Precious Copper Ingots Found in Devonshire

Treasure trove! Detector found bronze hidden 3,000 years ago Thursday, February 12, 2009, 09:28 PRECIOUS copper fragments stashed away by pre-historic Denbury residents more than 3,000 years ago have been unearthed. Seven copper ingots smelted sometime between 1100BC and 800BC and thought to have been stashed away by blacksmiths for later repairs to tools and axes were discovered in fields ploughed by farmer Kiernan Wellwood. Phil Higginson, 52, from Newton Abbot and fellow members of Torbay Metal Detecting Club Stuart Hunt, from Newton Abbot and David Martin, from Exeter, unearthed the prehistoric hoard in April. Mr Higginson said: "I found a couple of pieces of copper first and one of the other chaps found a similar piece and someone else found another. We did not realise what it was at first, but when we all put our heads together we knew it was copper and probably buried when the pyramids were being built. It was amazing to think the last person to have touched it lived more than 3,000 years ago." The finds were recorded with Devon's archaeological finds liaison officer Danielle Wootton and are now at the British Museum. A treasure trove inquest was held on Tuesday to determine whether the find is valuable and if it can be kept by the finder or has to go to the museum. The pieces are classed as treasure and Exeter Royal Albert Memorial Museum has expressed interest in acquiring the find. The pieces have been analysed by British Museum experts who confirmed that they are late Bronze Age. Ms Wootton told the inquest: "We do not know what they are exactly but we think that because the metal at the time was precious it was buried away from view to be used later for repairs to tools and axes. "We have more and more finds like this in Devon and it could be it forms part of some kind of ritual. The more we learn about the Bronze Age the more we realise how civilised these people were." [Well, duh!] A medieval silver dress hook was also discovered in a Kingsbridge field. Ivybridge metal detector Barry Lang with a South Hams metal detecting club unearthed the early 16th century piece on land owned by farmer Paul Rogers, another treasure trove inquest heard. The piece has been analysed by experts at British Museum. Torbay and South Devon coroner Ian Arrow said both finds should be classed as treasure and should go to museums. It is likely the dress hook will be acquired by Plymouth Museum and art gallery.

FOCUS: Terrorism impacting archaeology

From heraldnews.com - an important story about a legal battle currently being waged in the United States courts The Herald News Posted Feb 20, 2009 @ 05:40 PM CHICAGO — The professor opens a cardboard box and gingerly picks up a few hunks of dried clay — dust-baked relics that offer a glimpse into the long-lost world of the Persian empire that spanned a continent 2,500 years ago. Matt Stolper has spent decades studying these palm-sized bits of ancient history. Tens of thousands of them. They’re like a jigsaw puzzle. A single piece offers a tantalizing clue. Together, the big picture is scholarly bliss: a window into Persepolis, the capital of the Persian empire looted and burned by Alexander the Great. The collection — on loan for decades to the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute — is known as the Persepolis Fortification Archive. These are, to put it simply, bureaucratic records. But in their own way, they tell a story of rank and privilege, of deserters and generals, of life in what was once the largest empire on earth. For Stolper — temporary caretaker of the tablets — these are priceless treasures. For others, they may one day be payment for a terrible deed. In an extraordinary battle unfolding slowly in federal court here, several survivors of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem in 1997 sued the government of Iran, accusing it of being complicit in the attack. They won a $412 million default judgment from a judge in Washington, D.C., and when their lawyer began looking for places to collect, he turned to the past. He decided to try to seize the tablets, along with collections of Persian antiquities at the Oriental Institute and other prominent museums. The goal: Sell them, with the proceeds going to the survivors of the bombing. His plan, though, has angered many scholars who see it as an attempt to ransom cultural heritage — the tablets are considered as important a find as the Dead Sea Scrolls — and fear it could set a dangerous precedent. “Imagine if the Russians laid claim to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the original draft of the Gettysburg Address because they had a legal case against us,” says Gil Stein, director of the Oriental Institute. “How would we feel?” The fight over the Persepolis tablets spans continents and centuries and features an eclectic cast of players: Indiana Jones-type, dirt-on-their-boots archaeologists, and lawyers in pinstripes. One of the nation’s most prestigious universities, and haunted survivors of a brutal attack. Iran and the United States. Add to that President Barack Obama, who was asked this month to weigh in on the long-running dispute. A European association of scholars specializing in Iranian studies — the group is called the Societas Iranologica Europea — has collected hundreds of signatures worldwide on a petition asking the president to stop the tablets from being sold or confiscated. “The antiquities belong to the cultural heritage of Iran ... and should therefore remain in public hands,” the letter read. The fight, though, is centered in the courts as both sides navigate a thicket of issues including sovereign immunity, terrorism laws, cultural exchanges, scholarly studies and the protection of antiquities. “The bottom line is to what extent does a foreign sovereign have immunity for its property,” says Patty Gerstenblith, a research professor at DePaul University’s College of Law and founding president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Cultural Heritage Preservation. “Historically, foreign nations have been immune from suits ... but in recent years, immunity has not just been chipped away at, but a sledgehammer has been taken to it.” Much of the “chipping,” she says, has been done by Congress, which passed the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in 1976. That measure generally protects foreign countries but also provides situations in which they can be sued. Two decades later, another law was passed to help civilians. It allows American victims of terrorism to seek restitution in U.S. courts if the attack occurred in a nation considered a state sponsor of terrorism. But winning in court doesn’t guarantee payment. Far from it. And no one understands that better than David Strachman, the Rhode Island lawyer representing the bombing victims. He won a $116 million judgment a decade ago against the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the deaths of a married couple shot by Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank in Israel. So far, he has collected only a fraction of that amount. This case stems from a horrific September afternoon in 1997 in Jerusalem when three suicide bombers, in a synchronized attack, blew themselves up on the city’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, a crowded, open-air gathering spot. The bombs, packed with rusty nails, screws, glass and poisons, killed five and wounded nearly 200, splattering blood on buildings and leaving the wounded and dying sprawled on the cobblestone streets. The Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, took responsibility. Two Hamas operatives were convicted in Israeli court. Two groups of Americans sued. Several were critically injured: One man, burned over 40 percent of his body, had more than 100 shrapnel wounds; a nail still pierced his skull years later. Another, severely burned, suffered permanent hearing loss and breathing and walking problems. A third man lost part of his ear. Others sustained nerve damage, partial loss of vision, constant pain and psychological trauma — one of the wounded later tried to kill himself. “These were absolutely life-changing injuries,” Strachman says. “The problem with terrorism is (after the attack is over), it looks like you’re sort of done with it. But these people have problems that are going to be with them for years and years.” In taking on Iran and some of its high-ranking officials, Strachman — whose suit was consolidated with another filed by other victims — offered testimony that Iran had provided financial aid and terrorist training to Hamas. The presiding judge found “clear and convincing evidence” Iran was liable for the injuries. But he didn’t say whether Iran’s assets can be seized. That decision revolves around the commercial use of the tablets — an arcane question that’s key to resolving this case, according to Thomas Corcoran, a Washington attorney representing the Iranian government. Iran, though, has an unlikely ally in its fight: The Justice Department. In three statements, the agency has generally agreed the tablets shouldn’t be seized, Corcoran says. It turns out, though, there may be competition for the tablets. Another lawyer is trying to seize the Persepolis collection and other Iranian assets to compensate more than 150 families of 241 U.S. service members killed in a suicide bombing of a Marines barracks in Beirut in 1983. The families hope to collect a $2.6 billion default judgment against Iran, which has been blamed for supporting the militant group, Hezbollah, believed responsible for the Beirut attack. A special measure passed in Congress last year made it easier for families to receive compensation. “If Iran wants to protect these things ... they’re going to have to do something to pay their judgments,” says Thomas Fortune Fay, the lawyer. “Maybe they’ll all end up on coffee tables around the country.” But not all the families of those Marines are in agreement. Annette Livingston, whose Marine corporal husband, Joel, was just 20 when he was killed in the Beirut bombing, believes the tablets should be seized but not sold to collectors. “Hold them hostage,” she says, until Iran hands over what it owes. “I think the only way to stop terrorism is if you take their money,” she says. James Thorstad, who lost his 27-year-old son, Thomas, a Marine staff sergeant, also wants Iran to pay, but not this way. “They got away with murder,” he says. “I want to punish them for what they did but I don’t want to hurt the (Iranian) people. I think they should have their antiquities.” So do some Iranian-Americans.“This is essentially targeting everyone who has tremendous pride and joy in having this heritage,” says Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. “The ones feeling the pain are not the ones behind these terrorist attacks.” But Strachman says the tablets would be sold to a museum where everyone could see them. And he says his clients — the bombing survivors — are the ones in pain.“They don’t want to mention the people who were horribly victimized,” he says. “Their lives were shaken forever. Would anybody do that with a rape victim? ... All Iran has to do is pay the judgment. If they came to terms with us, we wouldn’t be here.” Matt Stolper picked up his first chunk of the Persepolis tablets as a graduate student in the 1970s. About 35 years later, the bearded, silver-haired professor is edging toward retirement — but still immersed in the monumental research project. At 64, Stolper represents the third generation of academics who’ve analyzed the collection. It was discovered by scholars from the Oriental Institute in the early 1930s when they were building a ramp in Persepolis and stumbled upon two rooms in a fortified wall that held tens of thousands of tablets and fragments. “They knew pretty quickly that they had found something extraordinary,” Stolper says. “When it was discovered, there was only one other known text of this kind. The next day there were tens of thousands. Since then, no one has found a group like this.” The tablets, inscribed with wedge-shaped cuneiform characters, were loaned to the university for study. When they arrived in more than 2,350 boxes, there were great expectations. “The first thing people said was ‘Hot dog! at last, now we can see Persia from the inside,’” he says. But it turned out these records didn’t track gold or silver or armies on the move; instead, they focused on humdrum food rations and the day-to-day business of an empire. It would take decades to fully grasp their importance. Studying just one tablet was like to trying to understand a society with a single grocery receipt. Scholars had to figure out how they were connected. They also had translate them. While some of the pieces were as large as place mats, others were tiny nuggets. Some had just seals and no script; many others were written in Elamite, a hard-to-comprehend language dating back to 2300 B.C. or earlier. (Stolper is among a small group of people in the world who understand it.) When they did piece everything together, scholars had something rare because Persian history had typically come from Greek, Egyptian or biblical accounts. “It’s the first and really the only chance we have to understand the Persian Empire in the words of the people themselves,” Stein says. “It gives you a wonderful window into the Persian empire — of how it worked.” The records revealed how rank shaped the rations of beer, barley and wine, the movement of cattle and sheep and the distant travels of people who came from modern India, Egypt and Turkey. They offer a top-to-bottom look at a society. They show, for example, that mothers of newborn sons received double the food rations of those who gave birth to daughters. They list the names of Greeks who deserted to the Persian court. They may reveal the name of a general, cited by the historian Herodotus, who suppressed a revolt in 490 B.C. “It wasn’t just a bunch of guys in bed sheets running around saying ‘thee’ and ‘thou,’”Stolper says. “These were real men and women with needs for food and shelter and real fears and anxieties. ... These guys were highly civilized people who could operate extremely complicated bureaucracies because, after all, they had conquered an entire continent and what’s more important is ... they held on to it.” Over the decades, tens of thousands of tablets were returned to Iran after scholars finished studying and cataloguing them. When the Oriental Institute announced it was delivering more to Iran in 2004, Strachman heard about it. He had been able to collect just a small part of the judgment from Iranian bank accounts and a house in Texas once owned by the shah of Iran. This, he realized, could be a new opportunity. The prospect of losing the tablets has prompted Stolper to speed up his work. Aided by experts from the United States and Europe, Stolper is rushing to put online the first installments of a digital photo archive of the Persepolis collection that can be seen around the world. “Here I am in this in this odd position of responsibility for something that could be destroyed on my watch,” he says. “If it’s taken away or broken up, it’s completely irreplaceable.” No one knows how much the tablets (there are 10,000 to 12,000 useful pieces) would fetch on the open market. Some academics believe it would be a mere fraction of the enormous judgments; others think no institution would even bid on them considering the legal tug-of-war. Strachman, however, maintains he has been contacted by interested museums who want to expand their collections. He says he has no intention of trying to sell them commercially — something he says would be “absolutely inappropriate.” He has sued the Field Museum in Chicago, too, as well as the Harvard museums and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston for other Persian artifacts. In those cases, lawyers deny the items belong to the government of Iran. Strachman also is seeking a list of all Iranian assets in the United States. As this case works its way through the courts, Stein, head of the Oriental Institute, worries about broader implications. “If we open up the Pandora’s box ... and sell other countries’ cultural property, how long before they do the same to us?” he asks. “It would have a deadly, chilling effect on any kinds of cultural exchanges in the future.” Gerstenblith, the DePaul professor, agrees. The bombing survivors clearly deserve compensation, she says, adding that she wouldn’t object if land or bank assets were at stake. “Money is money,” she says. “But cultural objects are completely different.” Seven decades after these ancient records arrived by ship, a very modern-day debate over terrorism now leaves them in a legal limbo. It may take years more before their fate — and their home — is finally determined. “I think and have to hope that common sense is going to prevail,” Stein says. “They ultimately are the property of the people of Iran and they belong back there.”

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"They ultimately are the property of the people of Iran and they belong back there." Do they? The Islamic government of Iran has shown a careless disregard (or deliberate intent) in destroying Iranian cultural artifacts, demonstrated in many events reported in this blog and elsewhere (such as CAIS), as well as allowing under-the-table sales of Persian antiquities to the highest bidders via the Revolutionary Guard (see, for example, account in Jiroft article at Goddesschess). The simple answer is this: the Iranian government could have appeared in and defended the original action; instead, it allowed a default judgment to be entered against it. Under the common law shared by the United States and Great Britain, if a creditor follows statutorily-defined procedures for seizing a debtor's property, the creditor is entitled to dispose of that property in whatever manner desired in order to obtain compensation for what is owed. The debtor can prevent this from happening by paying what is owed.

Candidates' Match

I don't normally discuss chess dudes, particularly chess dudes with really bad hair, but since Kamsky is playing and he's USA, what the heck! Rules are made to be broken (sometimes). It's the half-way point in the match and it's all tied up after Game 4. I've been following the action, as previously written, at Susan Polgar's blog where she has been providing live commentary. She will be providing live commentary again tomorrow for Game 5 and I'll try to sneak peeks every now and then since the action will be taking place while I'm at the office. Probably the best quote I've seen thus far about this match is from Mig at his Daily Dirt blog: [But] Topalov has never been a slow, maneuvering player and only plays the Lopez on very rare occasions. (Against Sicilian-basher Polgar, for example.) Kamsky, on the other hand, speaks the Spanish as a native language and loves a slow grind so much you'd think he was dancing a rumba. That gave me a big laugh and a big thumbs up to clever M. Greengard, who certainly has a way with words :) I'm still chuckling. Many of the folks who comment at Mig's blog are also clever with words and can actually string two coherent thoughts together in one paragraph. Imagine!

Asian American Queen of Cinema

The Reigning Queen of Asian American Hollywood Pacific Citizen, News report, Lynda Lin, Assistant Editor Posted: Feb 21, 2009 (Image: Tamlyn Tomita in 2008) Tamlyn Tomita throws her hands in the air and confesses that the last few years have been a transitional time in her career. The actress, 43, who famously launched countless boyhood crushes as Ralph Macchio's love interest in "The Karate Kid, Part II," is starting to move into mom roles. "I've been mom how many times this year or last year. Wow!" she exclaims with a laugh. Let's see, there's the popular ABC series "Heroes," where last year she played Masi Oka's onscreen mother and George Takei's wife — despite in real life only being nine years older than Oka and 28 years younger than Takei. If there ever was any doubt that Hollywood is cruel, remove it now. Because while sitting in the lobby of the Miyako Hotel in Los Angeles' Little Tokyo and talking community and history with the Pacific Citizen, she's still every inch as lovely as her "Karate Kid" Kumiko character and sophisticated as Waverly in "The Joy Luck Club." Occasionally flashes of spunky Kana, her 1994 role as the Japanese Hawaiian plantation worker in "Picture Bride" bubbles to the surface too. "It's just a natural part of life," says Tamlyn, a Sansei who was born in Okinawa. "I won't be able to go up against actresses who are in their 20s anymore." But she doesn't mind. "It's just a matter of really taking delight in the roles that are out there and saying 'Oh my God! I'm a mother? No way!'" And with over 20 years in Hollywood, while many other former young actors have fizzled (Hello, have you seen VH1's "Confessions of a Teen Idol"?), Tomita has been a steady force with a lengthy IMDB.com Web page to prove it. In the last few months, television projects have been popping up non-stop: "The Mentalist," "Eureka" and maybe even "Heroes" again ("You never know!"). She names the projects between snaps of fingers and pauses to reflect. "I've been very, very lucky." 'Karate Kid': 23 Years Later After all this time, people still recognize Tamlyn in the role that launched her career. She could be walking down the street and hardened businessmen in suits would just melt remembering scenes from the film where Kumiko coyly dances in her kimono. They usually say, "You're that girl!" and maybe even start thinking about the chorus of Peter Cetera's "Glory of Love." "It's cute, very sweet." Before sharing screen time with other Japanese American legends like Pat Morita and Nobu McCarthy, Tamlyn was a history major at the University of California, Los Angeles and Little Tokyo's Nisei Week queen in 1984. From the beginning, her career and the community have always intersected. The idea for Tamlyn to audition for the "Karate Kid" came from Helen Funai, another former Nisei Week queen. When she landed the role, Tamlyn's father, the late Shiro Tomita, said Funai had to be her manager. "She basically mothered me through the first few years of my career. I wasn't alone." Shiro, who was interned at Manzanar during World War II, was a Los Angeles Police Department officer who helped to form the nation's first Asian task force. "I remember growing up and feeling that sense of community here in Little Tokyo." Tamlyn's mother Asako, who is half Okinawan and half Filipina, experienced the other side of WWII. "With English being her third language it was very difficult for her to tell her kids about what it was like growing up in the war on that side." In the fourth grade when Tamlyn finally read a very abbreviated version of the U.S. internment of JAs in her schoolbook, she rushed home and asked, "Dad, did this happen to you?" In response, Shiro gave his daughter a copy of Estelle Ishigo's book, "Lone Heart Mountain." It's partly her parents' influence that she says drives her to be an active community leader. She's been a Nisei Week host for the past eight years and a constant presence at community functions. "It's that sense of trying to retain that sense of history and to pass along these ideas of what it means to be Japanese American." This year during Nisei Week, Tamlyn brought her uncle as part of her "entourage" and had him sit in the thick of ondo dancers. I said, "'Yeah, that's right. This is all our people.' "Itinerant Actor" "I think with actors unless we're super successful — like a Tom Hanks or a Julia Roberts — we're always itinerant workers. It's from job to job." It's the kind of lifestyle that even after so many years makes Asako worry about her daughter. Even with the big budget splashy movies like "The Day After Tomorrow," Asako would ask, "Okay, what are you going to do next?" In Wayne Wang's 1993 film "The Joy Luck Club," Tamlyn made history as part of the Asian Pacific American cast in the first APA film to be released into mainstream America. She still gets recognized as Waverly Jong, the grown up chess champion. Since then, Tamlyn has seen Hollywood evolve to include some more roles for APA actors. "It does feel like it's opening up, but the bottom line to me still is that change is occurring slowly," she said. "There are more opportunities for roles that are not ethnic specific, but they're not leading roles." Once in awhile, APA actors pop up in the peripherals of new films and television shows, provide some comic relief or added drama and then just disappear. "We're just the seasoning. We're just the flavor still." That's why she doesn't shirk from the label of community leader. "You have to take it with the sense that by the fact that we're of a non-white face, it's a political statement. We're here to play. I'm going to sit at this table representing a whole group of people behind me. And I know there are people who would love to have the opportunity to speak and say something ... I happen to be very, very fortunate to have the opportunity to say what I need to say in order to propel our community and say, 'Hey, we're here! Count us!'" In the recent politically charged presidential elections, whenever Tamlyn would hear pundits talk about "black and brown" ethnic communities, she would want to shout out "yellow!" She leans forward and smiles. "Actually, I like to say 'golden.'"

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Lyrics to Peter Cetera's "The Glory of Love" Tonight it's very clear As were both lying here There's so many things I want to say I will always love you I would never leave you alone Sometimes I just forget Say things I might regret It breaks my heart to see you crying I dont wanna lose you I could never make it alone I am a man who will fight for your honor I'll be the hero youre dreaming of We'll live forever Knowing together that we Did it all for the glory of love You'll keep me standing tall You'll help me through it all I'm always strong when you're beside me I have always needed you I could never make it alone I am a man who will fight for your honor I'll be the hero youve been dreaming of We'll live forever Knowing together that we Did it all for the glory of love Just like a knight in shining armor From a long time ago Just in time I will save the day Take you to my castle far away I am a man who will fight for your honor I'll be the hero you're dreaming of We're gonna live forever Knowing together that we Did it all for the glory of love We'll live forever Knowing together that we Did it all for the glory of love We did it all for love We did it all for love We did it all for love We did it all for love

Mehen: An Ancient Egyptian Board Game

More info on Mehen. This Mehen board is from the British Museum, c. 2800 BCE. Sorry, I don't have the exhibit number or provenance saved in My Pictures and when I looked for it today, I could not find it archived at the British Museum's website. Drat! Doesn't this remind you of the "ALL SEEING EYE" with sun-rays coming out from it??? We don't know the rules - but we have examples of the playing pieces in several museums. The following information comes from P.S. Neeley's website on Mehen, where you can also download a version of the game: ‘Mehen’, which means ‘coiled one’ or as a verb, ‘to coil’, in ancient Egyptian was played on a spiral game board – most often explicitly in the form of a snake – with varying numbers of slots (playing squares), six sets of differently colored marbles (the playing pieces, with six marbles to a set), and six special playing pieces in the form of a dangerous, predatory animal – most often lions (but sometimes dogs or even hippos). It is the only multi-player ancient Egyptian board game known – the others were contests between two players (or teams), while Mehen could accommodate as many as six contestants. Strangely, it also seems to have ceased being played in ancient Egypt from just after 2000 BC. (during the early Middle Kingdom)... The Petrie Museum (among others) has a collection of archaic lions that date to Naqada III (pre-dynastic and Dynasty "Zero"). (Image from Petrie Museum, from My Pictures). According to P.S. Neeley, a form of Mehen may have survived into the early 20th century: In the 1920s, anthropologists, explorers, and adventurers found a curious, spiral based, game being played by Baggara Arabs of the Sudan -- The Hyena Game (You can see the rules for this game in The Rules section of the help file). Tim Kendall writes: " In all essential details the "Hyena Game" seems to have been identical to Mehen. It was played on a spiraling track, employed stick dice of precisely the kind known from Archaic Egyptian contexts, and had two types of pieces, one representing a predatory animal. The only difference would seem to be that the ancient Egyptians allotted six counters to each player rather than only one." [But, see Piccione's comments, below] Here are Dr. Peter Piccione's comments on Mehen from the old ANE Digest message/bulletin board: From: "Peter Piccione" peter_piccione@memphis-orinst.uchicago.edu Date: 30 Nov 1994 17:23:28 USubject: Re: Phaistos/games/duplicate Reply to: RE>Phaistos/games/duplicate On 11/22 Dr. John Baker asked about the Phaistos Disk (Crete, 17th century BC),"can it have been some sort of table game?" As I recall, this possibility was mentioned and discussed at the Colloquium on Board Games of the Ancient World, held at the British Museum in September 1990. Timothy Kendall of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, presented a fine paper on the Egyptian game of *mehen* (entitled, "The Egyptian Game of the Snake"), and I think he may have noted the similarities between the game and the Phaistos Disk. Unfortunately, the proceedings of that symposium are still in press, and I don't know that a publication date has even been set yet (but that's another matter). On 11/23, Dr. Joanna Smith wrote that the game in question is the spiral-form "game of snake" (citing W. Decker, SPORTS AND GAMES OF ANCIENT EGYPT, 131-33). She then broached the subject of small inscribed clay balls found on Cyprus about which Dikaios earlier conjectured were marbles for gaming (P. Dikaios,ENKOMI 2, p. 516). These balls are clay and impressed with Cyprio-Minoan signs, meaning uncertain (E. Masson, STUDIES IN MEDITERRANEAN ARCHAEOLOGY31/1). Dr. Smith noted the similarity between these balls and small Egyptian gaming balls (viz. "marbles"), which were associated earlier with the "game of snake." Those balls are made of stone and are incised with decorative text. She described an illustration of an inscribed Egyptian marble in association with that game, published by G. Hart, ANCIENT EGYPT, p. 53 [middle left] (BTW, the source for this photo is noted on p. 64, "p. 53ml"). She quotes Hart's description of the marble, "the stone counters are sometimes carved with thenames of Egypt's earliest pharaohs." My own extensive research into Egyptian board games and their religious associations has shed some light on the game of *mehen* (as the "game of snake"is properly called in Egyptian). The "mehen" is both the coiled serpent of that gameboard, as well as the proper noun, Mehen, denoting the specific serpent-deity embodied in the game. Regarding this game, note the following recent references: Decker, W. and Herb, M. BILDATLAS ZUM SPORT IM ALTEN AEGYPTEN: CORPUS DERBILDLICHEN QUELLEN ZU LEIBESUEBUNGEN, SPIEL, JAGD, TANZ UND VERWANDTEN THEMEN.Vol. 1, TEXT, pp. 608-11, 633-42. Vol. 2, ABBILDUNGEN, pls. 355-59. Handbuchder Orientalistik. Abteilung 1. Der Nahe und der Mittlere Osten 14. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994. Kendall, T. LEXIKON DER AEGYPTOLOGIE, ed. W. Helck and E. Otto. Vol. 5, 653-55.Wiesbaden: O. Harrassowitz. S.v. "Schlangenspiel" [in English]. Kendall, T. "An Ancient Egyptian Board Game among the Khababish?" In his"Ethnoarchaeology in Meroitic Studies." MEROITICA 10 (1984): 711-15. Piccione, P. "The Historical Development of the Game of Senet and Its Significance for Egyptian Religion," 41-42, 217-27. Ph.D. dissertation,University of Chicago, 1990. [Available through University Microfilms] Piccione, P. "Mehen, Mysteries and Resurrection from the Coiled Serpent."JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN RESEARCH CENTER IN EGYPT 27 (1990): 43-52. N.B., the still important seminal study (although outdated in certain conclusions and syntheses): Ranke, H. "Das Altaegyptische Schlangenspiele." SITZUNGBERICHTE DERHEIDELBERGER AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN 11. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1920. The archaeological and artistic evidence for the game of *mehen* is found only in contexts dating from the Predynastic Period through the Old Kingdom (perhaps as late as the First Intermediate Period). 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. Representations in the tomb of Hesyre and various other mastabas reveal that 2-6 people played at any one time (probably forming 2 teams of 1-3 players ea.) Gaming pieces included: 6 sets of marbles (6 per player) and 2 sets of feline draughtsmen (3 couchant lions and 3 couchant lionesses), probably 1 set for each team. That the game quickly developed significant and deep-seated religious associations (if these were not actually original to the game!) is indicated by the game's occurence and function in the Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts (q.v. Piccione, "Mehen," passim). While marbles were an important component of the game, none have ever been found together with any *mehen*-gameboards. Thus, the photograph of marble and board in Hart's ANCIENT EGYPT represents a false assemblage, composed, no doubt, for illustrative purposes (a common practice in museum display). That marble does not belong to that *mehen*-board. Because marbles were also in popular use with games other than *mehen* (e.g., Petrie, NAQADA AND BALLAS, p.35, pl. VII [1]), their occurence in an archaeological context does not necessarily indicate the presence of a *mehen*-game, specifically. Dr. Smith asked about the significance of Egyptian marbles which happen to be inscribed. Actually these are very rare, given the large number of uninscribed marbles recovered in Egypt. Most of the known examples are published by Peter Kaplony, DIE INSCHRIFTEN DER AEGYPTISCHEN FRUEHZEIT. Supplement, pp. 28-31[1050-1052], pl. 2. Aegyptologische Abhandlungen 9. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1964. The specimen published by Hart, now in the British Museum, is incised with the name of King Aha. The marbles of Kaplony's corpus are incised with the names of kings of the Archaic Period, specifically. They usually derive from the mastabas and cenotaphs of these kings and are probably inscribed as such to denote them as the property of their owners. The kings whose names are found inscribed on such marbles include: Aha (c. 3050-3016 BC), Djer (c. 3016-2970 BC), Wadji (c.2970-2963 BC), Anedjib (c. 2949-2897 BC), and Ninetjer (c. 2815-2778 BC). Uninscribed marbles have also been found in the tombs of these and other kings of the period. Other than this limited group of royalty, no other inscribed marbles are presently known to me (but that's not saying too much!). Note that the draughtsmen of other games (e.g., *senet*) are also rarely inscribed with the names of their owners (royal or otherwise). These incised Egyptian marbles probably were associated originally with*mehen*-boards in the burials. To my mind, though, there is almost certainly no connection between the Egyptian incised marbles and Dr. Smith's inscribed balls from Cyprus. (BTW, despite Dikaios' suggestion that these balls are gaming pieces, I am not convinced they are marbles for gaming. There is nothing to suggest that they could not, otherwise, have been used in some fashion as counting stones, for divination and sortilege, etc.). Whether or not the *mehen*-game was actually the inspiration for the Phaistos Disk of Crete or for stone slabs on Cyprus carved with patterns of coiling dots or for the Hyena Game of The Sudan is another more vexing question, and it is better kept for another discussion. Those interested should see S. Swiny, "Bronze Age Gaming Stones from Cyprus," REPORT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTIQUITIESCYPRUS 5 (1980): 54-78 and Kendall's article in MEROITICA (cited above). However, because of chronological considerations--although I do not deny the possibility, I am far more cautious and hesitant than Swiny and Kendall in identifying such stones on Cyprus and games in the remotest backwaters of The Sudan specifically as *mehen* or as descendents of *mehen*. Peter Piccione

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Here is some information about the ancient Egyptian Goddess Mehen: Mehen Patron of: defender of the Sun Boat Appearance: A serpent-headed man holding a spear, standing in the prow of the Sun Boat, or as a giant snake coiled around it. Description: In the Old Kingdom and in predynastic literature, Mehen, along with Set in his original form, fights Apep daily as the sun travels across the sky. Mehen wraps his coils around Apep, while Set strikes at Apep with a spear. Yes yes, darlings, I know - Mehen is referred to as a "serpent-headed man" in later ancient Egyptian references (all long past the Archaic Period) and the early 19th century adventurers who excavated Egypt just assumed that Mehen was a god. But think about it: (1) Mehen was paired with Set in his original form (Set was the original husband of the goddess Nepthys, sister of Isis). The Egyptians often paired their goddesses and gods together (think of the four pairs of gods and goddesses that make up the original Egyptian Ogdoad). (2) There were TWO GODDESSES on one of the sacred crowns of Egypt, signifying the uniting of the Two Lands (Upper and Lower Egypt): the Vulture Goddess and the Serpent Goddess who, together, guarded Pharaoh. Depictions of Mehen encircling the Sun God Re (Pharaoh incarnate) on the Royal Barque remind me of a fetus within a womb. I haven't done a study on the subject, but my guess is that the serpent-enclosed depictions of Pharaoh are older, and the depictions of Mehen as a serpent-headed male with a spear on the Royal Barque are much later interpretations of the ancient texts that New Kingdom Egyptians incorporated into tomb paintings of Re's journey through the "underworld", which those artists no longer perfectly understood.

Conserving Books: Not Just a Job

After long obscurity, it's prime time for China's "book doctors" www.chinaview.cn 2009-02-20 16:27:07 by Xinhua writers Fu Shuangqi and Zuo Yuanfeng BEIJING, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- Du Weisheng calls himself a "book doctor." In a 35-year career, he's saved many old tomes that got drenched, were bitten by rats, became rotten in damp storage areasor began to fall apart because of their old age. China held its largest-ever exhibition of intangible cultural heritage items in Beijing over the past two weeks, and Du was there. While other craftsmen displayed beautiful stitchwork, paintings and silver jewellery, his booth showcased a worn, old book. Almost every visitor regarded the book skeptically. Could it be saved? The thread-bound antique volume had obviously gotten soaked a long time ago and never properly dried. Most of its leaves were stuck together and many were fragile and broken. "I can fix it," Du told visitors. He showed some of them to peel a fragile leaf from the book with a thin piece of bamboo. "I do not like to do it with so many people watching. It is a delicate job that requires concentration," he said. "But I do it here so that more people will return home with some knowledge of book repair." LIFETIME LABOR OF LOVE Du joined the rare book division of the National Library of China in 1974. In the years since then, he has helped restore the 161 volumes of the 600-year-old Yongle Encyclopedia, as well as manuscripts from Dunhuang written between the 5th and 11th centuries. Dunhuang, a famed cave on the Silk Road, was unearthed more than a century ago. It was found to contain tens of thousands of relics. "When I joined the library at the age of 22, I knew little about book repair, but I did love books. I spent lots of time in secondhand bookshops as a kid," he said. "My first idea when I got the job was that I could read books freely." He soon realized how wrong he was. "This job is a painstaking art. It requires no less concentration than that shown by a real surgeon," he said. "You won't have time to read the books before they are fully restored." For about three years, he learned from two older masters before repairing a book on his own. Actually, that kind of apprentice system was the traditional means of teaching book-repair techniques. "Now, universities teach book repair courses. That's good because students can learn the whole set of skills systematically," he said. "An apprentice will inherit both skills and flaws from his teacher, even a bias against other schools of repair techniques," Du said. "It's best to get systematic training in a school and then follow a master for further education." LUXURY FOR GOOD TIMES Book repair has a long history, but it's a low-profile profession. "It only receives attention when society is prosperous and there's extra money," he said. "People don't care about the condition of books when they're hungry." For years, book repair was a marginal division in libraries. And as new books got cheaper, there were fewer secondhand bookshops, which were major sources of book-repair work. But as Du honed his skills in the quiet library studio, out of the public eye, the world outside changed. The government and public became more aware that antique books were an important part of China's heritage and needed better preservation. In 2007, the country started a national project to preserve millions of ancient books. A state-level rare book restoration center was established in the National Library of China for protection and education. The center has held seven short-term training programs for book-repair staff of museums and libraries nationwide. Du taught some of the courses. "The training is free. We plan to train about 500 people," he said. The State Council, China's Cabinet, released a list of the first 2,392 books in the National Rare Ancient Book Directory last March, following a nationwide survey. NOT JUST A JOB But increasing attention also led to misused resources. "There are about 20 colleges nationwide that train book-repair staff. They usually take high school graduates and give them three-year courses. But there are not so many positions in libraries and museums," Du said. It would be better to provide postgraduate courses, he said. "Investment in education should be increased but the money should be spent on a limited number of people and give them quality training." First, he said, a person must love books instead of just wanting a job. "Unlike my generation, young people now have less affection for books in general, not [to] mention ancient books," he said. "You can't sit there eight hours a day, doing repetitive work, without a passion for books and knowledge of their content." But for those who really love the printed word, "this is the best time ever for this business," Du said. Editor: Zhang Xiang

New Discoveries at Luxor

Egyptian archaeologists uncover ancient statues in Luxor www.chinaview.cn 2009-02-19 07:25:34 CAIRO, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian archaeologists on Wednesday uncovered a statue of pharaoh and a bust of the famous woman pharaoh Hatshepsut in the southern city of Luxor, the state MENA news agency reported. The three-meter Amenhotep statue was "dug out with only one damage in the nose and one in the teeth," said Moustafa el-Waziri, director of the archaeological mission, adding that more antiques would be unearthed in the future. Amenhotep III, or Amenophis III, was the ninth pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. He ruled the country from 1411 B.C. to 1375 B.C. after his father Thutmose IV died. Hatshepsut, or Hatchepsut, generally regarded as one of the most successful pharaohs, was the fifth monarch of the eighteen dynasty which dates back to 15th century B.C. Being a woman, she wore a false beard to reinforce her authority while acting as the regent of her son, Thutmose III.

Eastern Zhou Horse/Chariot Burial

From cctv.com Chariot and horse burial chamber excavated in Henan Source: CRI 02-19-2009 08:52 The excavation of some Eastern Zhou period tombs that had ancient chariots and horses buried underground has been completed, an official from Luoyang's cultural relics office told Dahe Daily on Tuesday. This is another latest uncover of ancient tombs following similar discoveries in surrounding areas in 2002. The excavation site contains 29 tombs, including two imperial wooden chariots and two dead horses. Field work for this excavation began in August 2008 and took archaeologists three months to finish. Many artifacts such as pottery, bronze weapons and jade were found despite the fact that most of the tombs had already been plundered by grave robbers. The horses, laying back to back in an orderly arrangement, were evidently killed before the burial. The two wooden chariots had rotted away, leaving only dusts. According to local archaeologists, this is also the first time a burial chamber with two horses and two chariots has been discovered in the Luoyang region. The chamber is located beneath a restaurant undergoing renovation. The restaurant, Luoyang Jujia, plans to encase the burial chamber in an underground culinary museum.

2009 Aeroflot

Standings after Round 4. I noted the chess femmes and a few Ms of interest :) Tournament A1 Standings After Round 4 (78 players): Rank Name Score Fed. M/F Rating TPR 1 GM Kurnosov, Igor 3.5 RUS M 2602 2927 19 GM So, Wesley 2.5 PHI M 2627 2639 52 IM Kosintseva, Tatiana 2.0 RUS F 2497 2614 65 IM Kosintseva, Nadezhda 1.5 RUS F 2486 2497 66 IM Robson, Ray 1.5 USA M 2455 2499 67 WGM Shen, Yang 1.5 CHN F 2448 2490 Tournament A2 Standings After Round 4 (84 players): Rank Name Flags Score Fed. M/F Rating TPR 1 GM Rakhmanov, Aleksandr 3.5 RUS M 2541 2785 6 GM Khachiyan, Melikset 3.0 USA M 2519 2614 8 WGM Romanko, Marina w 3.0 RUS F 2451 2727 25 GM Peng, Zhaoqin w 2.5 NED F 2461 2585 27 IM Krush, Irina w 2.5 USA F 2457 2502 32 Ju, Wenjun jw 2.5 CHN F 2392 2599 35 GM Ivanov, Alexander 2.0 USA M 2541 2431 48 WGM Munguntuul, Batkhuyag w 2.0 MGL F 2425 2471 49 IM Melia, Salome w 2.0 GEO F 2422 2508 64 WFM Gunina, Valentina w 1.5 RUS F 2400 2413 69 WIM Pourkashiyan, Atousa w 1.5 IRI F 2272 2350 80 WIM Kashlinskaya, Alina jw 1.0 RUS F 2302 2258 81 WIM Zhang, Xiaowen w 0.5 CHN F 2357 2139 82 WGM Gu, Xiaobing w 0.5 CHN F 2283 2108

Decorating...The Upstairs Bath

Some photos of the upstairs bathroom redo in progress. Okay, so I'm crazy undertaking all of these projects in the midst of the Second Coming of the Great Depression. The new toile shower curtain arrived yesterday; it's the "Antoinette" pattern that you can probably find by doing a search online. It's printed on a textured 100% cotton shower curtain in true black and creamy background - it's definitely not stark white, so now I can complete the rest of the decor; the goal is a sophisticated and yet comfortable black/white (cream) bathroom. I thought about taking "before" photos of the bath - too late! Darn! The old cheapo light fixture (it was basically a box that stuck out from the wall a good 9 inches with three half-light fixtures using those tiny base round "Hollywood" style bulbs) was taken down Monday and put out to the curb; it was gone Tuesday morning when I thought to pull out the digital camera and take a fare thee well snapshot. Oh well. The original shower curtain is still up, along with bits of the matching bordder along the ceiling line - also forgot to take photos of that before I started ripping it down! The original art work is in place. The mirror shot shows the new light fixture which throws off too much light! The electrician asked me for and installed three 60-watt bulbs which were blindingly bright in the small space. I later replaced them with three 40 watt bulbs, but they stick out too much below the line of the shades (I don't know if you can tell from the photo), and I am not used to so much brightness! I purchased some 40 watt appliance bulbs which are much shorter than a standard-size light bulb and are clear (so they will be transparent, hopefully), I will put them in tomorrow and retain the brightness, which is great for putting on make-up with these much older eyes. The third lamp in the old fixture had shorted out several years back, so the bath was lit by only two 25-watt bulbs. No wonder I couldn't see anything... Anyway, these photos give you an idea of what my 8 ft. long by 5 ft. wide bath upstairs (not including the tub width) is like. Pretty typical, I think. I will have to take a shot of the flooring - but not tonight, it's too yucky to contemplate tonight! So - the plan is to paint the walls medium tan, replace the artwork with black toned pieces and eventually redo the floor with black marble-look vinyl. I am also thinking about wallpaper or some decorative paint treatment once the walls are repainted. I am leaning toward a harlequin print wallpaper in black and tan on one or more walls, perhaps just on half-walls, or a varigated stripe in black and various shades of tan with a marbelized background... The dilemma is where to install such paper, if I go in that direction. Then - do I need a border if I decide to do only a half wall or two? What if I limit the wallpaper treatment to the little bit of wall that shows just above the shower, and on the opposite wall where the linen closet door is located? Oy, problems, problems... I also really like the idea of a lamp on the vanity - it's wide enough where water splash would probably not be a problem (since I do not have teenagers or children living in the house) - and I could shop for a tray to rest the base in to protect it from water splash-up. Then again, what kind of lamp would I get? And I'm considering several options regarding the overwhelming plate-glass mirror that takes up so much of the wall opposite the entrance. Framing it, perhaps? What about suspending a black wood-framed oval mirror by chains over the current mirror centered over the sink area? What about framing the current mirror into several different sections - perhaps a vaguely oriental motif? What about removing the current mirror altogether and going with the aforesaid black wood-framed oval mirror, flanked by two sconces on either side? Budget is, of course, always a consideration...

Friday Night Miscellany

Hola Darlings! Last night I was home late and so did not blog. It was a night out with a good friend - good drinks, an even better dinner, the excellent company of my friend and all the $$$ we spent went to supporting a locally family-owned establishment bar/restaurant called Kegel's that is time-worn around the edges but still serves dinner on crisp white tableclothes and wine is under $5 a glass. Oh - the food is uniformly excellent too. No nouvelle cuisine, just good German and American dishes presented on a modest two page menu in a no-nonsense manner. The dishes offered are all excellent. I usually get a filet mignon or the veal liver, Ann gets the German-style beef tips in gravy over thick homemade noodles. By the way, their baked potatoes are NEVER over-done. I've eaten at some high-brow restaurants where that was not the case. The prices have gone up a dollar here, and dollar there, since I've been visiting Kegel's the past 3-4 years, but the service has remained the same - relaxed, friendly and unassuming. It's the kind of place a woman alone can feel comfortable sitting at the bar to have a drink or two after work or spend some time alone, and not feel uncomfortable. All age groups visit Kegel's but the droopy drawers set who think they look cool (har!) don't hang out there, thank Goddess! Last night on our way out from dinner I was introduced to a fellow legal eagle who was sitting at the bar working a crossword puzzle. She had what I believe was a martini in the trademark-shaped glass, and what looked like dark beer in a stubby glass waiting on the side :) Now that's the south side of Milwaukee for ya! So, posting tonight, I'll see how long I last. I'm very tired; it is our busiest time at the office (through April 15) and Sunday night the critters in the attic reappeared with a vengence, waking me up at quarter to three in the morning; I finally gave up trying to get back to sleep upstairs where I could here every little scuff and scratch and, I fancied, even a few squeaks from time to time. Arrrggggghhhh! I finally removed to the recliner in the family room downstairs on the opposite end of the house from my upstairs bedroom. Suffice to say I didn't get much decent sleep. Monday night I slept in the guest room, but the mattress is hard, ouch! I need to get a better mattress pad for that bed - that will entail an extensive shopping trip to the local mall, I'm sure. Tuesday night I slept in my room, and I again heard the critters in the attic, so Wednesday night I moved back to the guest room. Last night I returned to my bedroom and it was a quiet night, thank goddess! I suppose until the excess mouse population has been disposed of through the unfortunate method of poison I will continue to experience these critter home invasions. Sigh. You can be sure bright and early Monday morning I was on the telephone with the critter people. We'll see if it's quiet tonight and the next few nights...

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A storm is on the way later tonight, we may get as much as 6 inches of snow, starting at midnight. Blechy! I am SO over winter. Here it is February 20th, we've got probably another 4 to 6 weeks of winter and perhaps even April and May. I cannot wait to get on that jet and fly away to New York. It's generally mild there in May - at least milder there than here! That trip is coming up fast! I'll be on vacation from May 7 - May 26th, yippee!

Some items that you may find of interest - they may make you laugh, they may make you cry: Here's a good one - the Chinese scientists have caused an uncontrolled blizzard of man-made snow that closed 12 highways. So much for being able to control the weather, har! Melt-pools 'accelerating Arctic ice loss' One of those "duh" articles - it took them HOW long to figure this out??? I mean, geez, it's only been reported for the past twelve months or so that the polar ice caps are melting faster than anticipated by ANYONE, but they didn't know why! Oh come on guys, don't you cook? You can thaw a totally rock solid frozen steak by wrapping it in plastic to be water-tight and floating it in a tub of cold water for 30 minutes or so. Isn't this the same effect, basically? I don't know the science, I only know it works. You're the scientists - why did it take you so long to figure this out??? The Candidate's chess match between American hopeful GM Gata Kamsky (who used to play for Russia years ago when he was an underweight teenager) and Bulgarian hopeful GM Vesilin Topalov is taking place right now. Today game 3 was played, and Kamsky playing with the black pieces drew the game, coming back from a defeat behind the white pieces in game 2. The score now is Topalov 2/Kamsky 1. Game 4 proceeds tomorrow. I believe the match is 8 games - not much time for either player to achieve a dominating position, so look for some fireworks tomorrow at this half-way game. GM Susan Polgar has provided live commentary on all of the games; here is her commentary on game 3. Others are also providing live commentary and analysis of these games, but I prefer SP's analysis. I can follow along much better with the action than when I read other GMs' comments/analysis. I am NO expert, that's for sure - but SP's analysis is usually spot on, and she explains how the game is proceeding in a way I can grasp. Perhaps it comes from all of the teaching courses and videos she has put together over the years, to help kids (and the rest of us) learn how to play chess :) She's got the knack of informing without being obscure, and presenting potential lines of action without being overwhelming. I highly recommend reading SP's commentary on the games, and playing the moves out on a chessboard as you go along. I cannot do that at work, but she's so good at what she does I can sometimes "see" the chessboard in my head as I sneak a peek at the progress of the games, which totally amazes me! Life goes on, the world keeps spinning around the sun, and the sun won't blow up for another billion years or so, at which point I won't give a damn cuz I'll be dead in less than 100 years (barring a miracle, darlings). Why, then, does this article about a new "Atlas" of dead and dying languages make me so sad? A fascinating story I read earlier today at the Wall Street Journal. I know next to nothing about the world of art (as in paintings and sculpture), but I know what I like, and I like a lot of the "Old Masters" because their paintings at least are recognizable as people and things and animals and plants! LOL! So I'm a barbarian - but I do speak the Queen's English properly (for the most part). Anyway, darlings, when I spotted this person's phiz in the print edition of today's WSJ, my first thought was "My Goddess, that's a woman disguised as a man!" My second thought was "what happened to her face, ohmygoddess!" Well, it turns out that he is - or was - not a she. He was a he - Harold Smith, who fathered at least half a dozen children, so I guess I cannot build up a proper fantasy about a "man" taking a great secret to her grave :) It's still a fascinating story - about an art heist and the people who investigated it, including Harold Smith, an iconic figure in the world of art - one of the best experts ever on recovering stolen art, who tried to track down the perpetrators and recover the stolen art. Really good stuff. I will read this book: The Gardner Heist" (Ulrich Boser) review by Guy Darst 2/20/09. Sorry - no link, but there is that photo of Harold Smith... Harold Smith's face was disfigured by a decades-long battle against skin cancer. A lesson for all of us who think skin cancer is relegated to a mole or two that can be easily excised by a doctor's scalpel.

Windows to the Soul of a Woman

Fascinating... From Telegraph.co.uk By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent Last Updated: 6:43PM GMT 11 Feb 2009 Women's faces 'are windows to the soul' Women's faces really are the windows to the soul while men's are closed books, a new study suggests. Researchers found that volunteers could tell if women were lucky, religious or trustworthy, simply by looking at them. But studying men's faces gave no hint as to their character, the study found. The experiment was designed to test the theory that physical appearance can reveal essential truths about the person within. Scientists are torn as to whether certain traits can be linked to how someone looks. Some believe the expectations of society can make us act differently, for example encouraging blondes to be more dizzy. The researchers asked 1,000 people to send in photographs of themselves and fill in a detailed questionnaire about their personality and beliefs. The team then isolated those who described themselves as strongly in one camp or another on four key aspects of their character and conflated the photographs into composite faces. More than 6,500 people then logged on to a website to guess which set of faces were linked to which personality feature. The findings show that they were able to identify lucky women 70 per cent of the time. They were even more accurate about which women were religious, correct 73 per cent of the time. And although the score for identifying trustworthiness was lower, at 54 per cent, the researchers described it as "statistically significant". The only woman's face which they did not identify correctly was of those who thought of themselves as funny. However, men's faces do not reveal as much of their true character, the findings of the study, reported in New Scientist magazine, suggest. The volunteers did not guess any of the faces correctly, only identifying the lucky face 22 per cent of the time. Richard Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire, and Rob Jenkins, from Glasgow University, who carried out the study, said that there were a number of reasons for the results. "Perhaps female faces are simply more informative than male ones. "It could also be that the men who sent us their portraits were less insightful when rating their personalities or less honest. "Or perhaps the women were more thoughtful when selecting the photographs they submitted." Studies have previously shown that people thought of as good looking were also more likely to be considered outgoing, powerful, intelligent and healthy. Researchers have also found that people with wider faces are both more likely to be aggressive and to have higher levels of testosterone, the male sex hormone, in their bodies. Although people can conform to behaving according to how they look, others can confound expectations, scientists warned. One study showed that baby-faced boys were more likely to be argumentative and aggressive and to grow up to be academic high achievers.

Russian 15 Year Old Becomes WGM

From Chessdom: I think they need to get a more current photograph of the young lady. Fifteeen does not look ten these days, darlings! Alina Kashlinskaya becomes WGM at 15! February 11, 2009 The Russian chess prodigy achieves her third norm at the Moscow Open Alina Kashlinskaya became WGM after achieving her last norm at the Moscow Open, informs the Russian website e3e5.com. This is her second top record achievement in a row. In 2007 Kashlinskaya became Europe’s youngest Women International Master, now in 2009 she is already Europe's youngest WGM. The previous norms were achieved in August 2007 at a tournament in Croatia and in October 2008 at a tournament in the Ukraine.The Russian Chess Federation will send a request to FIDE’s next congress for the title of the chess prodigy. Read more.

Easter Island - More to the Story

From Science Daily: Easter Island’s Controversial Collapse: More To The Story Than Deforestation? ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2009) — Easter Island (Rapa Nui) has gained recognition in recent years due in part to a book that used it as a model for societal collapse from bad environmental practices—ringing alarm bells for those concerned about the health of the planet today. But that’s not the whole story, says Dr. Chris Stevenson, an archaeologist who has studied the island—famous for its massive stone statues—with a Rapa Nui scientist, Sonia Haoa, and Earthwatch volunteers for nearly 20 years. The ancient Rapanui people did abuse their environment, but they were also developing sustainable practices—innovating, experimenting, trying to adapt to a risky environment—and they would still be here in traditional form if it weren’t for the diseases introduced by European settlers in the 1800s. “Societies don’t just go into a tailspin and self-destruct,” says Stevenson, an archaeologist at the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. “They can and do adapt, and they emerge in new ways. The key is to put more back into the system than is taken out.” While evidence suggests the Rapa Nui people cut down 6,000,000 trees in 300 years, for example, they were also developing new technological and agricultural practices along the way—such as fertilization techniques to restore the health of the soil and rock gardens to protect the plants. As a result, every rock on Easter Island has probably been moved three or four times, Stevenson said. “The story that Chris’s research team is piecing together on Easter Island with the help of Earthwatch volunteers—rock by rock, sample by sample—is one that offers us hope in the human spirit of innovation, and the power of people to change. What a timely lesson,” said Ed Wilson, President and CEO of Earthwatch. Other archaeological evidence indicates that the Rapanui people radically changed their societal structure from one dominated by chiefs to one that was much more egalitarian in nature, too, which effectively leveled out their consumption patterns.“That was the big adjustment that gets the population back to being more or less sustainable,” Stevenson says. “It was like telling today’s corporate head that the company can’t afford the million-dollar remodel of his office,” Stevenson says. “But it didn’t matter because BANG, the Europeans arrive with their dirty diseases”: the final nail in the coffin, he said.

Helen of Troy

Interesting information from Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" about Helen of Troy: Incarnation of the Virgin Moon-goddess, daughter of Queen Hecuba, or Hecate, who embodied the Crone. Helen was also called Helle or Selene. She was worshipped as an orgiastic deity at the Spartan festival Helenphoria, featuring sexual symbols carried in a special fetish-basket, the helene.(1). Trojan Helen married Menelaus, "Moon-king," who was promised immortality because he made a sacred marriage.(2) However, Helen left him and went home with her new Trojan lover Paris, so Menelaus lost both his immortality and the Trojan fiefs that Helen's "matrimony" brought. He sailed with his armies to get her back, and this was the start of the legendary Trojan War which pitted patriarchal Greeks against matriarchal Trojans.(3) [It was all about the money, darlings! Menelaus didn't give a rat's butt about Helen.] As Elen, Elaine, or Hel-Aine, the same Moon-virgin became the queen of pagan Britain, a "Lily Maid" who made the first alliances with emperors of Rome. (See Elaine.) The oldest British histories said the first British king was a Trojan named Brutus, Helen's relative.(4) After Troy fell, he sailed west to the island of Albion [probably meaning "white island", named for the white chalk cliffs of Dover] and founded a city, New Troy, later renamed Lugdunum (London) after his descendant, the god Lug.(5) Notes: (1) Graves, G.M. 1, 208-9. (2) Knight, S.L., 125. (3) Graves, G.M. 2, 276. (4) Briffault 3, 431. (5) Guerber, L.M.A., 309. Related is Helice: "Willow," a title of Hecate in her virgin form as the new moon and the Helicon or "willow-stream" surrounding the Mountain of the Muses. Like Artemis, Helice the Willow-maid was associated with both the moon and Ursa Major, eternally circling the pole, known as Helice's Axle.(1) Witches thought a willow wand a microcosmic axis mundi. See Willow. Notes: (1) Lindsay, O.A., 251. Following the lead: Willow Water and willows represented the Goddess Helice, "Willow," virgin form of Hecate with her willow-witye grain-basket.(1) Willow wants invoked the Muses, whose mountain was encircled by the Helicon, "Willow-stream." The Dionysian thyrsus, like the later withche's wand, was willow. As Dionysus was once a major god of Jerusalem, the willow figured prominently in municipal ceremonies there. A "Great Day" of the Feast of Tabernacles was known as the Day of Willows, with rites honoring fire and water.(2) Willow wands gave protectin in the underworld, where Orpheus carried one to show the way.(3) Willow wands were sacred to the Moon-goddess as late as the 17th century A.D., when an English herbal said the moon owns the willow. Witches used willow bark to treat rheumatism and fevers; i9t was the source of salicylic acid (aspirin), one of Hecate's cures. Some said wicca or "witchcraft" evolved from a word meaning willow, cognate with "wicher" (willow-withe weaving). Magic cats were supposed to grow from pussy-willows or "catkins," to become witches' malkins (familiars): hence the saying that all cats were gray in the beginning. The catkins were harbingers of spring, appearing on the willow as graymalkins. (See Cat.) Winding up for tonight, Elaine: (Var. Elen, Hel-Aine, Eileen) Britain's "Lily Maid," the virgin Moon-goddess bearing the same name as Helen of Troy; British tradition claimed the ilsand were colonized by Trojans. According to the bards, the Roman emperor acquired Britain only by marrying its queen, Elen. The people agreed to help build Roman roads because she ordered them, and the roads were called Roads of Elen of the Hosts: "The men of the Island of Britain would not have made those great hostings for any save for her."(1) Elen or Elaine became the mother-bride of Lancelot-Galahad in Arthurian romance. Lancelot the father begot on her his own reincarnation, Galahad the son [I believe this is just a retelling of the ancient legend of Seraimis, the Queen of the original city of Babylon, married to Nimrod, the first king and builder of cities according to the Bible]; but Lancelot in his youth had been named Galahad, and his mother was Queen Elaine. The Lily Maid gave Lancelot her sexual-symbolic charm to make him invicible: her pearl-bedewed sleeve of red silk. The womb-symbol of the Holy Grail was displayed in her castle, tendered by her dove-soul, Colombe. Galahad saw this vision again in his last moments, as he expired at the altar in ancient sacred-king style.(2) Notes: (1) Mabinogion, 85. (2) Malory 1, 377; 2, 268.

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The Lily and the Dove can be traced back to the ancient Middle East, and probably more specifically, to ancient Egypt. Both symbols figure prominently in the pages of the Bible, which borrowed much imagery (and prayers/paeons) from the Egyptians. The lily is most likely the Egyptian lotus (also prominent in Indian iconography), embodied in later versions of iconic art such as the fleur-de-lis and trefoil, which came to represent the Christian concept of the Holy Trinity of Father-Son-Holy Spirit or Sophia (representing the hidden female aspect of creation - the fathers of the church did not want to give it a name or a sex, but everyone knew it was Sophia and, in later years, the Virgin Mary, the "Holy Mother of God.")

2009 Aeroflot

Ladies' Standings After Round 1: Tournament A1: 58 IM Kosintseva, Tatiana w 0.5 RUS F 59IM Kosintseva, Nadezhdaw0.5RUS F 78 WGM Shen, Yang w 0.0 CHN F Tournament A2: 15 GM Peng, Zhaoqin w 1.0 NED F 21 Ju, Wenjun w 1.0 CHN F 41 IM Krush, Irina w 0.5 USA F 43 WGM Romanko, Marina w 0.5 RUS F 49 IM Melia, Salome w 0.5 GEO F 56 WIM Zhang, Xiaowen w 0.5 CHN F 59 WIM Kashlinskaya, Alina w 0.5 RUS F 60 WIM Pourkashiyan, Atousa w 0.5 IRI F 71 WGM Munguntuul, Batkhuyag w 0.0 MGL F 76 WFM Gunina, Valentina w 0.0 RUS F 84 WGM Gu, Xiaobing w 0.0 CHN F

The Art of Chess

A new exhibition in Iceland. Here is a press release - I found it at The Week in Chess: 32 Pieces: The Art Of Chess PRESS RELEASE by Larry List Artists of all eras and cultures have been interested in chess, "the Royal Game" of rulers, soldiers, prisoners, and exiles. From the early 20th century to the present this interest has paralleled major social (re)evolutions, with artists increasingly using chess imagery and ideas in their art. During such times, chess has provided a universally acknowledged societal model in miniature, that artists re-design based on patterns of love, war, and play. Sigmund Freud viewed chess as parallel to psychoanalysis - a mapping of the mind - while French-born Marcel Duchamp saw chess as art. In 1944, art theorist Andre Breton insisted that "...what must be changed is the game, itself, not the pieces." The Fluxus artists of the 1960’s made a grand game of- making-the-game and transformed chess into a sensory questioning of identities. In this exhibition, prominent contemporary artists Fryer, Kruger and Turk push the boundaries of interactivity while Kusama, Tunga, Clegg, the Chapman brothers and Cattelan explore mental states, real or imagined. Emin and Ronay transmute chess courtship rituals into heated intimacies and through serious or nonsensical creative play Mackie, Hirst, Whiteread, Friedman and McCarthy each reconstruct a new identity based on the game via the deconstruction of a chosen environment. Marcel Proust once explained that what is needed is not a new landscape, but, rather, a new vision. These leading contemporary artists offer new viewpoints from which to reconsider the creative social landscape through chess, while the timeless conceptual landscape of "the Royal Game" stands ever-ready to lend itself to future visions. The exhibition is co-curated by Larry List, Mark Sanders and Julia Royse for the Reykjavik Art Museum in Iceland (24 January - 12 April 2009) Catalogue will be available from the end of February 09. More details and some images at: http://www.r-s-a.co.uk/ and a lengthier version of the press release at: Art of Chess Press Release

China Tries to Stop Auction

From People's Daily Online Chinese lawyers try to stop Christie's sale of stolen relics 21:48, February 10, 2009 A team of 81 Chinese lawyers has written to auction giant Christie's in an effort to stop the sale of two bronze relics, which were looted from an old Beijing palace. The two artifacts, the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) bronze rabbit and rat head sculptures, will be auctioned by Christie's in Paris from Feb. 23 to 25. They were expected to fetch 8 million to 10 million euros (about 10.4 to 13 million U.S. dollars) each. "We've sent a letter to Christie's representative in China through e-mail," Liu Yang, one of the lawyers working on the case, told Xinhua. The letter will also be sent to Christie's headquarters by a liaison person in France, he said. Liu said they hope Christie's could give a second thought to the sale of the Chinese relics, withdraw them from the auction and persuade the owner of the stolen artifacts to return them to China. The two bronze head sculptures were housed in Yuanmingyuan, Beijing's Imperial Summer Palace. They were stolen when the palace was burnt down by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860. The rabbit and rat head sculptures currently belong to the Pierre Berge-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation and were put up for auction by Pierre Berge. Liu said his team had also sent a letter to Pierre Berge, asking him not to auction the relics and return them to China. He said his team would sue Pierre Berge if there were no "positive feedback from them (Pierre Berge and Christie's) within a reasonable period". Christie's would be involved in the lawsuit as the third party. But he declined to say how long his team would wait for the "positive feedback". Christie's Public Relations Officer in China Chen Yan confirmed that the company's Beijing office had received the letter. Chen said the sale of all the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge collection will go for charity. All the articles, including the two Yuanmingyuan bronze sculptures, have legal documents showing that they are possessed by their keepers legally, she said. "Therefore, the auction will go on as scheduled," she said in an e-mail to Xinhua. Chen said Christie's understands that the auction of the two bronze sculptures is "sensitive" in China and hopes to work with other parties to find a "satisfactory" solution. China and France signed the 1995 Unidroit Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, which stipulated that any cultural object looted or lost because of reasons of war should be returned without any limitation of time span. Liu refuted Chen's comments and said Pierre Berge does not have legal ownership of the two sculptures. He said according to the principle of the Civil Law System, the right of the owner of an article will not exceed the right of the article's previous owner. "The fact that the sculptures were stolen from China and illegally possessed by some people previously, means that the ownership of their current keeper is not legal," he said. Christie's carried a detailed introduction of the two bronzes on its website, saying that the two formed part of the zodiacal clepsydra that decorated the Calm Sea Pavilion in the Old Summer Palace of Emperor Qianlong (1736-1795). "Constructed between 1756 and 1759 under the supervision of the famous Jesuit priest Giuseppe Castiglione, the heads are characterized by a distinctly western style," Mathilde Courteault, head of the company's Asian Department, was quoted by the website as saying. "The clepsydra comprised the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac each of which, in their turn, spouted water to mark the various hours of the day with the exception of midday, when this elaborate hydraulic mechanism triggered all of the animals simultaneously," Courteault said. Early reports said Liu and his team had had trouble finding an appropriate plaintiff to sue Christie and channeling enough money for the lawsuit. But Liu said those problems were gone as the Global Aixinjueluo Family Clan, a civil society registered in Hong Kong, has agreed to be the plaintiff. Aixinjueluo is the clan name of the emperors of the Qing Dynasty. A company in Shenzhen in south China agreed to donate 400,000 yuan (58,823 U.S. dollars) to the lawyers to cover the legal cost, Liu said. He declined to release the company's name and said his team still need to sign an agreement with the company before they get the money. The action of the lawyers has gained support from many Chinese netizens, who are furious about the auction. Many netizens pasted comments on the forum of sina.com, saying that "looted relics must be returned to China for free." China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) said earlier that Christie's auction of the two stolen relics is unacceptable and China will not try to buy them back. Song Xinchao, director of the museum department with the SACH, said the best way to deal with the issue was to ignore it, because some business people might use the patriotism of the Chinese people to raise bidding prices for monetary gain. The American auction house Sotheby's tried to put a bronze horse head for auction in 2007. But Macao billionaire Stanley Ho bought the relic at a price of 69.1 million Hong Kong dollars (about 9 million U.S. dollars) before the auction and donated it to the Chinese government. China's Special Fund for Rescuing Lost Cultural Relics from overseas had negotiated with the keeper of the two relics in 2003 and 2004, but were deterred by an asking price of 10 million U.S. dollars for each artifact. So far, five of the 12 bronze animal heads have already been returned to China, while the whereabouts of five others is unknown. Source:Xinhua

Antiquities Theft in the U.K.

Thieves still find it more lucrative to plunder archaeological sites - and they steal everyone's heritage by so doing. Article from the Independent.co.uk Nighthawks hitting historic UK sites By Chris Greenwood, Press Association Monday, 16 February 2009 Britain's archaeological heritage is being plundered by illegal metal detector users who face little danger of being caught, a report said today. The first comprehensive national survey of its kind revealed thieves armed with state-of-the-art equipment are raiding some of the nation's most sensitive heritage sites. Researchers found knowledgeable criminals, dubbed nighthawks, are using auction websites such as eBay to cash in on what was once an illicit hobby. Police said some thieves have formed loosely-connected networks who trade information, often in online forums, about new and vulnerable sites. One senior Kent officer said there have been cases of farmers being threatened after confronting groups of men trespassing on their land at night. English Heritage, who commissioned the study, said many stolen items are worth very little, but their valuable historical context is lost for ever. But although the threat of nighthawking remains high, experts said the chances of prosecution remain at an all time low and penalties are "woefully insufficient". Sir Barry Cunliffe, English Heritage chairman, called for better guidance for police and a national database to accurately portray the extent of the problem. He said: "Responsible metal detecting provides a valuable record of history, but illegal activities bring responsible ones into disrepute. "Nighthawkers, by hoarding the finds or selling them on without recording or provenance, are thieves of valuable archaeological knowledge that belongs to us all. "Even in the case when the finds are retrieved, the context of how and where exactly the finds were found has been lost, significantly diminishing their historical value. "In the cases of internationally important material the loss of the unique evidence that these objects provide on our common history and origins is especially poignant. "By painting a clearer picture of the crime, this survey will help us to combat it more effectively." Nighthawking is the search and removal of antiquities from the ground using metal detectors without the permission of landowners or where the practice is banned. The problem emerged in the early 1970s as metal detecting first became a popular hobby and has become increasingly prevalent. English Heritage said 240 police reports of raids between 1995 and 2008 are likely to be just a fraction of the true scale of the under-reported crime. The study found only one in seven landowners who discovered they had been targeted by illegal metal detector users informed the authorities. Rural counties such as Norfolk (23), Essex (14), Oxfordshire (13), Suffolk (12), Lincolnshire and Kent (both 11) recorded the highest number of sites hit by nighthawking. Researchers also found about one in every 20 archaeological excavation sites are targeted by thieves. Roman sites often serve as a honeypot for thieves and can be targeted repeatedly, particularly after the land has been ploughed. More than a third of sites attacked by illegal metal detectorists (88) were scheduled monuments, key sites of historical interest. Only 26 cases resulted in legal action, with most offenders handed a small fine which in one case was just £38. Dr Pete Wilson, head of roman archaeology at English Heritage, said better guidance is required for police and prosecutors. He said this should outline the best ways of collecting evidence and lead to more successful prosecutions. Dr Wilson said antiquities sellers should be forced by law to prove the provenance of their goods and called on auction websites to monitor items put up for sale more closely.

2009 Aeroflot

Here is a list of the chess femmes participating in this year's gigantic, humungous Aeroflot Tournament (hope I got them all): IM Tatiana Kotsinseva (RUS 2497) Tournamet A-1 IM Nadedhza Kotsinseva (RUS 2486) Tournament A-1 WGM Shen Yang (CHN 2448) Tournament A-1 WIM Alina Kashlinskaya (RUS 2303) Tournament A-2 IM Irina Krush (USA 2457) Tournament A-2 IM Salome Melia (GEO 2422) Tournament A-2 WGM Bathuyag Montonguul (MGL 2425) Tournament A-2 WGM Marina Maranko (RUS 2451) Tournament A-2 GM Peng Zhaoquin (NED 2461) Tournament A-2 WGM Marina Romanko (RUS 2451) Tournament A-2 WIM Zhang Xiaowen (CHN 2357) Tournament A-2 There are also B and C Sections - too tired tonight to scroll through and try and pick out the chess femmes!