paanai oRi. Those words mean pot (suspended) in a rope net and that was inscribed in Tamil Brahmi script  on both sides of a storage jar. The jar was found in Quseir-al-Qadim, an ancient Egyptian port and was dated to the 1st century BCE when Egypt was under Roman control.

According to Mr. Mahadevan, the inscription is quite legible and reads: paanai oRi, that is, ‘pot (suspended in) a rope net.’ The Tamil word uRi, which means rope network to suspend pots has the cognate oRi in Parji, a central Dravidian language, Mr. Mahadevan said. Still nearer, Kannada has oTTi, probably from an earlier oRRi with the same meaning.

The word occurring in the pottery inscription found at Quseir-al-Qadim can also be read as o(R)Ri as Tamil Brahmi inscriptions generally avoid doubling of consonants. Earlier excavations at this site about 30 years ago yielded two
pottery inscriptions in Tamil Brahmi belonging to the first century
A.D.

Another Tamil Brahmi pottery inscription of the same period was
found in 1995 at Berenike, also a Roman settlement, on the Red Sea
coast of Egypt, Mr. Mahadevan said. These discoveries provided material evidence to corroborate the
literary accounts by classical Western authors and the Tamil Sangam
poets about the flourishing trade between the Tamil country and Rome
(via the Red Sea ports) in the early centuries A.D.[Tamil Brahmi script in Egypt ]

Around 300 BCE, there lived in Egypt a man called Thamista. When his bronze pot was stolen, one of the town folk, suspicious of Thamista decided to seek the help of Sobek, the crocodile god. On a piece of papyrus the owner of the bronze pot wrote, “If Thamista was the man who has stolen my bronze pot, give me this card” and put it along with cards with the names of other suspects. In a ritual in Sobek’s temple, one of these cards was picked and the suspect was found.

When archaeologists found papyri like these, they all mentioned a town called Tebtunis which was no where to be found. These papyri contained literary texts, records of private contracts, and descriptions of religious acts such as the one involving the crocodile god. This town which was lost in 12th century has now been located.

“The papyri give us particular and historic information that cannot be found elsewhere,” says Claudio Gallazzi, professor of papyrology at Milan University who has led the international effort here since 1988. The papyri and other archaeological finds are painting an ever more detailed picture of life in this ethnically mixed village over a long period of time. For example, Gallazzi says, they show that there was a strong Greek presence in the town at a time when most Greeks in Egypt were thought to have lived only in big cities. They also illuminate the surrounding areas with which Tebtunis interacted and traded. “When we find a treasurer’s registry, I know it contains interesting economic matters from many villages in the Fayum area, not just Tebtunis. And when we find religious documents, we can understand more about previously unrecognized religious-magic rituals [surrounding the crocodile god] pertinent to all of Egypt,” he adds.[Letters to the Crocodile God]

Geertgen tot Sint Jans (15th century): “John the Baptist“

In the Christian Gospels, there is an interesting episode when the pregnant Mary, the mother of Jesus goes to meet her cousin Elizabeth, who herself is pregnant with the child who would later be known as John the Baptist. In Luke (1:44) Elizabeth tells Mary, “As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy”, because the baby knew that he was in the presence of the Messiah.

In his lectures on the Historical Jesus at Stanford University, Prof. Thomas Sheehan tells that such bits were added by Christian writers to emphasize that Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus never thought of himself as the Messiah, but as we move forward in time, we can see the scriptures being written to make it appear that way.

According to Paul, who wrote in 50 CE, about 20 years after Jesus’ death, Jesus became a Messiah after his death when he was taken by God, but according to Mark who wrote in 70 CE, Jesus became a Messiah when he was dunked in river Jordan by John the Baptist. As per Luke, who wrote much after Mark, Jesus is the Messiah from the moment he was in the womb.

According to the Gospels, the ministry of Jesus starts when he is baptised by John. In fact, Jesus hears about John, goes to river Jordan and asks that he be baptised. After that John takes Jesus under his tutelage and becomes his teacher. This became a problem for later Christians because it looked odd when the Messiah became a student of John, so the texts were modified to make John say that he is not the Messiah and someone would come after him. This also accounts for the happiness of the baby John in the uterus.

While John the Baptist is considered a prophet by Christianity, Islam, and the Bahá’í Faith, Mandeans, a minority community in Iraq consider him to be God’s most honorable messenger. Besides that they think Jesus was a “false messiah” who perverted the teachings of John the Baptist. The Mandeans also believe that Abraham, Moses and Mohammad were also false prophets, but recognize some figures from the monotheistic religions like Adam, Noah, etc.

Now with the war in Iraq, the Mandeans and their 2000 year old culture is facing extinction.

The Mandeans are the only surviving Gnostics from antiquity, cousins of the people who produced the Nag Hammadi writings like the Gospel of Thomas, a work that sheds invaluable light on the many ways in which Jesus was perceived in the early Christian period. The Mandeans have their own language (Mandaic, a form of Aramaic close to the dialect of the Babylonian Talmud), an impressive body of literature, and a treasury of cultural and religious traditions amassed over two millennia of living in the southern marshes of present-day Iraq and Iran.

Like their ancestors, contemporary Mandeans were able to survive as a community because of the delicate balance achieved among Iraq’s many peoples over centuries of cohabitation. But our reckless prosecution of the war destroyed this balance, and the Mandeans, whose pacifist religion prohibits them from carrying weapons even for self-defense, found themselves victims of kidnappings, extortion, rapes, beatings, murders and forced conversions carried out by radical Islamic groups and common criminals.

Mandean activists have told me that the best hope for their ancient culture to survive is if a critical mass of Mandeans is allowed to settle in the United States, where they could rebuild their community and practice their traditions without fear of persecution. If this does not happen, individual Mandeans may survive for another generation, isolated in countries around the world, but the community and its culture may disappear forever.[Save the Gnostics ]

The Saraswati Heritage Project was started by the  culture and tourism minister Jagmohan in 2003-2004 to conduct  archaeological excavations in the region. Then the usual words – saffronization of history, attempts to push the antiquity of Indian civilization were thrown and Congress led UPA Government canned it.

Turns out that there are some smart folks at the ASI for they have quietly continued the project just by renaming it.

But the ASI funded the project from its own resources. “We wanted to bring the search to a logical conclusion,” RS Bisht, former joint director, ASI, who coordinated the project during the NDA regime, told DNA. [Sarasvati project is on, under a new name]

See Also: A detailed map showing Indus Valley sites and Ghaggar-Hakra river

Till the end of the nineteenth century, historians thought that Greek civilization started around the eight century BCE, about 200 years before the time of Buddha. In 1871, a German businessman,Heinrich Schliemann,  started looking for ancient Greece by excavating sites mentioned by the blind Ionian poet Homer and Schliemann’s work led to the discovery of a lost Greek civilization which was named after Mycenae, an important city of that time.

The Mycenianians were Greek speaking tribes who moved into the Greek peninsula around 2000 BCE. This civilization which reached the peak in the period from 1400 to 1230 BCE consisted of several small states, each with its own ruling dynasty. Thus the antiquity of Greeks was pushed back about 1200 years and was pushed further back when British archaeologist Arthur Evans discovered the Minoan civilization on Crete.

Schliemann’s contributions did not end there. Interested in the location of Homer’s Troy he started digging for it in Turkey. Though British archaeologist Frank Calvert had identified Hissarlik as the site of Troy, his work was over shadowed by Schliemann who published Ithaka, der Peloponnesus und Troja in which he claimed Hissarlik as the site of Troy. This is now accepted by historians.

Even though the site was discovered there were sceptics who claimed that Troy was an insignificant town and such a large war as described by Homer could not have happened there. For the past 16 years more than 350 people have been collaborating on the excavations in the site and their discoveries have resulted in some new facts. Troy, it seems was a large and important city controlling access from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. German archaeologist Manfred Korfmann who has been excavating in Troy wrote

According to the archaeological and historical findings of the past decade especially, it is now more likely than not that there were several armed conflicts in and around Troy at the end of the Late Bronze Age. At present we do not know whether all or some of these conflicts were distilled in later memory into the “Trojan War” or whether among them there was an especially memorable, single “Trojan War.” However, everything currently suggests that Homer should be taken seriously, that his story of a military conflict between Greeks and the inhabitants of Troy is based on a memory of historical events–whatever these may have been [Was There a Trojan War?]

If Karunanidhi was alive in late 19th century, he would have told Schliemann that Iliad was a myth and he should spend his time putting up his own pictures all around the city. Thanks to the work of Heinrich Schliemann, Frank Calvert, Manfred Korfmann and many others, it has been proved that there was history behind what was labeled myth.

Dr. S. R. Rao knows a bit about religious archaeology. As the former director of of National Institute of Oceanography he undertook under water excavations near Dwaraka and the island of Bet Dwaraka and it has revealed a great deal of information about the antiquity of the site.

Dr. Rao believes that the site of Hampi in Karnataka is the Kishkindha of Ramayana.

He said that the culture (seen in Kishkindha) has several Neolithic sites spread over Patapadu and Pusalpadu in Bellary district. Another important site is Bandi Pushala Chenu in Bellary-Kurnool area where excavations of the typical Harappan steatite wheel-like beads are found. These beads occur in all Harappan sites as early as 3000 BC. Bithur near Kanpur, a traditional Ramayana site, had yielded weapons of the culture, archeologically designated as ochre-coloured pottery (OCP), ranging from 1500 to 2000 BC or even 3000 BC near Ghaneswar in Rajasthan.

Excavations at the Neolithic culture site at Mahagara in the Belan valley of Uttar Pradesh yielded rice dated around 4000 BC. Further north-west in Pakistan, the cotton growing Neolithic culture is 7,000 years old (5000 BC). When Rama came to Kishkindha, the Vanaras were the same Neolithic people, whose help he took, said Prof. Rao.

The archaeological dating of Neolotihic culture ranged from 4000 BC in Uttar Pradesh to 7600 BC. in pre-Harappan sites of Pakistan. On this basis, Ramayana should be dated at least to 3000 BC, if not earlier. The Mahabharata, he said, mentioned Ramayana, while the Ramayana did not mention Mahabharata. There is no negative evidence to say that Ramayana was a myth. Ramayana is built on a core of truth depicting the life of a particular people and period, Prof. Rao added. [Ramayana is not a myth, says S.R. Rao]

If
you get a bunch of archaeologists, geologists, biologists and anthropologists
in a room, you can be sure that it will be one boring party. If you want to
get them charged up, like
Chris
Dodd on O’Reilly Show, all you need is ask the question: How did Mammoths
become extinct in North America?

Around 10,000 years back something happened in North America which
caused  the extinction of the mammoth, mastodon, horses, camels,
American lions, cheetahs, saber tooth cats and giant bears all of which
roamed around the grasslands from Alaska to Central America.
The
theories for the extinction of the mammoths and mastodon include a)
hunting by the
Clovis
people b) rapid change in vegetation due to climate change and c) killer
viruses. Now a new theory states that the cause is a supernova explosion
which
happened 41,000 years ago.

According to this theory, debris from the supernova fused to form comet like
objects and one such comet may have hit North America, triggering a
cataclysmic event that killed off the vast majority of mammoths and many
other large North American mammals. It was not just the animals that were
affected, for even human activity seems to have ceased around that time.

According to the new theory, 7000 years after the supernova blasts, an
intense blast of iron-rich grains that hit earth and evidence of that has
been found in 34,000 year old mammoth tusks. Then 10,000 years before
present, a 10 KM wide comet hit North America. Analysis of the particles
found at Clovis sites have revealed that their composition is similar to
lunar rocks and other lunar meteorites that fell on earth.