Innholdsfortegnelse for November/December 2022 i National Geographic History

Notre-Dame de Paris is one of the most famous Gothic cathedrals in the world. Back in 2017, History magazine covered the icon’s repeated “resurrections” over the centuries. After a devastating fire in 2019, this cathedral is undergoing another rise from the ashes, and National Geographic had an insider’s view of the restoration. Photographer Tomas van Houtryve shot an amazing story for the magazine and website, and I interviewed him for an Overheard at National Geographic podcast episode about the cathedral. What most captured my imagination from our conversation was how the fire revealed something hidden: stonemasons’ marks. Into every block they cut, medieval stonemasons chiseled a unique logo. These marks were used to calculate their pay, but they also give historians a way to track who worked at a site and…

BORN ODELL SCOTT in Los Angeles in 1898, Scott O’Dell worked in the silent film industry before becoming a respected author of books for adults. A typographic error on an early work resulted in his pen name, and O’Dell’s 1960 Island of the Blue Dolphins resulted in a new career as an award-winning author of children’s historical fiction. When O’Dell died in 1989, he had written 26 children’s books.…

SPARKLING WHITE WINES are also made in Italy (prosecco), Spain (cava), and California (which has been making them since the 1860s). Some of these houses use the méthode champenoise to produce their bubbles. But in the eyes of the world, these wines are not true Champagne. European Union trade agreements bar the use of the term “Champagne,” along with “méthode champenoise,” to protect the French appellation. Even so, some sparkling wines from California, such as Korbel, use the term “California Champagne” to describe their bubbly. In other words, all Champagne is sparkling wine, but not all sparkling wine is Champagne.…

Among the objects uncovered by archaeologists in the Mausoleum, one is particularly striking. It’s a jar that stands just under 12 inches tall, carved from a block of calcite. The jar was made in Egypt and bears a brief inscription in Egyptian, Persian, Babylonian, and Elamite that includes the name of the fifth-century b.c. Persian king Xerxes I. How did this alabaster jar get to Caria, and why was it in the tomb of Mausolus? In 480 b.c., during the Greco-Persian wars, and over a century before the time of Mausolus, Queen Artemisia I of Caria joined the army of King Xerxes I with her small fleet of ships during Persia’s second invasion of Greece. She not only offered the Persian king excellent counsel but also fought with such courage…

Dominating the arid landscape on the edges of the Judaean Desert stands a hill that was once the pinnacle of territory controlled by Herod the Great. Identified in the mid 1800s as the site of the palace-fortress built by the king, Herodium housed a luxurious oasis in the lands southeast of Bethlehem. Even before its identification, historians had a clear vision of what this landmark once looked like, thanks to the Judeo-Roman historian Flavius Josephus. In his History of the Jewish War, written in the late first century a.d., Josephus described it as“a hill, raised by the hand of man, to be the shape of a woman’s breast.” Comprising palaces, forts, gardens, and a theater, the complex has provided rich insights into a king whose rule shaped the early…

We ​have now another girl, a present plaything for her sister Cassy and a future companion. She is to be Jenny, and it seems to me as if she would be as like Henry, as Cassy is to Neddy.” With these words, the Reverend George Austen announced the birth of his daughter Jane, the seventh of eight children (six boys, two girls) born to his wife, Cassandra Leigh. No one could have suspected that this baby, born in 1775 in Steventon, a small town in England, would become one of the most famous novelists of all time. She died at just 41 and now rests in Winchester Cathedral. Jane Austen’s life was spent mainly in the domestic sphere, always living with immediate family, and never working outside the home. She…

For centuries, visitors to a bend of the Ayeyarwady River in central Myanmar (Burma) have been greeted with a breathtaking spectacle: hundreds of rose-colored pagodas and temples rising above red soil and emerald green vegetation. This vast sacred landscape is one of the largest concentrations of Buddhist temples anywhere in the world. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2019, Bagan is the legacy of a complex relationship between religion and culture, whose role in the forging of Burmese identity would be explored by scholars in the early 1900s. Rapid Rise The name of the modern state of Myanmar, and its previous name of Burma, both derive from a people known either as the Mranma or the Burman. Historians believe the Burman originated in the lands bordering western China and…

1902 American explorer Theodore Davis finds artifacts bearing Tutankhamun’s name in the Valley of the Kings. 1914 Sponsored by Lord Carnarvon, British archaeologist Howard Carter starts searching for more traces of Tutankhamun. 1922 Carter’s team finds a stone stairway leading into the ground. At its foot is a sealed door bearing the seal of Tutankhamun. 1923 On February 16, Carter officially unseals the tomb’s burial chamber, which holds the pharaoh’s stone sarcophagus.…

In the 19th century nothing visible remained of the Mausoleum. Even knowledge of its exact location had sunk into oblivion, but an English archaeologist managed to track down its remains. Charles Thomas Newton, an assistant at the British Museum in London, was sent as British vice-consul to Mytilene (on Lesbos) in 1852, with a mission to collect objects that could be of interest to the museum. Newton made important discoveries on the Greek island of Kalymnos, at Knidos (also in Caria), and at Didyma near Miletus in modern Turkey. Newton’s greatest contribution was rediscovering one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Poring over texts written by classical authors, Newton set his sights on exploring an area in the center of the Turkish city of Bodrum. It appeared unremarkable…

The hilltop palace-fortress of Herodium was protected by 1 a large circular tower to the east, some 60 feet in diameter. The other three towers were semicircular and faced north, south, and west, and would have stood as high as 130 feet. 2 The double-walled enclosure housed a garden (about 135 by 60 feet) surrounded by a colonnade. A large triclinium, or dining room, and baths opened off of this area. The single tower structure on the left of the mound was identified in 2007 as 3 the royal mausoleum. Historians believe it contained the remains of Herod, one of his wives, and a daughter-in-law. Archaeologists believe that the mausoleum was surrounded by a terraced garden that was set into the hillside. Around the base of the hill was Lower…

Gothic cathedrals can often render spectators speechless—awestruck by dazzling stained glass, towering ceilings, and engineering marvels. Other visitors might be moved to eloquence, like American filmmaker Orson Welles. He once described France’s Chartres Cathedral as“this rich stone forest, this epic chant, this gaiety, this grand, choiring shout of affirmation.” Built between the 12th and 16th centuries, these soaring sacred spaces are among Europe’s most popular tourist attractions today. From Notre-Dame de Paris in France to Canterbury Cathedral in England, they attract people from all over the world to gaze at their intricate sculptures, pointed arches, and the marriage between light and air. The Gothic is perhaps Europe’s most iconic style of Christian architecture. It first emerged in France in the 12th century and then spread across the continent. The Gothic…

1775 Jane Austen is born in the rectory at Steventon, in northwest Hampshire. She is the seventh child of Rev. George Austen and Cassandra Leigh. 1796 Austen begins writing Pride and Prejudice, perhaps her most famous and beloved novel. It will not be published until 1813. 1811 Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility is published. It is the first novel that she publishes, under the pseudonym “A Lady.” 1814 Austen publishes her novel Mansfield Park, which many critics consider her darkest, most complex, and most serious work. 1817 Austen dies of Addison’s disease in Winchester, a year and a half after Emma appears. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion will be published posthumously.…

Popping corks and fizzing bubbles are the signature sounds of Champagne, perhaps the most popular drink to ever come out of France. Associated with wealth, glamour, and good times, this sparkling white wine can be found at celebrations of all kinds, from boisterous New Year’s Eve parties to intimate dinners for two. While fizzy wines are made all over the world, to be called “Champagne” the wine’s grapes must hail from the Champagne region of France, and the wine must be made using the méth-ode champenoise to create the signature bubbles. Stemware was designed to highlight the appearance of these bubbles. Tall slender flutes and sophisticated coupes showed off the sparkles created by the method. Wine is made by fermentation, when yeast converts the sugars in grapes into alcohol. The…

BEFORE THE POLARIS VOYAGE (route shown in yellow), others had explored possible routes to the North Pole past northwest Greenland and 1 Baffin Bay. In 1852 Briton Edward Inglefield discovered that 2 Smith Sound was navigable. In 1853 American Elisha Kent Kane led an expedition to find survivors of the Franklin party. He discovered the Kennedy Channel between Ellesmere Island and Greenland, later followed by others seeking the North Pole. In 1860 American Isaac Israel Hayes pushed for the North Pole but also had to turn back.…

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was decorated with as many as 444 sculptures and reliefs adorning the monument from top to bottom. The upper pyramid was topped with 1 a sculpture of Mausolus at the reins of a chariot, and beneath this was 2 a frieze depicting the Centauromachy, a fight between Centaurs and Lapiths, legendary beings in Greek mythology. Their battle represented the human struggle between bestial urges and civilized behavior. 3 Lions graced the steps of the pyramid. 4 Numerous 10-foot-high statues were placed between the columns of the pteron (peristyle); these colossal figures represented gods, heroes, and ancestors of Mausolus. It is believed that two of them were carved by the influential Greek sculptor Scopas. Some experts believe they represent King Mausolus and his wife, Artemisia, while others…