| View previous topic :: View next topic |
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
 |
|
The general case.
------------
It’s a Fake! October 25, 2024
Not it, them.
I write extensively about the presence of fakes in museums and art galleries. This invites criticism about having a bee in my bonnet. Which is perfectly true but should it be a matter for reproach?
It wouldn’t be if I was just some dude who happens to specialise in the subject. Plenty do. But I don’t. My specialty is pointing out that museums and art galleries are dens of iniquity. So I thought I would provide a quick Socratic dialogue to explain why this is so.
What do museums and art galleries have in common?
They exhibit objects that are rare.
What do rare objects have in common?
They are few in number.
How many museums and art galleries are there in the world?
A vast number.
How do museums and art galleries square this circle?
Take an educated guess.
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
A very minor example of the genre and not even mine own.
--------------
Name That Tune! Nov 1, 2024
Name that composer!
You may not have heard of Albinoni, you may not have heard of his Adagio in G Minor. But you have certainly heard Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor.
It has featured in dozens of films and TV programmes — whenever the eighteenth century or sylvan glades or just calm contemplation is being evoked on screen. So much so that its composer was soon the richest composer in the world. Eh! Isn’t he long dead?
| Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni 1671–1751 |
No, I said its composer, not the bloke whose name is along the top.
A musicologist called Remo Giazotto was writing a biography of Albinoni in the penurious days of post-war Italy and thought up a cute scam. He took a Bach tune and re-engineered it to make it more Albinoni-ish, making sure the end product had all the little cues ’n’ curlicues modern audiences love, and that so much baroque music lacks. You had to hand it to him, he’d done a fine job.
Like all artists he wanted the world to beat a path to his door and preferably pay him a bob or two for his trouble. But nobody was going to be interested in an
| Adagio in G Minor, by R. Giazotto, after Bach, in the style of Albinoni. |
So he announced he had got hold of a copy of an unknown Albinoni composition that had turned up in the State Library of Leipzig.
When it was pointed out there was no such institution, this was amended to the State Library of Dresden. Both cities were in ruins so it seemed in bad taste to enquire further. It didn’t matter too much one way or the other, the lost score has never been seen from that day to this.
A new Albinoni is not a huge event, but it is certainly an event. Remo had no difficulty persuading a pal of his, the conductor of a Venice symphony orchestra, to feature it in one of their concerts.
This was a great wow and it was soon part of the standard repertoire, quickly reaching the giddy heights of Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic. And Orson Welles. And the rest of the film crowd. Albinoni was back!
[In the interests of full disclosure: I usually find my own fakes, this one was featured on Radio Three https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00245sz ]
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ishmael
In: Toronto
|
|
|
|
| Mick Harper wrote: | | After 1000 AD a new sort of political entity arose that was not ephemeral. |
This was the ‘nation state’. They have no defining characteristic save this immortality. For some reason, once a nation state gets established it continues to exist within the same borders forever. It is this ‘same borders’ rule that rules out China from being a nation state. |
Doesn't this tickle your AE sensory apparatus?
Whenever it is claimed that things were different then we ought to be suspicious.
I think it far more likely that the whole of the ancient world is nothing but a literary fiction than that there has ever been anything new under the sun.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
This was the first in a sequence of radical revisionist pieces I was hoping might drum up a bit of attention.
----------------
The Dark Ages were/were not as dark as you thought
They were something quite other November 4, 2024
There is only one difference between me and academics. They’ve got a job of work to do, I haven’t. But that one difference has a profound effect on what they believe and what I believe.
When I say ‘I’, I am referring to fruitcakes, nut-jobs, fantasists, conspiracy-theorists, contrarians, revisionists, people like that. People like me (though I would not accept any of these labels save, with caution, the last). By contrast
| You believe what academics believe. |
This is not always a comfortable position, you being so proud of being your own man (woman, etc) but it is unavoidable. You either learned it in school, at college or from ‘trustworthy’ media. What you learned is ‘the agreed version’, there is only one and it doesn’t change.
As I pointed out the other day, students cannot be taught one thing in the morning and the reverse in the afternoon. It would make exams a lottery, trying to guess who would be marking them. What you believe is astoundingly similar to everyone you know, even those whose tastes in politics and ice cream are quite different from your own.
This is catered for! Should you get restive finding yourself holding unvaryingly vanilla opinions, you will be constantly assailed by shouty voices telling you
| ‘This will change everything you thought you knew about…” |
What they mean is the prevailing political and cultural climate has changed a smidgeon since your teachers were pupils and emphases have changed to reflect this. As a professional critic of these seminal movements, I am constantly surprised, not so much at how little anything has altered, but at how out-of-date the all-new, all-dancing version turns out to be. Here is one refrain I’m sure you have heard many times
| “The Dark Ages were not nearly as dark as people think.” |
Is there anybody still alive who thought they were? Yes, me. In my opinion, the Dark Ages were so dark they never happened. That’s what I mean about fruitcake. But I’m not going to argue that case here (you can read my books on the subject). Instead, consider why an academic would think that one statement of mine puts me completely beyond the pale:
Do we come from significantly different cultural backgrounds? No.
Do we have significantly different levels of intelligence? No.
Do we have significantly different ethical standards? No.
Does that stop academics routinely accusing me of being a liar, a money-grubber, an exhibitionist, a member of a cult, a troll, a fascist? No.
| I am not allowed to be just plain wrong. |
But that is where the true divide is. If I’ve gone to the trouble of writing a book about Dark Ages (there is more than one) it is certain I will know more about the subject than the average historian.
What they know about the Dark Ages (there is only one in their book) is what they dimly remember from school — it is scarcely taught at the college level. Nor are they madly keen to address the lacuna when they get down to the serious business of teaching Tudors and Stuarts (or whatever). Compare that to
| I did the school and college bit plus I’ve spent the last several years immersed in the subject because I was writing a book about it. |
Do you suppose for one moment that would give the average historian pause before seeking to correct me on all manner of technical issues (always assuming we’ve got past the name-calling stage)? They do occasionally offer up standard rebukes but for the most part they wouldn’t deign to correct me at all.
| ‘I acknowledge receipt of your book but I’m afraid it isn’t my field.’ |
History is not like maths. You would not expect a mathematician to say, “Pythagoras’s Theorem? I’m sorry, it’s not my field, I have no comment to make on its veracity.” My book will go off to Ebay along with the other unsolicited review copies that land on their desks and don’t qualify for a place on their shelves. Read or unread.
| But what if the historians happen to be Dark Age specialists? |
A very different kettle of fish. My antagonists are in a position to dispute my thesis line-by-line. But they never do, and for a very simple reason
| I am always correct on a line-by-line basis. |
Of course I will be. You don’t spend years writing a book without nailing it all down, observing all the requisite rules. If you can’t, you don’t include it. If I can’t stand up the argument as a whole I wouldn’t write the book. So what would a Dark Age specialist do if confronted with a book that claims — with all the trappings of rationality — his specialism doesn’t even exist?
Literally. You won’t hear a squeak. The book never arrived. It arrived but he hasn’t had time to read it. He started reading it but he threw it out the window in disgust. In applied epistemology, we call it ‘careful ignoral’. Turkeys don’t debate the existence of Christmas. So one thing you can be completely sure of
| You will never know whether the Dark Ages existed or not. |
You are hardly likely to read a book about it and even if you did you would not feel confident enough to pass judgement. And why should you? Life’s too short to spend a chunk of it sorting out other people’s arcane disputations. You rely on being told if anything radical has changed.
| “And finally, before the sport and weather, here’s something that caught our eye. Apparently the Dark Ages never happened. Angela, I think you’ve got the details.” | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
I took up the cudgels by setting out my stall
--------------
How to lose history November 14, 2024
“Five hundred years, sir? That shouldn’t prove a problem. Cash or card?”
Historians rely on chronologies in order to get their facts straight. Unless you knew the Second World War occurred between the years 1939 and 1945, you wouldn’t be able make much sense of it. ‘1939–45’ is using our chronology. It runs from 1 AD (the birth of Christ) to 2024 AD with anything before that B.C. (Before Christ). You don’t have to be a Christian to use the system
If historians are examining documents using a different chronology they simply dovetail the dates. If, for example, western historians are studying a dated Muslim document, they know the Muslim Year One, when Mohammed and his followers left Mecca for Medina, corresponds to their year 622 AD.
| But there is a problem if they don’t know. |
Imagine, thousands of years hence, historians are digging around in the ruins of London. One of them finds a newspaper clipping, dated 23rd January 2015: ‘Saudi Arabia in turmoil as King Abdullah dies at 90’. Another historian points out an Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is mentioned in a sherd excavated in the Arabian peninsula but, it seems, this Abdullah died in 1436 and the event passed off peacefully.
| We know it is the same event being expressed in two different chronologies |
but the future historians cannot tell this from the two documents. In fact, they might easily assume it can hardly be the same event if one resulted in turmoil and the other did not. It would make more sense to assume these are two events happening six hundred years apart. And/or several thousand miles apart.
| This makes for a very different history. |
It would be more likely for the historians to tentatively come up with the idea that Abdullah is a throne name, perhaps a royal title, used by a dynasty that ruled over an empire that stretched from the British Isles to Arabia for six hundred years between c. 1436 and c. 2015. All this should get corrected as more and more data comes in but
Since chronologies are so basic to the study of history there is a strong temptation to use the existing one — however tentative it may be—in order to fit things in as they are discovered. Every time one is, the chronology is strengthened. If it doesn’t fit in
| historians are adept at using workarounds. |
Let’s say an archaeologist unearths the tomb of Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud from a stratified layer mapping to AD 1400 plus or minus rather than the 2015 of the history books. Does he boldly conclude the whole chronology must be wrong and writes ‘Our entire understanding of the Abdullah Period will have to be rewritten,’ in a paper sent to the Journal of Abdullan Studies for peer review?
| Academics are not bold people. |
They tend to refer to lecture notes they made when they were students, go with the flow, gain plaudits and earn professional advancement. Rather than point out fundamental mismatches, earn universal obloquy from their colleagues and be shown the door. All in all, it is better to say something like, and I quote
| “None of the large quantity of Mycenaean pottery recovered by the excavator was in its original position … it came from elsewhere on the site, becoming mixed into Stratum 1 by erosion, quarrying and modern building work.” |
That’s how they ‘worked around’ the fact that Greek pottery in Magna Graecia, i.e. southern Italy, appeared to be six hundred years too early when twentieth century academics were putting in the first building blocks of Italian history. You know, the one we rely on for 1 AD.
| And you ain’t heard nothing yet. But you will. Watch this yawning space. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
First a bit of theory, then the shiv goes in.
--------------
One Pharoah, Two Pharaohs… Nov 15, 2024
Line them up and see them go. They’re off!
Yesterday I was telling you how historians prize chronologies so much they can get stuck with incorrect ones. It is a QWERTY situation — better to use a widely agreed but flawed arrangement than strike out on your own with a better one.
| This has happened with historians specialising in the ancient world. |
There was no agreed chronology in those distant times, every state used a different one based on its own Year One, and even then had a tendency to change its chronology with, for example, a change in dynasty.
This is a nightmare for today’s historians who need to dovetail them in order to say who is doing what to whom, then express it all in a different chronology, their own — usually the Christian one that uses the Birth of Jesus as its Year One. But they caught a break.
| In the early twentieth century, Egyptology was the senior branch of Ancient Studies. |
This was largely because the written record, in the form of papyrus shards and inscriptions on monumental buildings, lasted better in the dry conditions of the Nile Valley than elsewhere, so there was more Egyptian history than elsewhere.
Egyptologists used this evidence to construct ‘king lists’ i.e. which pharaoh came before which and how long each reigned. Since the ancient Egyptians themselves used chronologies based on which dynasty followed which dynasty, it was possible for historians to piece together an entire timeline, and hence a
| chronology for Pharaonic Egypt as a whole. |
As it was known that the pharaohs came to an end with Cleopatra and the incorporation of Egypt into the Roman Empire under Augustus (reigned 27 BC to 14 AD) this could be dovetailed to our own modern chronology.
| So much for Egyptian history. |
But that same profuse historical record detailed Egypt’s dealings with all the other states of the ancient middle east. Now, it no longer mattered what internal chronology they used, each one of them could be dovetailed to Egypt’s chronology which was dovetailed to our own.
So long as the original Egyptian king lists were secure. I won’t go into the ins and outs of that here — I am a radical revisionist without honour in the world of Egyptology — but I can provide some random quotes from those who are greatly honoured
| “…there is confusion in its record of the other kings of this dynasty. Kitchen has supposed that six or seven entries were simply omitted from the list by a copyist…” |
Which is a bit unfortunate because
| “The work of Kitchen and Bierbrier on genealogies has been immensely important and influential but has argued for lacunae in the records when these appear to conflict with the accepted chronology.” |
And a final summing-up from that doyen of Egyptology, Sir Alan Gardiner
| “What is proudly advertised as Egyptian history is merely a collection of rags and tatters.” | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
Rameses II’s Carbon Molecules November 16, 2024
The third in an ongoing series.
As I was saying yesterday before being so rudely interrupted by having a kip, history is based on chronology and chronology is based on history. This reliance on a circular argument would be acceptable if there was an appeal available to an external discipline to confirm the match was a safe one. There is. Two in fact.
1. Archaeology. If a scarab belonging to Rameses II is found in an excavated stratum corresponding to the nineteenth dynasty (1292 to 1189 BC according to Egyptologists) then Pharaonic king-lists are probably a reliable chronology.
2. Nuclear physics. If a papyrus fragment referring to Rameses II (reigned 1279–1213 BC according to Egyptologists) is carbon tested and comes out as three thousand three hundred years old plus or minus then Pharaonic king-lists are probably a reliable chronology.
Unfortunately both these disciplines came of age in the twentieth century (A.D.) by which time Egyptology had not only come of age it was providing the entire chronology of Ancient History from c 3000 BC to 31 BC and by extension 1 AD and 2024 AD so it had better be bleedin’ right or there would be hell to pay.
1. Archaeology is not really an external discipline as far as history is concerned. More a junior partner. Archaeologists pusillanimously agree with this evaluation so they have a tendency to say, “Oh look, a Rameses II scarab, this must be a nineteenth dynasty stratum.”
2. Nuclear physics is an external disciple and a mighty one at that so historians have a tendency to say, “Ta very much for carbon dating but it’s a bit out so we have provided a table for adjusting carbon dates to real historic dates for our own internal purposes.”
To which nuclear physicists, for whom carbon dating is about one zillionth of their overall professional remit but gets oodles of much needed airplay for their recondite subject, have a tendency to reply
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
People don't read stories sequentially on Medium so, when writing sequential stories on Medium, you have to box clever.
----------------
Time flies when you’re having fun November 17, 2024
It’s a man’s life in the Revisionist Army
As I have been reiterating for three stories now (they’re listed below) history relies on chronologies and historical chronologies are flawed. I should emphasise that ‘flawed’ means different things to different people. For historians it means something like this
| The second intercalary period after the fall of the Abbasod dynasty must be curtailed by several decades to take into account the new findings in the British Museum basement. This inevitably means a commensurate lengthening of the Raphaelites. |
That sort of thing doesn’t happen often but it does happen. Academics are vaguely humanoid and are prepared to revise their subject when needs absolutely must. What we Revisionists mean by revisionism would run something more along these lines
The eight hundred years between the Trojan War (13th century BC) and the Peloponnesian War (5th century BC) can’t possibly be real, there’s virtually no difference between the Mycenaean and Classical Greeks who were respectively fighting them. We’ll have to take an axe to Ancient and Classical History.
As one set of Greeks is officially Bronze Age and the other Iron Age, that means putting the archaeologists to the sword as well. That leaves the afternoon free to… |
I’m telling you this because there’s only one reason to become a Revisionist. It’s hellishly exciting.
https://medium.com/p/0a5f733314b9, https://medium.com/p/1e5f8b4e9a11,
https://medium.com/p/268189d87979
and the next one: https://medium.com/p/fa65910452fb
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
More theory, more stage setting.
-------------------
How to spot a Dark Age (1) November 17, 2024
To get started on your Great Chronological Revisionist Hunt
you will need to know what to look out for.
Let’s say for the sake of argument that five hundred spurious years have been added to real history by historians using a flawed chronology. In other words (let’s say)
| 1000 BC in real time is not followed by 999 BC but by 499 BC. |
Since real people are doing real things, we can be sure they will be doing all the things in 999 BC they were doing in 1000 BC even though historians claim it is 499 BC. As the years 999–500 BC are a figment of historians’ imaginings, there cannot be any real people doing real things and historians have to account for this. So
For some reason people stopped doing all the things they had been doing pre-1000, they will be doing them again post-500 BC, but in between were reduced to such desperate circumstances they have left no trace for historians and archaeologists to find.
This is an unusual experience for human beings to find themselves in. It’s possible for some natural catastrophe or some unnatural incursion by desperadoes to bring things to a temporary halt but for it to last five hundred years is… well, if that’s what happened, that’s what happened.
| And it happened to the people next door as well. |
And to the people next door to them. And the people next door to them. That’s the big problem with chronologically-induced Dark Ages. You can’t have people not in a Dark Age living cheek-by-jowl with people that are in a Dark Age.
At the very least they’d leave some sort of historical record that the neighbours seem to have disappeared from the historical record. They might pop in and help out. Or take the place over. They'd sure as hell do something with five hundred years to think on’t. Hence
| Dark Ages have to apply to everyone across the board. |
At any rate to everyone within your particular purview of history. You can have Byzantines doing stuff, you can have Muslims doing stuff, the Chinese are always doing stuff, but in your neck of the woods everyone’s in a Dark Age.
| So that’s the first thing to look out for. | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
How to Spot a Dark Age (2) November 18, 2024
You may wish to read (1) but it is not essential
We were busy learning how to spot Dark Ages and had been given the First Big Clue, that everybody* has to be suffering together and they have to be suffering for a very long time†.
* Everybody within your field of history. † Five hundred years, plus or minus.
It won’t take you long to find that the history you are familiar with (or should be) contains two periods that qualify for the Dark Age label
1. The ‘Greek Dark Age’ which affected everyone in the Mediterranean and Middle East from c 1200 to c. 600 BC
2. ‘The Dark Age’ which affected western Europe from c. 400 to c. 1000 AD
As the very idea of a Dark Age is hard to square with our idea of how people are — can you imagine giving up everything you hold dear and living in a mud hut for five hundred years? — your next step is to identify the signs that indicate these are bogus Dark Ages i.e. they did not actually happen but are artefacts created by historians adopting flawed chonologies. In brief, the things to look out for are
no observed development for many centuries over a wide area
no credible explanation why everything stopped
no credible explanation why everything started up again
the same thing happening twice: once before, once after |
Since even historians have the wit to understand they may be held up to ridicule trying to get us to believe such things, they have various tricks of the trade to distract us:
creative labelling
nudging from both ends
explaining them away |
So now you have all the tools in the Revisionist’s Toolbox as we embark on our massive tour d’horizon of Dark Ages You Have Known And Loved. Though we don’t have a tool to persuade people to go on massive tours d’horizon to find out they’ve been knowing and loving completely stoopid things, so you’ll be on your own with this one.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
We embark on a tour of the ancient world to demonstrate how academic historians have hidden their monumental blooper for the last hundred years.
-------------
It all starts with the Trojan War November 19, 2024
The people who brought you Classical History had one thing in common
They were all brought up on Homer and Thucydides, authors respectively of The Iliad, the world’s most celebrated poem which describes the Trojan War, and The History of the Peloponnesian War, considered to be the world’s earliest work of proper history.
The two epics don't appear to be incompatible, there is even a leading office-holder common to them both, the King of Sparta. So Ancient Greek history could be sketched out like this
* The Greeks were expanding and found the Trojans in their way
* So fought them for ten long years, and vanquished them
* Having secured local dominance the Greeks took on the world’s superpower, Persia
* They then threw it all away by engaging in internecine strife
* Hence got vanquished in their turn by Philip of Macedon
* Only to rise again under Alexander the Great, vanquishing Persia to become the world’s new superpower.
Rise and fall and rise again, a suitable moral lesson for Classicists to teach their young wards in the classrooms of the Enlightenment and beyond.
When the twentieth century loomed and modern academic history was demanding evidence to flesh out the Classics, they had to rely for a basic chronology on Egyptologists and their pharaonic king-lists...
* Menelaus, the king of Sparta, was fighting the Trojans c 1450 BC
* Leonidas, the king of Sparta, was fighting the Persians in 480 BC
* The kings of Sparta in between didn’t seem to have left much of a trace in the historical record for a thousand years.
| That can’t be right, the Egyptologists must have got it wrong. |
“Have you got a better chronology,” asked the Egyptologists sweetly.
“Er… no, we haven’t,” said the Classicists.
“Then we win,” pointed out the Egyptologists.
“Damn, we’ll have to declare a Dark Age between 1400 and 600 BC."
"I'm afraid so."
"That’s massive. Can you at least bring 1400 down a bit?”
“We can give you 1200 but that’s our final offer.”
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
It all starts with a music hall joke.
-----------
What’s A Greek Urn? November 20, 2024
Depends whether you’re a historian or an archaeologist but it’ll be in drachma.
Look at things from the Greek specialists’ point of view. You’ve all agreed on a Greek Dark Age between 1200 BC and 600 BC. You’re not happy about the six hundred years that separates the Mycenaean Greeks who fought the Trojans from the Classical Greeks who fought the Persians but you’re stuck with it because all the other specialists in Ancient History have agreed to use Egyptian king-list chronology, and there’s no going back.
| It will require some cod-Socratic dialogue |
We'll have to fill that six hundred years with something.
Dark Age or no Dark Age, there must have been Greeks living in Greece.
A tall order if the six hundred years never actually existed.
Hence the people we're studying would leave precisely nothing.
We can explain away the lack of a historical record.
They were in a Dark Age.
We can’t explain away the lack of an archaeological record.
Everybody produces archaeology whether they’re in a Dark Age or not.
What do people leave most of?
Pottery sherds, they’re indestructible.
What’s neato about pottery sherds?
They’re undateable.
What’s extra neato about pottery sherds?
They have styles only specially trained specialists know how to identify.
| The ‘Greek Geometric’ style was born. |
It lasted for precisely six hundred years and while the various styles could not be precisely dated by the usual method of establishing discrete strata, each with its own distinctive patterning, they could be shown to have evolved over six hundred years by
A half-hearted design is Protogeometric and shows it’s early.
Not cheap and basic, as some might think.
A bold design is full-on Geometric and shows it’s late.
Not expensive and top of the line, as some might think.
Nobody’s going to get many published papers in the bank with that.
Greek potters were creative, but not as creative as us...
1. Protogeometric
A: Early Protogeometric
B: Late Protogeometric
2. Geometric
A: Early Geometric I
B: Early Geometric II
C: Late Geometric I
D: Late Geometric II
By gummee, we’ve got ourselves a complete sequence there. Now all we’ve got to do is plug Greek Geometric archaeology into the Greek historical record:
* Mycenaean pottery showing Greeks prancing around in chariots etc.
* Classical Greek pottery showing Greeks prancing around in chariots etc.
* Geometric pottery with nobody prancing around because it was a Dark Age and potters could only manage squiggles.
| Giving a complete Greek history with nary a gap in sight... |
Mycenaean: before 1200 BC
Submycenaean: 1200 to 1000
Protogeometric: 1000 to 900
Geometric: 900 to 700
Attic: 700 to 600
Classical: after 600
But don’t puff it up, more research may be needed...
| “It is often with some reluctance that specialists have accepted the necessity of spinning out the limited amount of pottery for the LHIIIC, Submycenaean, Protogeometric and Geometric phases to cover the period between 1200 to 700.” |
You may be wondering about that ‘LHIIIC’. Wonder no more:
L stands for ‘lower’ because there is an ‘upper’
H stands for ‘Helladic’ because there is non-Helladic
III stands for three because there is a one and a two
C stands for C because there is an A and a B.
Thirty-six different categories to choose from. As one leading revisionist historian said about creative labelling:
| “Once you’ve got, you can’t stop.” | |
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
I decided 'enough theory', let the dogs see the rabbits at work
--------------
Classic Battles, Oxford v Cambridge November 21, 2024
They’re at it like knives
Talking of Greek chariots, here is a cautionary tale. One of the early bigwigs of Classical studies, Oxford’s Hilda Lorimer, pointed out
| there was a very close similarity between 1450 BC and 750 BC vehicles |
So everyone set to to explain this extraordinary fact. Extraordinary because there was a Greek Dark Age to be fitted in, when no chariots were produced. Did they keep the blueprints in a cave for seven hundred years?
Her opposite number, Anthony Snodgrass, Emeritus Professor in Classical Archaeology at Cambridge, posed the question in a slightly different way
| Since there is no sort of evidence from 1250 down to 700 for the use of chariots in the Aegean, it seems unwise to assume any continuity between the Mycenaeans and eighth-century chariots until this can be proved |
And set to to answer it in his own fashion
| ‘inspired by the epic poetry of Homer’ and ‘a few surviving Mycenaean pots’ showed later artists the way to draw them |
That did the trick because nobody was much interested in chariots — they’re pretty hopeless for warfare at the best of times — so nobody wondered how epic poetry and finding seven-hundred year-old pots did the trick.
Shields were a different matter. Shields are necessary for sharp-bladed warfare in all eras and, as it happened, the Greeks used a peculiar design of their own devising, called the dipylon shield
When I say ‘Greeks’, I mean both the Mycenaean Greeks of c 1200 BC and the Classical Greeks of c 600 BC. But not the Dark Age Greeks in between. Was this another case of blueprints in caves? Professor Snodgrass didn’t think so
| Snodgrass, having suggested that the chariot depictions in Classical art did not represent contemporary objects, was forced to argue the same for the Dipylon shield — that it was some sort of throw-back with heroic associations. His argument was based on the over stylisation of the shield on Classical pottery. |
Pshaw, said Peter Greenhalgh, an actual specialist in early Greek warfare
| ordinary round and rectangular shields were clearly in use in the Classical period (a fact also acknowledged by Snodgrass) and this implies that the dipylon shield was also real |
but now Pistol Pete would have to explain the gap himself
| Greenhalgh could not believe that they were derived from pre-1200 BC because of the gap in time and ignored the evidence of the Mycenaean pots, putting forward the idea that their design was new, dictated in particular by their use in conjunction with the spear |
Spears in conjunction with shields, whatever will those Greeks think of next? Reynold Higgins, Keeper of Greek Antiquities at the British Museum, decided they were both wrong because dipylon shields were also shown on beads of 1150 BC. Snodgrass hit back at this simple museum keeper
| If the dipylon shield was an actuality in 650 BC, then we have to assume either that it was modelled, more or less slavishly, on the bead miniatures of 1150; or that the ‘dipylon’ shield, having actually developed into this form, then remained in use, unchanged for centuries; or else it was revived by pure coincidence in identical form, after an equally long lapse. |
Could be. Certainly covers all the bases. Or maybe the Mycenaean and the Classical Greeks used the same shield because they were, for all intents and purposes, the same Greeks and the assumption that hundreds and hundreds of years of Dark Age separated them was a bunch of hooey. But where’s the fun in that?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
This is how the real work is done.
----------------
Mind the Gap! November 22, 2024
There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip.
Which brings us on to those very few archaeological sites that show continuous occupation from the birth of cities around 3000 BC until the end of the Classical world in the A.D. era. They may be few but they will surely demonstrate once and for all whether the Greek Dark Age, from 1200 BC to 600 BC, did or did not exist.
The best known of these sites, certainly the most archaeologically excavated of them, is Troy. Whether this actually is Troy is something for another time, the important point here is that a city on the banks of the Dardanelles was occupied from very near 3000 BC all the way down to Roman times.
To make Troy the absolute gold standard of excavation, each stage in the city’s development is readily distinguishable from the later one above and the earlier one below. It was subject to regular earthquakes, sackings, fire and similar misfortunes, leaving evidence archaeologists could clearly see as they dug down. Hence they were able to identify Troy Levels 1–9. So, for instance:
Level 1 at the bottom is the foundation going back to 3000 BC
Level 9 at the top is the Roman city of 100 BC to 400 AD
Level 7 is the one when the Trojan War c. 1200 BC is assumed to have happened
Level 8 corresponds to the Greek Classical period 600–100 BC.
Denys Page, Professor of Greek at Cambridge, can put it all into limpid prose
| For 2000 years men had left traces of their living there; some chapters were brief and obscure, but there was never yet a chapter left wholly blank. |
So, from c 3000 BC until c 1000 BC, Troy is a perfectly ordinary city undergoing the usual fits and starts, and the archaeology is giving voice to this fact. Then comes something that baffles Professor Page
| Now at last there is silence, profound and prolonged for 400 years; we are asked, surely not in vain, to believe that Troy lay ‘virtually unoccupied’ for this long period of time. There is nothing at Troy to fill this huge lacuna. |
Yes, it is the famous Greek Dark Age, only this time it is in Turkey. It was all hands to the pump to explain this enigma. Was there a Trojan Dark Age as well? It appears, at first glance, not
| Yet despite the apparent lapse of several centuries, there is every indication of continuity between Troy 7 and Troy 8. The excavator, Carl Blegen, could detect no sign of a break in occupation. Furthermore, the local pottery of Troy 8 was the same distinctive, lustrous grey ware used during Troy 7 |
Dr Blegen mused on this and had a lightbulb moment
| He therefore supposed that the inhabitants of Troy 7 abandoned it for a nearby refuge, where they continued to produce this ‘Grey Minyan’ pottery for 400 years before returning. |
Stands to reason. If King Priam, Ajax, Ulysses, the Wooden Horse et al have just sacked your city, of course you’re going to seek refuge somewhere nearby. And of course you’re going to take your china nicknacks along with you. Or, if there wasn’t time, the knowledge of how to make more of it. Herr Dr Blegen gives us the full SP
| These people in 1100 BC carried with them the tradition of making Grey Minyan pottery and maintained it down to 700 BC … Did some of the inhabitants perhaps then return to Troy? Though there is nothing to prove this, we do know that in 650 BC the Trojan citadel, which had been virtually deserted for some four hundred years, suddenly blossomed into life once more with occupants who were still able to make Grey Minyan pottery. |
Those of us with second homes can see what must have happened. They had all gone off to live in the refuge right enough, but used to pop back from time to time to give the old place an airing and a dusting. You wouldn’t want to carry everything back and forth every time so obviously you’d leave a fair amount of your venerable but still serviceable Grey Minyan crockery in the cupboard. Wouldn’t you?
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
|
|
|
|
It's always difficult writing pieces in sequence for a platform like Medium where everyone (huh!) is coming at it differentially, so this is designed to serve as both sum-up and introduction while surreptitiously feeding fresh material in.
---------------
The story so far. November 23, 2024
Not so much for people, as for historians and archaeologists.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Egyptologists started using ‘king-lists’ to create a chronology of Egyptian history from around 3000 BC right down to c 0 BC when there were no longer any pharaohs to list.
At this point Egyptian chronology could be seamlessly blended with Christian chronology that started at 1 A.D. It was enormously helpful not only for Egyptologists...
The Ancient Egyptians had diplomatic and military dealings with other states near and far so it was possible, now the date at the Egyptian end was known, to establish when it was happening at the other end. Whatever dating system anyone was using, it could be translated into an Egyptian date which could be translated into a BC/AD date.
This provided the essential scaffolding for a whole range of academic specialties that were getting started as the modern university era was getting started.
When all these other academic studies had got established, in part thanks to Egyptologists, they soon left Egyptology far behind as more and more academics (and more and more newly-established countries) sought to fill in all the details of the past glories of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Greece… the reach of BC chronology was ever widening, ever lengthening, ever thickening.
| But each one of them ran into a problem. |
And it was the same problem. They couldn’t find anything going on for a large chunk of time in the general vicinity of c 1500 BC to c 500 BC. Their history and their archeology were roaring ahead but were reporting a blank canvas for a puzzlingly long epoch.
It could be a few centuries, it could be more, but it was a goddamn nuisance making it join up on either side of this apparent ‘dark age’. It’s not as if there’s so much Assyrian history you can afford to lose half a millennium in the middle of it.
| You and I know what has happened. |
When Egyptology was in in its infancy it was only too easy to double-count dynasties or get misled by ancient Egyptians' fondness for non-counting the previous dynasty. Or whatever. By some means or other, the early Egyptologist pioneers had put in four, five, six hundred years into their chronology which didn’t in fact exist.
| We know what should have happened next |
“We’re all finding the same gap."
"Egyptian chronology must be wrong.”
“We’ll send out a patch.”
“Cheers.”
| We know what actually happened |
1. In academia, specialisms don’t talk to one another. In fact they have special rules whenever there is a need for one subject area to use material from a different one.
2. So while, say, Aramaean specialists were staring at a five hundred year gap they wouldn’t necessarily know that Classicists were reporting a similar five hundred year gap in Greece.
3. If Aramaean specialists conclude the Egyptian chronology they had hitherto been relying on must be wrong and decide to eliminate the five hundred years so Aramaean history can proceed seamlessly like histories normally do, Aramaean history will be five hundred years adrift of everybody else’s and they will be more of a laughing stock than they already are after Mel Gibson made The Passion of the Christ using Aramaic dialogue.
“Mum, why do we have to talk in this weirdly anachronistic way?”
“I don’t know, dear, you’ll have to ask your father.”
“Who is my father, mum?”
4. If five hundred years are removed from history it means all the textbooks will have to be rewritten, undergraduate lecture notes that have served well for twenty years will have to be scrapped and elaborate explanations prepared as to why everyone had been teaching history all this time with five hundred years of it being totally spurious and they never even noticed.
5. Nobody knows enough about Egyptian history to challenge Egyptian chronology except Egyptologists who are determined to cling on to their primacy in this area. And anyway they definitely won't be carrying the can for such a giant cock-up.
6. Nobody knows anything about these ‘dark ages’ except scholars who have made it their life’s work studying them and they are not about to declare their work has been a totally wasted life, so butt out.
7. The period 1500 BC to 500 BC is when the Bronze Age became the Iron Age so archeologists, who use these labels as paradigms, are not going to be very happy and they are big bastards out in all weathers with picks and shovels who should not be riled.
8. The period 1500 BC to 500 BC are formative years in the Christian religion and they are nasty bastards who, while they have given up burning folk for heresy, are still largely in control of major Great Powers, university appointment boards and so forth.
9. "How can anyone claim five hundred years of spurious time has been added to such a well-established and basic thing as a chronology?"
"And unanimously agreed by tens of thousands of accredited experts, remember."
"Such people must be ipso facto looney-tunes."
"I for one have no intention of joining their ranks, giving up a cushy job with twenty weeks holiday a year."
"In order to live a life of total penury, as I've heard."
"Being buried in a cardboard box, I shouldn't wonder."
"Just for endless intellectual excitement."
"What's that then?"
10. So it’s steady as she goes.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
The Library Index 
FAQ 
Search
Register
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
