Belzoni: A Biography

Reviled by generations of archaeologists as a pillager and plunderer of antiquities (and Schliemann and Woolley weren't???), a new biography of explorer/amateur archaeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni attempts a balanced view of the man and the times in which he lived.

Review at The Wall Street Journal

DECEMBER 2, 2011

A Pre-Digital Tomb Raider
Sifting sand, opening crypts, raising fallen statues and scooping up anything marketable—and transportable—to Britain.
By GERARD HELFERICH

In the Egyptian gallery of London's British Museum stands a 3,400-year-old statue carved from polished black stone. Lifted from the city of Thebes, the figure depicts Amenhotep III, who ruled Egypt from about 1386 B.C. to 1350 B.C., when the kingdom was at the peak of its power and prosperity. Sitting erect but serene, his hands resting on his thighs, Amenhotep seems every inch the pharaoh. But one detail disturbs the regal impression: Beside the king's left foot, with all the subtlety of a Times Square billboard, appears the crudely carved name "Belzoni." How this Italian commoner came to be forever linked with an Egyptian pharaoh is now the subject of a lively, witty biography by Ivor Noël Hume.

Belzoni

By Ivor Noël Hume
(University of Virginia Press, 301 pages, $34.95)

Though Giovanni Battista Belzoni is not generally recalled today, he is still infamous among archaeologists. Born in 1778 in Padua, Italy, Giovanni worked in his father's barbershop until age 16, then left to study in Rome. After Napoleon Bonaparte captured the Eternal City in 1797, Belzoni wandered Europe for a time, ending up in London, where he hoped to secure work as a hydraulic engineer. But the only job the 6-foot-6 Italian could find was as a circus performer, billed as "the Patagonian Sampson" and toting a dozen lesser men about the stage.

For more than a decade, Belzoni barnstormed Britain and the Continent, yet always longed to make his mark in a respectable calling. On the island of Malta he met an agent of Egypt's ruler Mohammed Ali Pasha, who hired him to design an irrigation system to distribute the waters of the Nile. With his Irish wife, Sarah, Belzoni arrived in Alexandria in June 1815. But when his waterworks failed to impress, the Belzonis found themselves broke and far from home.

Then Giovanni met Henry Salt, England's new consul general to Egypt. Eager to curry favor with British aristocrats, who coveted the Egyptian antiquities that Napoleon had made fashionable, Salt hired Belzoni to provide the goods. The Italian took to the work with the mercenary zeal of a true showman and over the next three years dashed up and down the Nile, sifting sand, opening tombs, raising fallen colossi, and scooping up anything transportable and marketable.

Belzoni didn't have the pharaonic fields to himself, however. His great rival in looting was another Italian, Bernardino Drovetti, the former French consul general, whose clients included the Louvre museum. Though their competition was usually limited to dirty tricks and subterfuge, the shenanigans occasionally flared into something more pointed, as when pistols were drawn over sacking rights to an obelisk from the island of Philae. (Belzoni prevailed.) To eliminate any question of ownership, Belzoni and Henry Salt took to incising their names directly on the relics.

But the collaborators quarreled often and long about expenses, the rights to the loot and credit for their discoveries. By 1819, Belzoni was fed up; he and the long-suffering Sarah returned to England. He had excavated the fabulous tomb of Seti I at Abydos, and in London he hoped to exhibit a reproduction of the sepulcher. But he failed to pry Seti's sarcophagus away from Salt and the British Museum, and without that showpiece his exhibit failed to attract the hoped-for crowds. Belzoni's memoir sold briskly, though, and in London he was celebrated as an illustrious explorer and even "the Great Belzoni." To his bitter disappointment, however, his lower-class origin, Italian nativity, circus experience and patently mercenary attitude meant that he could never be accepted by English society as a gentleman scholar.

Later generations were even harder on Belzoni. In the 19th century, as archaeology began to mature into a more rigorous, respectable endeavor, his smash-and-grab methods were abhorred; he was decried by the president of the Archaeological Association of America as "the greatest plunderer of them all" and by a writer for the National Geographic Society as "the most notorious tomb robber Egypt has ever known."

Biographer Ivor Noël Hume hopes to rehabilitate Belzoni's reputation. The "Great Explorer," he argues, was no worse than his contemporaries or his predecessors. The looting of Egyptian tombs and temples was already rife in ancient Greek times, and the Egyptians themselves were eager accomplices (for a price) in the sacking of their cultural heritage. Into the 20th century, tourists could still buy antiquities directly from Cairo's Egyptian Museum.

As for Belzoni, Mr. Hume says, "he was only doing his job." In that laissez-faire era, "there were no archaeological purists looking over his shoulder. All that mattered was finding something exciting." If there is blame to be ascribed, Mr. Hume suggests that it be cast on Belzoni's employer, Henry Salt, and on Salt's wealthy patrons, who craved Egyptian objets to display at their country estates and in the august institutions on whose boards they sat, especially the British Museum, which purchased many of Belzoni's discoveries.

Despite Belzoni's unsavory reputation, the author says, he "showed more serious interest in the context of the tombs and temples" than others of his time. Mr. Hume, former director of excavations at Jamestown, Va., goes so far as to argue that Belzoni was "a bona fide archaeologist." Others may find that claim extreme, since the beginning of Egyptian archaeology is usually traced to about 1850, when Frenchman Auguste Mariette, the founder of Egypt's first national museum, began to preach the gospel of conservation. And some may not be so quick to forgive the desecration of Egypt's patrimony. Still, in this entertaining and graceful account of Belzoni's adventures, Mr. Hume opens a window on the raffish days of early Egyptology, when an Italian giant towered over his competitors.

Mr. Helferich is the author of "Stone of Kings: In Search of the Lost Jade of the Maya," just published by Lyons Press.

Brooklyn IS 318 Needs Help!

It breaks my heart that the kids of IS 318's chess program have to face this - and not just them.  Chess programs all across the country are suffering because of massive budget cuts.  These are championship calibre teams too.  How sad, and pathetic.  We've got plenty of money to pay New Gingrich over a million dollars of taxpayer money in "consultation fees" to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. How many school chess programs would that money fund - please do the math.

Brooklyn champion school chess team held in check by lack of funds

Intermediate School 318 in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, running out of moves to raise money

BY Mark Morales
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Wednesday, November 30 2011, 10:45 PM

A Brooklyn middle school’s championship chess team is trying to avoid being checkmated by budget cuts.

Students and faculty at Intermediate School 318 in East Williamsburg are frantically trying to raise as much cash as they can to keep funding their top-shelf chess team.

School officials said budget cuts and the economic slide have made it nearly impossible to make ends meet. “It’s kind of like a double whammy,” said Assistant Principal and chess team organizer John Galvin. “We don’t have the money and \[parents\] don’t have the money, but somehow we’ve got to make it happen.”

Galvin said he was able to use school funds to run the $100,000 program, which boasts 28 national championships, before the cuts started in 2008. Now, administrators need to come up with at least $60,000 to cover the costs.

Nicholas Fevelo for News

Yuxin Zhou plays chess at Intermediate School 318 in East
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Wednesday. Her championship-winning
team is struggling to raise funds to attend competitions.

Student chess players have already raised $12,000 from selling chocolate bars, and administrators were able to scrape together an extra $10,000 from private donations. Money has gotten so tight for the team that Galvin said he ran up an $8,000 tab on his credit card two weeks ago covering the team’s hotel and airfare on a trip to Dallas for a national competition. The team won in the eighth-grade division.

Galvin, who said he’ll be reimbursed from the fund-raising, said the chess program is important for his students who come from poor families. “The premise of the team is that if you work hard and you study, you can be the intellectual equal of any kid in the U.S.,” he said.

“It doesn’t matter how much money you have or what language you speak — no one has an advantage when you sit across the board.”

Seventh-grader Shanniah Wright said she’s sad the team cut back on its local competitions. “I don’t get as much practice playing different people as I would like,” said Shanniah. “I could get better at chess before the nationals.”

“It makes me a little sad that I can’t do that,” said eighth-grader Isaac Barayev, 13. “You miss out on the experience and the fun of playing chess.”

Galvin said his chess team has bigger things to worry about than team finances.

The team is visiting Google’s Chelsea office to push around the firm’s executives on the chess board Thursday, and in the spring, it will be matching wits with students from Columbia University and NYU.

In April, the team heads to San Diego for the National Junior High School Championship. Meanwhile, the team is also the subject of the forthcoming documentary “Brooklyn Castle.”

“I don’t want the kids to worry about how they are going to afford the trip,” Galvin said. “I want them to worry about being good students and great chess players.”

For more information on how to donate, visit www.is318chessteam.com

Haunted Lewis Chess Pieces?

Judith Weingarten, author of the excellent blog Xenobia, Empress of the East, sent along the following, for which I thank her! 

Haunted Chessmen
November 25, 2011
From Strange History.net

[Excerpted]

***This post is dedicated to Invisible***

Invisible writes in with the news that the Lewis Chessmen are about to go on exhibition in New York. And Beach took this as a prompt for one of his favourite archaeological stories. The unnamed Lewis farmer in the following account was one Malcolm ‘Sprot’ Macleod.

In 1831 a high tide on the coast near Uig in the Isle of Lewis washed away a sand-bank and exposed a cave in which there as a small beehive-shaped building rather like the little domestic grinding querns to be found in the Highlands. A labourer working near found it, and, thinking it might contain some treasure, broke into it. He found a cache of eighty-four carved chessmen ranged together. They had an uncanny look, and he flung down his spade and ran, convinced that he had come on a sleeping company of fairies.

[In] the narrative above, from the great Katharine Briggs, continues with poor Malcolm being sent back to get the chessmen by his furious wife.
The greater part of them [67 of 78] are now in the British museum. Replicas have been made of them, but the originals, all mustered together, are much more impressive. A tradition has risen about them. It is said that the guards who take the guard-dogs round at night cannot get them to pass the Celtic [sic] chessmen. They bristle and drag back on their haunches. So perhaps the Highlander’s superstition can be excused.

The chess pieces are actually Norse in origin and were probably made in Scandinavia, quite possibly in Norway, which ruled the Western Isles at this time. But in Gaelic legends chess games between mortals and fairies are a commonplace, perhaps because chess was seen as a ‘game of kings’.

As to those poor dogs, Katharine Briggs is always reliable and she will certainly have come across this tale in her endless fairy hunting. It remains to be seen though whether it is just third-hand London rumour or a folk belief from the staff of the British Museum itself.

************************************

I don't know who Katharine Briggs is -- but I too, wonder if there is anything more to the intriguing notion that the pieces might be "haunted."  It seems plausible to me that a simple laborer coming across the wondrously carved pieces for the first time, with those large bulging, staring eyes of theirs, might have been a little spooked by the sight of all of them lying there, seeming to stare right at him!  In the 1830s, away from the big cities, the legends of the land would still have been close in the hearts of the local people.  Who knows - perhaps the laborer at first mistook the pieces for fairies themselves -- you know, "The Wee Little People"...

I looked through what resources I have in my library, but there was no mention direct mention of the "laborer" discovering the pieces and running away because they frightened him!  Indeed, accounts I've read online generally say that there is no report of how the pieces were first discovered other than the well known "facts" (the location of the discovery and the interesting fact that they were evidently "buried" in a sort of oven or stone cache of one sort or other).  But - read on for yourself, and check out Note 8 at the very end. 

I did find some information about how the pieces first came to the attention of the public, in H.J.R. Murray's "A History of Chess" (pages 758-762, including hand-drawn illustrations of some of the pieces in the British Museum): 

The Lewis chessmen were discovered in 1831 in a sand-bank at the head of the Bay of Uig, on the west coast of the island of Lewis, one of the outer Hebrides.  There is no circumstantial account of the discovery, but it appears that they were found in a small chamber of dry-built stone, resembling an oven, about 15 feet below the top of the sand-bank.  The chessmen were exhibited by Mr. Roderick Ririe at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, April 11, 1831, but before the members had raised the money to purchase them Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe stepped in and bought 10 of the pieces, while the remaining 67 chessmen, 14 tablemen, and a buckle were bought for the British Museum.  On the dispersion of Mr. Sharpe's collection, the Lewis chessmen, now 11 in number, Mr. Sharpe having obtained another one from Lewis, were purchased by Lord Londesborough, and at the sale of the latter's collection in 1888 they were purchased by the Society of Antiquaries for the Scottish National Museum.  All the game-pieces, as well as the buckle, are carved of walrus-ivory.  The 78 chessmen comprise 8 Kings, 8 Queens, 16 Bishops, 15 Knights, 12 Rooks, and 19 Pawns, of which 2 Kings, 3 Queens, 3 Bishops, a Knight, and 2 Rooks are now at Edinburgh.  The Kings and Queens are carved seated, the Kings holding a half-drawn sword across the knees, the Queens usually resting the head on the right hand.  Seven of the Bishops (2 at Edinburgh) are also seated, the other 9 are standing.  All are represented with the crozier.  The Knights are on horseback with spear in the right ahnd and shield on the left arm.  The Rooks are armed warriors on foot, with  helmet, shield, and sword.  The Pawns are of various shapes and sizes, but most have octagonal bases.  Two of them bear some ornamentation.  A Queen of the same type as the Lewis Queens was found in County Meath, Ireland, in the first half of the 19th century.  It is now in a private museum in Dublin.(7)

The carving of the Rooks as warriors on foot undoubtedly points to Icelandic workmanship.  La Peyrere, Lettre a M. La Mothe (1664), Paris, [1663, 56, describing the Icelandic chessmen, says:

La difference qu'il y a de leu pieces aux notres, est, que nos Fous sont des Evesques parmy eux . . . Leu Rocs sont de petits Capitaines, que les escoliers Islandois que sont icy apelent Centurions.  Ils sont representez, l'espee au coste, les joues enfles, et sonnant du cor, qu'ils tiennent des deux mains.

[Don't ask me to translate!] 

Sir Frederick Madden, in his Historical Remarks (Archaeologia, 1852, xxiv; also separately printed, and in CPC., i), endeavoured to prove that these pieces are of Icelandic carving of the middle of the 12th century.  The latest authority, Mr. O.M. Dalton (Cat. Ivory Carvings . . . in the B. Mus., London, 1909), ascribes them to the 12th century, and thinks that they may be of British carving.  Wilson had already claimed a Scotch origin for them.  Both views depend upon the assumption that the chessmen are as old as the 13th century.

If there were any truth in the tradition which Capt. Thomas discovered to be current in Lewis, they may be the work of Icelandic carvers of the beginning of the 17th century only.(8)

The notes from Murray:

(7)  A rough woodcut of it was given in O'Donovan's Leabhar na g-Ceart, Dublin, 1847, lxii.  Other Norse chessmen are depicted in Fabricius, Danmarkshistorie, 1861, i. 494 (a seated Bishop), in  Worsaae, Nordiske Oldsager i det kongelige Museum i. Kjobenhawn, Kjobenhavn,  1854, 160 (a King, Bishop, and Pawn) and in Engelhardt, Guide illustri du Musee des Antiquities du Nord, Copenhague, 1870, 57 (a Knight); - v. d. Linde, ii. 312.

(8)  The tradition is to the effect that a shepherd employed by George Mor Mackenzie (who settled in Lewis, 1614-15) murdered a sailor, who had swum ashore from a wreck with the chessmen in a bag.  The shepherd buried the bag in the sand, and never prospered afterwards.  Capt. F. and W. L. Thomas, in Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotl., 1863, iv. 411.  In addition to the works already mentioned, information respecting the Lewis chessmen is also contained in Wilson, Prehis. Annals Scotl., ii 341; and Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotl., 1889, xxiii. 9.

********************************************

This is some good stuff! A possible murder connected to the Lewis chess pieces?  Now that could be a capital haunting, indeed! 

Imagine this:  what if the story is true; or at the least, a mangled version of the story (regardless of its truth) is talked about for years around the islands, enough so that it has passed into general folklore after some years (we don't know when the shipwreck occurred or when the murder of the sailor took place).  Given this background, in addition to an enduring belief in hauntings and ghosts and, of course, the Wee Little People, the laborer's reaction might not seem so silly to our modern eyes if he knew that tale of a long-ago murder and the burying of the unfortunate sailor's bagful of goodies...

Woooooooo, sends chills down my spine, I have to say! 

*************************************************

I don't recall coming across in any of the accounts I've read about how the Lewis chess pieces ended up where they did the information contained in Murray's account.  Much more fascinating reading than bare-bones reports that the British Museum acquired 67 pieces and the National Museum of Scotland acquired the other 11 pieces!

Here's the line of "descent" of the pieces after they surfaced -- no indication, unfortunately, of whether they were held for a period of time after their discovery before being sold to Mr. Roderick Ririe, or when he may have acquired them, or what he paid for them.  It is quite possible, of course, that Ririe was not the original purchaser, but as he exhibited the pieces at the Antiquarian Society I am assuming that he must have been an avid antiquities collector and I assume he may have been the first buyer.  How he came to know about the pieces, however, now that is something not known either.  Arghhh! 

1.  Roderick Ririe exhibits the pieces to the Scottish Antiquarian Society on April 11, 1831.  They consist of 77 chess pieces, 14 "tablemen" (checkers? tablut pieces?) and an ivory belt buckle.

2.  Mr. Kirkpatrick Sharpe buys 10 chess pieces directly from Ririe.

3.  Ririe sells 67 pieces, 14 "tablemen" and one belt buckle to the British Museum. 

4.  Kirkpatrick Sharpe acquires another Lewis piece - but it is not described how, or how the piece was identified as belonging to the Lewis cache.  In any event, either Sharpe or someone on his behalf or on behalf of his Estate sells 11 Lewis pieces to Lord Londesborough.

5.  In 1888 the Society of Antiquaries acquires the 11 Sharpe pieces for the Scottish National Museum.

It appears at least some record of these transactions were kept -- else Murray couldn't have tracked down the information he provided in his History of Chess!  Didn't 'gentlemen' of the period nearly always write diaries and letters and what not? Was nothing from their records saved that can be dug around in today that might contain further information or clues?  Inventories?  Estate records?  Attorneys' records?  Bills of Sale?  We know that the pieces passed through the hands of at least three gentlemen:  (1) Ririe; (2) Sharpe; (3) Lord Londesborough. 

And what of Capt. Thomas?  Who was he, and why was he interested in the Lewis chess pieces?  How did he track down the old story about the shepherd murdering the sailor and burying the contents of the sailor's sack? What, exactly, were the contents of the sailor's sack?  It is assumed it was the Lewis chess pieces but - how do we really know...

And why would the local people have been willing to talk to him?  We've all read tales from all over the world about how notoriously closed-mouth villagers are when it comes to outsiders - whether a thousand years ago or today.  So how did the Captain sniff out the murder story? 

I do love a mystery, but I don't know if I have the time or resources to try and explore this any further.  Like the blogger who reported the original "haunted pieces" story (see above, from strangehistory.net) , I'm wondering if anyone out there has any information on this? 

Another Article on the Lewis Chess Pieces

From The Wall Street Journal:

NOVEMBER 24, 2011
Masterpiece: The Lewis Chessmen (12th Century)
Lively, Ivory Warriors

In the 2001 film "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," Harry and his pal Ron play a Christmastide game of "wizard chess" in the bedecked Great Hall of Hogwarts. To many film lovers the chess pieces' gnomelike appearance would seem another example of the film's masterly art direction. But connoisseurs of antique chess sets recognize the pieces as copies of what is arguably the most famous chess set of all, the 12th-century Lewis chessmen.

Eighty-two Lewis chessmen reside in the British Museum, which purchased them between 1831 and 1832 (an additional 11 pieces are owned by the National Gallery of Scotland). The tangled history of this doughty little army—selections from which are currently on exhibition at the Cloisters, the Metropolitan Museum of Art's medieval treasury in upper Manhattan—is worthy of a Wilkie Collins mystery.

According to the illustrated essay accompanying the exhibition, by the British Museum's curator of late medieval collections, James Robinson, they were part of a hoard of luxury goods unearthed in 1831 in a sandbank along Uig Bay, on the west coast of the windswept Isle of Lewis, largest of the Outer Hebrides west of Scotland. Suffice it to say that the Lewis chessmen eventually arrived at the British Museum via a chain of avarice, sharp dealings and, happily, dedicated scholarship.

Soon after the discovery, stylistic inspection revealed that the multiple kings, queens, bishops and other pieces in the hoard represented pieces from at least four distinct but incomplete sets. Stylistic similarities to contemporaneous church sculpture point specifically to the Norwegian city of Trondheim.

"These pieces represent the highest class of society," observes Mr. Robinson as we examine them together at the Cloisters. "And though they were by tradition thought to have been a merchant's hoard, they may well have been made for a Medieval Norwegian king and presented by him to one of his ambassadors as part of the wealth they were supposed to display, symbolic of their sovereign's power."

Chess, which originated in sixth-century India and came to Europe by way of Persia and the Islamic lands, was truly the game of kings. Sovereigns and their courtiers played chess not only for amusement, but to exercise their skill at military strategy in an age when might often made right.

Medieval European chessmen were fashioned from various precious materials, but virtually every one of the Lewis chessmen is a masterpiece ivory sculpture in miniature. Tough, though prone to splitting when worked or stored near heat, ivory has a satisfying heft when held, and can be polished to a buttery sheen. These animated little warriors were hand-carved using a variety of knives, saws, files and drills. Moreover the Lewis chessmen are distinctive because most are made of walrus ivory, a characteristic medium of maritime North Europe. Walrus tusks are much smaller than African elephant tusks, which dictates the size of objects carved from it. Walrus is also more yellow in color than elephant ivory, and because the smooth outer layer is also thinner than elephant ivory, carving often exposes the darker pulp beneath. Exposed pulp is often kept in less prominent places on the Lewis figures—under a carved fold of a costume, for instance—which shows how skillfully the anonymous craftsmen planned the carving of each piece.

That carving itself is distinctive, especially in its visual strength. As chess is an abstract battle, so the chessmen, especially the pawns, are carved as lively abstractions of human figures. Their overall shape is dictated by the tapering shape of a section of tusk, and their features, physiques and costumes are worked with marvelous detail within this limitation.

Certainly, the pieces bear distinct family resemblances within the different ranks, though their sizes vary, depending on the size of the original piece of tusk. Kings—some bearded, some not, all with long plaited hair under their crowns—sit on their elaborately carved thrones, swords in their laps. Their cloaks are meticulously detailed to show the right arm free to wield that sword. Queens, their veils falling from beneath their crowns, are carved to show their position as regal advisers. Though their right hands seem to be slapping their cheeks in consternation, the gesture was meant to signify thoughtful deliberation.

To carve a queen's fully rounded right arm required consummate skill to drill through the ivory, shape the limb and finally polish it in the round without fracturing it. Similar pierce-work distinguishes the bishops, each of whom holds a crozier, the hooked staff of episcopal office.

Kings, queens and bishops are all enthroned, and the exquisite scrollwork carved on the backs of each throne "recalls the marginalia of a manuscript" Mr. Robinson says. This intricate, sinuous visual language was an essential part of Northern European Medieval art, linking these chessmen to Romanesque and early Gothic stone carving and illuminations of the Book of Kells.

Warder.
The Trustees of the British Museum

The helmeted knights break most vigorously from the conical form, each, replete with shield, sword and suit of mail, seated astride a sturdy little pony. The warders or rooks are carved as bearded, helmeted foot soldiers (castle shapes came later) with shields and swords adding to their fierceness. But several of them, called "Berserkers," are particularly fierce, their bared teeth literally chomping on their shields in their lust for battle. This frenzy was called beserksgangr in Norse and gave us the word "berserk."

Finally the most abstract of all the chessmen, the little pawns, each worked from a tiny bullet-shaped tip of a tusk and carved only with a series of facets, or with incised flat sides, instead of human features.

Superficially, the bulging eyes of those chessmen with faces lend them a comically lunatic stare. But as you compare these pieces, each reveals nuances—facial features, gestures and postures—that the master ivory carvers achieved within the limitations imposed by the walrus tusk. For example, one of the warders is carved with his face and even his eyes turned slightly off to the side in apparent thought. It is this essential humanity of the unknown carver's hand that reaches across to us over the centuries. Viewed this way, we can understand Mr. Robinson's comment that "these Lewis Chessmen are my Elgin Marbles."

—Mr. Scherer writes about classical music and the fine arts for the Journal.

Wrap Up of News Coverage: 2011 Women's World Chess Championship Match

The New York Times:

17-Year-Old From China Repeats as Women’s Chess ChampBy DYLAN LOEB McCLAINPublished: November 24, 2011

In the growing rivalry between the emerging superpowers China and India, Beijing scored a symbolic victory on Thursday: a Chinese woman won a chess match.

The woman, Hou Yifan, 17, easily retained the Women’s World Chess Championship title when she drew the eighth game of a match against Humpy Koneru, the best Indian woman to play the game.
The final score of the best-of-10 match was 5.5 points to 2.5 points.

Despite the lopsided score, the victory was not as easy as it appeared, Ms. Hou said in a telephone interview from Tirana, Albania, where the match was held. “Every game was interesting. Both of us had chances,” she said. The difference was that “in the middle games, I caught her mistakes.”

Ms. Koneru said she was disappointed but not entirely surprised. “I’ve been struggling for the last year with my game,” she said by telephone, adding that her mistakes were caused by a lack of patience at critical points when she played too aggressively.

Rest of article.

From The Times of India:

Humpy lost it in the mindHari Hara NandananHari Hara Nandanan, TNN | Nov 25, 2011, 09.16PM IST

CHENNAI: The Tirana experience must be hurting Koneru Humpy a lot. A 5.5-2.5 win for defending champion Hou Yifan of China after the eighth-game draw on Thursday night meant that this match was one of the most one-sided in women's World chess championship history, highlighting the mental state of the Indian more than her preparation.

Realistically, Humpy is not inferior to Yifan, though her scores in the 10-game Tirana championship and also her past score against the Chinese would weigh against her strength. In fact, Humpy was stronger in rating when they started the match, though the 17-year-old Chinese was still the champion.

Maybe, the Indian did not have the kind of run up to the longest battle that she waged against anyone in her career. The 10-game format came back to women's chess title match after a long time but this cannot be a reason for failure because Yifan had the same experience.

Perhaps, the Chinese was less experienced in top-flight chess compared to Humpy. "Better and tougher preparation earlier in the year, huge backing from the Chinese Chess Federation, a huge plus score against Koneru, two match wins in the FIDE KO (knockout) format against Koneru, youth and I believe superior talent all on her side all suggested to me that this would happen," noted Mark Crowther in his analysis of Yifan's triumph.

Among the factors Crowther mentioned, the backing of the Chinese Chess Federation is striking because by now it is obvious to the world that Humpy has not enjoyed the best of support from All India Chess Federation. It is difficult to conclude that either Humpy or AICF is to blame in the cold war but Hou Yifan was certainly in a better position in that respect as any Chinese player is given the way chess is run in that country.

Perhaps, the decisive factor that swung the match in Yifan's favour was that the Indian had a huge mental lag againt Yifan, who had scored two wins in shorter matches against her in the same championship in the last three years. Humpy was slightly better in games 1,2 and 8 but still she could not take it beyod the opening level.

"In the first two games she got the position she wanted (out of the opening), but she could not get much," said GM Abhijit Kunte. "Though Yifan was taken out of the book, she coud find over-the-board solutions." Kunte does not think that this is the end of the world for the Indian. "In fact, Humpy is more experienced and the difference between them is not much as the score would indicate," he added. Humpy is only in her mid-20s and this match would certainly help her in the battles to come.

3,300 Year Old Leather Chariot Trappings Rediscovered (!)

Unbelievable - the Cairo Museum doesn't even know what the hell it has in its own collections!

As reported at nature.com:
Ancient Egyptian chariot trappings rediscovered

Forgotten drawers in Egyptian museum yield 'astonishing' leather find.

Jo Marchant

23 November 2011

 

The beautifully preserved leather trappings of an ancient Egyptian chariot have been rediscovered in a storeroom of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Researchers say that the find, which includes intact harnesses, gauntlets and a bow case, is unique, and will help them to reconstruct how such chariots were made and used.

A painted box from Tutankhamun's tomb depicts the Pharaoh on a chariot chasing Nubians.

Kenneth Garrett/National Geographic/Getty Images

The ancient Egyptians used chariots — typically with one or two riders and pulled by two horses — for hunting and warfare as well as in processions. They are frequently shown in ancient Egyptian art, and several examples of the wooden frames survive, including six dismantled chariots found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb, dating to around 3,300 years ago.

But researchers knew little about the leather trappings and harnesses used with such chariots, as leather decomposes quickly if any moisture is present. Barely any leather survives on the chariots from Tutankhamun’s tomb, though some fragments are known from chariots found in other tombs, such as that of Yuya and Thuya, Tutankhamun’s great-grandparents.

Accidental treasures
Then in 2008, André Veldmeijer of the Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo, who specializes in the study of ancient leather, saw a black-and-white photograph of some intact chariot trappings in a 1950s book on ancient technology¹.

They were labelled as being held in the Egyptian Museum, but when Veldmeijer asked the curator, Ibrahim El Gawad, he knew nothing about them. But a few months later, El Gawad came across the trappings by accident, lying forgotten in a series of drawers in a back room of the museum.

Veldmejier says that El Gawad called him to the museum and showed him “layer upon layer” of leather. “It’s a gorgeous find,” he says. “What was in the picture, that’s not even half of what’s in the museum. It was astonishing.”

The trappings are 90–95% complete, according to Veldmeijer, and include the leather casing that would have covered the wooden chariot, as well as harnesses, gauntlets, and a bow case and quiver. Wear marks and details of the stitching are still visible, and the intricate red, green and white design — the only known example of its type — is still bright after more than three millennia.

Chariot ride

Veldmeijer is now working with Salima Ikram, an Egyptologist at the American University in Cairo, to conserve, catalogue and study the trappings as part of the Egyptian Museum Chariot Project. That includes attempting to open out the fragile pieces — which had been folded to fit into the museum drawers — and protecting them with acid-free packing material. They will report their first results at a dedicated conference to be held in Cairo next year.

“The trappings should help us to understand more about chariot construction and use, which in turn will be important for our knowledge of ancient Egyptian warfare and elite display,” says Susanna Harris, an expert in ancient textiles and animal skins at University College London. She adds that the results may also have implications for the study of chariots in other societies for which there are no surviving examples. “For example there are chariots in the wall paintings and iconography of Crete (Minoans) and mainland Greece (Mycenaeans) dating to this period but no preserved chariot leather there,” she says.

The Egyptian Museum project is in its early stages but the researchers are already gaining new insights into how the chariot was used. For example, Ikram has identified a leather strap that she thinks acted as a safety belt. “It would have fitted around the driver’s bum to stabilize him, and to stop him from falling out,” she says.

Veldmeijer also hopes to identify the type of leather used, as well as studying the stitching and skin-processing methods and how the leather was cut and assembled.

One mystery yet to be solved is where the chariot trappings come from originally. Museum records state that they were bought from a Greek antiquities dealer called Georges Tano in 1932, but it isn’t known where he found them. To have survived in such good condition they were presumably discovered in a tomb, and the style suggest a time around that of Tutankhamun. [The fact that we don't know and probably won't ever know clouds our knowledge.  This is the type of destruction of history that is the legacy of antiquities looters and smugglers.]

El Gawad thinks that they belonged to Tutankhamun's father, the rebel pharaoh Akhenaten, but Veldmeijer believes them to date from slightly later, possibly belonging to one of Tutankhamun’s successors.

(Journal citation and references at nature.com)

More Celestial Connections Found at Stonehenge

From artdaily.com
November 29, 2011
Archaeological discovery provides evidence of a celestial procession at Stonehenge

BIRMINGHAM.- Archaeologists led by the University of Birmingham with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection have discovered evidence of two huge pits positioned on celestial alignment at Stonehenge. Shedding new light on the significant association of the monument with the sun, these pits may have contained tall stones, wooden posts or even fires to mark its rising and setting and could have defined a processional route used by agriculturalists to celebrate the passage of the sun across the sky at the summer solstice.

Positioned within the Cursus pathway, the pits are on alignment towards midsummer sunrise and sunset when viewed from the Heel Stone, the enigmatic stone standing just outside the entrance to Stonehenge. For the first time, this discovery may directly link the rituals and celestial phenomena at Stonehenge to activities within the Cursus.

The international archaeological survey team, led by the University of Birmingham’s IBM Visual and Spatial Technology Centre (VISTA), with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Vienna (LBI ArchPro) have also discovered a previously unknown gap in the middle of the northern side of the Cursus, which may have provided the main entrance and exit point for processions that took place within the pathway. Stretching from west to east, the Cursus is an immense linear enclosure, 100 metres wide and two and a half kilometres across, north of Stonehenge.

Professor Vince Gaffney, archaeologist and project leader from the IBM Visual and Spatial Technology Centre at the University of Birmingham, explains: “This is the first time we have seen anything quite like this at Stonehenge and it provides a more sophisticated insight into how rituals may have taken place within the Cursus and the wider landscape. These exciting finds indicate that even though Stonehenge was ultimately the most important monument in the landscape, it may at times not have been the only, or most important, ritual focus and the area of Stonehenge may have become significant as a sacred site at a much earlier date.

“Other activities were carried out at other ceremonial sites only a short distance away. The results from this new survey help us to appreciate just how complex these activities were and how intimate these societies were with the natural world. The perimeter of the Cursus may well have defined a route guiding ceremonial processions which took place on the longest day of the year.”

Archaeologists have understood for a long time that Stonehenge was designed to mark astronomical events, built by farming societies whose everyday concerns with growing crops linked their daily lives to the passage of the seasons and in particular the sun, on which their livelihoods depended. This new evidence raises exciting questions about how complex rituals within the Stonehenge landscape were conducted and how processions along or around the Cursus were organised at the time Stonehenge was in use.

Professor Gaffney adds: “It now seems likely that other ceremonial monuments in the surrounding landscape were directly articulated with rituals at Stonehenge. It is possible that processions within the Cursus moved from the eastern pit at sunrise, continuing eastwards along the Cursus and, following the path of the sun overhead, and perhaps back to the west, reaching the western pit at sunset to mark the longest day of the year. Observers of the ceremony would have been positioned at the Heel Stone, of which the two pits are aligned.”

Dr Henry Chapman, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Visualisation observes: “If you measure the walking distance between the two pits, the procession would reach exactly half-way at midday, when the sun would be directly on top of Stonehenge. This is more than just a coincidence, indicating that the exact length of the Cursus and the positioning of the pits are of significance.”

Stonehenge, while certainly the most important monument in the later Neolithic and Bronze Age landscape, was surrounded by a dense concentration of other sacred sites, some of which were already ancient when Stonehenge itself was built. The team has also revealed a new horseshoe arrangement of large pits north-east of Stonehenge which may have also contained posts and, together with the henge-like monument discovered last year and a number of other small monuments, may have functioned as minor shrines, perhaps serving specific communities visiting the ceremonial centre.

Paul Garwood, Lecturer in Prehistory at the University of Birmingham, comments: “Our knowledge of the ancient landscapes that once existed around Stonehenge is growing dramatically as we examine the new geophysical survey results. We can see in rich detail not only new monuments, but entire landscapes of past human activity, over thousands of years, preserved in sub-surface features such as pits and ditches. This project is establishing a completely new framework for studying the Stonehenge landscape.”

These new discoveries have come to light as part of the Stonehenge Hidden Landscape Project, which began in summer 2010 as the world’s biggest-ever virtual excavation using the latest geophysical imaging techniques to reveal and visually recreate the extraordinary prehistoric landscape surrounding Stonehenge.

Professor Wolfgang Neubauer, Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute, adds: “The LBI provides the best academics, technicians and young researchers in a team of 20 people and uses multiple systems designed for use on projects where the scale of work was previously unachievable. The use of non-invasive technologies provides information for virtual archaeologies that can be disseminated to the public via the web, iPad or mobile phone.”

Dr Christopher Gaffney, lecturer in Archaeological Geophysics at the University of Bradford, concludes:

“Building on our work from last year we have added even more techniques and instruments to study this remarkable landscape. It is clear that one technique is not adequate to study the complexity of the monuments and landscape surrounding our most important archaeological monument and the battery of techniques used here has significantly increased the certainty of our interpretation.”

2011 World Youth Chess Championships - Top Females

Girls U-18:Classificação final após 9 rondas

Rk.			Nome	FED	EloI	Pts.	Des 1	Des 2	n	w	we	w-we	K	rtg+/-
1		WIM	Arabidze Meri	GEO	2329	8.0	40.0	0.0	9	8	6.10	1.90	15	28.5
2		WGM	Kashlinskaya Alina	RUS	2377	7.5	40.0	0.0	9	7.5	6.70	0.80	15	12.0
3		WFM	Enkhtuul Altanulzii	MGL	2183	6.5	36.5	0.0	9	6.5	4.63	1.87	15	28.0
4		WIM	Papp Petra	HUN	2265	6.5	36.0	0.0	9	6.5	5.81	0.69	15	10.4
5		WIM	Abdulla Khayala	AZE	2216	6.5	33.0	0.0	9	6.5	5.74	0.76	15	11.4
6			Kurbonboeva Sarvinoz	UZB	2135	6.5	31.5	0.0	9	6.5	5.46	1.04	15	15.6
7		WIM	Kazimova Narmin	AZE	2241	6.0	35.0	0.0	9	6	5.62	0.38	15	5.7
8		WFM	Baciu Diana	MDA	2205	6.0	32.0	0.0	9	6	5.93	0.07	0	0.0
9		WFM	Chumpitaz Ann	PER	2203	6.0	31.5	0.0	9	6	5.87	0.13	15	2.0
10		WFM	Adamowicz Katarzyna	POL	2082	6.0	31.5	0.0	8	5	3.44	1.56	15	23.4

Girls U-16: Classificação final após 9 rondas

Rk.			Nome	FED	EloI	Pts.	Des 1	Des 2	n	w	we	w-we	K	rtg+/-
1		WIM	Ziaziulkina Nastassia	BLR	2272	7.5	40.0	0.0	9	7.5	6.33	1.17	15	17.5
2			Klek Hanna-Marie	GER	2154	7.5	37.0	0.0	9	7.5	5.43	2.07	15	31.0
3		WFM	Salazar Aura Cristina	COL	2237	7.5	36.0	0.0	9	7.5	6.28	1.22	15	18.3
4		WFM	Rodriguez Rueda Paula Andrea	COL	2145	7.0	40.0	0.0	9	7	5.00	2.00	15	30.0
5			Pratyusha Bodda	IND	2064	7.0	33.0	0.0	9	7	5.47	1.53	15	23.0
6		WFM	Iwanow Anna	POL	2169	6.5	33.5	0.0	9	6.5	5.96	0.54	15	8.1
7			Severina Maria	RUS	2183	6.5	33.0	0.0	9	6.5	6.35	0.15	15	2.3
8			Nandhidhaa Pv	IND	2139	6.0	36.0	0.0	9	6	5.24	0.76	15	11.4
9		WFM	Osmanodja Filiz	GER	2127	6.0	33.0	0.0	9	6	6.18	-0.18	15	-2.7
10		WFM	Fataliyeva Ulviyya	AZE	2148	6.0	33.0	0.0	9	6	6.49	-0.49	15	-7.3

Girls U-14:  Classificação final após 9 rondas

Rk.			Nome	FED	EloI	Pts.	Des 1	Des 2	n	w	we	w-we	K	rtg+/-
1		WFM	Goryachkina Aleksandra	RUS	2313	9.0	45.0	0.0	9	9	7.69	1.31	15	19.6
2		WFM	Styazhkina Anna	RUS	2063	7.5	38.0	0.0	9	7.5	5.68	1.82	15	27.3
3		WIM	Khademalsharieh Sarasadat	IRI	2215	7.0	39.0	0.0	9	7	6.85	0.15	15	2.3
4		WCM	Chiang Sarah	USA	2056	7.0	37.0	0.0	9	7	5.36	1.64	15	24.6
5		WCM	Derakhshani Dorsa	IRI	1966	6.5	32.0	0.0	9	6.5	6.24	0.26	15	3.9
6		WFM	Felix Vega Aurora Edith	PER	1850	6.5	31.0	0.0	8	5.5	3.50	2.00	15	30.0
7			Rodionova Daria	RUS	1977	6.5	29.5	0.0	8	5.5	5.95	-0.45	15	-6.8
8		WFM	Srija Seshadri	IND	1926	6.0	35.0	0.0	8	5	3.80	1.20	15	18.0
9		WFM	Mahalakshmi M	IND	1955	6.0	31.0	0.0	9	6	6.14	-0.14	15	-2.1
10			Coelho Ramyres Santana	BRA	1800	6.0	30.0	0.0	8	5	3.00	2.00	15	30.0

U-12 Girls: Classificação final após 9 rondas

Rk.			Nome	FED	EloI	Pts.	Des 1	Des 2	n	w	we	w-we	K	rtg+/-
1		WIM	Abdumalik Zhansaya	KAZ	2091	8.0	43.0	0.0	9	8	7.23	0.77	15	11.6
2		WFM	Vasenina Anna	RUS	2018	7.0	38.0	0.0	8	6	5.40	0.60	15	9.0
3			Tohirjonova Gulruhbegim	UZB	1858	7.0	35.0	0.0	9	7	5.52	1.48	15	22.2
4		WCM	Dordzhieva Dinara	RUS	2028	7.0	35.0	0.0	9	7	6.72	0.28	15	4.2
5			Unuk Laura	SLO	1737	7.0	33.5	0.0	8	6	2.78	3.22	15	48.3
6			Oreshko Mariya	USA	1694	6.5	35.0	0.0	7	5	1.65	3.35	15	50.3
7			Gueci Tea	ITA	1754	6.5	34.5	0.0	8	5.5	3.05	2.45	15	36.8
8			Bykovtsev Agata	USA	0	6.5	29.0	0.0	9	6.5
9		WFM	Mammadzada Gunay	AZE	1857	6.0	34.0	0.0	8	5	4.66	0.34	15	5.1
10		WCM	Hojjatova Aydan	AZE	1899	6.0	33.5	0.0	9	6	6.28	-0.28	15	-4.2

Under-10 Girls: Classificação final após 9 rondas

Rk.			Nome	FED	EloI	Pts.	Des 1	Des 2	n	w	we	w-we	K	rtg+/-
1		WCM	Obolentseva Alexandra	RUS	1853	8.0	42.5	0.0	6	5.5	4.26	1.24	15	18.6
2			Radeva Viktoria	BUL	1755	7.0	35.0	0.0	5	4	3.29	0.71	15	10.6
3			Arda Cagil Irmak	TUR	1547	7.0	32.0	0.0	2	1.5	0.53	0.97	30	29.1
4			Guo Shuo	CHN	0	6.5	36.5	0.0	7	4.5
5			Shuvalova Polina	RUS	1522	6.5	35.5	0.0	6	3.5	1.53	1.97	30	59.1
6		WFM	Caballero Quijano Mitzy Mishel	PER	1770	6.5	34.5	0.0	6	3.5	4.03	-0.53	15	-7.9
7			Sliwicka Alicia	POL	1694	6.5	32.5	0.0	3	0.5	2.00	-1.50	15	-22.5
8			Bidhar Rutumbara	IND	1678	6.5	31.5	0.0	1	1	0.71	0.29	15	4.3
9		WCM	Serikbay Assel	KAZ	0	6.0	33.0	0.0	8	5
10		WFM	Wang Annie	USA	0	6.0	31.0	0.0	6	3

Under-8 Girls: Classificação final após 9 rondas

Rk.			Nome	FED	EloI	Pts.	Des 1	Des 2	n	w	we	w-we	K	rtg+/-
1			Assaubayeva Bibissara	KAZ	0	8.0	39.0	0.0	3	2
2		WCM	Tran Vuong Mai Khanh	VIE	1785	7.0	41.5	0.0	1	0	0.91	-0.91	30	-27.3
3			Salonika Saina	IND	1380	6.5	34.0	0.0	2	1.5	0.58	0.92	15	13.8
4			Lakshmi C	IND	1410	6.5	33.0	0.0	1	1	0.09	0.91	15	13.6
5			Zhang Taylor	CAN	0	6.5	29.0	0.0	1	1
6			Solozhenkina Elizaveta	RUS	0	6.0	35.5	0.0	4	2.5
7			Bai Xue	CHN	0	6.0	33.0	0.0	2	1.5
8			Ismayilzada Zeynab	AZE	0	6.0	32.5	0.0	5	2.5
9			Motahahere Asadi	IRI	0	6.0	31.0	0.0	2	0.5
10			Ramesh Kaavya	USA	1395	6.0	31.0	0.0	1	0	0.52	-0.52	30	-15.6