipe for Parthian chicken: Dress the chicken carefully and quarter it. Crush pepper, lovage [a green herb], and a little caraway suffused with liquamen [a fish sauce similar to garum] and add wine. Place the chicken in an earthen dish and pour the seasoning over it. Add laser [a fennel-like plant] and wine. Let it assimilate with the seasoning and braise the chicken. Sprinkle with pepper. Among the book’s simplest recipes is a dish…

DURING EGYPT’S LATER PERIOD—from the beginning of the Ptolemaic period in the fourth century B.C. to the Roman occupation in A.D. 30—the mummy-production industry flourished. Pilgrims offered them to the gods in places of worship all over the country. One such center was the cult of the cat goddess, Bastet, in Bubastis in Lower Egypt, where a vast number of votive cat mummies were produced to meet demand. As European interest in Egypt boomed in the 19th century, children sold them to tourists. Today, these mummies are carefully conserved by museums for their cultural, historical, and scientific value. Examples of votive mummies are shown on this page.…

IN ANCIENT GREEK culture, death came in many forms with both positive and negative attributes. Hades, sovereign of the underworld—also known as Pluto—was often referred to as "the rich one." Some writers suggest this is a euphemism, to avoid speaking his dreaded name. Other scholars believe it is because Hades was associated not just with death but with the wealth of precious metals and gems, which both come from his realm deep within the ground. Hades only presided over the dead; he did not decide when mortals died or deliver death itself. The Fates, also called the Moirai, were three goddesses who determined how long a person’s life would last: Clotho spun the thread of life, Lachesis measured it, and Atropos cut it at life’s end. Death itself could come…

THE REGION OF TARTARUS was envisioned as a bottomless abyss located far beneath the underworld. In myth, it was often used as a prison for defeated deities: After the Titan Cronus overthrew his father, the sky god Uranus, Cronus used it to incarcerate his hideous brothers, the Cyclopes and the Hecatoncheires (hundred-handed giants). Before the battle to usurp his father, Zeus freed them so they could fight with him against Cronus and the rest of the Titans. When Zeus and the Olympic gods triumphed, they cast down Cronus and his allies to Tartarus. Later myths imagined Tartarus as the setting for the carrying-out of divine punishments against mortals. The sentences were often as diabolical as the crimes. For instance, the king Tantalus—who murdered his own son and served his flesh…

Soft,strong, and shimmering—silk was first cultivated in China, perhaps as early as the mid-third millennium B.C. The art of turning the cocoons of the silkworm moth (Bombyx mori) was, according to legend, discovered by the wife of the Yellow Emperor, a mythical forebear of the tribe that later founded China’s first dynasty, the Xia, in circa 2070 B.C.While she was drinking tea in the shade of a mulberry bush, a cocoon fell into her cup. Instead of throwing it away, she examined it and discovered that pulling on a strand could completely unravel it. Traditionally, silk production was entrusted to Chinese women and carefully guarded as a state secret. Revealing the confidential methods of sericulture was punishable by death.Centuries later,it would be these silken threads that would weave together a…

The Hard Work Behind the Softest Fabric The painting above was created by the 12th-century Emperor Huizong (Song dynasty), and is believed to be a copy of an eighth-century original by the Tang-era painter Zhang Xuan. Created from ink, color, and gold applied, appropriately, on a silk canvas, “Court Ladies Preparing Newly Woven Silk” portrays the importance of work that was carried out in almost ritualistic fashion by high-ranking women. At just over 15 feet long, the painting—on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston—is prized for the cleanness of its lines and the freshness and vibrancy of its colors. 1 POUNDING Four ladies pound the silkworm cocoons with sticks in hot water to extract the fiber. Despite the physicality of their work, they are sumptuously dressed in silken…

The screams of the wounded men left on the battlefield lasted through the night and into the next day. Some died of dehydration, others were crushed under retreating horses and wagons. Many, who had no chance of being healed, were finished off by scavengers prowling the battlefield to strip the corpses of whatever valuables they might have had. Burying the Fallen The task of burying the thousands of bodies began the day after the battle and took local peasants more than 10 days to complete. They dug common graves about six feet deep in which they dumped 30 to 40 bodies. The dead were stripped naked as the peasants took everything from shoes to rags. Thousands of dead horses were burned on pyres; according to some accounts the same was…