Top secret KGB history now online

A slow Saturday, so time to do a little random browsing. Which has turned up this link to an internal history of the KGB. It was compiled back in 1977, but is apparently still highly classified in Russia.

7th-century Viking manor house excavated

Archaeologists excavating Denmark's most important site - a huge Viking manor house complex on Lake Tissø, west of Copenhagen - are gleaning key information about the life style of the Norse elite over one thousand years ago.

The 2002 dig at the site, located north of the town of Slagelse in west Zealand, Denmark's largest island on which Copenhagen is situated, ended in December with the sensational discovery of the foundations of a manor house building dating back to 500-600 AD - the original building on the site.

"The newly discovered manor house pre-dates the main building on the site by some 500 years," said Lars Jørgensen, leader of the Danish National Museum's Tissø dig. "Post holes indicate that it was 38 metres long and some 8 metres high, and the first such building ever unearthed in Denmark."

"The very size of the building came as a surprise to us, as it is four times bigger than any other manor or farmhouse of that period. Its existence tends to reinforce our theory that the site was used for representational and/or ritual activities by the Viking elite of the time."

Among exciting artefacts from last autumn's dig are a golden hinge and jewellery and other metal items, as well as chunks of white-plastered mud wall.

One theory is that the original manor house probably burned down necessitating its replacement by the already excavated main building nearby.

The article, in the Copenhagen Post, goes on to describe finds of jewelry, sword furniture, skeletons of warhorses and hunting dogs, and much more. Hat tip to Archaeologica.

Huge Russian identity theft

From VNUNet:

Millions of customers of a Russian mobile phone operator may have had all their credit card details, addresses and social security numbers stolen. Mobile Telesystems (MTS) has admitted what could be one of the largest data thefts in history.

According to the New York Times [I haven't been able to locate this story online -- D.], victims' stolen details were found on CDs circulating on the streets of Moscow. The CDs were said to contain details of as many as five million customers.

And as is pointed out at Tom's Hardware:

Part of the problem is that data that is confidential isn't just stored at MTS. MTS is required to share it with the police and Russian government agencies (including the K.G.B.'s successor agency, the Federal Security Service). Speculation is that an employee of one of the government agencies sold the data to an outside party.

MEANWHILE, Finnish day-trippers are now thinking twice about visiting the Russian border town of Vyborg:

Thieves are spraying tourists with pepper gas on the streets in broad daylight and making off with wallets, passports and cellphones, tour operators said. Groups of five to 10 are boldly forcing their way onto crowded tour buses, robbing passengers and looting overhead compartments. Some hunt down their victims and offer to sell back passports and cellphones.

4th-century toothpaste recipe

From Discovery News:

An Egyptian toothpaste formula dating to the fourth century A.D. recently was found in a collection of papyrus documents at the National Library in Vienna, Austria, making it the world's oldest-known recipe for toothpaste and also adding to the growing body of evidence that the medical system of ancient Egypt was one of the most advanced of its time.

Ingredients for the recipe, revealed at a recent dental congress in Vienna, include one drachma of salt, two drachmas of mint, 20 grains of pepper and — perhaps the most active component — one drachma of dried iris flower, which since has been found to be effective against gum disease.

The reference to "the medical system of ancient Egypt", however, is rather unspecific. Is it medical knowledge originating in Pharaonic times that is intended? Or is it late Roman medicine in Egypt? As the articile goes on to note:

Since the 4th-century toothpaste recipe was written on the back of correspondence between monasteries, researchers suspect a Christian monk may have invented the formula.

Steven Armstrong, a research associate at the Rosicrucian Museum and an expert on health care and religion in the ancient world, said the timing of the recipe would have coincided with the influential writings of Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea in what is now Turkey. He, along with several colleagues, helped to spread health care and the monastic life.

Armstrong agreed that a monk may have written the toothpaste recipe and told Discovery News, "As monasticism evolved from the life of hermits to communal life, the sick often gathered around monastic communities for healing, care and comfort. Basil's model emphasized up-to-date medical care, as well as hospice ministry."

The mention of St. Basil seems somewhat of a red herring in this context, but I'll leave it to the historians of medicine to take it from here.

UPDATE: Dr. Weevil notes that the claim of priority in the article is demonstrably false; see his post here for more on 1st-century antecedents. There also appear to be some even earlier Chinese recipes, but the references I have found tend to be a bit too popularizing to be trusted entirely. This one is entertaining, at least:

Like toothbrushes, compounds for cleaning teeth (and freshening breath) have been used since ancient times. Early Egyptian, Chinese, Greek, and Roman writings describe numerous mixtures for both pastes and powders. The more palatable ingredients included powdered fruit, burnt shells, talc, honey, ground shells, and dried flowers. The less appetizing ingredients included mice, the head of a hare, lizard livers, and urine.

EU decides Britain not an island

European Commission statisticians have decided that Britain is not an island. They say an island can not have fewer than 50 permanent residents, can not be attached to the mainland by a rigid structure, can not be less than a kilometre from a mainland and, crucially in the case of Britain, can not be home to the capital of an EU state.

Their study has raised fears that Anglesey and Skye, which are linked by bridges, and Lundy, which has a population of 18, could lose their island status.

From the Telegraph.

Run away, run away!

This reminded me of that Monty Python bit, where John Cleese is the sergeant drilling the troops, who starts sarcastically asking the soldiers if they'd rather be doing something else instead. One by one, they answer yes, only to be dismissed with a "right, off you go then."

When the Czech defense minister paid a visit on Monday to his country's troops engaged in chemical warfare defense in Kuwait, he made an unusual offer. With an American-led invasion of Iraq appearing increasingly possible, the minister, Jaroslav Tvrdik, a former career officer, announced that any Czech soldiers who did not really want to go to war could return home with him that evening.

Seven soldiers threw their packs aboard the ministerial jet and flew back to Prague. Twenty more soldiers from the 250-member Czech unit, stationed with United States troops at Camp Doha, about 60 miles from the Iraqi border, are expected to return in the next few days, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.

Loved this quote:

"It's certainly a unique approach" to troop morale, said Ian Kemp, news editor of Jane's Defense Weekly in London.

Meanwhile the reaction back home in the Czech Republic was less than sympathetic:

Czech soldiers who accepted an offer to return home from Kuwait if they "did not feel ready" for a US-led war against Iraq have come in for huge public criticism.

Nobody expected any of the 250-strong Nuclear, Biological and Chemical unit to take up the offer from a defence minister hoping to illustrate his soldiers' dedication. But when 27 of them did - with seven of them flying straight home - national pride was severely dented.

Names and nomina

Eugene Volokh asks about the rarity of certain personal names of ancient Roman origin nowadays, even while others enjoy great popularity.

It might indeed seem arbitrary, if parents typically named their children after ancient Romans. But most names are chosen because they have a living history behind them, whether familial, national, religious, or cultural. In the West, Judaeo-Christian names predominate; names such as Mark and Luke may have non-Christian cognates, but their popularity is entirely due to the authors of the Gospels. Many other names of ancient origin owe their popularity not to their antiquity, but rather to having been borne by popular kings, queens, heroes, or saints.

So what about names like Julius, Claudius, and Cornelius? Good classical names enjoyed a revival of popularity starting with the Renaissance; in England, the adoption of Greek and Latin names hit a high point in the 18th century, in parallel to the coining of so many of the classically-derived words we now take for granted. Since then, the usual process of sorting has occurred, just as with the contemporary neologisms: some became lastingly popular, while others fell into obscurity.

That process, incidentally, was the subject of a statistical study that I cannot locate at the moment. The mathematical model, however, demonstrated that sorting inevitably occurs, and that in the case of surnames of occupational origin, leads to the random dominance of some names and the extinction of others. For example, the large numbers of Smiths today is not indicative of a vast population of blacksmiths in times past, while one would certainly expect a lot more Farmers if there were no random selecting.

NOTE: Geitner Simmons has also posted some comments, bringing up the practice in the American South of giving slaves Roman names.

Washington Crossing the Delaware vandalized at Met

Just spotted this at WNBC:

A famous oil painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware was vandalized at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, allegedly by a former museum employee who glued two pieces of paper over it, police said Friday.

"Washington Crossing the Delaware," painted by Emanuel Leutze in 1851, sustained $2,000 in damage, police said.

The former employee, Robert Gray, 41, of Manhattan, was arrested Thursday and charged with felony criminal mischief.

The painting, which depicts Washington's attack on the Hessians at Trenton on Dec. 25, 1776, was defaced sometime last Saturday, police said. They said the museum didn't report the incident to them until Tuesday.

The accused doesn't sound too clever, if this Newsday report is correct:

Police zeroed in on the suspect, Robert Gray, 41, of Inwood, because his name was written on the paper, they said. Gray was charged with felony criminal mischief.

Some sites with info on the painting are here and here.

Archeological consequences of war in Iraq

There have been quite a few articles over the past several months on the risk to historical sites in case of war in Iraq. A good overview is in today's Boston Globe:

If the 1991 war is any guide, protecting this country's archeological treasures will not prove easy. Far more severe than bomb damage was post-war looting, which flooded the international art market with priceless pieces of mankind's past.

''Private collectors refer to this as the `Golden Age' of collecting,'' said [John] Russell, who has excavated at Nineveh. ''Judging from what you see [at auctions], dozens of sites were looted, and some of them by bulldozer.''

This emphasis on the risk of wholesale looting is noteworthy -- most other articles have focused instead on the more dramatic threat posed by bomb and shell.

As an aside, I should note that at least one major site, that of ancient Babylon, has already been destroyed by the Iraqis themselves. At least, that is what I have been told by a reliable colleague who has been there himself: apparently Saddam Hussein ordered the ruins of the palace complex rebuilt, which entailed remaking them in grandiose modern brickwork. A series of snapshots of Iraqi sites that ran in the NY Times Sunday Magazine at the beginning of January would seem to bear this out -- the picture of Babylon showed a reconstruction like something out of Mussolini's Italy.

ADDENDUM: H.D. Miller has more on the "reconstruction" of ancient sites in Iraq, including this link to an article I probably should have searched out myself.

Me 262 reproductions

Stumbled across this almost by accident; it seems that a group is building five reproductions of the pioneering WW2 Me 262 jet fighter. Here is the official website; articles about the project are here and here.

Botched Mafia hit: bad to worse and beyond

You think your boss is hard on you? Try working for the mob:

. . . the hit men found and tracked not William, the intended victim, but his father, George M. Aronwald, 78. They shot him to death in a laundry near his home in Queens, and after the botched assignment, Mr. Cacace had his hit men killed, prosecutors said.

Then, they added, he had the hit men who had killed the hit men killed.

From the NY Times.

Another look at the WW2 bombing of Germany

A few days back the New York Times ran an essay by Peter Schneider on the recent German "rediscovery" of the horrors visited on the German people during WW2, in particular, the vast destruction caused by Allied wartime bombing. Der Spiegel is now running a six-part series on the bombing campaigns, while Jörg Friedrich's Der Brand. Deutschland im Bombenkrieg 1940-1945 (The Fire: Germany Under Bombardment, 1940-45) has been a German bestseller since November.

I did not link to the Times essay at the time. For some reason I found it unsatisfactory: perhaps too much of a personal meditation, too much on past German amnesia and too little on the implications of the new remembrance. There is now another review, however, which takes a narrower focus but ends up more satisfyingly incisive. It is in the Boston Globe, and read alongside the Times essay, merits a mention here.

Mantegna Descent into Limbo sold for $28.6m

Basia Johnson's Mantegna sold today at Sotheby's for a hammer price of some $25.5m. The buyer hasn't been identified, but may well be the Getty Museum -- which offered some $25m for the painting several years back (Johnson wanted a few million more, and wouldn't come down). Report from Newsday here; another in La Repubblica (in Italian).

Apparently the two Rubenses, the Pontormo, and the Botticelli in the same sale did not reach reserve; Taddeo Gaddi's Saint Matthew, however, sold at a hammer price of $720,000.

HERE'S MORE from the NY Times.

17th-century Belfast emerges from dig

Archaeologists have been giving details of what is said to be the most important find of 17th-century artefacts ever made in Belfast.

An excavation of what was once a medieval village and plantation town has yielded more than 20,000 artefacts. The foundations of homes and businesses dating back to the 1600s have been uncovered during the five month dig.

The site, situated between Hill Street and Waring Street, in the city centre was part of a redevelopment scheme by the pub company Life Inns. . .

Items recovered include 17th century coins, imported pottery as well as pottery made in Belfast. The archaeologist leading the dig, Ruairi O' Baoill, said the fragments found were without doubt the "most significant archaeological finds in Belfast to date".

From the BBC.

Roman London outside the walls

A "significant" Roman settlement has been uncovered outside the ancient walls of London which archaeologists say could change the story of the city. Excavations have been under way since September at the site in Shadwell, east London, which is due to be developed into flats.

The site is the size of a football pitch and contains the remains of a palace or military headquarters only a mile east of the Tower of London.

Archaeologists say the find is significant because the evidence of development outside the Roman city has been buried under centuries of development. The Tower of London is considered to be Roman Londinium's eastern boundary and the remnants of the city walls can still be seen nearby.

From the BBC.

US a rough place? Not half as bad as the UK

This appeared in Sunday's Times of London:

People in England are more than twice as likely to be mugged as their American counterparts, according to an official study. Research by the US Department of Justice shows that while America has managed to cut the most serious crimes of violence, the rate in England and Wales has risen sharply.

The study, based on police data and surveys of thousands of victims, will embarrass the government as it comes after a damaging row over sentencing policies.

It shows that robbery rates have soared so that mugging is now 2.3 times more prevalent in England than in America. Assault is also twice as common here. . .

Both England and America have managed to bring down rates of assault, burglary and vehicle theft, although people in England are still twice as likely to have their cars stolen and are 60% more likely to be burgled.

In some respects the US is still a more dangerous place, but if the trends of the past few decades continue, Britain may catch up before too much longer.

Americans are now just four times more likely to be murdered than people in England, compared with nine times in the early 1980s. Rape is twice as likely there, compared with 17 times in 1981.

One wonders at what point Britons will rebel; so far there seems to be little organized outcry over the breakdown in public safety, but an issue like this has the potential to sneak up on the political establishment and set it on its ear. Just ask David Dinkins. So what to do? It seems that the US model is being looked at, and in particular, New York under Dinkins' successor, Rudolph Giuliani.

Latest figures show robbers served an average of 18 months longer in prison in the US than in Britain. American burglars and car thieves were jailed for twice as long.

Norman Brennan, director of the Victims of Crime Trust, said the lesson from America was clear: prison works. “My suggestion to David Blunkett is build more prisons. My advice to (Lord Chief Justice) Woolf is to start sending out the message that the courts will not accept that it’s normal to be mugged in the street or to be burgled.”

Braidwood obituary

Between the long weekend and wrestling with a balky cable modem, I neglected to post the news of the deaths of archeological pioneers Robert and Linda Braidwood. The NY Times obituary is here; a further appreciation of the Braidwoods' contributions is at Ideofact.

MORE on the Braidwoods in the Times of London.

Running on cooking oil in Wales

Ever wondered how the Brits can afford to keep their cars fueled? Here's an amusing tale from the Guardian (hat tip to Mirabilis):

When staff at a Welsh supermarket first noticed dramatic increases in the sale of cooking oil, they thought the locals were doing a lot of frying. They weren't. They were filling up their cars with it - not surprising, as it's only 42p a litre. Trouble is, if you don't pay duty, it's illegal.

Diesel engines have been running on vegetable oils for over a century: in 1900, Dr Rudolph Diesel exhibited an engine running on peanut oil (the French government was then interested in developing peanut oil as an alternative, locally-produced fuel for its African colonies). Here is some more info before you try it in your own vehicle.

Desert Rats standards to museum

Veterans from the World War II desert campaign handed over their standard flags in a ceremony in Greater Manchester on Tuesday. More than 30 members of the 8th Army Association took part in the ceremony at the Imperial War Museum North.

Viscount Lord Montgomery of Alamein, son of the regiment's commander Field Marshall Montgomery, and the Earl Kitchener of Khartoum attended the ceremony. . .

The 8th Army Veterans Association's vice-chairman Alf Davies said it was sad that annual reunions - attended by thousands just a decade ago - had fallen to just 200 in 2002.

He added: "Our grandchildren have taken more pride than our sons and daughters. They are suddenly beginning to realise the importance of what we achieved. We hope that these standards will remind them of that."

From the BBC.

Nubian "black Pharaohs" find

From the BBC:

A team of French and Swiss archaeologists working in the Nile Valley have uncovered ancient statues described as sculptural masterpieces in northern Sudan.

The archaeologists from the University of Geneva discovered a pit full of large monuments and finely carved statues of the Nubian kings known as the black pharaohs.

The Swiss head of the archaeological expedition told the BBC that the find was of worldwide importance.

The black pharaohs, as they were known, ruled over a mighty empire stretching along the Nile Valley 2,500 years ago.

The pit, which was full of ancient monuments, is located between some ruined temples on the banks of the Nile.

It had not been opened for over 2,000 years.

In France no freedom to criticize wine

Freedom of the press in France?

Mr. Favrot, 32, is editor of Lyon Mag, a small magazine from nearby Lyon that has started a war of words here by printing a sacrilege: that Beaujolais nouveau, the fruity young wine that has won this quiet corner of France fame from Topeka to Tokyo, is a "vin de merde" — politely put, sewage wine.

That comment, made by a prominent French wine connoisseur, François Mauss, during an interview with one of Mr. Favrot's reporters, has pitted Mr. Favrot and the other 35 people at the magazine he helped start seven years ago against some of France's most powerful vintners.

After the article appeared last August, the red-faced makers of Beaujolais sued the magazine for "denigrating a product," and earlier this month won nearly $375,000 in damages and court costs. That was several times the usual amount in such cases and one of the largest awards ever won against the French press.

The judge here in Villefranche-sur-Saône, the heart of the Beaujolais region, demanded that the magazine fork over the cash immediately. If upheld, the demand will force the employee-owned magazine to close its doors.

Perhaps this is nothing more than a bad decision by a local judge that will soon be overturned. Nonetheless, French law is not nearly as protective of the free expression of opinions as American law. The story appears in yesterday's NY Times.

Reflections of the Deep South in rural NJ

Fascinating review in yesterday's New York Times:

In the photograph the church appears almost like an animal shot with a tranquilizer dart. The structure sags, as if on sun-soaked haunches, unable to move from the asphalt veldt. Were it not for the presence of a white van in the foreground, the image might have been captured by a Farm Security Administration photographer roaming the Deep South in the 1930's.

Appearances deceive. The photograph of Mount Moriah Primitive Baptist Church was taken just last year. And although Elsmere, the town in which the church stands, once bore the biscuits-and-gravy name of Eighty Acres, it is in New Jersey and lies not much farther south than Philadelphia. Yet one almost expects to see cotton growing nearby.

The languid image is part of a revealing online exhibition, "Small Towns, Black Lives," created by the New Jersey photographer Wendel A. White. Over the past 13 years Mr. White has been toting his camera through the state's southern reaches, documenting the existence of a handful of small all-black communities that still survive there. In his back road travels, he has also unearthed the rich African-American history of several towns that are now largely populated by whites.

Mr. White's online photographs depict little-known aspects of the nation's past: communities formed by blacks in the 19th and early 20th centuries as havens from racism. Many of these enclaves, where African-Americans could raise families and build careers, were in New Jersey. For Mr. White there has been some urgency to document these insular towns before they change even further or disappear completely. "Even if they don't physically go away, the nature of the communities is disappearing," Mr. White said. "What we're seeing is the last bit of the 19th century."

The exhibition itself is online at blacktowns.org.

Race, the military, and the front line

Those unfamiliar with the structure of the modern military may not appreciate how few of those "under arms" serve in front-line units, let alone in a direct combat capacity. Which is why this USA Today article will probably turn some heads:

The American troops likeliest to fight and die in a war against Iraq are disproportionately white, not black, military statistics show — contradicting a belief widely held since the early days of the Vietnam War.

In a little-publicized trend, black recruits have gravitated toward non-combat jobs that provide marketable skills for post-military careers, while white soldiers are over-represented in front-line combat forces. . .

"If anybody should be complaining about battlefield deaths, it is poor, rural whites," says Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University in Illinois.

When Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., called recently for the return of a military draft, he evoked images of inequality raised during the early years of the Vietnam War, when black soldiers died at rates much greater than their share of the U.S. population.

Though Rangel is right that blacks and lower-income Americans still serve in disproportionate numbers, that fact misses another significant trend. While blacks are 20% of the military — compared with 12% of the U.S. population — they make up a far smaller percentage of troops in combat jobs on the front line.

In a host of high-risk slots — from Army commandos to Navy and Air Force fighter pilots — blacks constitute less than 5% of the force, statistics show.

Japan's oldest Rising Sun flag stolen

News from Japan:

Some 50 priceless works of art and curios, including Japan's oldest Hinomaru (Rising Sun) flag, have been stolen from a historic house in Nishiyoshino, Nara Prefecture, which was used by Emperors during the 14th century Imperial Court schism, police said Sunday.

The owner of the Hori Family home, which is a designated important cultural property of the nation and also known as the Imperial Palace in Anou, found the property ransacked Saturday morning and raised the alarm. Anou is an old name of Nishiyoshino.

Police confirmed that missing valuables included the flag and many old works of art. Investigators suspect that the theft could be related to a recent series of burglaries targeting important cultural properties in the prefecture.

The lost flag was believed to have been used by Emperor Go-Daigo's army during the Nambokucho period (1336-1392), when the Imperial Court was split into the Northern Court in Kyoto and the Southern Court in Yoshino of present day Nara Prefecture.

Oldest star chart?

From the BBC:

The oldest image of a star pattern, that of the famous constellation of Orion, has been recognised on an ivory tablet some 32,500 years old.

The tiny sliver of mammoth tusk contains a carving of a man-like figure with arms and legs outstretched in the same pose as the stars of Orion.

The claim is made by Dr Michael Rappenglueck, formerly of the University of Munich who is already renowned for his pioneering work locating star charts painted on the walls of prehistoric caves.

"Plague streets" of Edinburgh

This article from Ananova is quite eyecatching:

The entrance to a labyrinth of streets beneath Edinburgh has re-opened, more than 350 years after it was sealed off during an outbreak of plague.

Workmen have knocked through the floor of the city's council headquarters to expose the entrance to the redeveloped Mary King's Close.

Local folklore says the narrow 17th century staircase beneath the City Chambers is where the council closed off 400 plague victims to die in 1645.

The ghost of a young girl who died from the disease is still said to haunt the area. The redevelopment is due to open at Easter as a tourist attraction.

A rather more detailed and matter-of-fact treatment here.

Medieval Chinese palace destroyed by fire

As I sometimes say, "See the world while it's still there":

A centuries-old mountaintop palace in central China caught fire and was ``burned into ashes,'' a government preservation agency said Tuesday, eight years after the area was added to a U.N. list of cultural heritage sites.

The Yuzhengong Palace on the lush hillside of Wudangshan Mountain in Hubei province, a typical example of imperial architecture during the late Yuan (1271-1368) and early Ming (1368-1644) dynasties, caught fire at 7 p.m. Sunday, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

By the time the fire was extinguished 2 hours later, the UNESCO World Heritage Site structure was burned to the ground and ``nearby cultural relics were damaged,'' Xinhua said.

From the Guardian.

Miserly Michelangelo

As was widely reported some time back, Rab Hatfield's research in Italian archives has demonstrated that Michelangelo was both far richer and far stingier than had been appreciated. His book, The Wealth of Michelangelo, is now out (though may be difficult to get for the moment outside of Italy), and the New York Times reports:

Although Michelangelo bellyached aplenty about deprivation and has often been cast as somewhat poor, he died in 1564 with the modern equivalent of tens of millions of dollars, according to . . . professor Rab Hatfield, an American who teaches at the Syracuse University program in Florence.

That money was not some late-in-life windfall. Professor Hatfield's research shows that for most of Michelangelo's nearly 89 years, he was marginally, moderately or massively rich. But he often refused to show it, and often declined to share it.

"He was the richest artist of all time," at least until that time, Professor Hatfield said in an interview here today. . .

On the road with a pair of assistants, Michelangelo would get just one bed for all of them, and the reason, Professor Hatfield said, was not erotic but economic. The artist was hoarding his lucre. . .

By the time he was 30, he already had the David and Pietà under his belt, and his fee, like his reputation, was gigantic. . .

When Michelangelo worked on the Laurentian Library here in Florence, he was on a monthly salary from Pope Clement VII that equaled about $600,000 a year, Professor Hatfield said.

For a tomb for Pope Julius II, according to the professor, Michelangelo got the rough equivalent, by one calculation, of more than $10 million over time, even though he did not come close to completing the project.

"He accepted about four times as much work as he could ever possibly do, but he got big fat advance payments," Professor Hatfield said.

While he owned land, paid his assistants well and, in fact, helped his family immensely, he held tight to much or even most of his money.

The professor said that the house in Rome in which Michelangelo died had little furniture, no books and no jewels, but it did have a chest with almost enough gold currency to buy the Pitti Palace.

Decorated tomb found at Saqqara

Haven't found any mention in the English-speaking papers yet, but La Reppublica reports a French team has discovered a richly decorated tomb at Saqqara from era of Akhenaton.
The tomb belonged to the Scribe of the Treasury, but the absence of a sarcophagus suggests that the tomb may never have been used. The tomb consists of several rooms, whose walls are decorated with painted low reliefs in a good state of preservation.

Cambridge Black Death hoard to the Fitzwilliam

When Richard Mortimer caught sight of something glinting in the soil of a long trench excavated in a Cambridge street, he could hardly believe his eyes.There, about a metre below the surface of Chesterton Lane, previously driven over by thousands of motorists a day , were hundreds of gold and silver coins, and the remains of a wooden chest they had been buried in.

Richard and fellow archaeologist Roderick Regan, of the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, had been hired by Anglian Water to check out the excavation before new sewers were laid in the road.

And what they had stumbled on proved to be the biggest find of ancient treasure in the city's history – 1,800 gold and silver coins dating back to the 1340s, when the Black Death was sweeping Cambridge.

That find was two years ago; the various claimants to the hoard have now agreed that it should go in its entirety to the Fitzwilliam Museum. See the full story here.

Finds from ancient Calcutta

The remains of an urban settlement possibly dating back to the second century BC have been unearthed by archaeologists on the outskirts of the eastern Indian city of Calcutta.

"Human skeletons, cast copper coins and other traces were found in eight trenches ... in a sprawling garden house near Dum Dum International Airport," said Bimal Bandyopadhyay, superintending archaeologist of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) in Calcutta.

"They tell a story of a continuous settlement from the second century BC to the 12th century AD. After a little gap, it was reoccupied by settlers in 15th century AD until modern times," he said.

"The discovery strongly supports a long-standing claim of a section of the city-based historians that there was an urban settlement in greater Calcutta long before the British anchored their ships to the eastern bank of the river Hooghly," he said.

From tomorrow's Sydney Morning Herald.

Blackbeard's shipwreck

Here's an article on recent work relating to the wreck, including a redating of the ship's bell.

Celadon spirit bottles in Chinese tombs

Archeologists have found two rare celadon porcelain bottles in an ancient tomb dating from the Song Dynasty (960-1279), at Liuzhou City in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The "spirit bottles" were once popular funerary objects in which to "keep" the spirit of the dead person in southern China during the Southern and Northern Dynasties and the Song Dynasty, according to archeologists.

The single cell brick tomb is 2.8 meters long, 1.4 meters wide and 1.9 meters high. It is the longest tomb ever found in the 2,100-year-old city with other tombs between 2-2.4 meters long, local archeologist Jiang Yuanjin said.

From the People's Daily.

Cutback rumors at Phillips

Just in from the Antiques Trade Gazette:

Phillips de Pury & Luxembourg have refused to comment on a national press report that they are to cut half of their workforce and scrap their Impressionist and Modern art department.

A spokesman for the auction house told the Antiques Trade Gazette. they had no comment to make about a Daily Telegraph report that the troubled auction house is set to make sweeping changes and reduce staffing to about 75.

1970s nostalgia?

Today's a holiday, but James Lileks has a Bleat posted, starting off: "One of the few virtues of growing up in the 70s is the constant realization that everything is better."

Yeah -- I can't say I miss much about the '70s, except being young.

UPDATE: A reminder, courtesy of the NY Times' coverage of the Milan fashion shows.

Ancient Near Eastern library found

From the Independent:

Under the ruins of a 3,800-year-old royal palace in western Syria [archaeologists] have found part of an ancient diplomatic and administrative library, the most important archaeological discovery of its kind for more than 20 years.

Accounts on clay tablets describe the region's conquest by one of the Bronze Age's superpowers, the Hittite Empire, in 1340BC. This helped to reduce Egyptian power in neighbouring Palestine and played a key part in creating biblical-era Israel. . .

One text is an instruction to make 40,000 mud bricks, perhaps to strengthen the city wall. Another orders workshops to make 18,600 swords, while yet another names the 25 military captains who are to receive the weapons. . .

As well as diplomatic letters and intelligence documents, the library included reports and instructions on economic and legal matters. One tablet reveals, for instance, that a lady of the palace, called Napshi-Abi, was very rich and owned 200 gold-hilted knives, ebony chairs and knives inlaid with lapis lazuli. . .

Also buried for 33 centuries were the tombs of Qatna's royal family, containing ivory, royal insignia, alabaster vases, gold and silver bowls and gold rosettes. So far archaeologists have found a funerary complex (complete with entrance statues) that served up to 15 generations of royalty.

WW2 spy photos help China reconstruct lost past

Archaeologists in China have turned to the CIA and a hoard of wartime spy photographs taken by the Japanese to rediscover a past erased by the Cultural Revolution.

In the Museum of Chinese History on Tiananmen Square, Beijing, historians are printing and analysing 11,000 photographs taken by Japanese bombers and spy planes during eight years of fighting between the two countries from 1937-45. They were kept hidden by the CIA for 50 years.

From the Telegraph.

The WDC antiwar march: under whose banner?

On Thursday I was driving out to view an auction and tuned in to NPR, where they were discussing the (then) upcoming antiwar march and the history of marches on Washington.

Appallingly, there was mention but no discussion of ANSWER, the organization behind the last two big Washington antiwar marches -- which, it turns out, is a front for a fringe group of unreconstructed Stalinists (more here, here, and here). The New York Times and Washington Post have also maintained their silence, and by extension so have the vast numbers of regional newspapers that reprint their articles. This is inexcusable, for ANSWER's role has for some time been the subject of anguished debate on the left and outrage on the right.

In fact, one of the callers commented that he had been taken aback by some of the people "they" had let speak at the first march against war in Afghanistan, as well as the motley assortment of unrelated causes promoted by other groups of marchers. No one in the studio, however, bothered to let him know that the speakers were the hand-picked voices of the event organizers and not loose cannons who just happened to get some mike time.

First air raid on Britain 88 years ago

According to Ananova, today is the 88th anniversary of the first air raid to inflict casualties in Great Britain. The German Zeppelin raid dropped bombs upon Great Yarmouth in Norfolk in 1915.

Vaccine scare fuels polio resurgence

Vaccines are not risk-free, but the risks of not vaccinating are virtually always much, much worse. The New York Times reports from India:

The little girl sat somberly, eyes large and sad, mouth an unmoving bow, legs as lifeless as a marionette's. Her face contorted in pain and frustration. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

She clutched at her mother, who berated herself for her child's agony. In trying to do what she thought was right for her daughter, Tehazib Jahan had done something irrevocably wrong.

Last year, Mrs. Jahan had heard the story circulating through her Muslim neighborhood that the polio vaccine would make her child sterile. She believed it. So even though her daughter, Uzma, still needed two doses of the vaccine, Mrs. Jahan would not take her to the immunization booth. When the vaccinators came to her house, she demurred.

Three months ago, Uzma came down with a fever. Then the paralysis, polio's calling card, set in. Today the once playful 4-year-old cannot stand without help.

"We are illiterate, not very intelligent," Mrs. Jahan said. "We were influenced."

Borne along by rumor and fear as much as any biological route of transmission, the polio virus — almost vanquished worldwide thanks to a cheap and widely available vaccine — has made a defiant comeback in India.

Couldn't happen here in the USA? Don't bet on it. Communities where significant numbers of parents opt out of routine vaccination have already seen the comeback of other epidemic diseases, as noted here.

Last Union Army widow dies

Gertrude Grubb Janeway, the last known widow of a Union soldier from the Civil War, died Friday in her log cabin in Grainger County, near Blaine [Tennessee].

Only one widow of a Civil War soldier now remains, and her name is Alberta Martin, who was married to a Confederate soldier. She now resides in a nursing home in Enterprise, Ala.

Mrs. Janeway was 18 when she married the 81-year-old John Janeway in 1927. At the time of her death, she was reportedly still receiving a $70 monthly Civil War pension check. The full story is here.

UPDATE: Here's a bit on the last Civil War widow.