Discovery News: Archaeorama News

Digging into the myths

Sensational announcements seem to distinguish the world of archaeology these days.

First it was the Vatican and its costly book revealing the innocence of the Knights Templar. Then cameras switched on the blackened mummy of Tutankhamun and his toothy smile.

Now from Rome comes news of another sensational discovery, nothing less than the “Big Bang of Romanity”: the Lupercal grotto where ancient Romans believed that a she-wolf suckled their founder Romulus and his twin brother Remus.

The story is well known. Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of the war god Mars and mortal priestess Rhea Silvia, were saved and suckled by a she-wolf after they had been thrown in a basket into the Tiber by their great-uncle Amulius.

Found and then raised by a shepherd named Faustulus, the  brothers are said to have founded Rome on April 21, 753 B.C. The legend culminates with Romulus killing Remus in a power struggle.

Finding a physical connection to one of Western civilization’s central myths, is amazing and disquieting at the same time.

“The myth has met reality,” Italian newspapers wrote. Indeed, it is a reality studded with sea shells and mosaics, buried 16 metres under the ruins of the palace of Augustus, Rome's first emperor.

Pictures taken by probes lowered into the cave, show a vaulted chamber decorated with stucco reliefs and sea shells. Camera lights really turn this deep cavern into a fairly tale world.

You can be sure this will soon be a very popular tourist spot. Journalists are already offered a tour to the site -- right now the attraction is a small hole in the ground.

Myth and reality often do not go well together. I believe that myths should remain above our world, ethereally suspended in their grandiose fog.

Even though historical accounts record that the emperor Augustus built the sanctuary of Romulus and Remus on the Palatine, the newly discovered cave is obviously not "proof" that the mythic twin brothers and the female wolf really existed.

Rome's founding myth is just a myth. Let’s keep it that way. A magical hole in the ground leading to a mosaic studded cave. All within our reach, but lost to our touch.

Coldest of Cold Cases

I’m finally back after a bad flu. Luckly, it wasn’t like the one that supposedly struck Francesco dei Medici and his wife Bianca Cappello 420 years ago. Remember the Medici trial?

The big issue there was: “poison or not poison”.

Did Francesco, the founder of the Uffizi gallery, and Bianca really die from malaria, or were they poisoned with arsenic by Ferdinando, Francesco’s brother?

Well, the verdict has finally come. It looks like this will remain one of the coldest of cold cases.

Forget the speculations of the “prosecutor” Donatella Lippi, professor of medical history at the University of Florence. Forget the questioning of the “public defender” Gino Fornaciari, professor of forensic anthropology at the University of Pisa.

After much debate, the “judge” Piero Pruneti, editor of the journal Archeologia Viva, declared that further investigation is needed.

“We do not have enough evidence for a judgement. The case is not closed,” he said.

Basically, the final evidence would come only if Bianca’s mummified body is found.

Extensive analysis on her body could finally tell whether the Medici couple was the victim of what seems to be the “perfect murder.”

Following the search for Bianca’s body will be one of my next adventures. Meanwhile, here is a video on the mock trial.

Where is the dignity in the display of this corpse?

It’s the headline of an interesting opinion article in the Irish Independent.

The subject: King Tut, of course.

In his review of Tutankhamun’s new display, Philip Henser writes:

To me, this looks like a sad and an unattractive object. The body of the 19-year-old boy is blackened into charcoal, his teeth peeping through the mouth. I find it difficult to reconcile any kind of notion of the dignity of death with the idea of putting a dead body, however old, in a glass case for people to pay to stare at. The trappings of Tutankhamun's tomb - the sublime funerary mask and the extraordinary beds and caskets - are one thing. They are the trappings of a civilisation, and don't represent a human being, but rather the nobility of his status. But Tutankhamun's corpse is another matter. That, really, is just a human being.

Taking care of mummies is not easy. I’ve asked Eduard Egarter, the official caretaker of Ötzi the Iceman at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, what it is like to take care of the world’s oldest and best-preserved mummy.

Here are his thoughts.

Mummy Porn?

Where are the crying children, the boy with no name, the tatooed man, and the smoking woman? One was drowned in a bog, one was hanged, one fell, one died from tuberculosis and one passed in a fever.

Embalmed, sunken, dried out — all are mummies now resting in glass cases in the German city of Mannheim.

Running until March 24, 2008 at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums, Mummies - The Dream of Everlasting Life, is the world's biggest-ever exhibition of mummified bodies, featuring more than 70 mummies – adults, children and animals - from around the world.

Described as a stomach-churning show, this is indeed one of the most discussed collection of mummified bodies.

According to Dietrich Wildung, director of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, the exhibition is "mummy porn."

"If you can say that sex sells, then you can also say the mummy sells,” he said in an interview to Deutschland Radio.

Remarking that the Berlin Egyptian Museum's mummy collection is not publicly displayed and that there are plans to send the mummies back to Egypt for proper burial, Wildung added that the Mannheim exhibition is an invasion of privacy and violates the rights of the dead to be left to rest in peace.

Resting in hi-tech display cases seems to be the fate of many mummies. King Tutankhamun has just joined the club.

Today, the famed boy pharaoh has been removed from his sarcophagus and placed in a hi tech climate-controlled glass case, where he will rest – his black, leathery face exposed to 5,000 visitors a day.

The move is aimed at preserving the mummy from humidity and heat - much of it generated by the breath of the tomb’s visitors- and raise money to fund other works in the Valley of the Kings.

Indeed, mummy sells.