Reproduction of a terracotta stirrup jar from Gournia by E. Gilliéron & Son, ca. 1914; original ca. 1525–1450 B.C.

The art of the Greek Bronze Age is an intoxicating blend of reality and fantasy: colorful depictions of wide-eyed octopuses, craggy landscapes, well-endowed goddesses, mythological beasts, and millennia-old rituals abound on amulets, frescoes, jewelry, seals, vases, votive statuettes, and weapons. It’s hard to imagine a time before these exhilarating works—products of the great Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations but influenced by cultures spanning from the Middle East to India—were known to the modern world. But as recently as the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these treasures were still ensconced deep in the earth, awaiting discovery.

Historic Images of the Greek Bronze Age: The Reproductions of E. Gilliéron & Son, a yearlong exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, transports visitors back to the days when archaeologists first started buzzing about the existence of a “preclassical” Greece. On display are 60 detailed reproductions, fashioned to scale, of some of the most famous artifacts to be unearthed from sites such as Knossos, Mallia, Mycenae, and Tiryns. Created a century ago, these objects are now practially “artifacts” in their own right—records of early archaeological and museological practice. They are the handiwork of a Swiss father-son team who shared the same name, Emile Gilliéron (differentiated in the Met’s show as père [father, 1850–1924] and fils [son, 1885–1939]), and had a surprisingly profound influence on how these works were perceived by worldwide audiences.

Reproduction of a fresco with a griffin from Knossos by E. Gilliéron, père (1910); original ca. 1450–1300 B.C.

The duo worked closely with prominent archaeologists such as Sir Arthur Evans, the father of Minoan archaeology, to resurrect these fragmentary images as they emerged from the ground. The Gilliérons then made high-end, precise copies of the artifacts for sale to museums around the world, including the Met. In the days before cheap travel and social media, such collections of “genuine fakes” were invaluable resources to students, scholars, and the general public alike.

Key to the success of identifying and commissioning such newly unearthed artifacts was Gisela Richter, curator in charge of the museum’s Department of Greek and Roman Art from 1925 to 1948. Each year, the widely published scholar spent three months in Greece. “She’d hear about a discovery and request a replica of it for the museum,” says the show’s curator Seán Hemingway. “What’s interesting is that archaeologists would give their permission to have the copies made.” Evans, for example, gave his permission with the understanding that the objects wouldn’t be published before he published them, but that they could be displayed so people could see what was being found.

A black-and-white photograph in the exhibition shows how the Met’s “Gallery for Prehistoric Greek Art” looked in 1933. “Most of the objects in this picture were reproductions,” says Hemingway, who points out that the copies were clearly labeled as such. One wood-and-glass display case in the photo, which holds a replica of the Agia Triadha sarcophagus, was actually dusted off and reused for the same purpose in the present show. “We even used to have the Lion Gate from Mycenae,” he adds. “It’s just amazing.” In subsequent years, the Met started acquiring real Bronze Age artifacts, so many of its reproductions were sold, given away, and lent out to fellow institutions. Even so, the museum still has hundreds of others squirreled away in storage.

Reproduction of the “Throne of Minos” from Knossos (ca. 1906); original ca. 1700–1425 B.C.

The only object in the show not produced by the Gilliérons is the so-called “Throne of Minos” from the palace at Knossos (right). The plaster copy is so close to the alabaster original, I can’t help but linger for a moment. “The throne’s great, isn’t it?” says Hemingway. “When I first saw it, I thought, well, it’s just dirty because it’s been in storage for a long time.” But after inspection by a conservator at the museum, he learned it was intentionally muddied with black paint to look exactly as it did when it was excavated. Most of the palace was badly burned in the 14th century B.C., he explains, and the throne (both the original and its doppelgänger) reflects this pivotal moment of the site’s history. The throne was one of the first objects found during the first season of excavations at Knossos in 1900; the Met snatched up the work directly from Sir Arthur Evans in 1906. “That’s part of the interesting thing about this exhibit,” he adds, “most of these works were made very soon after they were found or restored.”

Although aspects of some of the Gilliérons’ works, like the border of the Bull Leaper’s fresco from Knossos (top banner; border not pictured), have since been tweaked with the help of additional discoveries—and scholars have scrutinized and debated the details of countless others—it’s amazing how these images have endured. In fact, the fresco copies that still hang on the walls of the actual palace at Knossos on Crete, giving visitors a lasting impression of the whimsical art roughly in situ, were more than likely made by the two as well.

Reproduction of the “Ladies in Blue” fresco from Knossos by E. Gilliéron, fils (1927); original ca. 1525–1450 B.C.

Even overly embellished reproductions, such as the Ladies in Blue fresco (left) retain historical value. This work was created the year after an earthquake damaged the original, which was on display at the Iraklion Archaeological Museum. “Gilliéron, the son, went to Crete in ’27 to repair the original, then he made a copy for us,” says Hemingway. “This piece is so much of their restoration. That’s why it’s kind of a signature piece for this exhibition.”

So why—since these works are now so well known—should these “fakes” entice visitors to the Met today? “They convey quite a close sense, in terms of scale and color, of the remarkable wall paintings that were done on Crete and elsewhere in Greece in the Late Bronze Age that our collection doesn’t. They add to our ability to convey the complexity and richness of the art of the period,” says Hemingway. “This exhibition has been kind of fun because it’s gotten into how these two men worked with Evans—and that’s really the focus of the exhibition: their work on Crete and how they made this sideline business of making reproductions. And we were such a great client of theirs.”

See a related article by Seán Hemingway on the Met’s website.

“Historic Images of the Greek Bronze Age: The Reproductions of E. Gilliéron & Son” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through June 17, 2012.

I’m a peace-loving person. So what drew me to the Penn Museum’s exhibition “Battleground: War Rugs from Afghanistan” wasn’t so much the sight of handwoven carpets loaded with bombs, helicopters, grenades, and tanks, but the opportunity to learn more about the people who made them, why they chose to depict such unusual imagery, and how these unique pieces wound up here.

“The trouble with these carpets, generally, is that they’re all made since the country began to fall apart in 1979,” says Brian Spooner, curator of the Penn Museum’s Near Eastern section who specializes in Afghanistan and Oriental rugs. “Since then, it’s not been safe for people like me to go there and actually find out how things are done.” Spooner, an ethnographer and anthropologist, has worked in Afghanistan since the 1960s. “I spent a decade sitting on carpets,” he says, “and going with visitors to carpet stores and getting annoyed by what dealers told them about the carpets. They just made things up on the spot.”

So Spooner decided to undertake a study of Oriental carpets in the summer of 1972, visiting places where they were being made in northern Afghanistan. The following year, he invited a family of Turkmen carpet-weavers—a husband and wife, and their four-year-old daughter—to Philadelphia to create a carpet in the Penn Museum’s rotunda. “They wanted to do one with a portrait of President Nixon on it,” he says with amusement. “We politely declined.” Eventually, they reached a compromise: a small carpet featuring the museum’s logo.

The idea of producing a carpet for a specific clientele is relatively new, Spooner points out. Carpets have been woven in Afghanistan for at least 2,500 years, during which time they brimmed with sophisticated floral and geometric motifs. These images endured because historically carpet-weavers in Afghanistan were geographically isolated. “They’re cut off from the rest of the Islamic world and the rest of the world in general,” he explains. “And so the idea of weaving something that would be of interest to a larger public outside their own community didn’t occur to them until the beginnings of globalized processes in the 20^th century.”

In recent decades, carpet-weavers and dealers began catering to Soviet soldiers and American GIs who were buying the rugs as souvenirs in the war-torn country. Some later sold their purchases into the international market. “The carpets you see here were all bought on eBay,” he adds, and then donated to the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto where the exhibition originated.

Spooner draws on his vast knowledge of Oriental carpets in general to illuminate the works on view in the show. The finest rugs are produced by children (child labor) on vertical looms in urban workshops, he explains, which are run by the royal palace or the power center. “What you’re looking at here come from a rural tradition that has grown out of nomadic tribes in Central Asia, woven by women and young girls on horizontal looms…The typical situation would be one in which the women do the work and the men tell them what to do. And then the men, of course, strike up relations with the dealers to get things sold. Then the men, very often, will give the women templates. They’re also copying from each other as well, I’m sure.”

But how do people feel about creating these new motifs, I wonder aloud. “This is the big question,” says Spooner. “This is the sort of thing that obviously you can only find out by going and talking to people.”

Is it possible that the weavers are somehow rebelling against the war through these images? “I personally think that it’s a typical Western reaction to think that it must be ‘protest art.’ I think it’s ‘tourist art,’ ” says Spooner. “Imagine what it’s like: the fabric of your society has been totally torn apart. Much of your family has been broken up because they’ve had to flee as refugees. And you’ve got to make a living. What can you do? You can’t plow your fields—but you can weave. But you want to weave something you can sell immediately. And you see these foreigners here with money. What do they want? They’re fighting, they’ve got all these tanks and so on. Maybe they would like that. But they can’t talk to them to find out what they would like.”

As I wander the one-room gallery space—its walls painted desert tan punctuated with silent videos of U.S. troops projected high above the rugs—I’m overwhelmed by the violent imagery, occasionally interrupted by the juxtaposition of a pink-winged butterfly with a “butterfly land mine” or a string of upside-down hearts on the body of an AK-47. I ask Spooner what the public reaction to the works has been so far. “People don’t quite know what to do with them,” he says, making me feel a bit better. “But the fact is that this is a phenomenon that has transformed the Oriental rug market.”

“Battleground: War Rugs from Afghanistan” is on view at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology through July 31, 2011.

Donald C. Haggis

Today’s Mediterranean Diet is renowned for its delectable fish and vegetable dishes drenched in olive oil—and it is best enjoyed in good company over a carafe of wine. But how different was it in ancient times? Research undertaken by archaeologist Donald C. Haggis of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is starting to provide some mouthwatering answers. “What people ate and how people ate were directly connected to their society,” he says.

Since 2002, Haggis has been directing excavations at the Early Iron Age and Archaic (ca. 1200–480 B.C.) site of Azoria on the Greek island of Crete. Here he has conducted the most comprehensive analysis of diet at an early Greek city in the Aegean to date. “While food has been recovered from cemetery and sanctuary sites in Greece, we still have significant gaps in our information about domestic and civic spaces, houses, and public buildings,” he says. “We know from historical sources that food was an important aspect of economy and sociopolitical interaction.” Archaic and Classical Cretan political institutions required food as forms of payments or tithes, he explains. They also stored and processed food for public banquets and consumed food in the context of public assemblies and sacrifices to the gods.

Azoria, Crete (on the hilltop in the foreground)

So Haggis decided early on to expose as much of the site as he could. While many archaeologists try to avoid such large-scale digging these days, he argued that it would be necessary in order to obtain the teeny remnants of faunal and botanical data he was looking for—“clues” to the city’s economic and social structure. This required intensive strategies; in fact, the most intensive sampling done on a Classical site to date. On average, over the course of each six-week season between 2002 and 2006, the team dry-screened 50,000 liters of soil and water-sieved 700 to 800 samples (or 13–15,000 liters)!

Water-sieving

Melding into the earth over the past three millennia were the bones of fish and animals such as cows, goats, pigs, rabbits, and sheep; remnants of almonds, barley, cheeses, figs, marine life, olives, onions, pistachios, pulses, seashells, and wheat; and, in the sediment at the bottom of large pithoi (storage jars), grapes and their stems—evidence of wine. The team also unearthed heaps of pottery: serving dishes and entire cooking-pot assemblages, as well as kraters for mixing wine; amphoras for storing, transporting, and dispensing wine; and drinking cups and jugs. But as remarkable as these finds may seem, says Haggis, “Nothing actually surprised us about the range of foods consumed, only the ways in which foods were processed and consumed.”

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For instance, his team found evidence for large-scale storage of food and processing of grains and pulses at Azoria. However, they found no evidence for “primary” food storage and processing, which must have been conducted away from the city center, on rural estates or in distant dependent households. “At the center, they were preparing meals,” he says, “reducing pulses and grains for coarse breads, stews, and porridges.” This is a stark contrast from the preceding period, during which grain was regularly stored, cleaned, and ground to make flour in private households.

Azoria's tightly compressed elite homes provide evidence for city planning

Also, as Haggis suspected, the archaeologists discovered that food was consumed in both private homes and public spaces at Azoria. The elite private homes were tightly compressed into “spine walls”—rather than grouped and widely distributed as in earlier periods—providing evidence for urban development and city planning. These houses had large storage and living areas, distinctly separate kitchens, and dining areas, all linked by a courtyard. Such households likely served as the centers of large estates employing serfs, slaves, and “quasi-citizens.” (Only houses of the elite have been excavated to date. In the coming seasons, he hopes to investigate all levels of Azoria’s sociopolitical society.)

The public structures included banquet halls and a type of monumental civic building known as an andrion, where important male community members assembled. In these areas, the team found food debris, cups, jugs, storage jars, and cooking pots, along with large conical stands for wine-mixing bowls. Haggis believes that one building’s function centered on wine mixing and drinking in huge quantities; it was also a place where cuts of meat were dressed with sprigs of thyme and mint, and prepared for roasting on a spit. Porridges and stews, with and without meat, were also consumed in these areas.

Haggis in the Archaic shrine

One main public dining hall, which included pantries for drinking vessels, featured an area for cult activity. Here, Haggis believes, sacrifices to Hestia, goddess of the hearth, were made at a small altar with votive offerings such as figurines, trumpet shells, murexes, and boars’ tusks, as well as food and drink. “Food consumption at Azoria in the public or civic buildings was a highly ritualized and ritual social event,” says Haggis. We imagine that both sacrifices to the gods were conducted on altars in these buildings, that matters of warfare and state were discussed, and perhaps even laws and concerns of the economy.”

A standout discovery at Azoria is a unique post–Bronze Age olive oil press. “The production of olive oil was a scaled-up, highly centralized, and state-controlled enterprise, probably for the consumption of within the civic buildings,” says Haggis. Olive oil was mainly used for food preparation, lighting, and special adornment and cleansing. “It was a semi-luxury product in Classical Greece, and its uses would have indicated the character and formality of an activity, as well as the participants’ status and social and political identity,” he says. “The installation at Azoria preserves evidence for all stages of oil processing—crushing, pressing, settling, and separation—providing the only well-preserved example of a lever-and-weights-style press from the Archaic Greek Aegean.”

Olive press room

Azoria was abandoned, looted, and then set ablaze between about 480 and 475 B.C. Haggis’s team has uncovered evidence of the fiery destruction, which was probably caused by a neighboring city-state, on the buildings’ walls—each room deliberately torched from the floor up. In 2004, they recovered two complete serving vessels from the site’s “Monumental Civic Building.” Analysis of their contents has revealed one of the “last suppers” served before Azoria’s demise: one pot contained a sheep- or goat-meat stew with chickpeas, grapes, onion-like bulbs, and twigs from the mint family (possibly thyme and oregano); the other contained a stew of wheat, broad beans, and grapes.

The Archaic period on Crete was long believed to be a “second Dark Ages” (the Iron Age, which directly proceeded this period, is considered the “first”). Haggis, however, has seen the light. “The dramatically historicized—or perhaps historically dramatized—‘Archaic gap’ or ‘second Dark Ages’ is an illusion of the archaeological record… We know that the sites exist, we simply have to excavate and study them,” he insists. “That said, the sixth century B.C. does represent a period of change, a discontinuity from the Early Iron Age and Early Archaic settlement and burial patterns and structures. I think that work at Azoria demonstrates quite clearly that the discontinuity is related to the development of cities, and thus new ways of structuring the economy, social and political organization, and the way of life on Crete.”

The life-size Mamenchisaurus created by Hall Train Studios

A 60-foot-long fiberglass model of a Mamenchisaurus dominates the central gallery of “The World’s Largest Dinosaurs” exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History. Poised on a pedestal, the 18-year-old female sauropod casually munches on a bunch of leaves as visitors marvel at how the snack traveled down her 30-foot-long neck. Her dimly lit right-hand side shows how her skin may have looked—a mottled gray-green pebbly surface with a fleshy pink underside—as she sauntered across present-day western China some 140 million years ago. However, the skin is peeled away from her left-hand side, illuminating areas where researchers envision her bones, veins, and muscles, as well as her reproductive and respiratory systems. The creature’s mechanically powered belly rises and falls with each lifelike breath.

The Mamenchisaurus heart moved about 635 quarts of blood through its body.

Through interactive stations surrounding the model, visitors absorb the latest factoids about the Mamenchisaurus: the lumbering animal didn’t sweat; it ate about 1,150 pounds of plant matter each day; and while its body weighed 13 tons, its head was only about 45 pounds. But I’m interested to learn more about the star of the show, the model that represents a smallish sauropod (some sprawled more than 150 feet). So I was lucky to sit down with her Canadian-based creator Hall Train, whose studio of the same name undertook the mega-size work of art.

Hall Train Studios began planning the model in the summer of 2010. “The first thing was finding out as much as I could about the osteology of the animal,” says Train. So he pored over the latest research on the Mamenchisaurus by leading experts including Mark Norell, curator of the exhibit and chair of the AMNH’s Division of Paleontology. (Norell also later vetted Train’s artistic interpretations.) In a single weekend, Train came up with some hand-drawn sketches, which he later digitally enhanced with colors and details. Next he produced a giant poster showing the outside of the animal with the cutaway on one side and the skin on the other—Norell’s idea, he notes.

Hall Train with the small, polymer clay model

By August, Train had started sculpting a small model out of a polymer clay; inside, he fashioned an elaborate and accurate internal structure of the creature made from socketed brass components. Using the small model, his team was able to isolate points where the armature would lie inside the life-size model and make a computer model from that data.

On the digital model, they divided the dinosaur into 10 separate pieces—no single piece exceeding 12 feet in length—so that it would physically fit inside the AMNH’s gallery space. “Each side of the body comes apart like a big clamshell,” he says.

The pebbly skin on the dinosaur’s right-hand side is Train’s chef d-oeuvre, based on a mathematical model made up of polygons that are five, six, seven, and eight sided. “They shift from one count to another and they’re very random,” he explains. “They get larger in some areas and they get smaller in others, and they get kinda squished and stretched.” The resulting realistic image was then mapped onto the computer model’s skin.

The model is made up of 10 pieces so it can fit in the museum's gallery space.

Next, the 10 digital pieces were sent directly from Train’s computer to his mill, which cut the molds out of “cheap Styrofoam,” says Train, “like the type that your stereo comes in. But really big blocks of it.” The finished pieces are made out of fiberglass; but instead of using polyester resin, the studio used an epoxy composite. “It’s much lighter, much stronger. It’s incredibly durable. You can take any of those pieces and jump up and down on them.”

Finally, the pieces were shipped to the AMNH, where Train worked with the museum’s staff to assemble the model and add finishing touches such as filling the pebbles on the dinosaur’s skin with epoxy. “They have incredibly talented people here and they put together this wonderful group that was just so enthusiastic and dedicated and capable.”

Mamenchisaurus lungs

As you walk through the show, you can see more of Train’s masterpieces—a veritable exhibit within the exhibit—including the Mamenchisaurus’s glowing lungs and beating heart. He also helped design the show’s entrance: a fern-filled forest mural through which the life-size head and neck of an Argentinosaurus emerges. (He shot the photo, meant to represent a lush setting in South America, a bit closer to home—in the old growth forest at the center of Vancouver Island.) Also don’t miss his Mamenchisaurus mini-me under the gigantic model’s tail; this is the actual sample on which the large one is based. And in an adjacent gallery, check out the gooey baby dino. Train got to inspect the original discovery on site in Argentina. “They found the skin intact inside the egg,” he says. “It’s really super-fine and textured.”

Although Train had an early interest in paleontology as a teenager, he began his career as an illustrator and then went into advertising. He eventually started a film company and produced and directed TV commercials for nearly a decade. “Then I got kind of sick of that,” he says. “One year I was down here in New York picking up some Clio Awards I’d won for some ads I’d made. The next day, I walked to this museum. I looked in and said to myself, you know, this is what I really want to do.” So about 15 years ago he undertook his first project for the AMNH, a film for the fossil hall that had just opened, and then others, including documentaries on dinosaurs. He’s been working on various AMNH projects ever since. Around the same time, Steven Spielberg hired him to work on Jurassic Park, and he’s also a production designer for Universal Studios to this day.

So what’s next for Hall Train Studios? Train’s team is currently working on a mother and baby Mastodon for another museum. “I’m really looking forward to that because they’re mammals and they’re kind of cuddly,” he says. “But in terms of dinosaurs, I guess I have to say, I wouldn’t mind going bigger, you know? It would be a wonderful challenge.”

“The World’s Largest Dinosaurs” is on view at New York’s American Museum of Natural History through January 2, 2012.

Geoff Emberling, guest curator of the exhibition “Nubia: Ancient Kingdoms of Africa” on view at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW), has directed excavations in Sudan where he uncovered Kerma period sites now flooded by the Merowe Dam. He recently spoke with me about the show and why he finds Nubia so interesting.

Shawabti of King Senkamanisken, Nuri, tomb of Senkamanisken, 640–620 B.C.

EBM: Why do we know so much today about ancient Egypt but not about Nubia?
GE: There are a number of different reasons why Egypt is better known. Egypt is a literate civilization, so it’s more expressive in that sense. And the preserved, standing remains of Egyptian temples are larger, more impressive, for the most part. Also, Egyptian tomb painting provides an incredible amount of detail and specificity that is difficult to get for many periods of Nubian history. So there’s an undoubted difference in the nature of the historical record.

Another reason, I think, is tied up with the history of racism, both in society, more broadly, and within academia, in particular. This is, I would say, not a problem today, but it has informed the decisions and perspectives that people have had on these civilizations. The ugly truth is that through much of the 20th century, scholars thought of Nubia as an “African” civilization and explicitly excepted Egypt from being part of the greater African tradition—despite the fact that Egypt is within the continent of Africa. So as an African civilization, Nubian cultures were deemed less interesting, less complex, less powerful, and therefore less worthy of the kind of detailed archaeological attention that Egypt has had.

Hathor-headed crystal pendant, El-Kurru, 750–720 B.C.

EBM: So what changed and when?
GE: It’s certainly the case that there’s now a critical mass of archaeologists working in Nubia broadly; that is, in southern Egypt outside the Nile Valley—because that part of Nubia is underwater—but also in northern Sudan. There’s a critical mass that has been working now for several decades and starting to really produce detailed syntheses and new interpretive perspectives. Among the results of this intensified work is the finding that in some periods, for example the Kerma period [ca. 2500–1500 B.C.], Nubian civilization is now known to have been considerably more militarily powerful than previously thought. That is, that they seriously threatened the Egyptian state with raid and conquest.

But to answer your question of what changed and when, there is a long history that began in the 19th century with efforts of some Europeans to outlaw the slave trade, specifically from Sudan. That was part of the political motivation for British colonialism in Sudan—trying to stop the slave trade. It has taken a long time for those values to be changed. I have had people ask me to confirm that, “Egyptians were white, right?”

Head of a Nubian, Kerma, 1700–1550 B.C.

EBM: Were any Nubian excavations affected by the recent uprising in Egypt? Were any digs disrupted and do you know of any looting at Nubian sites?
GE: There was no looting that I know of. Archaeologists are more concerned about the ongoing construction of dams in Sudan that are threatening to flood even more of Nubia than is already underwater.

EBM: What interests you most about Nubia?
GE: For me, archaeology is at its best when we make discoveries that give us a picture of a time and a place so different from our own that we get a sense of broader context for our own historical moment and social and political realities. From that point of view, Nubia is really interesting as a distinctive kind of social and political organization. One way it’s distinctive, for example, is how kingship is handed down. It didn’t go father to son; it went in a pattern that we still don’t completely understand—from father to son, to other son, then to the next generation. Part of this succession involved marriage between kings and their sisters. It also involved a surprisingly prominent role for female members of the royal family. So unlike at least stereotypical views of ancient societies, in Nubia we suspect a greater role for women and political power than in some others.

Fly pendants, Semna, 1550–1070 B.C.

EBM: What, specifically, is known about the role of women?
GE: We know that at some times they ruled independently. This is expressed more directly in the later Nubian tradition, after about 350 B.C. In classical sources, there are references to having to fight against a Nubian queen who was militarily powerful—and she only had one eye. Apparently, she was one tough broad! And that’s a later incarnation of something that we glimpse, less vividly, in earlier periods. But in the royal cemeteries of Nubia, most of the burials are burials of queens, simply because kings married multiple times, and so there were more queens running around than there were kings. But they all got royal burials.

EBM: What does a typical royal burial contain?
GE: This points to another reason I find Nubia so interesting. Egyptian cultural practices are adopted in selective and interesting ways in Nubia. So earlier Nubian royal burials, which we know from the site of Kerma, are very non-Egyptian. Nothing about them is Egyptian. The rulers were buried in huge mounds, and in the most powerful of these burials, hundreds of retainers were buried in the tumulus and thousands and thousands of cattle skulls were buried around the base of the mound, indicating the funeral feast but also the wealth of the king.

Statue of King Senkamanisken, Gebel Barkal, 640–620 B.C.

EBM: So that would just be for a king’s burial then, not for a queen’s?
GE: It’s difficult to be certain because these burials were looted in such a way that there are no bones preserved in the central burial chamber. But it is normally assumed that these were burials of kings. But now that you mention it, I don’t think that there’s any evidence, I mean, it’s not like there are any inscriptions that name the original occupants of these early burials.

EBM: Were the Egyptians and Nubians similar in their daily lives?
GE: Actually, in a lot of ways, they were not. This to me, again, is something that’s interesting about Nubia—it’s a different kind of society in ways that we have yet to fully understand. Egypt was a relatively bureaucratic and urban civilization, even though people sometimes say Egypt was “a land without cities.” This is no longer considered to be the case. Nubia, for the most part, was non-urban. Its population was quite dispersed. There was probably a significant degree of mobility practiced by most Nubians.

Nubia was also a culturally diverse land. The term Nubia itself is a very late term. It’s a Greek term, actually, and it seems to refer to a tribe called the “Noba” who really only appear in the historical record in the third century B.C. So when we talk about the “land of Nubia,” there’s a natural inclination for us to think in terms of a unified culture but, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. It’s fragmented with a lot of different cultures and—to the extent that we can identify various places—there are a lot of different little polities and, presumably, different cultures that are involved throughout Nubia.

Painted cow skull, Khozam(?), 1700–1550 B.C.

EBM: How much is known about the individual cultures?
GE: One thing that we know is a series of place names. This points back to the difference between the Egyptian record and the Nubian record. There is an Egyptian trader named Harkhuf who traveled through the lands of Nubia [ca. 2250 B.C.]—but he didn’t use the word Nubia. He described different places that he visited and he used terms for them that are, in some cases, difficult to locate exactly. One place, the most certain, is Wawat, which is between the second and first cataracts. It’s not clear where all the other places are, but it’s clear that most of them fall within the area that we would call Nubia today. So it just points out that politically there’s a lot of division. Culturally, it’s also clear that there are some divisions, for example, looking at archaeological ceramics. It’s always difficult to be certain when you’re starting with archaeological finds exactly how this plays out—ethnicity, tribal identity, anything like that. But Nubia as a whole is rarely unified by a single ceramic style.

Straight-sided redware bowl, Nubia, 3100-3000 B.C.

EBM: What is your favorite object in the show and why?
GE: I just love the ceramics. They’re handmade, many of them are probably made by women in their households, they’re decorated in elaborate geometric ornamentation in forms that are deeply evocative of the natural world—shapes like gourds and ostrich eggs—and so for me, the ceramics are gorgeous. But it’s hard to turn your back on the grandeur of the royal statue of Senkamanisken, a Nubian king.

EBM: What do you hope visitors get out of the exhibition?
GE: I’ve written a narrative for this show, trying to work against the way in which we have a tendency to see Nubia through Egyptian eyes. So what I hope people will see is that Nubia is a rich and interesting culture in its own right that is fully deserving of our attention—and that attention is rewarded with insights into life in a very different time and place.

For more on the exhibition, including commentary by Jennifer Chi, associate director for exhibitions and public programs at ISAW, see Through Nubian Eyes, Part I.

“Nubia: Ancient Kingdoms of Africa” in on view at ISAW through June 12, 2011.

Miniature dagger, Kerma, 1700–1550 B.C.

Ancient Nubia has long been overshadowed by pharaonic Egypt, yet an increasingly clear picture of the mysterious land is finally starting to come to light. Among the most intriguing revelations have been that in certain periods Nubia was much more powerful than previously thought and that it had a rich and unique cultural heritage. Located in present-day southern Egypt and northern Sudan, Nubia is the focus of an exhibition at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) in New York titled “Nubia: Ancient Kingdoms of Africa.” The show features 120 artifacts spanning 2,500 years, beginning with the civilization’s rise in the late fourth millennium B.C.

“I felt that looking at Nubia was important,” says Jennifer Chi, associate director for exhibitions and public programs at ISAW. “It’s an area that I think is misunderstood.” Unlike Nubia, Egypt was a literate civilization, she points out, and surviving texts paint an unflattering picture its traditional enemy. “There’s a very biased viewpoint from the Egyptian side of Nubians being these uncultivated villagers.” The artifacts in the exhibition, however, tell a different story.

Pitcher in the form of a hippopotamus, Kerma, 1700–1550 B.C.

On view are the types of objects one might expect from a land that was also a trade partner of Egypt, including rigid shawabtis, necklaces with beads of carnelian and faience, even milky alabaster canopic jars. But then there are the marvelous surprises: a warrior’s ceremonial dagger with a delicate ivory handle (pictured above); a cattle skull painted with a still-vivid checkerboard pattern, mounted like a trophy in its display case; and a pair of three-inch-tall ivory pendants in the shape of flies, a Nubian symbol of military power for men and, possibly, fertility for women.

Other highlights include signature Nubian pottery, which beginning from about 3000 B.C. was extremely sophisticated—thin, refined, and elegant, even though it was all handmade. ”I was trained in classical archaeology,” says Chi. “I never really realized that Nubian culture extended so far back and I didn’t realize the sophistication of the pottery technology from a very early period. It really speaks of specialization of craftsmanship and therefore having at least a settled village life from a very early period forward. That’s just fascinating to me.”

Winged ram-headed scarab amulet, faience, El-Kurru, 750–720 B.C.

In later periods, Nubia and Egypt shared, to an extent, a similar material culture. Nubians imported faience, for instance, which is strongly identified with ancient Egypt. By about 2000 B.C., there is evidence for large faience workshops in Nubia, in important urban centers such as Kerma. However, it seems that the adversaries didn’t have much else in common.

Nubia was made up of a loose federation of groups or tribes without a distinct leader like the Egyptian pharaoh. And whereas the Egyptians had clearly defined funerary practices for the burial of their royalty and elite in pyramidal structures, the Nubians instead had elaborate burial mounds surrounded by mud-brick walls, human sacrificial victims, and thousands of cattle skulls.

Egypt conquered Nubia around 1550 B.C., and there is evidence that Nubians served in the Egyptian army. However, Nubia later regained strength and emerged to overtake Egypt—ruling as its 25th Dynasty from about 750 to 650 B.C. “Nubia has a voice,”  says  Chi, “and it has a distinguished archaeological record that can really speak of its individual place in the history of ancient Africa.”

“Nubia: Ancient Kingdoms of Africa” in on view at ISAW through June 12, 2011. See an interview with guest curator Geoff Emberling, who has directed excavations in Sudan, in Through Nubian Eyes, Part II.

Sacred medieval manuscripts can be appreciated for both their religious and aesthetic values, and I’ve been drawn to the artistry of Christian examples filled with Biblical references familiar to me. In a 2010 exhibition titled “The Art of Illumination,” for instance, the Metropolitan Museum of Art showcased the exquisite Belles Heures, an early-15th-century private devotional book depicting scenes ranging from the radiant Annunciation to the bleak moment of Christ’s death. So when the Met announced “The Washington Haggadah: Medieval Jewish Art in Context,” featuring an “unprecedented” loan from the Library of Congress of an illuminated Hebrew manuscript used at the Passover Seder, I was curious to learn about the work—made about 70 years after the Belles Heures and for a religion different from my own.

Roasting of the Passover Lamb, 14 v., from the Washington Haggadah, Library of Congress, Hebraic Section

Curator Barbara D. Boehm and associate curator Melanie Holcomb, both from the Met’s Medieval Art Department, jointly answered my questions about the Washington Haggadah presentation, which is part of a series of focused installations on Hebrew medieval manuscript illumination. Created by renowned scribe and illuminator Joel ben Simeon (born in 1420 in Cologne, Germany), the work bears the date January 29, 1478, and is shown alongside contemporary pieces of medieval art.

EBM: What distinguishes the work of Joel ben Simeon?
Curators: Joel ben Simeon’s work is distinguished by his “dual citizenship”—he was born in present-day Germany, but also lived and worked in Italy—his beautiful hand, and the humor he injects in many of his illustrations.

EBM: Are there many well-known illuminators of medieval Hebrew manuscripts?
Curators: Joel ben Simeon is particularly well known because he was so prolific—he signed a number of his works, indicating that he served both as a scribe and as an illuminator. But our visitors will see, when they come back to view other manuscripts in this series, that there are other scribes and illuminators whose names we know as well.

EBM: How was the Washington Haggadah originally used; for example, in the home of multiple generations of the same family?
Curators: In virtually every discussion of medieval haggadot, authors mention the presence of wine stains from the seder on the pages. That tells us what we could already guess about how it was used. For some, this is a particularly touching aspect. As museum curators, we wish the owners had been a little more careful at dinner!

Ha Lachma Anya, the invitation to the Seder, folio 3 v., from the Washington Haggadah, Library of Congress, Hebraic Section

EBM: What is known about its history?
Curators: In the late 19th century, this haggadah belonged to the Provencali family of Mantua. The names of four members of the family appear in the book. It is particularly touching that there is also a note in German dated April 1879 written by Ettore Finzi saying that he is sitting at the seder table, having just sung the first part of the “gada” and waiting to be served. When the food arrived, he signed off “Guten Apetit.”

The Washington Haggadah was on the art market in Mantua in 1902 and was eventually acquired for the Library of Congress with funds from the New York banker and philanthropist Jacob H. Schiff. You can read more about its fascinating history in the newly published facsimile by David Stern and Katrin Kogman-Appel, who will be speaking at the Metropolitan on April 7.

EBM: Were the contemporary works of medieval art displayed near it also used during the Passover Seder?
Curators: Because religious law provides few specifications about the types of objects to be used in ritual, Jews of the Middle Ages were free to incorporate luxury items into their holiday celebrations in keeping with contemporary taste. In the illustrations he created for the Washington Haggadah, Joel ben Simeon represents objects used in the preparation and celebration of the Passover Seder that were also favored in Christian homes of his time. We know these kinds of objects were used in medieval seders because they appear in the manuscript, and we are showing about a dozen of them in the gallery.

Pouring of the Second Cup of Wine, folio 4 r., from the Washington Haggadah, Library of Congress, Hebraic Section

EBM: Why is the Washington Haggadah so important as a work of art?
Curators: All illuminated Hebrew manuscripts from the Middle Ages are rare and important. They simply do not survive in the numbers that we see with Christian and secular manuscripts of this period. The Washington Haggadah holds a very important place as a great treasure of Hebrew illumination in an American public collection. Illuminated Hebrew manuscripts are more often found in libraries in Europe—including the Vatican—in Israel, and in seminary libraries.

EBM: What are the curatorial challenges involved in displaying religious art?
Curators: Funny you should ask. Some of these very questions were posed in a recent Connections piece on the Museum website called “Religious Art.” The sacred and aesthetic values are inextricably linked in religious art, and that’s why we love it.

EBM: What, exactly, makes this loan “unprecedented”? How did it come about?
Curators: The loan both is and isn’t unprecedented. It represents the continuation of an initiative that we undertook several years ago to feature consistently a work of art representing medieval Jewish artistic heritage. We have been blessed by the cooperation of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary in realizing that. Now, thanks to a grant from the Berg Foundation, we are expanding our reach with a series of focused installations that showcase gems of Hebrew manuscript illumination from beyond this important New York collection. We were already in touch with several European libraries when Harvard University Press and the Library of Congress, aware of our efforts in this field, began a discussion with us about featuring the Washington Haggadah. We thought it highly appropriate to inaugurate this series with a Hebrew manuscript from our own national library.

EBM: Does the Washington Haggadah provide new insights into medieval Jewish life?
Curators: The book reflects the vibrancy of the Jewish community in the late Middle Ages and the importance of that community’s artistic heritage. That shouldn’t be a new insight, but given the rare survival of such works of art, it may be surprising to some.

“The Washington Haggadah” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 5 through June 26, 2011.

Wiñay Wayna's terraces may have been used to grow coca, which the Inca used in rituals.

In a narrow corridor on the first floor of the American Museum of Natural History—a short flight down from the hubbub surrounding the towering Barosaurus in the main entrance lobby—photographs of lush emerald landscapes, thick adobe walls, snaking muddied rivers, and snow-capped mountaintops brighten up the institutional-white walls. Many visitors stop, look, snap pictures with their phones, and continue on to the gift shop. But those who read the gallery wall labels are rewarded with information about the remains of a startlingly vast, timeworn network of wobbly suspension bridges, dirt-covered pathways, and paved trails that crisscross the exhilarating vistas of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The exhibition “Highway of an Empire: The Great Inca Road” brings together more than 50 photos of points of interest along the impressive network, which at its peak spanned a remarkable 25,000 miles. (To put that into perspective, the equatorial circumference of the Earth is 24,901.55 miles.)

It is believed that between about A.D. 1400 and the 1530s, the Incas both constructed new imperial routes and incorporated previously existing road systems of annexed states and empires. “The ‘Inca road’ is a diverse concept,” says R. Alan Covey, associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University, who was brought on board to curate the show. “In some highland regions, they may have rehabilitated roads used by the Wari state [A.D. 600–1000], and on the coast, they may have mapped onto routes of states like Chincha and the Chimú.”

The Inca gathered at sites such as Sacsayhuaman to take part in festivals and religious rites.

The road system facilitated the movement of people—soldiers, administrators, messengers, and those on state business—as well as information and products. “Goods like corn and dried potatoes were moved up to highland administrative centers and to outposts on the highway, while exotic raw materials and fine craft goods were transported to Cuzco, the Inca capital,” says Covey. “The main Inca networks were designed to maintain order, and not for ‘public’ use.”

The Inca road has been explored and documented by researchers, including archaeologist John Hyslop who published an authoritative book on the qhapaqñan (royal highway) in 1984. Over the past few years, more than 300 participants from the Andean nations have surveyed some 9,000 miles of the road, documenting archival descriptions of routes from the early Colonial Period and carrying out more intensive research at sites found along or near it. While parts of the road are well preserved, others have been destroyed or replaced by modern routes. A goal of the project is to have the Qhapaq Ñan, the Main Andean Road, recognized on the UNESCO World Heritage List so it will be preserved for future generations. It is currently on the Tentative List.

A traveler takes in the view from the Inca road near Machu Picchu.

While the road is undeniably impressive, it’s the fine quality of the photos that first draws viewers into each scene. Taken by more than a dozen accomplished contemporary photographers, the vivid prints are mounted on stark-white mat boards in uniform, straight-edged black frames. This allows for bold colors—such as the red poncho of an ethereal figure amid wispy clouds on a stone-slab road near Machu Picchu—to radiate from the image. “For me, the Andean landscapes are breathtaking,” says Covey. “There is a certain artistry in how some of the Inca roads traverse such diverse panoramas. I think that combination of natural and constructed beauty is really impressive and the photos really bring it out.”

Inca craftsmen at Cuzco shaped massive blocks with hammers made of hard river stones.

One standout shot shows a woman in a flowing blue skirt and straw hat balancing a red cloth bundle slung over her back. She follows her shadow toward a sundrenched wall of irregularly shaped gray stone blocks, and is no taller than three of them stacked up; the stones likely continue well beyond the reach of the shot, but how far? The photo is cropped tightly, making it impossible to see where the wall—an Inca ruler’s palace at Cuzco—begins or ends, both punctuating its monumentality and providing testament to the level of Inca stone craftsmanship also seen in the road system. A shot of Sacsayhuaman (second image from the top of this page), a site used for festivals and religious rites, has a similar effect: tourists exploring the fortress-like structure look more like ants against the backdrop of imposing walls, mountains sprawling as far as the eye can see, and, possibly, an impending rainstorm.

Mummy bundles of the Chachapoyas, who were conquered by the Incas, were found on a cliff near the road in 1996.

The exhibition also highlights the broader story of Inca society through photos of the Andean landscape where herders, farmers, and fishermen made a living before, during, and after Inca times. The story of these people is inextricably linked with the road. “The Incas used llamas as pack animals, but couldn’t ride them,” says Covey. “So the breadth of the road system—from central Chile to southern Colombia—is made all the more impressive when one considers that it was traversed on foot.”

“Highway of an Empire: The Great Inca Road” is on view at New York’s American Museum of Natural History through September 2011.

The story of the University of Pennsylvania’s late-19th-century excavations at Nippur in Iraq sounds more like the plotline for a reality TV show—complete with alliances, betrayals, and tabloid fodder—than the academic pursuit of knowledge about an ancient civilization. But Philadelphia’s Penn Museum isn’t afraid to tell the messy tale in the exhibition “Archaeologists & Travelers in Ottoman Lands,” which offers insight into the nascent days of American archaeology. On view are artifacts excavated from the site, photos of the dig, two unique paintings, and the paper trail left behind by the drama’s leading men: Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910), who granted the excavation permit to dig at Nippur and later divvied up the finds; John Henry Haynes (1849–1910), who discovered more than 24,000 cuneiform tablets over a decade of work at the site; and Hermann Vollrath Hilprecht (1859–1925), who egregiously took credit for the whole thing.

Hilprecht was a Penn professor, Assyriologist, and ordained minister. “Penn got interested in archaeology basically through the likes of people like Hilprecht,” says exhibition curator Robert G. Ousterhout. “They were interested not so much in the sphinxes and Egypt and mysterious cultures, but in texts—and in learning the texts of Mesopotamia.” In fact, the goal of the expedition to Nippur, an important Mesopotamian religious center, was to provide “scientific proof” of the Bible by uncovering cuneiform tablets that could produce texts paralleling the Old Testament. Getting permission to dig at the site proved to be the first of many challenges the university was to face.

At the Mosque Door (1891) by Osman Hamdi Bey

Enter Osman Hamdi Bey: A French-trained Orientalist-painter-turned-archaeologist, Hamdi Bey was the founder of Istanbul’s archaeological museum and, for all intensive purposes, the gatekeeper of archaeology in the Ottoman Empire. Everyone seemed to know that the quickest way to his heart was through his art. So the University of Pennsylvania arranged for two paintings by Hamdi Bey to come to America, to be exhibited at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and, ultimately, to be purchased by the university. One of these works, At the Mosque Door, hangs at the entrance to the exhibition. As part of the process of preparing the show, the painting, which had been rolled up in the back of the museum’s archives, was restored and re-stretched. “It looks nothing like its original form,” notes Ousterhout. “It was scratched, there were tears in it. It had been cut off the frame.”

The French snatched up the other work from a Paris exhibit before it could even be shipped to America. “Everyone was sort of out playing the same game to flatter Hamdi Bey as an artist, exhibit his paintings, and get their entrée into the antiquities of the Turkish Empire,” says Ousterhout. Also on view are letters in which the University of Pennsylvania offered Hamdi Bey an honorary doctorate, as well as the correspondence among the officials of the university, deliberating as to whether or not he was of sufficient stature to merit a PhD from the prestigeous institution. As an extra incentive, the university gave Hamdi Bey a certificate for membership in the Archaeological Association of Philadelphia. “So a rather interesting trail here of the Americans dealing with Hamdi Bey in Istanbul,” says Ousterhout. Ultimately, the university’s efforts paid off.

Herman Vollrath Hilprecht in Istanbul, ca. 1895

Cut to Turkey: “Now, for the excavation, possibly the Americans’ greatest tool is not all the paper we see here,” says Ousterhout, pointing to a tidy row of flat-pressed documents lining the narrow gallery’s walls, “but the figure of Hermann Hilprecht who was sort of the ‘evil genius’ behind the whole thing.” Hilprecht positioned himself in Istanbul where he drank tea with Hamdi Bey and hoped to organize the Oriental galleries at the fledgling archaeological museum there. It helped to have Hilprecht at his side.

The new Ottoman antiquities law, as drafted by Hamdi Bey in 1883–84, stated that no antiquities could be removed from Ottoman soil. “He understood how to use the law to his advantage,” says Ousterhout. “It meant that anyone can excavate in the Ottoman Empire—if they play his game.” And those who played it best could be rewarded by having “gifts” bestowed on them in the form of part of the excavated goods. Permit in hand, Penn next had to get to the site.

Ziggurat at Nippur by John Henry Haynes (1893-94)

Cue in John Henry Haynes: Haynes was a classical archaeologist who went on the first American excavation at Assos, Turkey, and stayed on in the Ottoman Empire working at Robert College in Istanbul and at the American mission school at Aintab. He was also the first American consul in Baghdad. “He was sort of the man on the ground for the Americans because he knew his way around,” says Ousterhout. “And he was quite an impressive photographer. He is the first person to systematically work as a photographer at an archaeological site, not just show up and take pictures.” Trained by William Stillman, who was known for his important photographs of the Acropolis in Athens, Haynes learned how to frame a photo, use contrasts of dark and light, use a high vantage point to dramatic effect, and open up the landscape he was shooting. Sometimes, he even set up scaffolding to get the right shot. “He understands how to compose a picturesque photograph. But he’s completely unknown,” says Ousterhout, who refers to Haynes as the “father of archaeological photography.” About 50 of Haynes’s photos are in the exhibition, being shown for the first time. “One of the things we’re doing here in this exhibit is resurrect his career.”

Hamdi Bey with J.P. Peters, 1889

The Dig: Penn’s John Punnett Peters (1852–1921), also an ordained minister, led the Nippur expedition for the first two seasons but simply couldn’t take the conditions at the inhospitable and remote site, located in the swamps of southern Iraq. At the end of the first season, the camp was robbed and burned by warring tribes.

Hilprecht eventually took over as “scientific director” of the excavation—after a fallout withe Peters—but did not return to Nippur, noting his “delicate constitution,” and insisted on directing the dig from the comfort of his offices in Istanbul and Philadelphia, and his home in Jena, Germany. Haynes was then tapped to be the field manager at Nippur. “He’s the only one who was at the site consistently through the entire decade of excavation, from 1889 to 1900,” says Ousterhout.

As a classical archaeologist, Haynes knew what he was doing and could read the inscriptions he unearthed at classical sites. “But in Mesopotamia, it’s dealing with cuneiform texts, which he couldn’t read,” he says. “The only person who could read them was Hilprecht who was back in Istanbul. Haynes is also dealing with a lot of unbaked mud—and so the excavation is not as straightforward. Plus the directions he’s receiving from Hilprecht aren’t straightforward. It’s simply: find more tablets. It’s not: do a systematic, stratified excavation. It’s simply: get to the good stuff and get to it whatever way possible.”

The exhibition features several dozen finds from the site, which were divided between the archaeological museum in Istanbul and the Penn Museum. On view is a tubular Parthian “slipper sarcophagus,” as well as vessels and figurines, including one of a god or man putting his thumb to his nose with his fingers outstretched, a typical Sumerian greeting. “Virtually none of this has been on display before,” says Ousterhout.

Haynes, ca. 1900

In 1894, Haynes returned to Nippur for a third season to oversee about 90 workmen. “He was quite literally going crazy at the site, writing to Philadelphia regularly saying, ‘Send help, I can’t do this alone,’ ” says Ousterhout. The workmen came from two feuding tribes and so he constantly felt his life was in danger. But that year, he met a young architect in Baghdad, a recent grad from MIT who was traveling on a scholarship, named Joseph Meyer (1856–1894). Looking at the site, Meyer soon realized that there was a city there, and that there was much more besides tablets to be excavated. He also provided much-needed companionship for Haynes.

But within six months Meyer died of dysentery; soon thereafter, Haynes became mentally unbalanced and suffered the first of his mental breakdowns. “He was sent back to the United States at that point for a little R&R, during which, in his ‘weakened condition,’ he married,” Ousterhout says with a chuckle. “His family regarded her as a ‘floozy’ and a ‘gold digger.’ We’re not entirely sure what the story is there. But the last season in the dig house was very interesting. She insisted on coming.” On display is a photo of his bride, Cassandria, being carried in a sedan chair. At the dig house, their marriage fell apart.

Hymn to the Goddess Inanna, clay tablet from Nippur, ca. 1730 B.C.

In 1900, the final season of excavations, Haynes hit the jackpot—some 24,000 cuneiform tablets—which was at the time thought to be Nippur’s temple library. “What we know, in effect, of Sumerian literature, all comes out of that discovery,” says Ousterhout. Many of the tablets are now known to have belonged to students learning how to operate the stylus and write cuneiform. Students also learned by copying documents, letters, and legal and economic texts; as their skills progressed, they also copied poems, works erotic literature, and classics, including the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Tablets & Tabloids: “What happened in the end was Haynes made the discovery of a lifetime. And Hilprecht decided then it was time to go to the excavation. He arrived, dismissed Haynes as incompetent, took over the excavation, and claimed credit for everything. The headlines that came out of the excavation all credit Hilprecht for an excavation he did in absentia. It finally comes out because he is basically dissing everyone else,” says Ousterhout. Hilprecht claimed that every other excavation paled compared to his—and that he was responsible for everything that came out of the ground at the site. He was rewarded by the university, given a medal, and granted research leave, during which he went on a tour of Europe, lecturing about his great discoveries. (At that point, however, none of the tablets that had been shipped back to Penn had even been unpacked or read.) Haynes, meanwhile, suffered another mental breakdown, entered an institution, and died, forgotten, in 1910; coincidentally, Hamdi Bey died the same year.

Temple court at Nippur, ca. 1893, photo by Haynes used as the frontispiece of Hilprecht's 1903 book

“I sort of like this,” says Ousterhout, turning from the tablets and walking just a few feet to a wall collage of blown-up newspaper clippings and caricatures of Hilprecht. “The tablets on one side and the tabloids on the other side.” In 1903, Hilprecht published a book called Explorations in Bible Lands during the 19^th Century—a copy sits in its own display case—in which he took credit for everything. Hilprecht even used Haynes’s 1893 photograph of Nippur as his frontispiece, but didn’t credit it to Haynes. In the volume, Hilprecht showed his own illustrations, many of which turned out to be pieces from a bazaar in Baghdad! “He’s taken to task by the academic community for what he overstates in the book,” says Ousterhout, “and there’s a tribunal in 1905 that is vicious.” Chief among his critics was Peters.

Protected by his Philadelphia society wife Sallie Crozer Robinson, Hilprecht was found not guilty of “literary dishonesty” by the university. But the scandal never went away and, finally, in 1910—following another incident in which he locked up the tablets at the Penn Museum and took the storeroom keys with him to Europe, leaving inside unpacked crates of crumbling artifacts—he submitted his resignation to the university. “He doesn’t think they will accept it, but they do,” he adds.

The Excavation at the Temple Court in Nippur (1903) by Hamdi Bey

The Fallout: At the height of excitement about the Nippur discoveries, Hamdi Bey was commissioned by Hilprecht, on behalf of the university, to create a painting for new galleries at the Penn Museum that were planned to tout the finds from the site. Hamdi Bey completed The Excavation at the Temple Court in Nippur in 1903, the same year that the book was published, and is believed to have been created from Haynes’s 1893 frontispiece photograph. Hamdi Bey, however, added a few finishing touches, including Hilprecht on site examining the pottery in the lower right-hand corner of the scene (detail below). “We know from the records of the excavation that Hilprecht was nowhere near this site in 1893,” says Ousterhout. ”He was there in 1891 and he was there again in 1900. So he’s actually put in the photograph here, overseeing an excavation when he was nowhere near it!”

Hilprecht examining pottery at the site

After Hilprecht’s resignation, however, the university turned down the painting and cancelled plans for the new galleries. Hilprecht’s wife purchased the work and the couple took it to their home in Germany where, according to correspondence, it hung in a place of honor. Mrs. Hilprecht’s granddaughter gave it to the Penn Museum in 1948. Neither painting—now valued at an estimated $6–8 million each—has ever been on display at the Penn Museum before.

“The university thought that they were going to get a Nippur gallery out of this,” says says Ousterhout. ”What they got was the Nippur scandal.” The tribe had spoken.

“Archaeologists & Travelers in Ottoman Lands” is on view at the Penn Museum through June 26, 2011. An expanded version of the show—with its emphasis shifted onto the Ottoman perspective of watching the Americans come into the empire—will open at Istanbul’s Pera Museum in October.

The Iceman's findspot (Photo © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology/Marco Samadelli)

On September 19, 1991, two hikers from Nuremberg, Germany, made the accidental discovery of a lifetime in the Ötzal Valley Alps: the 5,300-year-old frozen remains of a man preserved by a glacier. Over the past two decades, “Ötzi the Iceman,” has captivated the attention of researchers and the public alike, as new facts have seeped out about his life, clothing and equipment, untimely death, and tattoos, which are among the world’s oldest. (In 2007, the blogosphere lit up when Brad Pitt reportedly got a tattoo of the Iceman’s chalk outline.)

Ötzi—actually, his discovery—turns 20 this month and Italy’s South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology, where he now resides, is hosting a special exhibition in his honor called “Ötzi 20.” He may not yet be old enough to order a beer in the U.S., but the Iceman has a lot to celebrate in this show, which includes latest scientific findings and interpretations as well as a brand-new reconstruction by Netherlandish brothers Alfons and Adrie Kennis.

On the eve of the exhibition’s March 1 opening, Beat Gugger, curator of the “Ötzi 20^” exhibition, and Swiss museum expert Andreas Putzer, archaeologist and co-curator of the show, kindly took time amid a flurry of preparations to answer my questions.

Examination of Ötzi by Dr. Eduard Egarter Vigil (Photo © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology)

Eti: What is the most surprising thing you’ve learned about Ötzi over the past 20 years?
Beat Gugger: It is interesting how new scientific methods have been able to provide a highly detailed reconstruction of the life and death of Ötzi, and are still capable of revealing new aspects.

Eti: What do we now know about his tattoos?
Andreas Putzer: Ötzi’s tattoos are among the oldest evidence of tattoos and their therapeutic purposes. On his body can be seen some 50 tattoos in the form of groups of lines and crosses. Four groups of lines are located to the left of the lumbar region, one to the right, and three each on the left calf, the back of the right foot, and on the outer and inner right ankle. A cross can be seen on the inside of the right knee and in the area of his left Achilles tendon. Two tattooed lines also appear on his left wrist.

Eti: Do we know any more about the technique used to apply them?
Andreas Putzer: Unlike modern tattoos, Ötzi’s tattoos were not produced using needles but rather by fine cuts into which charcoal was subsequently rubbed. Bone or copper needles and flint may have been used as tattooing instruments.

The Kennis brothers created a new reconstruction of Ötzi's face (below) (Photo © South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology/Heike Engel)

Eti: Are his tattoos reflected in the new reconstruction that was made for the exhibition?
Beat Gugger: The new reconstruction will depict Ötzi with a naked torso. The tattoos on his back and wrist will therefore also be visible.

Eti: Why was it so important to create a new reconstruction?
Beat Gugger: After 10 years of research and new forensic evidence, there was a need to combine these results in a new reconstruction [face pictured below]. The Kennis brothers from the Netherlands have created a figure using the latest scientific discoveries with both an awareness of the region from which Ötzi came and considerable artistic talent. The new reconstruction will certainly change our image of the Iceman. [See the National Geographic Germany article (PDF, in German).]

Eti: What do you think is the most scientifically significant recent finding about Ötzi?
Beat Gugger: It is interesting that Ötzi was preserved as a mummy and found with his everyday clothes and equipment, just as he had lived, and not, for example, like the Egyptian mummies who were prepared after death for the “journey to the hereafter.”

Eti: What, to you, is the most personally interesting recent discovery about Ötzi?
Beat Gugger: There was special excitement recently at the news that scientists had succeeded in decoding Ötzi’s genetic material. It must first be evaluated—we eagerly await the results.

New reconstruction of Ötzi's face by the Kennis brothers (Heike Engel-21Lux/Südtiroler Archäologiemuseum/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC DEUTSCHLAND)

Eti: What are some of the “secrets” Ötzi still holds?
Beat Gugger: There are still many open questions about his life and death. Scientists still have to clarify numerous questions in coming years about where and with what group of people Ötzi lived. We will never be able to discover everything about the life and death of Ötzi—and it is perhaps not such a bad thing if Ötzi keeps a few secrets to himself.

Eti: What is Ötzi’s larger significance in the story of archaeology?
Beat Gugger: Ötzi is a man from a period of over 5,000 years ago who, like a time traveler, has physically landed in the 20th and 21st centuries. He lived on the cusp of the Stone Age and the Bronze Age: owing to the Ötzi find, this epoch is particularly interesting for archaeologists and is now designated by researchers as the Copper Age. It goes without saying that archaeological research in the Alpine region is extremely interested in finds from this era.

Eti: Why do you think Ötzi has become so popular? Why are people drawn to him?
Beat Gugger: Without doubt, his name, but also the political arguments at the outset, have contributed much to his popularity. Hugely important, however, is the scientific sensation he created: we have an almost direct insight into his life of over 5,000 years ago.

“Ötzi 20” is on view at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology from March 1, 2011 to January 15, 2012. The special website devoted to the exhibition includes fun sections on Ötzi-themed curiosities and arts.