Ancient World Review

The Nekyomanteion: Greek Oracle Of The Dead

The video above shows the underground chamber of the Nekyomanteion, aka the Necromanteion, the "Oracle of the Dead," which the ancient Greeks believed was the door to Hades -- the Greek underworld, not the Hell of Christianity.

"The Necromanteion ... was an ancient Greek temple of necromancy devoted to Hades and [his wife, the goddess of he underworld] Persephone." (Wikipedia). "According to tradition, it was located on the banks of the Acheron river in Epirus, near the ancient city of Ephyra. The site was believed by devotees to be the door to Hades, the realm of the dead."

Note: Technically, Nekyomanteion is a term for "the prophecy-place of the dead," but it is also used as a place name.

"The Greeks used several terms for oracles of the dead. Nekyomanteion, 'prophecy-place of the dead' is found first, in the 5th century BC." Source: "The Ancient Greek Orackles Of The Dead," Daniel Ogden (PDF).

"Although there were many oracles in ancient Greece, there is only one known oracle of the dead (1)," according to Atlas Obscura. "It was an entryway to the underworld, and a place where the shades of the dead could - under special circumstances - reveal the future to the living. It was the place that Homer sent Odysseus to seek advice from a long-dead oracle, and where he was horrified by visions of Hades, and it also appears in a sordid chapter of Herodotus' Histories."

Odysseus visits Hades (plus later encounter with Scylla and Charybdis). From the great 1997 miniseries The Odyssey. Highly recommended.

"Communicating with the dead, however, was not limited to the famous characters in the writings of the ancient Greek authors," according to Ancient Origins. "Regular citizens [also visited] the Necromanteion to seek counsel with the dead. They would first enter a dark chamber before performing certain elaborate rituals intended for their own protection and to gain the ability to communicate with the deceased. After this, a priest would lead them into a deeper chamber, where a ritual animal sacrifice would be performed, before passing through three gates which symbolised their entry into the Underworld. The celebrants would now be able to speak to the spirits of the Underworld."

(1) The Atlas Obscura is incorrect when it says that there was only one Greek oracle of the dead. According to the Ogden paper cited above, there were four major oracles: "Acheron in Thesprotia [the oracle discussed here -- named after the river], Avernus in Campania [Italy], Heracleia Pontica on the south coast of the Black Sea, and Tainaron at the tip of the Peloponnese's Mani Peninsula."

Note: As mentioned in the footnote above, the oracle on the Acheron river was located in Thesprotia. According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed. revised), the Thesproti were "a people mentioned in Homer's Odyssey with a king of Ephyra in the Archeron valley." They formed "a tribal state which entered the Epirote Alliance and the Epirote Confederacy, sided with Rome in 170 BC, and survived under the Roman settlement." 

Alexander And The Oracle Of Siwa

This is a clip from the great Michael Wood documentary In The Footsteps of Alexander the Great. Highly recommended.

Alexander the Great visited Egypt (which had capitulated to his army) after securing Asia Minor and Syria. Preparing for his invasion of Persia, he visited the Oracle of Zeus-Ammon in the Siwah Oasis in order to consult the god about his divine parentage. Specifically, he wanted to find out if he was the son of Zeus.

That's the story, anyway. According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia, "Alexander’s belief in his own divinity was revealed to him before he left Macedon for Asia. His mother pulled him aside and recounted a series of events occurring the night before her wedding. Supposedly, Olympias was asleep in her bedchamber when a clap of thunder awakened her. Suddenly, a bolt of lightning (evidently this was the god Zeus) shot into her room and struck her in her womb - miraculously without harming her - a flash of light immediately followed."

Alexander may have actually believed he was the son of Zeus. According to Alexander of Macedon, by Philip Green (1992 ed., p. 272), "[d]espite the skepticism expressed by some modern scholars, there can be little doubt that he was anxious to clear up the very serious question of his divine parentage."

He had obvious political motivations as well. He needed divine approval for his construction of Alexandria and his invasion of Persia, and he wasn't the first ruler to grasp the advantages of being seen as a god or the son of a god. 

Next video shows the Amun Oracle in the Siwa Oasis.

Unsurprisingly, the Oracle confirmed Alexander's divine status. Or so he implied:

"Since none of his followers were admitted with him, and Alexander never revealed what took place during that famous oracular consultation (though it is just possible that the priests may have done so for a consideration), the responses he received must remain problematical. When he came out, all he would say in answer to a chorus of eager questions was that 'he had been told what his heart desired.'" -- Alexander of Macedon, p. 274.

"For a consideration" means that Alexander either bribed the priests of Zeus-Ammon into giving him the answer he wanted or paid them to keep their mouths shut about his deception. Maybe he was sincere about his quest, but a negative response would have been a disaster so he probably bought some insurance to make sure he got the outcome he needed. Unfortunately we'll never know because there were no witnesses other than the priest or priests involved.

Maybe one of them kept a diary and recorded what actually happened. That's an archaeological discovery I'd really like to see.

Conan The Barbarian Wouldn't Look Like Arnold Schwarzenegger

I'm a huge fan of the original Conan stories by Robert E. Howard, one of the best American writers who ever lived. I like the movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger as well, even the second one which is almost universally considered, with considerable justification, to be a piece of crap. The Conan of the movies is so radically different from the Conan of the Howard stories that they might as well be two different characters, but never mind that.

The scene in the clip above is from the first movie, Conan the Barbarian (1982). It shows how Conan, enslaved as a child after his village was destroyed by the forces of the evil Thulsa Doom, was chained to a mill wheel and grew into a heavily muscled giant after years of pushing the wheel around in circles.

This scene always bothered me because it seems unlikely that pushing a wheel around like that would give you the physique of a world-class bodybuilder. It's possible, I guess, at least to a certain extent. This kind of labor would definitely strength your thighs and calves, and I suppose the pushing action would have some effect on your chest, back and other muscles, but would it turn you into The Arnold? Very doubtful.

There's also the question of nutrition here. Bodybuilding, even accidental bodybuilding, requires a good diet and I find it hard to believe that the slaves pushing that wheel were fed very well. I'm not sure how old the movie-Conan was supposed to be when he was first chained to the wheel, but he must have spent at least ten years pushing it around and around in all kinds of weather. In the real world I'm guessing all that repetitious slogging would have left him extremely thin, wiry and prematurely aged when they finally released him. And he probably would have had all kinds of knee and back problems.

Around the time Conan the Barbarian was made, Arnold Schwarzenegger was 6'2" with a 52" chest, a competition weight around 235 and an off-season weight around 260. (Source: Bodybuilding.com) The guy was flat-out monstrous and even though he had the genetics for size he didn't get that big on a slave's diet. Hard labor can give you mass and make you tough and strong (if it doesn't kill you) but the one thing it doesn't do is give you gigantic, well-defined muscles like a bodybuilder. That kind of physique requires a specific type of training and it's not the same thing as training for strength.

There's a big difference between bodybuilders like Arnold, who train for size and definition, and powerlifters, who train for strength. For example, the next video shows the Georgian powerlifter Lasha Talakhaze at the 2017 Weightlifting Championship in Anaheim, California. His build is a long, long way from Arnold's, but it's fairly typical of powerlifters I've seen.

Warriors in movies are usually shown as being extremely chiseled, but that kind of physique requires long sessions of targeted exercises in the gym. It's not the kind of body that a Viking farmer, for instance, or a Cimmerian like Conan would develop as a matter of course. In the stories, Howard describes Conan as being huge and muscular with amazing endurance and lightning reflexes. He can also move across a forest floor as "silently as a panther," a talent not usually associated with sheer mass. These qualities -- speed, size, stealth, fast reactions -- aren't usually found together. In and of themselves, they're not totally unrealistic, but even if Conan combined them all in one lethal package, he still wouldn't have looked like Arnold.

There's also the question of how good a fighter someone as big and muscular as Arnold would be. If you put a sword in his hand, he could do a lot of damage -- for a while -- but he would probably gas out pretty quickly because sustained fighting requires a lot of cardio conditioning and cardio tends to work against the bodybuilder's goal of size. Runners have a completely different kind of physique and a smaller, lighter opponent can usually run circles around a bigger, slower man. For example, the next video shows the notorious MMA fighter, Conor McGregor (around 155 pounds, depending), sparring around with Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (400+ pounds), the Icelandic strongman who played The Mountain in Game of Thrones.

They're just playing around here, but it's obvious that Björnsson could crush McGregor with his bare hands if he ever got hold of him in a real fight. It's also obvious that someone as big as Björnsson doesn't have the cardio to keep the conflict going for very long. If this was a sword fight, the lighter, faster McGregor could probably beat Björnsson if he could just stay out of his reach and wear him down long enough to strike a blow, something that probably wouldn't take very long. The heavier you are, the slower you are. It's the classic size-and-brute-strength vs speed-and-agility tradeoff. Smaller fighters have an advantage over bigger, heavier opponents if they know how to use it. This is how Bronn won the trial-by-combat against the heavily armored Sir Vardis Egan in Game of Thrones. It's also how the Viper almost beat the Mountain in GOT. Unfortunately for the Viper, he got cocky and that particular fight didn't end so well for him.

Getting back to Conan, though, what would someone like him look like in real life? That's hard to say. He would be big, certainly, and muscular, but he wouldn't have the kind of physique that Arnold had in his prime. There were no bodybuilding gyms (or steroids) in the Hyborean Age. Conan was fast as well as strong, so he wouldn't look like Lasha Talakhaze, either. If he did, his stamina and fighting abilities would be limited. A real-life Conan would be big, but not too big, and he would also be lean due to his diet and the generally harsh conditions of his life. He might look something like a extremely fast UFC heavy-weight (206+ pounds) fighter, but considering his speed and agility it seems more probable that he would fit into the light heavy-weight (186-205 pounds) category. In other words, he wouldn't be a giant.

All of this, of course, directly contradicts Howard's own descriptions of Conan. For example, in the classic novella Red Nails, Conan is said to be "almost a giant in stature, muscles rippling smoothly under his skin which the sun had burned brown." In Queen of the Black Coast, he's described as a "tall powerfully built figure in a black scale-mail hauberk, burnished greaves and a blue-steel helmet from which jutted bull's horns highly polished." In The Hour of the Dragon, he's a "mailed giant" and so on. He can move over a bed of dead leaves in complete silence and he's always bounding around, as "supple as a panther." In other words, Conan somehow manages to combine the muscularity and size of a heavyweight bodybuilder with the speed, reactions and endurance of a lightweight MMA fighter, not to mention the fact that he's highly intelligent, literate and a wise ruler with a strong sense of honor and chivalry towards the weak. All told, that's a fantastic collection of attributes not normally found in the real world; but he is, after all, a fantasy character, the greatest fantasy character ever created.

Scene from The Whole Wide World (2003), based on the life of Robert E. Howard.

Thirteen Sealed Mummy Coffins Found Stacked In Well In Egypt

Coverage starts at 1:07.

"Archaeologists have discovered more than 13 ancient Egyptian coffins piled one on top of the other within a burial well at the desert necropolis of Saqqara, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities." Source: Live Science.

"The 2,500-year-old wooden coffins are so well preserved that the intricate designs on them, painted in blue, gold, white, black and red, are still visible.

"The identity of the deceased who were buried within the coffins remains a mystery; archaeologists have yet to look inside the sealed coffins, which haven't been opened since the bodies were interred within, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities reported in a Sept. 6 Facebook post."

"These newfound coffins are the largest finding at Saqqara since 30 wooden coffins were discovered in a cache at Al-Assasif cemetery within the necropolis in October 2019, the ministry said."

Egyptian Mummies With Red And Blonde Hair

Video from 2017.

"According to Dr. Janet Davey from the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine in Australia, some ancient Egyptians were naturally blonde or red haired. Her research has brought an answer to an intriguing question connected with Egyptian mummies and the effects of the mummification process." Source: Ancient Origins (2016).

"An article published recently by The Sydney Morning Herald says that the mystery of the red and blonde hair discovered on some ancient Egyptian mummies may finally be solved. The new research was necessary to check the common perception that no ancient Egyptians had hair that wasn’t colored dark brown or black. Until now, most researchers had claimed that the different colors of the mummy hair were a result of the mummification process itself."

Note: According to Wikipedia, the ancient Egyptians used natron, a "salt mixture from dry lake beds," as a drying agent during mummification ceremonies. Until recently, experts believed that this treatment could have changed the color of the mummy's hair, but Dr. Davey, with the help of industrial chemist Alan Elliot, ran an experiment which demonstrated that this wasn't the case:

"Davey and Elliot covered [hair] samples in the salty powder for 40 days. It is believed that this was the same amount of time that was needed in ancient times to dry out the bodies. The donors of the hair were men and women aged from 4 to 92 years old. Most of the samples were dark hair, with one grey, one fair, and one with henna on it for comparison.

"After 40 days, all the hair was removed from the salty powder and they appeared unchanged. Microscopic analysis also showed no change in the hair."

These findings are consistent with recent DNA analyses which show that the ancient Egyptians were more closely related to Europeans and inhabitants of the Near East than modern Egyptians. 

Related: Coffin of Tutankhamun's Great-Grandmother Opened to Show Preserved Body With Blonde Hair. This Daily Star story was posted on June 14, 2019, but I think it's old news. The story quotes one Egyptologist who claims that natron bleaches hair, a claim that was apparently disproved by Davey's research in 2017.

Thousands Of Medieval Skeletons Found In Swedish Abbey

"A previously unknown graveyard with thousands of well-preserved skeletons, some of them dating as far back as to the Viking Age, found in a well-researched area, has baffled Swedish archaeologists, providing them with unique research material." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"The sensational discovery was made outside of Medieval Vreta Abbey, north of the Swedish city of Linkoping.

"Despite plenty of research and excavations performed in the surrounding area over the years, a new graveyard with Viking-era graves was found during pipe-laying, national broadcaster SVT reported."

 

New Neanderthal Remains Discovered In Italy's Ciota Ciara Cave

Coverage of the Ciota Ciara site starts at 5:12.

"Excavations conducted by the University of Ferrara at Ciota Ciara Cave [Borgosesia province, Italy] have yielded remains belonging to Neanderthal man dating back 300,000 years." Source: Archaeology News Network.

"According to the press release, two teeth, a canine and a lower molar, discovered in the same stratigraphic levels where human remains had been found in 2019, an occipital bone (part of the posterior portion of the skull) and a second lower incisor, probably belonging to an adult individual of young age, were found in during the this year's excavation campaign."

Handwriting Analysis Suggests Widespread Literacy In Biblical Period Of Kingdom Of Judah

"Researchers have analyzed 18 ancient texts dating back to around 600 BCE from the Tel Arad military post [1] using state-of-the-art image processing, machine learning technologies, and the expertise of a senior handwriting examiner, and concluded that the texts were written by no fewer than 12 authors, suggesting that many of the inhabitants of the kingdom of Judah during that period were able to read and write." Source: Science Daily.

[1] The Tel Arad site (originally a Canaanite settlement which was deserted around 2650 BC) was turned into a citadel during the time of the Biblical (and probably legendary) King David and Solomon. "It is believed that several citadels were built one upon the other and existed in the Hellenistic and Roman periods." (Wikipedia)

According to Science Daily, "...the researchers examined the ostraca (fragments of pottery vessels containing ink inscriptions) writings discovered at the Tel Arad site in the 1960s. Tel Arad was a small military post on the southern border of the kingdom of Judah; its built-up area was about 20,000 square feet and it housed between 20 and 30 soldiers."

Note: The argument here is based on computerized and more traditional forensic handwriting analysis. This isn't the same thing as Graphology, which claims to be able to analyze personalities and detect a person's psychological state from their handwriting.

If the researchers in this study are correct when they say that the inscriptions on the Tel Arad fragments were written by at least 12 people, this would imply that literacy was fairly widespread at the time because it would be unusual otherwise to find so many writers in a place so small:

"'It should be remembered that this was a small outpost, one of a series of outposts on the southern border of the kingdom of Judah. Since we found at least 12 different authors out of 18 texts in total, we can conclude that there was a high level of literacy throughout the entire kingdom. The commanding ranks and liaison officers at the outpost, and even the quartermaster Eliashib and his deputy, Nahum, were literate. Someone had to teach them how to read and write, so we must assume the existence of an appropriate educational system in Judah at the end of the First Temple period.'"

The question, naturally, is whether handwriting analysis can detect different hands in inscriptions this old.

Proto-Elamite - A Still Largely Undeciphered Ancient Language

Video from 2012.

"Proto-Elamite is the last undeciphered writing system from the Ancient Near East with a substantial number of sources (more than 1600 published texts). It was used for a relatively short period around 3000 BC across what is today Iran." Source: Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CLDI, 2013).

Note: Wikipedia describes the Proto-Elamite script as "largely" undeciphered, so there may have been some progress in translation recently.

Reflectance Transformation Imaging, the technology Oxford used to study their proto-Elamite tablets (see video above), "...is a computational photographic method that captures a subject’s surface shape and color and enables the interactive re-lighting of the subject from any direction," according to Cultural Heritage Imaging.

"For a majority of the tablets the only available images are hand copies, drawn 80-100 years ago, but for a growing number of texts kept in the Louvre Museum high quality images are available," according to the CDLI.

Related: Deciphering Proto-Elamite

Elamite Scripts

8 Ancient Writing Systems That Haven't Been Deciphered Yet

Graffiti In Pompeii

"Over 11,000 graffiti samples have been uncovered in the excavations of Pompeii," according to Wikipedia. Note: Some graffiti examples can be found on this Wikipedia page.

"Much of the graffiti at Pompeii seems surprisingly modern ... Ancient inscriptions include declarations of love ('Health to you, Victoria, and wherever you are may you sneeze sweetly.'); insults ('Sanius to Cornelius: Go hang yourself!'); and remembrances ('Pyrrhus to his chum Chias: I’m sorry to hear you are dead, and so, goodbye!'). There are also billboard-esque painted inscriptions that included political campaign messages, advertisements for Gladiatorial games, and other public notices—like the equivalent of a giant flyer for a lost horse. The commonplace nature of these inscriptions is part of what makes them so historically valuable." Source: The Atlantic (2016).

Also see: The Bawdy Graffiti of Pompeii and Herculaneum

"[Pompeii's] well-preserved first level has given archaeologists, historians and classicists an unparalleled view of the ancient world, brought to a halt in the middle of an ordinary day." (Smithsonian, 2010)

"From the very beginning, archaeologists noticed copious amounts of graffiti on the outsides of buildings. In the late 1800s, scholars began making careful copies of Latin inscriptions throughout the ancient Roman world, including Pompeii, and cataloging them. This effort is a boon to scholars ... since more than 90 percent of Pompeii’s recorded graffiti have since been erased by exposure to the elements."

Related: Pompeii Graffiti May Rewrite Timeline Of Vesuvius Eruption.