LUCY’S BONES,
SACRED STONES,
& EINSTEIN’S BRAIN
ALSO BY HARVEY RACHLIN
The Making of a Detective (1995)
The Making of a Cop (1991)
The Songwriter’s Workshop (editor) (1991)
The TV and Movie Business (1991)
The Songwriter’s and Musician’s Guide to Making Great Demos (1988)
The Kennedys: A Chronological History: 1823-Present (1986)
The Money Encyclopedia (editor) (1984)
Love Grams (1983)
The Encyclopedia of the Music Business (1981)
The Songwriter’s Handbook (1977)
LUCY’S BONES,
SACRED STONES,
& EINSTEIN’S BRAIN
THE REMARKABLE STORIES
BEHIND THE GREAT OBJECTS
AND ARTIFACTS OF HISTORY,
FROM ANTIQUITY
TO THE MODERN ERA
HARVEY RACHLIN
GARRETT COUNTY PRESS
Garrett County Digital
For more information, please address: www.gcpress.com
Copyright © 1996 by Harvey Rachlin
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-939430-91-5
Cover design by Kevin Stone (kstonedesign.com)
On the cover:
Enola Gay. Wikimedia commons: Photo by Toastydave
Babe Ruth Bat. Wikimedia commons: Photo by Dave Hogg
To the memory
of my friend
Steven Schulman
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
THE BLACK STONE OF THE KA‘BAH
LUCY THE HOMINID
THE CODE OF HAMMURABI
THE CONTENTS OF KING TUTANKHAMEN’S TOMB
THE BLACK OBELISK
THE SILOAM INSCRIPTION
THE ROSETTA STONE
THE PORTLAND VASE
THE VEIL OF THE VIRGIN
THE CROWN OF THORNS
THE HOLY LANCE
THE SHROUD OF TURIN
THE BLOOD OF SAINT JANUARIUS
THE RUBENS VASE
THE ANTIOCH CHALICE
THE BOOK OF KELLS
THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY AND THE DOMESDAY BOOK
THE HOLY CHILD OF ARACOELI
COLUMBUS’S BOOKS OF PRIVILEGES
THE CANTINO MAP
THE HOPE DIAMOND
EDMOND HALLEY’S ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATION NOTEBOOKS
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
GEORGE WASHINGTON’S FALSE TEETH
THE CRYPT OF JOHN PAUL JONES
HMS VICTORY
VICE ADMIRAL LORD NELSON’S UNIFORM COAT
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER
NAPOLEON’S PENIS
LONDON BRIDGE
JEREMY BENTHAM: A PHILOSOPHER FOR THE AGES
THE ONE-CENT MAGENTA
JOHN BROWN’S BIBLE
CAPTAIN DANJOU’S WOODEN HAND
MAJOR GENERAL DANIEL E. SICKLES’S LEG
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
THE APPOMATTOX SURRENDER TABLES
THE BED LINCOLN DIED IN
LITTLE SORREL, STONEWALL JACKSON’S CHARGER
ROBERT BROWNING’S RELIQUARY
THE ELEPHANT MAN
OWNEY, THE CANINE TRAVELER
THE WRIGHT BROTHERS’ FLYER
THE BREAST-POCKET ITEMS THAT SAVED THE LIFE OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT
PILTDOWN MAN
LADDIE BOY
BABE RUTH’S SIXTIETH-HOME-RUN BAT
JOHN DILLINGER’S WOODEN JAIL-ESCAPE GUN
ANNE FRANK’S DIARY
THE ENOLA GAY
EINSTEIN’S BRAIN
THE RIFLE THAT KILLED PRESIDENT KENNEDY
VOYAGER 1 AND VOYAGER 2’S GOLD-PLATED PHONOGRAPH RECORD FOR EXTRATERRESTRIALS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
KEYWORDS
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
LUCY’S BONES,
SACRED STONES,
& EINSTEIN’S BRAIN
INTRODUCTION
Historical artifacts make physically manifest the dreams and ideas, the great deeds and events, of human history. They symbolize the glorious triumphs of human endeavor, its humiliating defeats, and just about everything in between. Steeped in legend, artifacts forge an indelible link with the past. Imagine, if you will, holding in your hands Tutankhamen’s gold face mask, Columbus’s Book of Privileges, or Horatio Nelson’s uniform coat. Nothing quite approaches the thrill of coming face-to-face in the present with an object associated with a famous figure of the past. Some artifacts signify gallant and heroic deeds. Others are instruments of evil or the focal points of sacred or bizarre occurrences. Each has a tale to tell, whether an epic chapter or a footnote. Such artifacts open a window on the past, helping us to understand our heritage and ultimately ourselves.
Even if we can’t go back in time to witness the first power-driven heavier-than-air flight, the signing by representatives of the American colonies of the document declaring their freedom from the British realm, or the Judeans’ construction of an ingeniously conceived rock tunnel to thwart the invading Assyrians, we can today still seek out the Wright brothers’ Flyer, the Declaration of Independence, and the Siloam Inscription. Or we can contemplate relics like Marie Antoinette’s slipper (Museum of Fine Art, Caen, France), George Washington’s schoolboy copybooks (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.), Lewis and Clark’s journals (American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia), Jules Verne’s globe (Jules Verne Museum, Nantes, France), or Sigmund Freud’s couch (Freud Museum, London).
What about the toothbrush of Napoleon (Science Museum, London) or the shaving mug of Honest Abe (Ford’s Theatre National Historic Site, Washington, D.C.)? Such relics remind us that these mythic figures were flesh-and-blood mortals, too. But mortals succumb; artifacts (properly preserved and cared for) can survive for thousands, if not millions, of years. The sundry bas-reliefs, baked clay tablets, papyrus letters, pottery, figurines, and tools of the ancient past provide invaluable insights into the evolution of civilization. Some stellar artifacts remain, too—for example, the Code of Hammurabi (Louvre Museum, Paris) and the Dead Sea Scrolls (most of the scrolls are in the Israel Museum and the Rockefeller Museum, both in Jerusalem).
That these things still exist, having endured destructive natural processes, capricious human behavior, and the ravages of time, is incredible. But the discovery of an artifact marks only the beginning of a long process of scholarly research. Sometimes it is a challenge for experts to determine just what an artifact is. After all, relics of antiquity do not come with labels attached. If you found the cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper, or the tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai, they would not be inscribed “The Holy Grail,” or “The Ten Commandments.” Painstaking study, analysis, and debate attend the identification of artifacts. And at the end of the process, our conclusions remain conjecture, more or less.
Over the past centuries, the work of many archaeologists has centered on biblical sites. Humans have been endlessly fascinated by God and, of course, by whether the archaeological record can be said to confirm the theological record. We find that many seventeenth- and eighteenth-century archaeologists often too hastily interpreted ancient inscriptions to fit their preconceptions. Perhaps this is still true today. Yet the brilliant work of the pioneers of the past, such as Heinrich Schliemann, Jean-Francois Champollion, Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, Charles Leonard Woolley, Austen Layard, and Flinders Petrie, established modern archaeology as a science, a discipline, and an art. Modern society owes them a deep debt.
The search for artifacts is not a sim
ple affair, and I often found myself led into endless loops and down blind alleys with no object in sight. Where, one might ask, is the first lightbulb of Thomas Edison? Edison conducted a series of experiments in which different materials were progressively used to achieve increasingly better results. In 1878 and 1879, Edison worked with bulbs over many months, gradually moving them from unusable short-lived filaments to a filament-and-bulb design that was long-lived enough to patent. At each stage the bulbs were taken apart to be examined. I learned that the very first lightbulb that Edison experimented with was probably long ago discarded. But not all of Edison’s original inventions have disappeared. His original phonograph mechanism, the machine that marked the advent of the sound recording era and the one on which the nursery rhyme “Mary Had a Little Lamb” was recorded and played back on tinfoil mounted to it, does still exist (Edison National Historic Site, West Orange, New Jersey); unfortunately, the tinfoil was probably long ago thrown away.
Of all the hundreds of thousands of words written by William Shakespeare, only a few are known to survive in his own hand: six signatures and the words by me, which precede one of them. Four signatures are at the Public Record Office in London, three on a will (which has the by me preface), and one on a deposition. The Guildhall Library and the British Library, both also in London, have one signature each on a deed. And it is widely believed that the manuscript of a play at the British Library, The Book of Sir Thomas More, is written, in part, in his hand (several people cooperated in its authorship). Since there is no identification of Shakespeare as an author of the play and there are no known signed letters or manuscripts of Shakespeare against which the handwriting could be compared, it is difficult to prove this, but by comparing the use of language and style, some have said that the manuscript in question might be an early work of Shakespeare.
In Shakespeare’s day, discarded sheets of paper would often be used in binding books. That means that some printed books of the time might literally have contained Shakespeare’s work between their covers! Alas, my zeal in tracking down relics of Shakespeare’s hand did not extend to ungluing sixteenth-century books. In any case, if any of Shakespeare’s manuscripts remained at his printer’s shop, they would probably have been destroyed in the great fire of London in 1666.
None of Gutenberg’s printing presses or the equipment from his workshop are extant. It is not known when the original Gutenberg printing press was destroyed or how it actually looked, or even if it was destroyed. But it’s possible that Gutenberg’s original printing press was destroyed during his lifetime, around 1462, when, during a conflict between Adolf of Nassau and Diether of Isenburg, many houses were torched; Gutenberg’s workshop and the equipment therein could have been among the casualties. At the Gutenberg-Museum in Mainz, Germany, which has two of the forty-eight surviving Gutenberg bibles—the Solms-Lauback and the Shuckburg, named after their previous owners—there is a reconstructed Gutenberg press, but it is not a perfect model, as nothing of certainty is known about Gutenberg’s original printing presses. The first prints of his workshop were not made until 1499, thirty-one years after the inventor of movable type died.
Man is a relative newcomer among Earth’s creatures. But, endowed with a brain like no other before him, he quickly learned to express himself. He soon discovered he had a musical soul (a flute has been found that is thirty-two thousand years old) and a taste for painting (cave art dates back twenty-nine thousand years). It would be only a few thousand years more before he would begin to sculpt figures and fashion weapons, tools, and other implements. As human history unfolded and societies became more complex, artifacts became more dramatic, more representative of human needs, drives, emotions, and introspection.
Over time, some artifacts attained special significance, gradually growing in historical value until they became national, even international, treasures. In the meantime, however, many important relics were handled rather haphazardly. Often their significance went unrecognized for centuries. Around the world today are numerous extant artifacts having wonderful provenances and histories. They are housed in museums, libraries, archives, and other institutions as well as collections in the private domain.*
Some artifacts exist only because at times in the past, people specifically created and preserved some objects to serve as relics. It was a custom of the past, for instance, to preserve locks of hair and to make life and death masks. Today we have locks from George Washington (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, New York), Thomas Jefferson (Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.), John Keats (Pierpont Morgan Library), and Frankenstein author Mary Shelley (New York Public Library, New York, New York) as well as life masks of such people as Thomas Jefferson and Dolley Madison (New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York) and Beethoven (Beethoven-Haus, Bonn, Germany), and death masks of such figures as John Keats (National Portrait Gallery, London), Walt Whitman (Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts), and Clara Barton (National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.).
I have endeavored to find artifacts with striking, colorful backgrounds. The selection here ranges from the offbeat to the famous and includes lesser-known objects with histories of mystery, massacre, and marauding—what I call cloak-and-dagger artifacts. In all cases, however, I picked objects whose stories I found absorbing—enough, I hope, to inspire the reader to undertake his or her own voyage of discovery.
All the artifacts described here are the originals or at least are said to be the original. Does it matter if they are real? The authenticity of liturgical relics may be less important than what they symbolize. Believing such relics can work miracles, people have venerated them over long periods.
Traditionally, according to the canon of the Roman Catholic Church, liturgical relics are classified as first, second, and third class. A first-class relic is something that was part of a holy person, such as a bone, hair, limb, or finger, or his or her blood. A second-class relic is an object that belonged to the person in life. And a third-class relic is something that touched the holy person but that he or she did not own. The dates for liturgical relics are those of popular tradition, which of course may or may not be true.
Various biblical and liturgical artifacts were thought by people of the past (and some of the present) to have fearsome military power. Such objects, associated with figures in the Bible, were deemed holy relics, ordained by God to bring power to the bearer and calamity upon his target. This was the thesis of the popular motion picture Raiders of the Lost Ark, the lost ark being the biblical Ark of the Covenant.
Part of the labor—and fun—of writing this book was trying to track down the locations of noteworthy artifacts, if indeed they still existed. One, for example, that I very much wanted to find was the letter that spawned America’s most famous newspaper editorial: Virginia O’Hanlon’s “Is There a Santa Claus?” letter. The eight-year-old New York City girl’s innocent letter in 1897 to the editor of the New York Sun and the wistful editorial response were reprinted in the Sun a couple of times and have been quoted the world over. They are a symbol of hope for all things people believe in.
So what happened to the letter? The New York Sun shut down many years ago. I imagined that somewhere, cartons of the newspaper’s files were piled in a warehouse, with the letter, a bit crushed, in an old file just waiting to be discovered. When I finally found the Sun’s archives, however, the letter was nowhere to be found.
In tracking down artifacts, I became a sort of detective. As one who has always enjoyed scavenger hunts and puzzles, I embraced the challenge of searching for artifacts. Each case I solved led me to seek out another one that might be even more difficult to find.
There is a great story about the siege of Plattsburgh, New York, during the War of 1812. The American general Alexander Macomb, while commanding the Champlain Department, called for volunteers to assist in defending approaches to the area against the invading British. A number of schoolboys, mostly fifteen years of age, volunteered with a group commanded by
Captain Martin J. Aitkin. One can imagine the trepidation with which these tender youths entered into battle with the professional redcoats, but they fought heroically and successfully, fending the British off a crucial bridge. I was told one of their muskets still existed, and I searched for it but couldn’t find it. What I did turn up, however, was one of the Model 1819 Hall breech-loading rifles (National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C.) that Congress presented years later in lieu of a medal or other citation to members of the volunteer corps for their “gallantry and patriotic services” during the siege. This rifle was awarded to Gustavus A. Bird, one of the schoolboys under Captain Aitkin’s command, but none of the weapons the boys held during the battle seems to have survived.
Then there was the roller coaster of excitement and letdown when I heard that Crazy Horse’s “scalp shirt” was at the Nebraska State Historical Society in Lincoln. Crazy Horse was the Sioux war leader who led American Indians in the massacre of Custer and some of his men at the Little Bighorn River in Montana in 1876, and who fought earlier in the Fetterman Massacre, the Battle of the Rosebud, and the Wagon-Box Fight. Scalp shirts contained locks of hair of tribal members and were made by Plains Indians to symbolically represent the tribe for whom the wearer was responsible.
One day, one of the historical society’s curators realized the shirt was machine-made and decided to check into its history. After examining original letters from the donors, he found that the “scalp shirt” wasn’t even manufactured until a year after Crazy Horse’s death in 1877. Shortly before, Crazy Horse had taken a third wife. Upon his death she took a second husband. The second husband took the name of his wife’s famous first husband and became known as Crazy Horse of Pine Ridge Agency. Thus this garment is simply a shirt worn by Crazy Horse’s third wife’s second husband. Got that?
What of Neville Chamberlain’s black umbrella, the famous prop from his infamous sojourn to Munich, where he was duped by Hitler in September 1938? Everyone interested in World War II has seen photographs of the tall, mustachioed man in black top hat leaning on a closed umbrella—a kind of tall, somber Chaplin. The celebrated umbrella was the subject of the 1938 French hit song by Ray Ventura et ses Collegiens, “La Chamberlaine: Polka Parapluie” (“The Umbrella Polka”), as well as “The Umbrella Man” by Flanagan and Allen in England. Many of the prime minister’s papers and letters went to the University of Birmingham in England, and a large quantity of his unwanted clothing and paraphernalia, including some of his everyday umbrellas, was given away to deserving causes after his death. The celebrated umbrella, however, has probably long since disintegrated at a municipal dump.
Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, & Einstein's Brain Page 1