Pimping antiquities, cracking the code, and weighing the talent.
010
Being Critical Is Easy; Finding Answers Is Difficult
The November/December 1999 Editors’ Page provided an interesting comparison of prostitution with antiquities dealers and looting. So what is an archaeological magazine that accepts ads from antiquities dealers? Antiquities pimps?
I understand the economics and the need for income from advertisers.
And it’s easy to be critical. But in the same issue with your editorial on antiquities dealers and looters, who destroy the very thing they revere, are advertisements about how to buy Roman coins and how to own a piece of ancient history.
How much of the antiquity/looting problem is the result of archaeological magazines like yours?
So much of history isn’t where it belongs. Pieces of Egypt in New York, Mayan artifacts in Los Angeles. As I said, being critical is easy. Finding answers is the real problem.
Richard Byrd Bisbee, Arizona
Loathsome
I’ve found your articles interesting, your editorial positions loathsome. I’ll not renew.
Walter Mudgett Key West, Florida
Let the Market Decide!
Thanks for Hershel Shanks’s editorial (“How to Stop Looting,”AO 02:04) and Shawn Eckert’s excellent letter on “grave robbing” in The Forum, AO 02:04, recommending the selling of at least some artifacts to provide money and incentive for further exploration. The profit motive has done great things to satisfy human needs in diverse areas. Why not give it a try in archaeology?
When the great unwashed provide us with antiquities, it is called looting. When members of the priesthood do the same, it is called archaeology. The looting “problem” is caused by a fervent, but misplaced, opposition to personal property rights becoming attached to the relics.
If, for example, these precious items belonged exclusively to the owner of the land on which they were found, the free market would solve the problem, just as it does with valuable minerals. Nobody “loots” oil or diamonds on such a scale and with such destructive results; the owners would not permit it. It would be in the financial interest of anyone finding an artifact, moreover, to add to its value by arranging for a professional to certify its significance.
Academics who have devoted their lives to this field feel it is self-evident that they should have a monopoly on antiquities. Governments, being the greatest of monopolists, hoard the glory that emanates from discovering our past. It is a scam as old as human culture.
Don Vandervelde Gig Harbor, Washington
Useful Replicas
Don Neuendorf suggests that replicas of artifacts be available for purchase (The Forum, AO 02:04). In the 1970s, the 011bookstore of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago sold a replica Akkadian cuneiform grain tablet along with a transliteration and translation. I use it in teaching about Western Civilization.
Thurber D. Proffitt San Diego, California
Who Cracked Hieroglyphics?
Your write-up about the Rosetta Stone’s 200th Birthday was seriously unreliable and not up to your usual standard (“Rock of Ages,” The Forum, AO 02:04). The statement that “several scholars tried their hand at deciphering the text, but it was not until 1822 that the code was cracked, when the 32-year-old Jean François Champollion compared the Greek names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra to the hieroglyphic names in cartouches (oval enclosing royal names)” is inaccurate and gives no credit to those who initiated the cause. In 1797 Abbé Barthélemy1 and Georg Zoega2 concluded that the cartouches contained proper names and even suggested that the hieroglyphs were actually letters. In 1802 the Swedish diplomat Johan David Akerblad published a letter3 in which he drew up an alphabet of demotic characters as a result of his study of the Rosetta Stone. In that letter, 14 signs are attributed to Akerblad’s own earlier work. These three pioneers paved the way for a correct decipherment of hieroglyphics.
Further important work prior to Champollion’s was done by Thomas Young. Young knew English, French, Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan, Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Ethiopic. He was also a professor of natural philosophy. Working in the demotic text and building on the work of Akerblad, Young identified the names of Ptolemy, Alexander and several gods, and fixed the correct values of six characters and partially correct values of three others, resulting in a list of 86 demotic words. These results were communicated to the Royal Society of Antiquaries in a letter from Sir W.E. Rouse Boughton,4 read on May 19, 1814, and published in 1815 in Archaeologia, vol. XVIII, pp. 59–72. This letter was accompanied by a translation of the demotic text of the Rosetta Stone.5 Young published these materials in an extensive article in a supplement to Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. IV.
That Champollion did not know of Young’s encyclopedia article is not possible, since advance copies were sent to Paris as early as 1818. Champollion wrote early on that “hieratic characters are signs of things and not signs of sounds.”6 This statement proves beyond doubt that Champollion originally disbelieved in the alphabetic character of the Egyptian text.
What caused Champollion to change his mind and arrive at a conclusion diametrically opposed to what he had asserted so confidently a year earlier? The answer is simple. Young’s encyclopedia article enlightened him.
These letters, documents, plates and articles were collected and reprinted,7 giving the truth about the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone.
I do not mean to take away credit from Champollion for the value of his translation of the Rosetta Stone; however, credit is not his alone. Earlier redactors established the method and alphabetic character of the text.
John C. Elder IV Sandstone, Minnesota
In Memoriam
In “From Rome to Brindisi” (Past Perfect, AO 02:01), you published a translation of Horace by Smith Palmer Bovie, who passed away last May. On Sunday, September 19, 1999, a memorial was held in the Voorhees Chapel of Douglass College, Rutgers University, in celebration of this wonderful professor of Classics.
I knew “the Bov” for a long time. A man of marvelous animation and humor, he strove to make the classics accessible, dynamic and fun. I am aggrieved that the cosmos has claimed a good (kalos) friend.
Jefferson W. McCullough Rocky Hill, Connecticut
How Much Does a Talent Weigh?
The September/October 1999 issue of Archaeology Odyssey carries an article on the excavation of a ship that sank 3,000 012years ago off the coast of Turkey (Cemal Pulak, “Shipwreck! Recovering 3,000-Year-Old Cargo,”AO 02:04). The major part of the cargo was a huge pile of ox-hide copper ingots. The ingots originally weighed about 60 pounds, though over the millennia they lost five pounds to corrosion.
This raises an interesting question:
Are these ingots the talent used as the largest unit of money in ancient times? My source book, Donald Lanzen’s self-published Ancient Metrology, says that the Hebrew talent was 67.42 pounds, but other nations had other talents, usually of less weight. It seems logical to assume that the talent was the heaviest metal ingot that could be carried a significant distance by a man. The ox-hide shape would enable men to lift and carry these ingots. The curved center would give better balance to a man carrying the ingot on his shoulder.
Evan Hansen Beryl, Utah
Cemal Pulak replies:
Mr. Hansen is probably right that the talent originally represented the maximum amount of weight that could be shouldered by one man. During the Late Bronze Age, the value of a talent ranged from about 62 to 66 pounds depending on the standard used, though a lighter talent also seems to have been used during this period. Whether ox-hide ingots corresponded to the value of any specific talent is impossible to ascertain, however, as most have come from underwater sites. Due to corrosion, these copper ingots lose some of their original weight. Just how much is impossible to determine; some ingots appear to be hardly affected while others are reduced to mere “skeletons.” Unfortunately, the few terrestrial hoards that have been discovered so far are relatively small, and large numbers of ingots are necessary to produce meaningful information about variations in weights.
The best-preserved ox-hide ingots from the Cape Gelidonya (c. 1200 B.C.) and Uluburun (1300 B.C.) shipwrecks excavated off Turkey’s southern coast, for example, vary significantly in weight. This probably indicates that these ingots were not intended as money; rather, they constituted a quantity of raw copper subject to weighing and evaluation during each major transaction.
Being Critical Is Easy; Finding Answers Is Difficult
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Anne Claude Philippe Caylus, Recueil d’antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, greques et romaines (1761).
2.
Georg Zoega, In De Origine et Usu Obeliscorum (Rome, 1797), p. 465.
3.
Johan David Akerblad, “Lettre sur l’inscription égyptienne de Rosetta, addressée au Citoyen Silvestre de Sascy” (Paris, 1802).
4.
W.E. Rouse Boughton, “Letter to the Rev. S. Weston respecting some Egyptian antiquities, with four copper plates,” Archaeologia vol. XVIII (London, 1814), pp. 59–72.
5.
Boughton, Museum Criticum of Cambridge (1815).
6.
Jean-François Champollion, De l’Ecriture Hieratique, (Grenoble, 1821).
7.
Thomas Young, Hieroglyphics, Collected by the Egyptian Society, Cairo2 Vols. (London: Howlett and Brimmer, 1823–1828), pl. X ff.
