Recently an underground cave dedicated to the founders of Rome – Romulus and his brother Remus was found between one of the seven hills of Rome and the Basilica of Santa Anastasia. Does this mean that the story of the two brothers are not myth anymore or can archaeology prove mythology?

“Everyone always wants to think that archaeology has proved the Bible is true, or that there really was a Trojan War, or that King Arthur was a real character,” says historian T.P. Wiseman of England’s University of Exeter. “Archaeology by its nature can’t provide such evidence.” He says that when archaeologists interpret an artifact, their expert perspective is essentially a best guess, because there’s no means of confirmation. Historian Christopher Smith of Scotland’s University of St. Andrews notes that even if artifacts clearly reference the Romulus and Remus story, all they will show is that the cavern is a place where first-century Romans celebrated the legend — not that the story is real. “It is tempting to argue that the finds support historical events,” Smith says, “when in fact they merely support ancient beliefs about events.”[ Does a cave prove Romulus and Remus are no myth? – USATODAY.com]

The Troy was considered a mythological place till German businessman,Heinrich Schliemann found a site in Turkey which is now accepted by historians. 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?]

Archaeology could not prove that the Trojan war happened for sure, but it came up with the answer that it could have happened. 

Technorati Tags: Troy, Trojan War, Heinrich Schliemann

Here is Gireesh Gupta, Associate Professor at Belmont Abbey College writing about the history of Hinduism

Around 1500 B.C.E., Indo-Aryans entered India through the northwest region. Scholars differ on the exact venue where the Indo-Aryans lived before migrating into India. Some scholars believe that they came to India from Central Asia.[Hinduism is one of the Oldest Religions of the World]

According to some genetic studies done recently Indo-European speaking population did not come from Central Asia and were native to the subcontinent for a few millennia. At least you can tell the Professor to read those papers, but what do you tell Charlene Wilkinson of Guyana?

My North American years were instructive. I discovered a culture of African American scholars who understood the centrality of Black people in the creation of human civilization. I learned that the Indus Valley civilization of India was a Black one before the coming of the Aryan invaders;[I beg you to turn away from shallow arrogance]

Linguists have always tried to push the Aryans into India through the Khyber/Bolan passes and since this whole story is imaginary they had to distort original Sanskrit texts. One such distortion was done by a famous Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University and when this distortion was pointed out to the esteemed professor, the reaction was not very academic like.

Professor Witzel and I happened to participate in a seminar organized by UMASS, Dartmouth in June 2006. When I referred, during the course of my presentation, to this wrong translation by the learned Professor, he, instead of providing evidence in support of his own stand, shot at me by saying that I did not know the difference between Vedic and Classical Sanskrit. Should that be the level of an academic debate? (Anyway, he had to be told that I had the privilege of obtaining in 1943 my Master’s Degree in Sanskrit (with the Vedas included), with a First Class First, from a first class university of India, namely Allahabad.)[Let not the 19th century paradigms continue to haunt us!]

This looks very civil, compared to what happened at the recent Princeton Theological Seminary conference on the Talpiot Tomb. The conference was held to discuss the possibility that a tomb in Jerusalem which held ossuaries belonging to Joseph, Mary,  Mariamne, Jesus, son of Jospeh, and Judah, son of Jesus would belong to the Jesus family of the Bible fame. Here is one scene from the conference.

During the opening session, Professor Kloner shouted down Professor James Charlesworth from the audience. I was sitting behind Professor Kloner and heard his colleagues advise him that screaming at Professor Charlesworth would not do his reputation any good. Subsequently, Professor Kloner decided to direct his invective at me. Filmmakers are fair game. At one point, Professor Kloner jumped on the stage and, as reported by the Jerusalem Post, shouted “liar” at me, as I attempted to ask a question from the audience. Later he thought better of it and again jumped up on the stage and publicly apologized. But after Ruth Gat’s statement, he verbally and physically attacked me at the closing reception in front of television cameras as they rolled. I said nothing to him, but I watched in shock as his wife wrestled with him so as to prevent any further physical assault. Is this scholarship?[Simcha Jacobovici Responds to His Critics]

The Jewish carpenter would have been amused by all this.

Technorati Tags: Talpiot Tomb, Aryans,

Mycenean Greece, the home of Homer’s Agamemnon, flourished after the decline of the Harappan civilization.This culture showed great affinity with that of the Minoan culture which predated it and displayed  warlike character similar to the Spartans (the folks in 300). The Mycenean palaces were fortified and  warfare paintings dominated their wall paintings.^[11]

This civilization collapsed around 1100 B.C.E and the collapse was attributed to the Dorian Invasion. According to this theory, a group of Greek speaking men from the North invaded the Peloponnese peninsula and destroyed the Mycenean civilization. As per the  Greek tradition, this movement was the return of the sons of Heracles, who were the founders of three Dorian (from the city of Doris in central Greece) tribes.

The early descriptions of the Dorians came from Herodotus, who himself was from a Dorian colony and wrote that the Dorian women wore a particular kind of dress which was fastened with pins. Thucydides dated the Dorian invasion to 80 years after the Trojan war and wrote that the Dorians held the Peloponnese implying military activity.

Archaeologists after reading Herodotus and Thucydides looked for the dress pins and found a few. It seems there was an ideological movement in the 19th century to emphasize the war like nature of the Dorians and distinguish them from the Peloponnese . While classical historians put the origins of Dorians near Thessaloniki, 20th century historians moved them far north and gave them blue eyes and blonde hair.

The similarity to the Aryan invasion/migration theory which states that war like Aryans from Central Asia invaded ancient India around 1500 – 1200 B.C.E is remarkable. The Aryan invasion theory was put to rest when genetic studies found that there was no massive movement of Central Asians in that time frame and  no external origins to Indian castes and tribal population. Genetic studies of Indian populations also told us that Indo-European speakers  reached India much before the fictional date and were not foreigners by the time the vedas were composed.

In the Peloponnese case, decipherment of Linear B, the script used for writing Mycenaean, revealed that it was Dorian in style and thus the invaders suddenly turned into a linguistic sub group. The question then was if the Dorians were newcomers or the old population adapting to new conditions of the Iron age. History Professor Isabelle Pafford calls it the invasion by safety pins since the earlier invasion theory has now been discredited.

Technorati Tags: Dorian Invasion, Aryan Invasion, Mycenean,

Recently a 2500 year old Babylonian Seal which depicted worshippers offering incense to the Sumerian god Sin was discovered in Jerusalem. Dr. Eilat Mazar who led the dig read the inscription on the seal as “Temech” and connected it to the Temech family mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. In her interview with the Jerusalem Post, she noted that, “The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archeology and the biblical sources and serves as actual evidence of a family mentioned in the Bible.”

This reading was questioned by other scholars who suggested that the words on the seal actually read “Shelomith.” Even if the words read “Temech”, there is nothing to suggest that this was the Temech of the Hebrew Bible. Also, without knowing how common this name was during the time of the destruction of the First Temple, there is no way to find the probability that this person was indeed the biblical one.

Now imagine finding a tomb in Jerusalem in which there is an ossuary which holds the remains of Jesus, son of Joseph. Going by the same logic which was used in the Temech case, one could argue that there is no evidence to say that the ossuary was of Jesus of Bible fame. What if you find that next to the Jesus ossuary, others which read, Joseph, Mary,  Mariamne (possibly Mary Magdalene) and Judah, son of Jesus.

These were all common names, but the probability of all of them appearing together in  a family tomb is rare. Film makers Simcha Jacobovici (of the Exodus Decoded fame) and producer James Cameron made this case in their documentary, The Tomb of Jesus. The documentary upset clerics and the some faithful because it challenged the cornerstone of Christian faith, that Jesus rose bodily into heaven after his crucifixion.

A conference on this topic was held recently in Jerusalem in which archeologists, statisticians and experts in DNA and ancient
languages came together to analyze the evidence. Three days of debates and the conclusion is that there are many camps ranging from,  “no way” to
“very possible”. First there is group which believes this tomb does not belong to Jesus.

Myers, who specializes in archaeology and the history of Second Temple, said there are two main reasons why he rejected the claims put forth by Cameron and Jacobovici. The first dealt with the
statistical analysis presented by Andrey Feuerverger, professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Toronto. Feuerverger had calculated that there was a 1 in 600 chance that the particular cluster of names found on the Talpoit ossuaries would occur in one of the roughly 1,000 tombs discovered so far.

It wasn’t the statistical process he used that flagged the analysis for Myers, but it was the Feuerverger information used to calculate those odds.  Most of that information centered around the reading of the inscriptions on the ossuaries which bore the names used in the analysis. One was interpreted toread “Mariemene e Mara” and in some early Christian texts was believed to refer to Mary Magdalene. But epigraphers at the conference, however, contested the reading as “Mariemene e Mara” – a crucial part of the calculation.[Jesus Tomb Case Closed for Most Scholars ]

Film maker Simcha Jacobovici had an entirely different view

Reached in Jerusalem, director/author Simcha Jacobovici said, “we feel totally vindicated. My work with James Cameron was the catalyst for an international symposium that has finally considered the evidence and is opening the door for further research. It’s time that the world seriously considered that the Jesus family tomb may very well have been located.”[Princeton Conference Vindicates Associated Producers James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici on “Lost Tomb of Jesus” ]

And there is the “may be group”

I am with the “possible to likely” group, and it is not always easy totake positions that are in the minority, but my conclusions are based
on my own sense of “best evidence,” and I have published them in Near Eastern Archaeology.I also think there is more to be said about the DNA testing as well as
the statistical studies, some of which was misunderstood, in my view at
least, at the Symposium. I will be writing more on this in coming days.[Results of the Princeton Symposium Regarding the Talpiot “Jesus” Tomb]

The final word is not out. Prof. James Charlesworth of Princeton  has been authorized to re-investigate the Talpiot Tomb site and analysis from various participants are yet to come out. This debate may be closed for some, but is opening for others.

A 2500 year old stone seal discovered outside the Old City walls has caused excitement in Jerusalem since it connects archaeology and the Hebrew Bible. The seal depicts worshippers offering incense to the Sumerian god Sin, symbolized by a crescent moon, and has the words “Temech” engraved on it. According to the Book of Nehemiah, a book of the Hebrew Bible which contains an account of the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem, the Temech family were servants of the First Temple sent into exile following the destruction of the temple in 586 B.C.E.

According to Dr. Eilat Mazar who led the dig

“The seal of the Temech family gives us a direct connection between archeology and the biblical sources and serves as actual evidence of a family mentioned in the Bible,” she said. “One cannot help being astonished by the credibility of the biblical source as seen by the archaeological find.”[First Temple seal found in Jerusalem]

The seal which has been dated 538-445 B.C.E is called the First Temple seal by Jerusalem Post which is odd because the First Temple was already destroyed by then. Technically it is a Persian seal since it was made in Babylon and depicts a Sumerian God.

There is scepticism about the way the characters on the seal have been read.

Writing on the ANE-2 e-mail list, Peter van der Veen disagrees with Mazar’s reading. If you examine the figures below, you can easily see why. Engravers normally put the letters on a seal backwards, so that the seal impression in clay would show the letters in their correct orientation. A reversed tav might not immediately grab your attention, but a reversed mem practically shouts, “Hey, read me in the mirror!”[But can it balance a beach ball on its nose?]

If you read it in reverse, those characters read, “Shelomith” and not “Temech.” Even if you assume that the words read “Temech”, what about the biblical connection? How can you assume that this one name exactly refers to the person n the Bible?

The name תמח does indeed appear in a list of the Bible—precisely twice, with reference to the same individual, in a list of “temple servants” (Ezra 2:53 // Nehemiah 7:55). Mazar hasn’t adduced a shred of evidence to connect that תמח with the biblical תמח—nor could anyone expect her to do so, since all we know about the biblical תמח is his name and (possibly) occupation. Without knowing how common the name תמח was among Judeans of the relevant period, we have no way even to put a probability figure on the seal’s תמח being the biblical תמח.[But can it balance a beach ball on its nose?]

Also if he is the Biblical Temech, what is this monotheist doing in front of a Sumerian God?

Technorati Tags: Jerusalem, Hebrew Bible, First Temple, Babylon

The Indian History Carnival is an attempt to collect posts related to Indian history and archaeology from the blogosphere.

1. Hari ponders:  Why did the highly original Pre-Columbian empires of Mexico, Central and South America – the Aztecs and the Incas
   – perish so abruptly and spectacularly under European conquests, while
   the ancient traditions, beliefs, books and languages of the Indian
   subcontinent, even while suffering destructive invasions through the
   ages, manage to adapt and survive so successfully to the present day?

2. Writing about Wootz steel, Andrew Leonard notes how ancient globalization worked: “So Diocletian, an Illyrian commoner native to what is now Croatia,
   rises to absolute power over the Roman Empire and builds armament
   factories in Syria that employ steel from Hyderabad as the raw material
   for state-of-the-art weapons of individual destruction. That’s
   globalization, old school.” More information on Wootz steel can be found here, here and here.

3. Arun Gandhi recently made the comment that, “We have created a culture of violence (Israel and the Jews are the
   biggest players) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to
   destroy humanity.” Rebecca notes that Mahatma Gandhi too had similar views. David T writes that Gandhiji’s principles do not work against everyone.

4. Kedar discovers that India was an economic super power from the 1st century till the 17th century.

5. Vinod writes about how a less known Atlantic Conference played a key role in Indian history because it was there that FDR made Indian Independence a pre-requisite to American involvement in WWII.

6. Aryaputra writes about Zamorins , the rulers of Calicut from the 14th to the 18th century.

7. Chandrahas has an interview with historian Ramachandra Guha.

8. The Indian Backpacker has images from Mahabalipuram: Tiger Cave,  Five Rathas, and Shore Temple

There are many history carnivals
in the blogosphere like the Military History Carnival and the Asian
History Carnival, but none which focuses on India. If you find any posts related to Indian history please send it to jk AT varnam DOT org or use this form

Numitor and his brother Amulius were descendants of fugitives from Troy and upon their father’s death, they received the throne of an ancient city near Rome. Numitor became the king and Amulius in charge of the royal treasury. Soon Amulius dethroned Numitor and fearful that Numitor’s daughter would produce children, she was sworn to abstinence. Well, we all know how well abstinence works, and before the daughter realized that she was pregnant and gave birth to twins. Amulius ordered that the daughter and both her children be killed.

The servant who had to kill the twins did not do it and instead put them in a basket on the banks of the Tiber river. The basket was carried downstream and the twins were  found by a shepherd Amulius who raised them as his own children. One of them grew up to be a dacoit and the other a software engineer. No, they grew up to be Romulus and Remus, known as the founders of Rome.

If this story has an uncanny similarity to the story of Karna don’t be surprised. The seventh century BCE  biography of Sargon says

My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the banks of the Euphrates. My high priestess mother conceived me, in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid. She cast me into the river which rose over me. The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water. Akki, the drawer of water, took me as his son and reared me. Akki, the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener. While I was a gardener, Ishtar granted me her love, and for four and […] years I exercised kingship

Besides Moses, and Karna, others who have undergone this ordeal include Perseus who was cast into the open sea, but was saved by the fisherman Dictys, and King Nyatri Tsanpo, regarded as Tibet’s first recorded monarch, who was sent floating in a casket down the Ganges. Like the story of the great deluge, this is also one of the recurring themes across cultures. Also, without this pattern the Hindi movie industry would have folded in the early 70s.

The Pyramids of Caral

Caral, in Barranca province, Peru, is one of the oldest cities of the Americas. The site was inhabited between 2627 BCE and 2020 BCE and had  an elaborate complex of temples, an amphitheatre and ordinary houses.The official web site of the project lists all those societies which created civilization: Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Peru, China and Mesoamerica. The web site calls Caral,the oldest civilization of America.

Writing in the Times of India, Shobhan Saxena decided to be more Peruvian than the Peruvians themselves, According to him, Caral is the mother of all civilisations. He also writes, “the earliest known civilisation in South
Americas—at 2,627 BC–was much older than the Harappa Valley towns
and the pyramids of Egypt.” Shobhan needs to know something: Google is your friend. The Indus valley civilization had its roots in Mehrgarh and reached the Mature phase by 2600 BCE. Ancient Egyptian civilization began around 3150 BC and they were building pyramids by the time of Caral.

One more thing. Even Tom Friedman does not use metaphors like “mother of all something” these days.

The Archaeology Magazine has published their Top 10 discoveries of 2007. Among the top 10 are the Solar Observatory at Chankillo, Peru, Nebo-Sarsekim Cuneiform Tablet, Greater Angkor, Cambodia, and Urbanization at Tell Brak, Syria. While nothing from India made it to the top 10, there is one story among the nine which did not make it to the final cut – Toba Survivors in Andhra Pradesh