The "Key Holders," Heroes of Afghanistan

Another compelling article about the current "Hidden Treasures of Afghanistan" exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The article contains photos of some of the treasures - check them out! 2,000-year-old treasures tell wild story NEELY TUCKER; The Washington Post Published: May 25th, 2008 01:00 AM An exhibit in Washington, D.C., reveals gold, intrigue and jewelry once buried in Afghanistan. The finds have survived looters and wars. WASHINGTON – You can go see Indiana Jones and the temple of whatever if you like, but it’s probably not going to be as good as the Bactrian Gold and the Secret of Tillya Tepe. The former is at any multiplex. The latter is at only the National Gallery of Art. It’s one of those ripping good yarns of yesteryear, the kind you used to see on cliffhanger serials before the main feature. This one is set in a dusty corner of Afghanistan. It’s about ancient art, looters, gravediggers, the Russians, the French, the Taliban, an invasion or three, civil war, the Silk Road, the Dragon Master and 22,607 pieces of gold and ivory and lapis and turquoise. There’s a surprising role played by pink Chinese toilet paper and six mysterious safes in a sealed underground vault at the presidential compound. OK, so the plot gets a little crowded. That tends to happen when your story is true and covers more than 2,000 years. The show is “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul,” and it is a remarkable display from a remote outpost in the world of antiquity: a dusty land of foreign traders, violent nomads, dangerous women and the unmistakable glint of gold. It has a great subplot of archaeologists winning one against the black market. It plays until Sept. 7. Like any good archaeological thriller, this one features valuable antiquities and modern twists, set into world-shaping international politics. After being covered by dirt and mud for nearly 2,000 years, most of the artifacts in this show were discovered in digs made during the 1930s or the 1970s. Then, once found, they were lost again, as the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the rise of the Taliban in 1996 raised successive clouds of dust over their whereabouts. Most archaeologists feared they had been lost forever to the black market or destroyed by the Taliban. Then, three years after the Sept. 11 attacks and the subsequent defeat of the Taliban, the sealed cases and footlockers were opened in vaults in the Arg, the Afghan presidential compound in Kabul. Nobody was sure what was in them – the keys had been lost – until they were broken open with a hammer, crowbar and finally a power saw. “This power saw starts going – bbbrrrzzzzttt!!! – and the sparks are flying, and at first I thought we were going to open them to find a couple of potatoes in a sack with a note saying, ‘We got here first! Your friends, the Taliban,’” says Frederik T. Hiebert, the show’s curator, who was representing the National Geographic Society when the safes were hacked open. “Or I thought the sparks would set something on fire, and it would burn up all these great artifacts inside.” Hiebert’s worries were well founded. It turned out much of the ivory and gold and glasswares had been packed in pink Chinese toilet paper. Which did not catch fire, and instead had preserved tens of thousands of items the wider world has not seen since the time of Christ. Here was the fabled Bactrian gold, named for the region in Afghanistan where it was found, in the graves discovered at a place called Tillya Tepe (“hill of gold”): Bracelets. Necklaces. A golden belt. A woman’s crown, thin hammered orbs of gold, designed to be pulled apart into five pieces and stored flat. Pendants depicting the Dragon Master of lore, a nomadic man holding a dragon’s foreleg in each hand. Here, in another case, ivory carvings from the ancient warehouses found in archaeological digs in the city of Begram. A woman astride a mythical leogryph. A fish-shaped flask, made of glass, stunningly blue. A bronze statue of the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis-Heracles. More than 23,000 objects in all. “This is probably our best picture of how the Silk Road actually worked,” Hiebert is saying, giving a walk-through of the exhibit. He gets enthusiastic, pointing to a series of decorative plaques. They are flat and rectangular and carved of ivory. They depict women in various poses, sitting, standing, reclining. All these were part of an elaborate chair or throne, the rest of which is missing. On the adjacent wall, a flat-screen monitor shows a rotating three-dimensional re-creation of how all the pieces would have been placed together on the throne. “This is the first time in 2,000 years anyone has seen that throne,” Hiebert says. The Silk Road of which you’ll hear much in this exhibit was not actually a single thoroughfare, but a series of trails, pathways and trading routes that ran from Rome, Greece and Egypt, and stretched all the way to China, with connections to Siberia, India and Persia. Those roads pretty much all ran through northern Afghanistan. “Nowhere in antiquity have so many different objects from so many different cultures – Chinese mirrors, Roman coins, daggers from Serbia – been found together in situ,” Viktor Ivanovich Sarianidi, the Russian archaeologist who made the historic find at Tillya Tepe in 1979, wrote in National Geographic in 1990. As recounted in that article, he was the leader of a joint Soviet-Afghan project that had been digging among ancient ruins in the region, off and on, for nine years. In 1978 he spotted a bit of painted potsherd on a nearby hillock. They dug beneath it. They uncovered a confusing site, as layers of villages from about 300 B.C. were lying atop the ruins of a massive edifice of walls and turrets more than 1,000 years older. That edifice had been built and collapsed and rebuilt, and apparently sat unused for more than 600 years. And amid these ancient ruins, they made a remarkable discovery: Tombs, from perhaps the 1st century A.D. It was a historic find, but civil war and the Soviet invasion were closing in. Sarianidi got the artifacts from the first six graves to Kabul before war broke out. He left in February 1979. In the intervening years, the national museum was bombed. Tons of Afghan artifacts turned up in Europe, traded on the black market. The Taliban, which did not allow graven images, destroyed more than 2,500 pieces of artwork in the museum. Archaeologists figured Sarianidi’s historic find had been sold off, melted down or destroyed. The find was thrilling in its day, but again, war intervened: World War II ended the dig. The artifacts were shipped to the national museum in Kabul and duly lost. It turns out they were in the footlockers in that vault in the Afghan presidential compound, the same place the goods from Tillya Tepe were taken. A small society of “tahilwidars,” or keyholders, had kept them safe, never saying a word about the treasure. Omara Khan Masoudi, the director of the national museum, was one. After the country was stabilized, they informed Karzai, and the world found them again. “To me, this exhibit isn’t just about archaeology, it’s about keeping culture alive, about real heroism in hiding and saving these artifacts,” Hiebert says. ********************************************************************************** The tahilwidars are heroes.

Women Warriors

I've made a point in this blog of writing about some of the history of women in war and women warriors. It is a tradition that goes back into the mists of time, something about which I am still learning (for we sure didn't study any of this stuff in school!) and now studying. (A few good resources to get you started: "Warrior Women," by Jeannine Davis Kimball, Ph.D.; "Women Warriors: A History," by David E. Jones; "Woman As Force in Long History: A Study in Traditions and Realities", by Mary Beard) Women have always fought, usually side by side with their husbands, fathers and brothers. History has given short-shrift to them, but there are examples from every age of women warriors who have made it into the history books. The thought of women being "too fragile" to fight seems to be a peculiarly late 19th century concept out of the age of Victoria that, at some levels, still seems to hold root in popular imagination in western cultures today but which denies a very different reality. Now, with the advent of "modern" warfare, more women warriors than ever are being injured and killed in the line of duty. This op-ed piece from The New York Times brings home some bitter truths about a different kind of injury in today's reality of women in war: For Women Warriors, Deep Wounds, Little Care By HELEN BENEDICT Published: May 26, 2008 THIS Memorial Day, as an ever-increasing number of mentally and physically wounded soldiers return from Iraq, the Department of Veterans Affairs faces a pressing crisis: women traumatized not only by combat but also by sexual assault and harassment from their fellow service members. Sadly, the department is failing to fully deal with this problem. Women make up some 15 percent of the United States active duty forces, and 11 percent of the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nearly a third of female veterans say they were sexually assaulted or raped while in the military, and 71 percent to 90 percent say they were sexually harassed by the men with whom they served. This sort of abuse drastically increases the risk and intensity of post-traumatic stress disorder. One study found that female soldiers who were sexually assaulted were nine times more likely to show symptoms of this disorder than those who weren’t. Sexual harassment by itself is so destructive, another study revealed, it causes the same rates of post-traumatic stress in women as combat does in men. And rape can lead to other medical crises, including diabetes, asthma, chronic pelvic pain, eating disorders, miscarriages and hypertension. The threat of post-traumatic stress has risen in recent years as women’s roles in war have changed. More of them now come under fire, suffer battle wounds and kill the enemy, just as men do. As women return for repeat tours, usually redeploying with their same units, many must go back to war with the same man (or men) who abused them. This leaves these women as threatened by their own comrades as by the war itself. Yet the combination of sexual assault and combat has barely been acknowledged or studied. Last month, when the RAND Corporation released the biggest non-military survey of the mental health of troops since 2001, it unwittingly reflected this lack of research. The survey found that women suffer from higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression than men do, but it neglected to look into why this might be, and asked no questions about abuse from fellow soldiers. Terri Tanielian, the project’s co-editor, told me that RAND needs more money to explore these higher rates of trauma among women. As the more than 191,500 women who have served in the Middle East since 2001 return home, they will increasingly flood the Veterans Affairs system. To ask those who need help for post-traumatic stress disorder to turn to a typical Veterans Affairs hospital, built in the 1950s and designed to treat men, is untenable. Women who have been raped or sexually assaulted often cannot face therapy groups or medical facilities full of men. At the moment, the Department of Veterans Affairs operates only six inpatient post-traumatic stress disorder programs specifically for women. And although all 153 department-run hospitals will treat women, only 22 have stand-alone women’s clinics that offer a full range of medical and psychological services. This number of clinics may seem adequate for the 1.7 million female veterans currently at home, especially since they represent only 7.2 percent of all veterans at the moment, but it isn’t. Many clinics are miles from where soldiers live, and many more are open only a few hours a week and lack staff members trained to deal with sexual assault, let alone assault combined with combat trauma. The Department of Veterans Affairs says it plans to open more clinics for post-traumatic stress disorder, but how many will be only for women remains undecided. Women are the fastest-growing group of veterans, and by 2020 they are projected to account for 20 percent of all veterans under the age of 45. Not all of these women will have suffered sexual assault, but many will have medical or psychological needs that conventional department hospitals cannot meet. The Department of Veterans Affairs must open more comprehensive women’s health clinics, designate more facilities for women who have endured both combat and military sexual trauma and finance more support groups specifically for female combat veterans. The best way to honor all of our soldiers is to do what we can to help them mend. Helen Benedict, a professor of journalism at Columbia, is the author of the novel “The Opposite of Love” and the forthcoming “The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq.” ************************************************************************************* I did not publish this piece to denigrate the service of our male warriors. They, too, are being short-changed by inadequate funding of veterans' support and medical services. The situation as it exists today is absolutely appalling! If our President is willing to send our brave members of the armed forces and the armed forces reserves into dangerous combat situations, we as a nation should do whatever it takes and fund whatever it costs to serve them and treat them when they are injured as a result of service for their country. Anything less is just a disgrace, pure and simple. If we have trillions to fight wars in foreign lands, why don't we have trillions to treat and provide services to our veterans? Shame shame on the President. Shame shame on Congress.

News from the Ken Whyld Association

Photo: Isis and Ken Whyld, IGK Symposium, Amsterdam, November, 2001. From personal album, taken by dondelion.

From the Ken Whyld Association website:
New Chess Literature

Alessandro Sanvito has written a new book about old chess manuscripts: Scacchi manoscritti (120 p.; price: 22.-- €) has been published by Caissa Italia editore where you will find further details.

A new Correspondence Chess Database on CD Ultracorr 2 has been announced by Tim Harding for June/July 2008 which will only be produced if at least 60 advance orders will be received by end of May. The advance price is 32 Euro. Orders can be made via his web site, here the direct link to the order page. Moreover a new book on olympiads has been announced by Mario Tal, you will find more details (in English / German) in this pdf-file!

A number 9 of Dr Hans Ellinger's series "Tübinger Beiträge zum Thema Schach" a reprint of the Lasker drama Vom Menschen die Geschichte [The History of Man] has just been published, you will learn all essential things from this flyer which also contains an order slip (in German; pdf-file).

The KWA serves a worthwhile cause, originally championed by chess historian Ken Whyld (d. July, 2003). Ken spent the greater part of his life researching and writing about chess and its history (including the elusive origins of the game) and amassed a huge collection of chess literature and writings on chess that were, after his death, donated by his widow to the Swiss Museum of Games, curator Dr. Ulrich Schadler (a friend of Goddesschess). Please consider supporting the worthy goals of the KWA via membership.

Goddesschess

Mr. Don has put together this week's edition of "Random Round-up" at Goddesschess (it's on the main page, on the right hand side, underneath Access Mundae). Mr. Don has outdone himself this week, LOL! Please visit and check out the poster he put together for "Arkansas Smith and the Temple of Chess," featuring stars of Goddesschess from left to right: Isis, Mr. Don, yours truly as the Woman in Dark Glasses and our resident beautiful young person, Michelle. Rock Crystal is his theme this week, and he takes us on an adventure in chessly directions...

Memorial Day 2008

My Dad died in early November, 2002, at 80 years of age. He was a WWII vet, like the fathers of so many of my baby-boomer generation. I think about my Dad all the time, but especially on Memorial Day.

This year, I noticed for the first time that there were no veterans out in the shopping malls and the stores selling red poppies. Why not? What happened? I've always bought a poppy, even when I was just a kid and I didn't even know what it meant, just because Dad said we should always remember and buy a poppy from a veteran. Even when I was a punk-butt teenager who thought she knew it all, I always bought a poppy (although I would hide it inside my purse). As I got older and learned something more about life and the world, I would seek out the veterans who'd be out on the street corners or inside shopping centers selling their poppies a few weeks before Memorial Day. But I saw no veterans selling poppies this year. Is it because so many VFW posts have closed, all their members either dead or too old to participate any more? Where are the younger veterans? Do they not care to carry on the tradition (at least, in my hometown)?

This is my Dad in his uniform (Army, enlisted man). He sure was a handsome guy. He had light blue eyes and curly hair. As a kid his hair was light blonde but it grew darker as he grew older. By the time I was born in 1951 all vestiges of his blondness had gone, leaving him with brown curly hair, but he passed on the blonde hair and blue eyes to several of my siblings. In the strange way of genetics, I inherited the "dark" streak from the Newton side of the family - olive-toned skin, dark auburn hair, brown/hazel eyes and a petite bone structure, like two of my "Italian" looking Newton aunts! My hair was always stick straight until a few years ago, I noticed a definite "frizz" starting to develop, much to my horror! Now when I wash my hair and let it dry naturally, it is quite wavy (and it frizzes in the humidity of the Wisconsin climate, eek!) A legacy from my Dad, I guess, that is showing up in my "mature" years (no comments from the peanut gallery about my age, thank you very much!)

To all of our veterans and their families, my heart is with you today. I miss my dad a lot, but I'm glad to have known him. He was a wonderful man.

Mehen

Mehen was both a goddess - the protector of Ra - and one of the earliest known board games played in Egypt. (Image: Mehen, British Museum, c. 2800 BCE). While online you'll find many references to Mehen as a "god," in her archaic form Mehen was definitely a female protectoress of the Sun God, perhaps closely allied with (or perhaps, an incarnation of or subsumed into) the Egyptian serpent-goddess and protectoress of Pharaoh, Uadjet. Upon the uniting of Upper and Lower Egypt, the vulture goddess Nekbhet of Upper Egypt and the serpent goddess Uadjet (also known as Buto) of Lower Egypt were united in one of the ceremonial crowns worn by Pharaoh to protect the physical incarnation of Ra on earth.

Stone Mehen board games have been recovered from First Dynasty Egyptian tombs but it's origins lies somewhere in the pre-dynastic period. The game gradually lost favor over the ensuing thousand plus years after the founding of the united Egyptian kingdom and ceased to be played in Egypt during the Intermediate Period. According to Peter Piccione, "Later in the Saite Period, the play of the game is again depicted on the walls of two tombs, as part of the neo-Memphite revival--when Old Kingdom artistic motives and themes were temporarily revived for socio-political purposes. The pattern strongly suggests that the *mehen*-game ceased to be played in Egypt after the Old Kingdom."

By that time, Senet and the 58-hole game (or Hounds and Jackals) were very popular in Egypt and Senet had taken on religious significance and mystical connotations that may have been appropriated from Mehen.

A form of Mehen evidently continued to be played by the Baggara Arabs of the Sudan called "the Hyena game." The modern "Game of the Goose" which also employs a spiral playing board is not, however, related to ancient Mehen.

For general information on Mehen:
P.S. Neely's website entry on Mehen (including post done by Peter Piccione in 1994 on the old ANE network)

Pascal Romain's website entry on Mehen (he posits a date as far back as 6000 BCE for the game outside of Egypt)

See also Board Game Geek, although it really is not known just why Mehen ceased to be played in Egypt, Neely's speculations (based on Kendall's) aside.

Mehen the Enveloper from Barbara Walker's "A Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets:" Egyptian serpent-goddess who enclosed the Phallus of Ra every night, as Hindu phallic gods were enveloped in their sleep cycles by the serpent-goddess called Infinity. See Serpent.

Walker's entry under "Serpent" is 7 pages long! There's a thunderstorm going on here now, I'm going to power down for the night -

2008 President's Cup

Held in Baku, Azerbaijan May 12 – 20, 2008 I'm a little late reporting the final standings - it took me awhile to work my way down the list and confirm the chess femmes because I was not familiar with most of the names! 1 9 GM Najer Evgeniy 2627 RUS 7,5 ($7,000) (not a chess femme!) 16 24 GM Stefanova Antoaneta 2538 BUL 6,5 ($600) 43 38 IM Paehtz Elisabeth 2449 GER 5,5 ($500) 56 52 WGM Khotenashvili Bela 2333 GEO 5,0 ($400) 57 54 IM Zozulia Anna 2332 BEL 5,0 ($300) 59 59 WIM Batsiashvili Nino 2304 GEO 5,0 ($200) 64 56 WGM Mamedjarova Zeinab 2322 AZE 5,0 ($200) 67 128 Abdulla Khayala 1982 AZE 5,0 69 63 WGM Mamedjarova Turkan 2271 AZE 5,0 74 80 WIM Gavasheli Ana 2191 GEO 5,0 83 111 Kazimova Narmin 2072 AZE 4,5 87 83 WFM Mammadova Gulnar 2188 AZE 4,5 88 102 Agasiyeva Fidan (AZE 2095), 4.5 90 98 Huseynova Sahar (AZE 2106), 4.5 91 79 Isgandarova Khayala 2193 AZE 4,5 98 99 Khudaverdieva Afag 2104 AZE 4,5 102 95 WFM Ni Viktorija 2120 LAT 4,5 112 118 Asgarova Turan (AZE 2020), 4.0 117 130 Babazade Jale (AZE 1974), 4.0 120 119 Guliyeva Sabina 2020 AZE 4,0 121 147 Soyunlu Narmin (AZE 1784), 4.0 128 132 Agayeva Gulshan (AZE 1956), 4.0 129 140 Hasanova Turkan 1897 AZE 3,5 131 74 WIM Umudova Nargiz 2222 AZE 3,5 134 131 Mammadova Aysel Alishiraz qizi 1962 AZE 3,5 139 124 Agayeva Aytan 1989 AZE 3,5 142 121 WCM Fataliyeva Ulviyyya (AZE 2003), 3.5 146 172 Kazimova Firuza Bakhlul qizi 1700 AZE 3,0 156 Khalafova Narmin Ilgar qizi 1954 AZE 2,0 174 156 Khalafova Narmin Ilgar qizi 1954 AZE 2,0 180 171 Karimova Nazrin Faiq qizi 1700 AZE 1,0

2008 U.S. Senior Open

I looked down the final standings table for chess femmes in this 78 player event held in Boca Raton, Florida April 28 - May 3, 2008. I found one - and only one, Hannalore Catania (1800), who finished in 69th place with 1.5 The event was won by IM Larry Kaufman (2383) with a perfect score of 5.0/5. Here are some familiar names who also played in the tournament: (5) IM Joseph M. Bradford (2467), 5.0 (7) GM Dmitry Gurevich (2594), 5.0 (16) Jerry Hanken (2200), 3.0 (30) Eric D. Moskow (2248), 3.0 (a very young "senior") (36) Al Lawrence (2000), 2.5 (38) Tim Redman (2000), 2.5 (78) Joel Channing (1283), 0.0

Chess in Africa

We don't see much news about chess in Africa. Here's an article about a tournament that Johnnie Walker Black Label Company sponsored in Ghana. Story posted at ModernGhana.com Hasford wins Chess Championship By GNA Sun, 25 May 2008 Sports News John Kojo Hasford scored 4.5 points, to win the Black Label National Chess Championship played at the Coconut Grove Regency Hotel in Accra on Saturday. Peter Anane-Nsiah, Francis Anquandah, John O’Neil and Kees Hoogenda scored four points each to take the second, third, fourth and fifth positions in that order. The one-day competition, which attracted about 80 players, was sponsored by Johnie Walker Black Label Company. Mr Eddie Thompson, Vice Chairman of the Ghana Chess Association said the association would do everything possible to ensure that the game was developed. He appealed to corporate bodies and institutions to help the association in its developmental efforts. The next competition will be held on July 1.

A History of the Governess

As an avid reader of "historical" (a/k/a romantic) fiction, particularly period Regency romances, I am intimately acquainted with the poor lot of the governess. Of course, the most famous governess in literature is probably the fictional "Jane Eyre" by Charlotte Bronte (at least, I think it was Charlotte - well, it was one of the Bronte sisters). There have been several "made for t.v." movies and some theatrical releases made of Jane Eyre's story - and I've watched every single one. My personal favorite is the one that stars the ugly George C. Scott as Mr. Rochester and the fabulous actress Susannah York as Jane (1970 made for t.v.) I've yet to see a performance equal hers as Jane Eyre. So, here is a book on the history of the British governess, aptly titled: Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres, by Ruth Brandon. Sounds rather fascinating, if uneven (according to the New York Times review).

Exhibit to bring temple of Artemis to İstanbul

From Today's Zaman May 22, 2008 Archaeological finds from Artemision, the Temple of Artemis in the ancient Aegean site of Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, will be exhibited for the first time in İstanbul. The exhibition, "Artemision: A Temple of a Goddess," will be inaugurated today at the İstanbul Archaeology Museum with a ceremony that visiting Austrian President Heinz Fischer will attend. The exhibition will showcase 453 items on loan from the Ephesus Museum in Selçuk and 72 works from the İstanbul Archaeology Museum's own inventory, reported the Anatolia news agency. The artifacts to be displayed include bronze, glazed, precious metal, ivory and amber findings from the archaic period and about 100 electron coins created in the oldest known coin minting in history. Some of these artifacts were preserved in the treasury room of the İstanbul Archaeology Museum and have not been on display since 1970. Likewise, a majority of the artifacts brought from the Ephesus Museum will be put on public display for the first time, Anatolia said. The Temple of Artemis, or Artemision in Greek, was designed and built by Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes in 550 B.C. The construction of this all-marble temple was financed by Lydian King Kroisos. The temple was unearthed by British archaeologist John Turtle Wood in 1870 after a long search that lasted for seven years. Upon application by the British Museum, David Gorge Hoghart started conducting archaeological excavations in 1905 on the temple and its surrounding area. These excavations unearthed not only parts of the temple, but also thousands of amber, bronze, ivory and glazed objects and coins dating back to sixth and seventh centuries B.C. Since 1965, the excavations at the site have been carried out by an Austrian team of archeologists, who discovered new findings that helped shed more light on the architecture of the temple. By expanding the excavations, the team found important evidence that relates to the early period of the temple dating back to the second millennium B.C. ********************************************************************************* More information on the Temple of Artemis (a/k/a Diana) at Ephesus, including photographs. This information makes it clear that this incarnation of Artemis was actually related to the Anatolian mother goddess Cybele, who wore a tower on her head as a crown (representing city walls).

A Grieving Nation Asks: Why?

A picture is worth a thousand words. This is what's left of the school talked about in the article.

From The New York Times
Chinese Are Left to Ask Why Schools Crumbled in Quake

By JIM YARDLEY
Published: May 25, 2008
This story was reported by Jim Yardley, Jake Hooker and Andrew C. Revkin, and was written by Mr. Yardley.

DUJIANGYAN, China — The earthquake’s destruction of Xinjian Primary School was swift and complete. Hundreds of children were crushed as the floors collapsed in a deluge of falling bricks and concrete. Days later, as curiosity seekers came with video cameras and as parents came to grieve, the four-story school was no more than rubble.

In contrast, none of the nearby buildings were badly damaged. A separate kindergarten less than 20 feet away survived with barely a crack. An adjacent 10-story hotel stood largely undisturbed. And another local primary school, Beijie, catering to children of the elite, was in such good condition that local officials were using it as a refugee center.

“This is not a natural disaster,” said Ren Yongchang, whose 9-year-old son died inside the destroyed school. His hands were covered in plaster dust as he stood beside the rubble, shouting and weeping as he grabbed the exposed steel rebar of a broken concrete column. “This is not good steel. It doesn’t meet standards. They stole our children.”

There is no official figure on how many children died at Xinjian Primary School, nor on how many died at scores of other schools that collapsed in the powerful May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province. But the number of student deaths seems likely to exceed 10,000, and possibly go much higher, a staggering figure that has become a simmering controversy in China as grieving parents say their children might have lived had the schools been better built.

The Chinese government has enjoyed broad public support for its handling of the earthquake, and in Sichuan on Saturday, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations praised the government’s response.

But as parents at different schools begin to speak out, the question of whether official negligence, and possibly corruption, contributed to the student deaths could turn public opinion. The government has launched an investigation, but censors, wary of the public mood, are trying to suppress the issue in state-run media and online.

An examination of the collapse of Xinjian Primary School offers a disturbing picture of a calamity that might have been avoided. Many parents say they were told the school was unsafe. Xinjian was poorly built when it opened its doors in 1992, they say, and never got its share of government funds for reconstruction because of its low ranking in the local education bureaucracy and the low social status of its students.

A decade ago, a detached wing of the school was torn down and rebuilt because of safety concerns. But the main building remained unimproved. Engineers and earthquake experts who examined photographs of its wreckage concluded that the structure had many failings and one critical flaw: inadequate iron reinforcing rods running up the school’s vertical columns. One expert described the unstable concrete floor panels as “time bombs.”

Rest of article.

Goddess Kanyakumari

Undated article/editorial. This isn't a rant on Tibet. I only copied out the part dealing with this interesting Goddess, Kanyakumari. Notice the last part of her name - MARI. That is the same as the Latin root for sea - "mare" - and obviously, Kanyakumari is a Goddess looking out to the sea, and the same word "kanyakumari" also means "land's end." The Latin word "mare" comes from an older Indo-European language that gave rise to Latin as well as many other languages. As I understand it, Sanskrit is the oldest and most pure form of language that can be directly linked to the original Indo-European language. Editorial Road To Liberation Laxmi Bahadur Vaidya Both for the Hindus and the Buddhist, India is very popular, prominent and famous tourist destination all over the world. It possesses several sacred pilgrimage places. Kanyakumari, the land’s end, is a charming, popular and unique religious as well as recreational tourist centre at the confluence of the three seas-the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. A large number of tourists are attracted by the serene beauty of this place and the spectacles of sunrise and sunset. The sunset and the moonrise can be seen almost simultaneously on full-moon days from the same spot. The temple of the virgin goddess Kanyakumari, which is overlooking the sea, is situated at the tip of the land. Posture The goddess stands above the pedestal in a lovely pose. She has a crown on her head in which valuable gems and diamonds are embedded. She also is adorned with gold ornaments containing various gems and jewels including brilliant earrings on her ears. The goddess is holding a rosary in her right hand and touches the garland by her left hand. A sparkling nose jewel too sheds lustrous radiance. The image, made of blue stone, is believed to have been installed by sage Parasurama. According to folktales and mythological stories, the goddess Parasakti in her reincarnation came down to earth as a virgin to annihilate Banasura (king of demons) who has harassed the Gods and tortured the saints, sages and hermits causing them endless misery.

Chess News Update

Hola darlings! I'm just about to go out and tackle the dreaded mess in the back yard. I've updated Chess Femme News, May 24, 2008. I've begun work on my June Chessville column, as the end of the month is coming up fast and the editor will be knocking on my email door soon politely asking where it's at! But first - to the raking!

An Interview with WIM Padmini Rout

Orissa chess champion Padmini Rout aims to become a Grand Master KalingaTimes Correspondent Bhubaneswar, May 23: Chess prodigy Padmini Rout needs no introduction. After becoming the youngest player from Orissa to earn the WIM title she has been nominated for the coveted Biju Patnaik Sports Award which would be presented to her later this year. At 14 she has earned name, fame and money, practically everything that children her age can dream of. She spoke to KalingaTimes.com in an exclusive interview: KT: What it feels to be the youngest WIM of Orissa? Padmini: It's a great feeling indeed. More so because very few from Orissa have earned the IM title. Being the youngest makes it all the more special. KT: You have been nominated for the Biju Patnaik Sports Award this year. How do you feel? Padmini: Receiving the highest sports award of the state will certainly be a matter of pride and great satisfaction. Awards act as morale booster and I'm sure this will encourage me to perform better and better in my chosen field. KT: Who have been your toughest competitors? Padmini: I have played against many but I think in my category I am quite strong. As it is, I treat all my opponents as rivals. KT: Which was your first international title? Padmini: It was the Asian championship in 2005 at New Delhi . KT: Do you think chess players of Orissa are getting the right kind of atmosphere and facilities here? Padmini: We don't have the state-of-the-art facilities compared to other states. For the beginners they may be alright but when it comes to professional coaching, Orissa lags behind as we do not have any Grand Masters here. A lot depends on self practice. I depend on my own computer and books for the practice. KT: Is sponsorship a big problem here? Padmini: Sponsorship is a great problem. It is difficult to find a sponsor in Orissa whereas in other states you get sponsorships rather easily. Getting a good sponsor in our state is difficult even after one performs well and wins major titles. KT: Who are the players you idolize? Padmini: My ideal player is Mikhail Tal. I also like Garry Kasprov. Among Indians I like Viswanathan Anand and Sasikaran. KT: Does chess affect your studies? Ho do you balance studies and chess? Padmini: No it hardly affects my studies. I study hard at the time of exams. My school also supports me very much. KT: What are your next big championships? Padmini: National Women's B at Calicut in June and Asian championship in July. KT: When can we expect Padmini Rout to become a Grand Master? Padmini: Within three years, hopefully.

Silent Survivors of Afghanistan’s 4,000 Tumultuous Years

Prior post.

From The New York Times
By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: May 23, 2008

WASHINGTON — Art objects inspire many reactions, perhaps most crucially acts of preservation or destruction. From 1979 to late 2001, destruction had the upper hand in Afghanistan. The Soviet-Afghan war, the ensuing civil war and finally the pernicious rule of the Taliban inflicted incalculable losses on active archaeological sites and ancient monuments and artworks.

In March 2001 the world watched helplessly as the Taliban blew up the two giant Buddhas carved from existing rock that had faced each other across the Bamiyan Valley for 1,500 years. The progressive destruction of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul was less blatant but equally tragic. Its collection of 100,000 artworks and artifacts — one of the finest in Asia — spanned several millenniums of Afghanistan’s rich, multicultural history.

The museum suffered looting, bombing, fire; the Taliban ordered destruction of all depictions of the human figure. By the time they were driven from power in November 2001, the Kabul museum had lost two-thirds of its collection. (Since then the museum has been safe, although looting continues outside Kabul.)

But isolated acts of preservation and some lucky circumstances also prevailed. In 1988 a small group of the Kabul museum’s staff hid crates packed with about 600 of its most precious artworks in the vault of the presidential palace. No one was sure how these crates had fared until 2004, when they were retrieved with their contents intact.

Around 200 of these works are in “Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures From the National Museum, Kabul,” at the National Gallery of Art here. At once revelatory and heart-rending, this show, making a four-city American tour, has much to tell about Afghanistan, past and present.

The objects in the exhibition date from 2200 B.C. to around the second century A.D., that is, from the Bronze Age to the height of the Kushan Empire, which reached nearly across Asia and deep into the Indian subcontinent. Included are Indian ivories, Roman-Egyptian glass vessels, Greek and Greco-Bactrian bronzes and carved stone, as well as a trove known as the golden hoard of Bactria, an ancient empire in northern Afghanistan.

The combination offers a picture of Afghan cosmopolitanism, which was fed by the trade routes of the Silk Road, and the ethnic diversity resulting from invasions and peaceful migrations alike. Structured to focus on four important excavation sites, this show is the latest phase in a close working relationship between the National Geographic Society and the Kabul museum. It has been organized by the society in collaboration with the National Gallery and overseen by Fredrik Hiebert, a National Geographic Society fellow.

It begins and ends with gold objects separated by more than two millenniums. The first group consists of three rare Bronze Age gold bowls, one intact and fragments of two others. They were found in 1972 at a single site, Tepe Fullol, in northeastern Afghanistan, but their very different styles reflect influences from across Asia. The designs on the intact bowl are abstract, a square divided by an X; each quadrant contains a stepped square found on artifacts from Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. One bowl fragment is strictly local, with motifs of a wild boar, trees and mountains. The other fragment features a majestic bearded bull, an image common to Mesopotamia, 1,200 miles to the west.

Subsequent displays contain objects from the Greco-Bactrian city of Ai Khanum, founded in 300 B.C. by a follower of Alexander the Great and excavated by French archaeologists from 1964 to 1978. (Destined for Kabul’s Institute of Archaeology, which was completely destroyed, these finds survived, unnoticed, in crates that never got farther than the Ministry of Information and Culture in Kabul.) This gallery contains two leafy Corinthian capitals; lidded, partitioned bowls (for unguents and perfumes); and a full-length statue of a man named Stratos who grasps the folds of his robe in one hand, a gesture that might have influenced centuries of statues of Buddhist sculptures.

The showstopper in this section is a large ceremonial plaque in silver and gold from the third century B.C. that might have been part of Alexander’s entourage (image at beginning of article). It represents Cybele, the Greek goddess of nature, riding in a chariot driven by the winged goddess Nike, seen in profile. Their high, lion-drawn chariot seems Syrian, but the naturalism of the figures is largely Greek. This naturalism is at its best in the priest who walks behind the chariot, carrying a large parasol. He leans back with his head tilted up — making sure the deities are properly shaded — in a pose that has the alert springiness of a circus juggler. Also marvelous: the gold rocks and incised flowers underfoot.

Rest of article.

Friday Night Miscellany

Is summer ever going to come? It's cold here! Today it didn't get above 53 degrees, there was a strong constant wind off the lake out of the east and I wore a winter coat and gloves. Here's a story that made me go "what?" It's absolutely silly - the Manchester Museum covered it's mummies after someone complained about a partially naked mummy. Hmmm, as if it still looked like anything after 2000 plus years??? Zahi Hawass (I can think of lots of other things to call him, all unflattered takes on his name) chimed in about "respect" for the dead. Yeah, right. That's why ALL of the mummies in the Cairo Museum are naked. Har! Note to Self: Do NOT, I repeat, do NOT end up in this hospital - the buggers have obviously faulty equipment and totally incompetent staff people and doctors. Woman brain dead for 17 hours suddenly, miraculously, comes back to life? Oh, please. If that story isn't enough, here's another one. Gold-dusted burgers. I foresee a new industry....panning poop for gold dust... Evil America's plot to overthrow the communist system in Cuba - send cell phones! Dreamed up by no less than the astounding brainpower of our dearly soon to be departed Prez, George W. Bush. Could the people at Goddesschess possibly be considered potential enemies of the State? (cue spooky music from "One Step Beyond...) Well, think about this: we advocate a decidedly goddess point of view that is totally subversive to the established patriarchal order; we poke fun of everyone, demonstrating an irreverence for THOSE IN POWER (although I understand Bushy did like my comments some months ago about Chavez and the "waaaa, waaaa" photograph); we have lots and lots of pages filled with subversive, goddess-tainted information at our website - and here, too! On occasion, we (not including, of course, Mr. Don), wear PINK! And - here's the clincher, a few years back we actually discovered in our stats program the trail of a rather clumsy spy front agency that had suddenly developed a passion for all things Goddesschess - I seem to recall the business was selling the equivalent of modern-day "murphy beds" - darlings, I'm not making this up! Sooooo, if a "national emergency" should arise, we might be jacked up and hauled off to Guantanamo. But you know what, if they do that, they'll be sorry. I'll try and convert each and every one of 'em to a Christian Witness of Jehovah...

2008 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

What a kerfluffle last night! I didn't dream it - Anna Zatonskih DID win the Women's Championship after two games of rapid chess, two blitz, and one final "Armageddon" game - what did she and Krush get on their clocks, 30 seconds each??? Congratulations to AZ and to IK for a thrill-filled evening even though I'm really dragging today - 5:30 came REALLY fast this morning when I didn't hit the sack until after 1 a.m. Here are the final standings for the women: 1 Zatonskih, Anna IM 2490 USA 7.5 2 Krush, Irina IM 2515 USA 7.5 3-4 Abrahamyan, Tatev WFM 2280 USA 6.0 3-4 Rohonyan, Katerine WGM 2318 USA 6.0 5 Tuvshintugs, Batchimeg WIM 2289 USA 5.5 6 Battsetseg, Tsagaan WIM 2251 USA 4.5 7 Zenyuk, Iryna WFM 2205 USA 3.5 8-9 Epstein, Esther WM 2194 USA 2.0 8-9 Airapetian, Chouchanik WFM 2143 USA 2.0 10 Jamison, Courtney 2064 USA 0.5 What an exciting championship! My impression is that all of the women had a real fighting spirit this year and were going all out for wins. There were very few draws. I'll have to sit down tonight and figure out the relative percentage versus the men's draws. As noted last night, Tatev Abrahamyan had an excellent tournament, 6.0/9 and won the Goddesschess Fighting Chess prize of $500. I am not a good enough player to be able to assess the quality of play but from what I read elsewhere, the games were well-played. Of course there were goof-ups in the play-off games last night, that's to be expected given the exhaustion, overdose rushes of adrenalin during those last grueling minutes and the circumstances of the play-offs themselves. And Krush and Zatonskih experienced that too, har! I can't wait for the next big event! Will the US be fielding a women's Olympiad team this year? Shouldn't the USCF be getting that together quickly now, given that the women will need time to train and organize and USCF will need to raise some money to send them to Germany? Will FIDE ever organize another Women's World Chess Championship? What happened to the invitation from the government of Turkey to host the WCC there? Will I ever stop sounding like a soap opera? Stay tuned for AS THE PAWN TURNS...

Winner of 2008 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

Irina Krush! She won the third play-off game behind the black pieces in a rapid-chess game (5 minutes on the clock for each player) Here's the final game in PGN: [Event "2008 Frank K. Berry U.S. Chess Championship"] [Site "Tulsa"] [Date "2008.05.21"] [Round "12Playoff"] [White "Zatonskih, Anna"] [Black "Krush, Irina"][Result "0-1"] [WhiteELO "2490"][WhiteTitle "IM"] [BlackELO "2515"][BlackTitle "IM"] [Source "MonRoi"] 1.e4 c5 2.g3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 4.Nf3 Bg4 5.Bg2 Qe6 6.Kf1 Nc6 7.h3 Bh5 8.d3 Qd7 9.Be3 e6 10.Nbd2 Nf6 11.Nb3 Nd5 12.Bxc5 Bxc5 13.Nxc5 Qe7 14.Nb3 O-O 15.Kg1 f5 16.d4 Rad8 17.Qe2 Nf6 18.c3 Ne4 19.Re1 e5 20.Qe3 exd4 21.Nfxd4 Ne5 22.Nxf5 Rxf5 23.Qxe4 Bg6 24.f4 Qc7 25.Qxb7 Qc4 26.fxe5 Qd3 27.Kh2 Rf2 28.Rhf1 Rxb2 29.e6 h6 30.e7 Re8 31.Qd5 0-1 Thanks to Susan Polgar's blog for providing updating posts on the play-0ff games and the denouement. I'm exhausted - it's way past my bed-time and I haven't eaten supper yet, time for this chess femme to call it a night! STOP THE PRESSES! UPDATED 12:10 A.M. NOT SO FAST! I tried to go to bed before midnight and this is what I get - Irina Krush did NOT win - ANNA ZATONSKIH IS THE WINNER OF THE 2008 U.S. WOMEN'S CHESS CHAMPIONSHIP!!!!!! At least - I think so - that's what I read at both Monroi just a few seconds ago and at Susan Polgar's blog, so it MUST be true. I thought game 3, which Krush won (?) was the end - but I guess not. Oh, I'll try and figure it all out tomorrow, or else leave it up to the people who really know about this stuff. Darlings, I just follow along as best I can, which obviously sometimes is not very good! Okay, now I really must scrub off my crusted on make-up and hit the sack - the alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m....

I Can't Stand the Suspense!

Irina Krush won the second rapid-chess play-off game behind the white pieces against Anna Zatonskih, and so now - what? Another play-off game at even faster time controls? Help!

WINNER OF 2008 GODDESSCHESS FIGHTING CHESS AWARD!

GM Susan Polgar, who graciously agreed to decide who the winner of this year's Goddesschess prize fund would be, has declared to winner at her blog this evening: TATEV ABRAHAMYAN! Congratulations to Tatev - she wins the $500 prize for her great performance this year. Thank you again from Goddesschess to GM Susan Polgar for agreeing to select the winner of this year's prize fund, and for going above and beyond the call of duty in personally delivering the prize money to Mr. Berry in Tulsa. The Goddesschess folks are already planning how to make the special prize bigger and better next year... Thanks to all our friends and supporters - and - geez! The Championship isn't over yet! SP reported at her blog that Zatonskih won the first play-off game. As I'm typing this the second game is in progress. I need to hire a GM to sit beside me and explain how all of this works to me, darlings, besides feeding me insightful information on moves and blow-by-blow analysis!

2008 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

Krush and Rohonyan just drew, leaving Krush with 7.5 and Rohonyan with 6.0. I can't believe Rohonyan gave up! Who's the winner??? Krush and Zatonskih both end up with 7.5 - but someone has to take the title. Is the prize money for first and second added together and split? Here's the game in PGN: [Event "2008 Frank K. Berry U.S. Chess Championship"][Site "Tulsa"][Date "2008.05.21"][Round "9"][White "Krush, Irina"][Black "Rohonyan, Katerine"][Result "1/2-1/2"][WhiteELO "2515"][WhiteTitle "IM"][BlackELO "2318"][BlackTitle "WGM"][Source "MonRoi"]1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5 4.cxb5 a6 5.bxa6 g6 6.Nc3 Bxa6 7.g3 d6 8.Bg2 Bg7 9.Nf3 Nbd7 10.Rb1 O-O 11.O-O Qa5 12.Bd2 Bb7 13.Qc2 Qa6 14.e4 Ng4 15.Bg5 h6 16.Bc1 Qa5 17.Rd1 Ba6 18.Bd2 Nge5 19.Nxe5 Nxe5 20.Be1 Rfb8 21.b3 Qa3 22.h3 c4 23.Ne2 cxb3 24.axb3 Bxe2 25.Qxe2 Rxb3 26.f4 Rxb1 27.Rxb1 Nd3 28.Bd2 Bd4 29.Kh2 Nc5 30.e5 Qa2 31.Re1 Qc2 32.Be3 Qc3 33.Bxd4 Qxd4 34.Qe3 Qxe3 35.Rxe3 Kf8 36.g4 Ra4 37.Kg3 g5 38.fxg5 hxg5 39.h4 gxh4 40.Kxh4 Nd7 41.exd6 exd6 42.Re4 Ra2 43.Kg3 Ne5 44.Rb4 Ke7 45.g5 Rd2 46.Rb7 Kd8 47.Rb4 Kc7 48.Be4 Rd1 49.Bg2 Rg1 50.Kh2 Ra1 51.Kg3 Ra8 52.Be4 Rh8 53.Rb2 Rh5 54.Kf4 Rh4 55.Kf5 Ng6 56.Rf2 Ne7 57.Kf6 Rxe4 58.Kxf7 Nxd5 59.g6 Kd7 60.g7 Ne7 61.Kf8 Ra4 62.Kf7 Rg4 63.Kf8 Kd8 64.Kf7 Kd7 65.Kf8 Ra4 66.Kf7 d5 67.Rf1 Ra3 68.Rf4 Ra2 69.Rf1 Ra3 70.Rf4 Rg3 71.Rf1 Rg2 72.Rf4 Rg5 73.Kf6 Rg1 74.Kf7 Ra1 75.Rf2 Ra8 76.Rf4 Rd8 77.Rf2 Rc8 78.Rf4 Rc5 79.Kf6 Rc4 80.Rf1 Ke8 81.Ke5 Rg4 82.Rf8 Kd7 83.g8Q Nxg8 84.Kxd5 Ne7 85.Kc5 Rg5 86.Kc4 Kd6 87.Rf6 Ke5 88.Rf1 Nf5 89.Re1 Kf4 90.Kd3 Ng3 91.Re8 Rd5 92.Kc4 Rd7 93.Rf8 Nf5 94.Kc3 Ke4 95.Re8 Ne7 96.Ra8 Rc7 97.Kd2 Nc6 98.Ra3 Rd7 99.Ke2 Nd4 100.Kf2 Rb7 101.Re3 Kf4 102.Re8 Rb2 103.Ke1 Kf3 104.Kd1 Ne2 105.Rf8 Ke3 106.Re8 Kd3 107.Ke1 Nd4 108.Kf1 1/2-1/2 Added 9:20 p.m.: Whoa! According to the official U.S. Championships website hosted by Monroi this year, there's to be a play-off between Krush and Zatonskih -- and from the looks of it - it's happening right now. Ohmygoddess! Krush just played a game over 100 moves. How is this fair?

2008 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

Krush and Rohonyan are still playing! Zatonskih won her game behind the black pieces against Battsetseg to finish with 7.5, securing at least second place for herself and $4,000 in prize money - and a shot at the Goddesschess Fighting Chess Award of $500; Tuvshintugs knocked off Abrahamyan. Tuvshintugs finishes with 5.5 and Abrahamyan finishes with 6.0. She had an excellent tournament, winning six games in a row, but I expect she's disappointed in her finish. The heat is on Krush - she's obviously battling for a win and clear first place. I'll have full results and final standings later. I hope Susan Polgar reports on whether any of the women scored WIM or WGM norms. Added 7:07 p.m.: Krush has 6:53 on her clock, Rohonyan has 17:02. Krush has a rook, bishop and 2 pawns plus her king to Rohonyan's rook, knight, 2 pawns and king. Added 7:49 p.m.: Zenyuk (W) caved to Airapetian! Zenyuk stays at 3.5 and Airapetian ends up with 2.0. Krush-Rohonyan still going on...

Female Graves Might be Elamite Royalty

From MehrNews.com Ramhormoz graves may be Elamite royal burials: experts TEHRAN, May 20 (MNA) -- A team of archaeologists studying two graves discovered in the city of Ramhormoz in southern Iran said that they bear their remains of a girl and a woman who were most likely members of an Elamite royal family. The team led by Arman Shishegar was assigned to carry out a series of rescue excavations in the Jubji region of the city in Khuzestan Province in May 2007 after the Khuzestan Water and Waste Water Company stumbled on two U-shaped coffins containing skeletons of a girl and a woman along with a great number of artifacts during a grading operation. The girl was about 17 years old and the woman was between 30 and 35 years old at the time of death, Shishegar told the Persian service of CHN on Tuesday. The girl was discovered wearing a golden bracelet embellished with pieces of agate on her wrist. The bracelet bears the female name Ani-Numa. During the rescue excavations, the archaeologists found five rings of power among the coffins’ artifacts, which were usually used by royals in Mesopotamia. One of the rings, which bears the name of King Shutruk-Nahhunte of Elam (c. 1185–c. 1155 BC) in a cuneiform inscription was previously surmised to belong to the king, but Farzan Foruzanfar, an anthropologist of the Cultural Heritage, Tourism, and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO), rejected the theory during his latest studies, Shishegar said. Due to the large quantity of valuable artifacts found in the coffins, the archaeologists believe that the girl and the woman had most likely been Shutruk-Nahhunte’s relatives or family members, he added. Another of the five rings, which bears a cuneiform inscription, was handed over to two ancient languages experts but their studies led to different results. One of them deciphered the inscription as a female name but the other said it was the name of a local official. According to Shishegar, the divergence of opinions is a result of the deformed shape of the ring. Since the grading operation was continued even after the extraordinary discovery, the graves’ site has been almost completely bulldozed. A golden armlet with floral motifs, two golden bracelets bearing deer-head patterns at each end, some ornamental stones with floral decorations, 155 golden buttons of various sizes, several statuettes of goddesses, a golden necklace, golden plaques with floral motifs, 99 golden necklace beads, 23 golden necklace pendants of various sizes, three marble stone dishes, earthenware and bronze dishes, several bronze bracelets, a fish-shaped goddess ornament, and a number of other artifacts have been discovered at the site. [I wonder how much was stolen that the archaeologists never saw?] All the relics were transferred to Tehran to be stored at the National Museum of Iran. Shishegar said the items are currently in danger, but the report did not provide any explanation of his statement. ************************************************************************************ The current regime in control of Iran are barbarians. Notice this quote from the article: the grading operation was continued even after the extraordinary discovery, the graves’ site has been almost completely bulldozed. Such continued, deliberate destruction could only be sanctioned by the highest levels of government, wiping out evidence of Iran's pre-Islamic past (and perhaps prior evidence of looting) and any chance for future archaeologists to piece together the history of the site in its original context. Arman Shishegar is a very brave man. Will the Revolutionary Guard make him pay for that last statement in the article about the artifacts recovered being in danger? You betcha. But we won't ever hear about it.

Did Humans Colonize the World by Boat?

Well, this is what I call a "duh" article. Of course they did. There are parts of the world that could not have ever been colonized otherwise. DUH! But I present it here, for what it's worth, as it ties into the ongoing controversy among archaeologists, etc. about how mankind spread where and when. From Discover Magazine Online Research suggests our ancestors traveled the oceans 70,000 years ago.by Heather Pringle May 20, 2008 Jon Erlandson shakes out what appears to be a miniature evergreen from a clear ziplock bag and holds it out for me to examine. As one of the world’s leading authorities on ancient seafaring, he has devoted much of his career to hunting down hard evidence of ancient human migrations, searching for something most archaeologists long thought a figment: Ice Age mariners. On this drizzly late-fall afternoon in a lab at the University of Oregon in Eugene, the 53-year-old Erlandson looks as pleased as the father of a newborn—and perhaps just as anxious —as he shows me one of his latest prize finds. The little “tree” in my hand is a dart head fashioned from creamy-brown chert and bristling with tiny barbs designed to lodge in the flesh of marine prey. Erlandson recently collected dozens of these little stemmed points from San Miguel Island, a scrap of land 27 miles off the coast of California. Radiocarbon dating of marine shells and burned twigs at the site shows that humans first landed on San Miguel at least 12,000 years ago, and the dart head in my hand holds clues to the ancestry of those seafarers. Archaeologists have recovered similar items scattered along the rim of the North Pacific, and some have even been found in coastal Peru and Chile. The oldest appeared 15,600 years ago in coastal Japan. To Erlandson, these miniature trees look like a trail left by mariners who voyaged along the stormy northern coasts of the Pacific Ocean from Japan to the Americas during the last Ice Age. “We haven’t published the evidence for this hypothesis yet, and I’m kind of nervous about it,” he says. “But we are getting very close.” Until recently most researchers would have dismissed such talk of Ice Age mariners and coastal migrations. Nobody, after all, has ever unearthed an Ice Age boat or happened upon a single clear depiction of an Ice Age dugout or canoe. Nor have archaeologists found many coastal campsites dating back more than 15,000 years. So most scientists believed that Homo sapiens evolved as terrestrial hunters and gatherers and stubbornly remained so, trekking out of their African homeland by foot and spreading around the world by now-vanished land bridges. Only when the Ice Age ended 12,000 to 13,000 years ago and mammoths and other large prey vanished, archaeologists theorized, did humans systematically take up seashore living—eating shellfish, devising fishing gear, and venturing offshore in small boats. But that picture, Erlandson and others say, is badly flawed, due to something researchers once rarely considered: the changes in sea level over time. Some 20,000 years ago, for example, ice sheets locked up much of the world’s water, lowering the oceans and laying bare vast coastal plains—attractive hunting grounds and harbors for maritime people. Today these plains lie beneath almost 400 feet of water, out of reach of all but a handful of underwater archaeologists. “So this shines a spotlight on a huge area of ignorance: what people were doing when sea level was lower than at present,” says Geoff Bailey, a coastal archaeologist at the University of York in England. “And that is especially problematic, given that sea level was low for most of prehistory.” Rest of article.

2008 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

Round 8 Results: Airapetian - Battsetseg 0 - 1 Jamison - Zenyuk 0 - 1 Rohonyan - Tuvshintugs 1 - 0 Abrahamyan - Epstein 1 - 0 Zatonskih - Krush 1/2 - 1/2 Tentative standings after Round 8 (based on my calculations): Krush - 7.0 Zatonskih - 6.5 Abrahamyan- 6.0 Rohonyan - 5.5 Tuvshintugs - 4.5 Battsetseg - 4.5 Zenyuk - 3.5 Epstein - 1.5 Airapetian - 1.0 Jamison - 0 The stage is set for the final game tomorrow. Is an upset in the making? Abrahamyan has now quietly won six games in a row. Here are the match-ups for Round 9: Player Draw (pairing numbers) (key match-ups in bold) 5. Esther Epstein v. 10. Courtney Jamison 6. Chimi Tuvshintugs v. 4. Tatev Abrahamyan 7. Irina Krush v. 3. Katerine Rohonyan 8. Tsagaan Battsetseg v. 2. Anna Zatonskih 9. Iryna Zenyuk v. 1. Chouchanik Airapetian (edited on 5/21/08 to correct typo)

2008 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

I've updated Chess Femme News through Round 7. Today is the big game between Anna Zatonskih (W) and Irina Krush (B). Susan Polgar is following the live action at ICC and posting on her blog. When I checked a few minutes ago, it appeared that Anna was losing or had lost the initiative. I'll be updating Chess Femme News more tonight, but right now I'm anxiously awaiting the results of Zatonskih-Krush! Updated 8:43 p.m. CST Zatonskih-Krush drew. Here is the game in PGN: [Event "2008 Frank K. Berry U.S. Chess Championship"][Site "Tulsa"][Date "2008.05.20"][Round "8"][White "Zatonskih, Anna"][Black "Krush, Irina"][Result "1/2-1/2"][WhiteELO "2490"][WhiteTitle "IM"][BlackELO "2515"][BlackTitle "IM"][Source "MonRoi"]1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nf3 Bg7 4.g3 O-O 5.Bg2 d6 6.O-O c6 7.Nc3 Qa5 8.e4 e5 9.h3 Nbd7 10.Re1 Re8 11.a3 Qc7 12.Be3 exd4 13.Nxd4 Nc5 14.Qc2 a5 15.b3 h5 16.Rad1 Nfd7 17.Rd2 Ne5 18.Red1 a4 19.b4 Nxc4 20.bxc5 Nxe3 21.fxe3 dxc5 22.Nde2 b5 23.e5 Bf5 24.Qc1 Bxe5 25.Ne4 c4 26.Nd6 Bxd6 27.Rxd6 Be4 28.Qd2 Bxg2 29.Kxg2 Qe7 30.Kf2 h4 31.Qd4 c5 32.Qxc5 Rac8 33.Qd4 c3 34.Nxc3 hxg3 35.Kg2 Qxe3 36.Qxe3 Rxe3 37.Nxb5 Rb3 38.Rd8 Rxd8 39.Rxd8 Kg7 40.Nd4 Rxa3 41.Nf3 Ra1 42.Kxg3 a3 43.Ra8 a2 44.Kf2 g5 45.Ne1 Kg6 46.Nc2 Rh1 47.Kg2 Rd1 48.Rxa2 Rd2 49.Kf3 Kh5 50.Ke3 Rh2 51.Kd3 f5 52.Ra8 Rxh3 53.Ne3 g4 54.Rf8 Rf3 55.Ke2 Kg5 56.Rf7 Kg6 57.Ra7 Kg5 58.Ra5 Rf4 59.Ra8 Rf3 60.Rf8 Kg6 61.Rb8 Kg5 62.Rb5 Rf4 63.Rb8 1/2-1/2

2008 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

Round 7 has come and gone - Krush won to go from 5.5 to 6.5; Zatonskih lost to stay at 6.0. Today they face each other in a game that may decide who is the 2008 Champion. Susan Polgar comments. This is a critical game - but the other women aren't coasting to the finish line. There's an intense battle for third place right now. Standings after 7: 1 Krush, Irina IM 2515 USA 6.5 2 Zatonskih, Anna IM 2490 USA 6.0 3 Abrahamyan, Tatev WFM 2280 USA 5.0 4-5 Tuvshintugs, Batchimeg WIM 2289 USA 4.5 4-5 Rohonyan, Katerine WGM 2318 USA 4.5 6 Battsetseg, Tsagaan WIM 2251 USA 3.5 7 Zenyuk, Iryna WFM 2205 USA 2.5 8 Epstein, Esther WM 2194 USA 1.5 9 Airapetian, Chouchanik WFM 2143 USA 1.0 10 Jamison, Courtney 2064 USA 0.0 Very exciting!

III International Chess Festival “President’s Cup”

May 9 – 21, 2008 180 players, 9 rounds, First Place is $7,000, first woman finisher is $600 Standings after 8 Rounds: 28 24 GM Stefanova Antoaneta 2538 BUL 5,5 31 38 IM Paehtz Elisabeth 2449 GER 5,5 40 52 WGM Khotenashvili Bela 2333 GEO 5,0 42 59 WIM Batsiashvili Nino 2304 GEO 5,0 45 54 IM Zozulia Anna 2332 BEL 5,0 50 56 WGM Mamedjarova Zeinab 2322 AZE 5,0 63 111 Kazimova Narmin 2072 AZE 4,5 69 83 WFM Mammadova Gulnar 2188 AZE 4,5 70 128 Abdulla Khayala 1982 AZE 4,5 84 63 WGM Mamedjarova Turkan 2271 AZE 4,0 89 98 Huseynova Sahar 2106 AZE 4,0 94 99 Khudaverdieva Afag 2104 AZE 4,0 97 80 WIM Gavasheli Ana 2191 GEO 4,0 102 119 Guliyeva Sabina 2020 AZE 4,0 104 94 Ismailova Aytaj 2129 AZE 4,0 109 74 WIM Umudova Nargiz 2222 AZE 3,5 111 79 Isgandarova Khayala 2193 AZE 3,5 118 131 Mammadova Aysel Alishiraz qizi 1962 AZE 3,5 120 124 Agayeva Aytan 1989 AZE 3,5 122 121 WCM Fataliyeva Ulviyya 2003 AZE 3,5 125 95 WFM Ni Viktorija 2120 LAT 3,5 127 140 Hasanova Turkan 1897 AZE 3,0 128 172 Kazimova Firuza Bakhlul qizi 1700 AZE 3,0 168 156 Khalafova Narmin Ilgar qizi 1954 AZE 2,0 180 171 Karimova Nazrin Faiq qizi 1700 AZE 1,0 Narmin Kazimova is a young player who caught my eye by her performance at the recently-concluded European Individual Women's Chess Championship.

Mayor's Cup International Open (India)

Koneru Humpy stages a come back and finishes the tournament with 9.0/11, tied with leader Krasenkow (who lost his final game) and several other players. Krasenkow wins on tie-breaks and is declared the Champion. From Expressindia.com Kransenkow triumphs Express News Service Posted online: Tuesday , May 20, 2008 at 04:40:08 Updated: Tuesday , May 20, 2008 at 04:40:08 Koneru finished in second place, and Bangladeshi GM Ziaur Rahman clinched third place. From The Daily Star, May 20, 2008.

Looking for Truth in Beringia

A fascinating article about a mammoth bone discovered in a cave nearly 20 years ago and the controversy it set off about just how early ancient man was in the Americas. The saga continues... Beringia: humans were here It was an extraordinary ancient land filled with fantastic creatures and intrepid people. ALEX ROSLIN, Special to The Montreal Gazette Published: Saturday, May 17 Beringia is thought by a handful of renegade scientists to be a prehistoric homeland for aboriginal people who later spread across the Americas and the key to one of archeology's greatest Holy Grails - figuring out how humans first got to this continent. This July, Jacques Cinq-Mars, a renowned archeologist living in Longueuil, is heading to Beringia - a vast territory that once spanned the Yukon, Alaska and Siberia - in hopes of resolving a controversy he unleashed nearly 20 years ago when he chanced upon a curious-looking cave in the Yukon's Keele Mountain Range, perched on a ridge high above the Bluefish River. Here, at a site known as the Bluefish Caves, Cinq-Mars's team discovered something that would turn archeology on its ear and has fuelled debate ever since - a chipped mammoth bone that appeared to have been fashioned into a small harpoon point. Radiocarbon dating showed the bone to be 28,000 years old. The find stunned archeologists who had long presumed the first people to enter the Americas did so 13,000 years ago via a land bridge from Siberia after the end of the last Ice Age. Until that point, routes from Alaska down into the Americas were blocked off by glaciers up to four kilometres thick, which would have cut off any possibility of migration for thousands of years. But scientists have unearthed a growing number of ancient human sites across the continent that date back much more than 13,000 years. How did those people get here? No one knows for sure. Cinq-Mars, a retired former curator at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, believes the answers lie in the lost land of Beringia. Rest of article.

2008 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

I've updated Chess Femme News for Round 6, and will be updating more later tonight for other events. Enjoy!

Egyptian Antiquities To Go On Display At Athens Museum

From PRInside.com Athens museum to show its priceless Egyptian collection © AP 2008-05-13 19:09:00 - ATHENS, Greece (AP) - A priceless ancient Egyptian collection opens to the public Wednesday, featuring a wooden body tag for a mummy, a stunning bronze statue of a princess, and a 3,000-year-old loaf of bread with a bite-sized chunk missing. The National Archaeological Museum in Athens is putting more than 1,100 pieces from the collection on permanent exhibition, as more of its halls open to the public following years of renovation. The previous Egyptian display, shelved six years ago, included just 350 artifacts. Most of the current collection, which museum officials say is one of the best in the world, has never been shown to the public before due to lack of space. A further 6,000 Egyptian artifacts remain in underground storage. One piece that made it into the display is the round, brown loaf of bread, which is missing a bite-sized chunk. Baked during the New Kingdom, between 1550-1075 B.C., it was placed in a tomb for the occupant's use in the afterlife. Museum officials are unsure what happened to the missing bit. [Well obviously, darlings, it was the Ka of the deceased enjoying a bit to eat after the grand ceremonies...] Archaeologist Lena Papazoglou, curator of the museum's prehistoric, Egyptian and eastern collections, said Egypt's dry, hot climate helped preserve organic materials - food, wood and leather - for thousands of years. "The exhibition includes intact birds' eggs," she said Tuesday. "If you shake them gently you can hear the yolks rattling inside." The exhibition centerpiece is a bronze statue of the princess-priestess Takushit, dating to around 670 B.C. Standing 70 centimeters (27 inches) high and wearing a gown covered in hieroglyphs, the statue was found south of Alexandria in 1880. "This kind of bronze statue is very rare," said archaeologist Eleni Tourna. At the other end of the sculptural scale is a thumb-sized bronze figurine of an African boy at a street market. "He has his wares spread in front of him and has dozed off in the heat, his pet monkey perched on his shoulder," Tourna said. The miniature was made in the 3rd century B.C. in Alexandria, the Greek-Egyptian port city founded by Alexander of Macedon that grew into a major intellectual and administrative center. "Alexandria was the center of the then-known world," Tourna said, "Like the New York of antiquity." The exhibition includes products from what Tourna calls Egypt's "death industry," such as pierced wooden tags from embalmers' workshops. They were inscribed with the name and designated grave of the corpse, to avoid embarrassing mix-ups. The core of the museum's Egyptian collection was donated more than 100 years ago by two rich merchants from Alexandria's then-thriving Greek community. "They had access to the art market and were able to buy top-quality pieces," Papazoglou said. Other pieces were donated by the Egyptian government in the late 19th century, while some were excavated in Greece. The relationship between Greece and Egypt, two of the ancient world's major powers, peaked in the Hellenistic era, between 304 and 30 B.C. But interaction began some 4,000 years ago, during the Minoan period in Greece. Mycenaean pottery has been found in large quantities in Egypt, while Egyptian artifacts were excavated in the royal tombs and citadel of Mycenae, in southern Greece. Another display due to reopen Wednesday at the National Archaeological Museum is the Stathatos collection, which focuses on ancient jewelry. In the future, museum officials plan to display important groups of glass, terra-cotta and ivory artifacts. [I'll bet there are some ancient game pieces in that collection that have yet to be identified as such!] Built in 1866-89, the museum hosts some 20,000 exhibits from prehistoric to late Roman times. On the Net: odysseus.culture.gr/h/1/eh151.jsp?obj_id=3249

The Eye Goddess Memorialized

Thank goddess for The New York Times, else I would never find out about such exhibits as this one:

From Around the Globe, a Mustering of the Tribes
By BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO
Published: May 16, 2008

All art fairs are messy, but the New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show is messier than most. It assembles a ridiculously broad range of tribal art from Africa, Oceania, Asia and North and South America. It is a forceful, entrancing ensemble nonetheless.

This year’s fair has relocated to smaller quarters in the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, at 26th Street, far south of its former home in the Park Avenue Armory. There is a tighter floor plan downtown — where the fair actually began 14 years ago, under a different name — but it looks and feels pretty good, with 76 participating galleries from 10 countries.

...

The New York International Tribal & Textile Arts Show runs through Sunday at the 69th Regiment Armory, Lexington Avenue at 26th Street; (212) 532-1516, caskeylees.com.
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Ach! Too bad the show finishes today. I highly recommend checking out the slide show at The New York Times article, which contains a short sampling of some of the art and artifacts at the show, absolutely stunning, wonderful pieces.

The "rug" image I included here is from the slide show. If that isn't a representation of an Eye Goddess, I'll eat my wool beret. Yes, she's from the 19th century - but she's from eastern Anatolia, an ancient hotbed of goddess worship (and I'll bet she's still worshipped there today, despite Islam).

Take and look and see what I see: She's got a sort of diamond-shaped head with two eyes (classic eye goddess iconography), a tree of life in the upper third of her body, and what look to be "chakra" points down the remaining two-thirds of her body. She's also outlined with - for lack of a better term on my part - an "energy mantra" that reminds me very much of the ancient serpent figures we see enclosing/ guarding the Sun God Re/Ra in ancient Egyptian iconography -- the serpents were representations of Mehen, the ancient serpent goddess/protector of Pharaoh as manifestation of the Sun God, as well as the serpent-had fringed cloak worn by archaic Athena. Altogether, She's an excellent example of ancient religious symbolism melding into certain iconic displays over the millenia.

I very much doubt this "rug" was ever meant to be walked upon as we trod upon our rugs today. For one thing, notice the much wider designed border at the "top" of the rug (above the Goddess' head) than at the bottom. I believe it was designed this way to facilitate hanging. The white "zig-zag" pattern across the top (an ancient pattern that is familiar on many goddess icons, I call it "M/V" for the wave-like pattern it forms, or "chevron") forms eight each "triangles" whose bottom edges are formed or closed by two miniature "eyes," also picked out in white threads. Extremely clever design on the part of the female weaver, because these "triangles" in and of themselves each represent a miniature "eye goddess" - diamond shaped head with two eyes!

Notice, too, the use of EIGHT - and the multiple of TWO TIMES EIGHT - or SIXTEEN. Hmmmm, where have we seen those numbers crop up before??? Hint: In chess.

The History of the Horse

Every chess player knows the role that the horse plays in the board game, even if he or she doesn't know the history behind the creation and evolution of the pieces. The "horse" - the knight piece in modern western chess - was a staple in the earliest Persian and Indian incarnations of the game (calvary), and has always had it's distinctive "L"-shaped move. (Image: Sassanid king Khosrau II (591-628 CE) mounted on his favorite charger, Shabdiz. Both horse and rider are arrayed in full battle armor. From Taq-e Bostan, Wikipedia) In today's game the rook is also known as a castle. But, delving back into the history of chess, the rook was originally a horse-drawn battle chariot (in Persia, it was called a ruhkh after the King's champion) and was the most powerful piece on the board, before the modernization of the game in the late 1400's (probably in Spain) gave rise to sweeping new moves by the Queen and the Bishop. The rook's wide-ranging vertical and horizontal movement has remained unchanged throughout history. Now, an exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (I love visiting there and have done so ever since I was a kid) delves into the history of the horse and its relationship with man - a fascinating study. Reported on at The New York Times: Man's Best Friend - Hoofed Department. One thing I noted with interest: if the horse was hunted to extinction in the Americas by 10,000 BCE, that means that man here had not learned to tame the horse and use it for pulling loads and riding (if man here had used the horse in these ways, it would not make sense that he would hunt the animal to extinction, it would prove too costly to his existence). This provides indirect support, perhaps, for theories supporting the immigration of mankind into the Americas, then, before the taming of the horse in the Old World, which I believe earliest evidence now places some 15,000 to 16,000 years ago in the Eurasian steppes.

The Key-Holders: Guarding Priceless Cultural Treasures with Their Lives

From The Chicago Tribune: To guard Afghan treasure, silence golden By Bay Fang Washington Bureau 11:48 PM CDT, May 13, 2008 WASHINGTON—For years they kept the secret. A dozen men, the "key-holders" of a fabulous treasure, told no one about the gold they'd buried deep in a palace vault, hidden from the ravages of war, looting and a regime bent on destroying Afghanistan's cultural heritage. Now, some 20 years later, that collection thought lost forever is being exhibited for the world to see. Opening in the U.S. with a show in Washington on May 25, it spans the beginning of the Silk Road trade through a country most Americans associate with violence and destruction. "The story of the hidden treasures is like the story of Afghanistan," noted Said Tayeb Jawad, Afghanistan's ambassador to the U.S. "It is about precious culture and traditions covered by the ashes of war and neglect. You don't know what remains under the ashes, and when you see the glitter of gold, you almost can't believe it." The exhibition is filled with artifacts of almost unbelievable artistry—collapsible gold crowns that belonged to nomad princesses, a chubby Aphrodite figurine with wings and a forehead mark in the Indian tradition, a golden tree hung with pearls for fruit. Accompanying the collection as it travels to Washington, San Francisco, Houston and New York are some of the key-holders, the men who protected the collection from the violence of mujahedeen and Taliban. "In Afghanistan there's a different curatorial system—these men are bonded by law to their collections, and they bear personal responsibility for them," said Fredrik Hiebert, curator of the U.S. exhibition. Sitting beside him on a couch in the National Gallery of Art, looking somewhat ill at ease, Abdullah Hakim Zada, one of the key-holders, said that when he and his comrades packed away the treasures, they could not have foreseen that there would be a civil war followed by the reign of the Taliban. "At times during the years, we worried that we hadn't put the right materials in the boxes for them to be stored so long," he said. Throughout his career as an Asian archeologist, Hiebert said everyone in the field thought the famous Afghan collection lived on only in legend. Rumors abounded: that it had been taken to Moscow after the Soviet invasion, that it had been looted or stolen, that the gold had been melted down. Afghanistan's National Museum had been shelled and set on fire, and its storerooms looted. The so-called Bactrian Hoard, one of the greatest archeological finds of the 20th Century, is the heart of the trove, discovered accidentally in 1978 by Russian archeologist Viktor Sarianidi, Hiebert's mentor. Six 2,000-year-old nomadic tombs, from an area in northern Afghanistan that was once an important crossroads on the Silk Road, contained more than 20,000 beautifully crafted pieces. Before Sarianidi could study the items, the Soviets invaded, and he rushed the pieces to Kabul, where they went to the National Museum. That was the last he saw of them. Unbeknownst to him, 10 years later, as the communist government weakened and rockets rained on the city, a group of museum workers packed the most important artifacts into boxes, sealed them with their signatures and brought them to the presidential palace, where they were stored in a vault. "Only 13 to 20 people knew about the treasures, and as fighting between the different groups got worse we decided not to tell anyone about them," said Omara Khan Masoudi, now director of the National Museum in Kabul. It was not until 2003 that a new government under President Hamid Karzai entered the palace and discovered — in a massive Austrian-made vault, alongside the government's gold bullion — piles of sealed boxes. Hiebert heard about these and traveled to Kabul that October with his colleague Thomas Barfield, now chairman of the anthropology department at Boston University. They met with then-Minister of Finance Ashraf Ghani. "The question then was, did it really exist?" said Barfield. The archeologists remained skeptical – until, two hours before their plane was supposed to leave, Ghani took them to the palace basement. " 'Well, boys,' [Ghani] said, 'I can't show you the gold, but I can show you the silver.' And he opened his hand and showed us this two-headed ancient Greek coin, almost as big as his palm, that we had also thought were completely gone. That was when we thought, if this stuff exists, there's no reason to doubt the Bactrian gold was there too." Ghani told Hiebert that if he agreed to do a scientific inventory on the items, they would open the boxes thought to contain the gold. A group of ministers and scholars, including Sarianidi, gathered around to open the sealed boxes with a power saw, sparks flying. "We literally didn't know what we would find," Ghani said in a telephone interview. "When we saw that it was actually what we hoped, it was the feeling of regaining a part of your being, of connecting our generation to those who lived thousands of years before us and for millennia to come." Still, further squabbles erupted before the collection left the country for the exhibit. Some feared letting it out at all. Others thought Afghanistan should negotiate for more money. "I pushed the idea that no matter where it goes, it should be touring for the next 10 years," said Tim Moore, cultural attache at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. In the end, this is the story of the hidden treasure, and the fact that it survived. "It was our job," key-holder Masoudi said. "Even if we just saved one piece or 100 pieces, we cannot be too proud, because it is just our job. Archeological pieces belong not to one person, but to the world." **************************************************************************************** See The History Blog for further information on the Bactrian hoard's visit to the U.S. Info page on the exhibit from the National Gallery of Art.

A Study in Extreme Courage

A book review from The New York Times: IDA: A SWORD AMONG LIONS Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. By Paula J. Giddings. Illustrated. 800 pp. Amistad/HarperCollins Publishers. $35. By RICHARD LINGEMAN Published: May 18, 2008 If slavery is America’s original sin, lynching is its capital crime. The historical memory dies hard: only last year, three nooses were hung from a schoolyard tree contested by white and black students in Jena, La. The wave of mob killings of blacks in the South — by hanging, burning, shooting and torture — started after the end of Reconstruction. These public murders were carried out with the real purpose of keeping blacks in their place, economically and socially. The practice was supported by leading citizens and became a popular public spectacle, a carnival of cruelty that drew excited crowds. According to “Rope and Faggot,” the 1928 study by the N.A.A.C.P. general secretary Walter White, between 1882 and 1927 there were 4,951 lynchings in the United States. About a third of them were aimed at whites, mainly in the West; 92 of the victims were women. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was one of the first African-Americans to raise an informed protest against this outrage. Paula Giddings’s devoted and scrupulous biography is not the first study of this pioneering woman, but it is a comprehensive work that attempts to portray her as part of the progressive movement that emerged among the black bourgeoisie in post-bellum America. Wells-Barnett dedicated her life to bringing lynchings to the attention of America and the world. Determined, outspoken and fearless, an incendiary pamphleteer, she was politically astute, anticipating the tactics of the civil rights movement. Giddings, a professor of African-American studies at Smith College and author of “Where and When I Enter,” a history of black women activists, brushes in the historical context of Wells-Barnett’s campaign ably, if in occasionally numbing detail. Excavating scattered letters, fragmented diaries and second-hand references to her writings for short-lived African-American weeklies, Giddings aims, she writes, to uncover the achievements of a bold woman whose militancy and “dominating style” sometimes cost her allies in her own day and proper credit in the eyes of history. Ida Bell Wells was born to slave parents in 1862 in Holly Springs, Miss. Her father, a skilled carpenter, and mother, a housekeeper, were struck down by yellow fever when Ida was 16. Giddings writes of this turning point: “Throughout the remainder of her life, she struggled to turn the negative emotions of abandonment into a righteous determination to reform herself and the society that had forsaken her race.” A precociously mature, bright and pretty teenager, standing barely five feet, Wells took charge of the upbringing of her younger siblings with help from relatives. She got some higher education, became a voracious reader with a love of Shakespeare and showed a talent for writing. She turned to teaching school to support her family, eventually moving in 1880 to Memphis. There she siphoned off some of her energy into journalism, turning out a column for a local African-American paper that regularly challenged the racist libels of the white press. Yet she remained very much the Victorian young lady who admired “noble true womanhood and perfect ladyship” and vowed to curb her “unfeminine” anger. Her craving for “perfect ladyship” toughened into a demand for respect. Black women at the time were often demeaned as dusky temptresses, which presumably explained their illicit sexual attraction to so many white men. Wells lashed out against the “wholesale contemptuous defamation of black women” and the “refusal to believe there are among us mothers, wives and maidens who have attained a true, noble and refining womanhood.” Her determination to be treated as a lady provoked her first clash with white supremacy, in 1883, when she violently resisted being ejected from the whites-only “ladies car.” She sued the railroad, but the Tennessee Supreme Court, in a preview of Plessy v. Ferguson, ruled she was no lady, merely a “mulatto passenger,” separable and unequal, whose intention wasn’t to ride comfortably but to “harrass” and litigate. Rest of review.

Spanish Drought Reveals Medieval Ruins

I wonder - is this drought due to climate change caused by global warming? Sort of sounds like it at the end of the article. A fascinating story:

From BBC News Online, May 13, 2008
Ships bring water to parched Barcelona

Climb down the stony banks of the massive Sau reservoir in the mountains above Barcelona and you get a real sense of why this famous city is so short of water that it's resorted to bringing in emergency supplies - by ship.

Nestling in a deep valley of stunning cliffs and forests, this vital source of water has sunk so low it's exposed the eerie sight of a medieval village that was flooded when the reservoir was opened in the 1960s.

The huddle of ancient stone buildings, including a church with its spire, has now re-emerged into the light and stands as a potent symbol of the severity of this water crisis.

In a year that so far ranks as Spain's driest since records began 60 years ago, the reservoir is currently holding as little as 18% of its capacity - at a time of year when winter rains would usually have provided an essential boost by now.

Rainfall figures show a consistent series of shortfalls in recent years - just as Barcelona's population has expanded to more than five million and the region's booming agribusinesses demand ever more irrigation.

For residents here, the arrival of water by ship is a profound shock - normally it's the drier areas further South that are notoriously parched.

Already they are living with restrictions on the use of hosepipes and the filling of swimming pools.

Now the Barcelona authorities are having to take the unprecedented step for any major European city of topping up supplies by the highly visible means of giant tankers arriving in relays, each bringing 28 million litres, up to a dozen ships coming over the next month.

The shipments won't be enough to restore the reservoirs - or make the ancient village vanish again. But they may buy time for a highly controversial pipeline to be completed by the end of the year. That should bring more reliable supplies from a neighbouring region but at a high political cost.

And it may also remind people of the forecasts from climate scientists of still drier conditions to come in the approaching decades.

Mayor's Cup International Open (India)

Round 9 action reported on at DNAIndia.com. As I read it, Koneru Humpy is currently in 9th place with 7.0/9, with 2 more rounds ago. Shame shame on Krasenkow for an 11 move draw. His prize money should be cut in half for such a sorry display! Kransenkow stays ahead DNA Correspondent Sunday, May 18, 2008 03:36 IST MUMBAI: Overnight leader and top-seeded Polish GM Michael Kransenkow maintained his slender half a point lead over rest of the field as the players on the top boards played safe and agreed for draws to retain their championship chances at the end of round 9 of the LIC — Mumbai Mayor’s International Chess Tournament. On the top board GM Abhijit Kunte and Kransenkow agreed for a draw just after 11 moves while Al-Rakib drew with his colleague, Ziaur Rahman in 10 moves. The fight on the third board between GM-norm holder MS Thejkumar and 3rd seeded Macieje proved to be exciting as the Indian player, who is rated much below Macieja, invited complications in the opening by sacrificing a pawn on move 9. The players agreed for a draw after some interesting exchanges. Second seeded GM Koneru Humpy, renowned for her fighting qualities, tried to quell the challenge of IM Arun Prasad. But eventually, Humpy agreed to a draw after 65 moves. Meanwhile, Uzbek GM, Anton Fillipov quelled the challenge of IM Venkatesh and Bangladeshi GM Reefat Sattar and Georgian GM Merab Gagunashvili defeated their opponents, Deep Sengupta and B.S. Shivananda respectively. IM Anup Deshmukh of LIC, who defeated GM Elizabar Ubilava, notched up a notable victory. With two rounds remaining in this 11-round tourney, a group of 6 players, Al-Rakib, Thejkumar, Kunte, Ziaur Rahman and Fillipov are trailing Kransenkow by half-a-point while a big pack of 12-players lead by Humpy are occupying the 3rd spot with 7 points. Results: GM Kunte Abhijit (7.5) drew GM Kransenkow Michal (8); GM Abdulla Al-Rakib(7.5) drew GM Rahman Zia (7.5); Thejkumar MS (7.5) drew GM Macieja Bartlomiej (7); GM Koneru Humpy (7) drew IM Arun Prasad S (7); GM Filippov Anton (7.5) beat Venkatesh MR (6.5); IM Laxman R R (7) drew Das Arghyadip (7); GM Reefat Bin-Sattar (BAN, 7.5) beat IM Sengupta Deep (6.5); GM Gagunashvili Merab (GEO, 7) beat Shivananda B S(6); FM Priyadharshan K (6) lost to GM Iuldachev Saidali UZB (7); IM Singh D P (6.5) drew GM Safin Shukhrat (UZB, 6.5); FM Vidit Gujrathi (6.5) drew GM Ramesh R B (6.5); GM Bakre Tejas (7) beat Arun Karthik R (6); Ram S Krishnan (7) beat IM Adhiban B (6); WGM Ramaswamy Aarthie (6) lost to IM Satyapragyan S (7); Bartakke Amardeep (6) lost to IM Saptarshi Roy (7); FM Akshat Khamparia (6.5) drew IM Konguvel P (6.5); GM Ubilava Elizbar (ESP, 5.5) lost to IM Deshmukh Anup (7)

2008 U.S. Women's Chess Championship

Coverage through Round 5 has been updated at Chess Femme News. Krush and Zatonskih are perfect through 5 rounds with 5.0. Here are the match-ups for Round 6, later today: Round 6 Match-ups (Sunday May 18): Player Draw (pairing numbers) 10. Courtney Jamison v. 8.Tsagaan Battsetseg 9. Iryna Zenyuk v. 7. Irina Krush 1. Chouchanik Airapetian v. 6. Chimi Tuvshintugs 2. Anna Zatonskih v. 5. Esther Epstein 3. Katerine Rohonyan v. 4. Tatev Abrahamyan So far, there have been no upsets like last year, when Liz Vicary knocked off Camillie Baginskaite, a performance which earned her the $300 Goddesschess Brilliancy Prize. Who will win the Fighting Chess Award this year - $500, $350 from Goddesschess and $150 from the Susan Polgar Foundation?