Ten Discoveries That Rewrote History
Page 1
A PLUME BOOK
TEN DISCOVERIES THAT REWROTE HISTORY
PATRICK HUNT is a global archaeologist who teaches on the faculty of Classics and Archaeology at Stanford University and has been the Director of the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project since 1994. He also directs the National Geographic Society’s Hannibal Expedition as the recipient of an Expedition Council Grant for 2007-2008. Hunt has been an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London since 1989 and earned his Ph.D. at the Institute of Archaeology, UCL, University of London, in 1991. His research has been featured in Archaeology magazine and various international history and science magazines, and on the History Channel. He has written over one hundred articles and been published in over forty journals and encyclopedias and gives lectures on archaeology all around the world. He has broken at least twenty bones in falls from stone monuments during fieldwork, fought off kidnappers, avoided gunfire battles in guerilla warfare, and twice survived sunstroke-induced temporary blindness over the last twenty years in the pursuit of archaeology. This has not stopped him. He lives on the San Francisco peninsula in Northern California with his wife and spends several months a year abroad pursuing historical and archaeological research.
Also by Patrick Hunt
Caravaggio
Alpine Archaeology
PLUME
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First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Copyright © Patrick Hunt, 2007
eISBN: 9781440628993
1. Archaeology—History. 2. Excavations (Archaeology)—History. 3. Antiquities.
4. Historic sites. 5. Extinct cities. 6. Tombs. 7. Civilization, Ancient. I. Title.
CC100.H86 2007
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2007019808
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This book is dedicated to my most keen fellow explorer,
my wife Pamela
Acknowledgments
This book proceeded out of my archaeological research over decades and a recent popular course at Stanford University. Archaeologists may not actually often rate the “Top Ten” sites or discoveries around the world, or make any such lists of most important sites, but it was an idea that seemed surprisingly obvious in terms of how much our understanding of ancient history is influenced by some relatively few but major discoveries. I felt it was vital for me to have some direct field experience at these sites or working knowledge of them. Admittedly, it is unusual for an archaeologist to range across so many cultures, regions and eras. The deliberate breadth-depth requisite of conducting archaeological research across five continents added years to my doctoral studies, and my Ph.D. dissertation (Institute of Archaeology, UCL, University of London) was not published in the usual single monograph form when finished back in 1991, but was instead split between at least seven different professional peer-reviewed academic journals. I am grateful to the Institute of Archaeology at London for allowing me such range.
This book would not have been possible without a patient, brilliant editor like Janie Fleming at Penguin/Plume, committed to publishing high-quality work and paying unflagging attention to detail. My literary agent, Carol Susan Roth—a writer’s dream—immediately saw the potential to turn a global archaeologist’s broad-ranging class into an accessible book.
I must credit Dr. Charlie Junkerman at Stanford, always visionary and prescient about what people are hungry to learn. My wife Pamela and daughters Hilary, Allegra and Beatrice were also equally supportive as we bounced around the world, sometimes bemused in Italy that the little Fiats we rented had no seat belts, but it would have been redundant anyway because our three girls were glued to their seats daily with wonderful and sticky gelato ice cream.
Friends who encouraged along the way include Chris and Teresa Hougie, Fritz and Beverly Maytag, Ed and Susan Catmull, Rob and Mary Anne Cook, Michael and Sande Marston and Bob Tousey. I am also deeply indebted to Helen and Peter Bing, Susan and Cordell Hull, and the National Geographic Society and its Expedition Council for sponsoring my archaeological research.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1 - Rosetta StoneThe Key to Egyptian History
Chapter 2 - TroyThe Key to Homer and Greek History
Chapter 3 - Nineveh’s Assyrian LibraryThe Key to Mesopotamia
Chapter 4 - King Tut’s TombThe Key to Egypt’s God-Kings
Chapter 5 - Machu PicchuThe Key to Inca Architecture
Chapter 6 - PompeiiThe Key to Roman Life
Chapter 7 - Dead Sea ScrollsThe Key to Biblical Research
Chapter 8 - TheraThe Key to the Aegean Bronze Age
Chapter 9 - Olduvai GorgeThe Key to Human Evolution
Chapter 10 - Tomb of 10,000 WarriorsThe Key to Imperial China
Selected Bibliography
Introduction
How would archaeologists around the world list the most exciting and seminal global archaeological discoveries, events that “rewrote” history? Nearly every list would include some immediately recognizable discoveries such as King Tut’s tomb, Machu Picchu, the Rosetta Stone, Troy, Pompeii, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, but would also include less familiar finds such as Akrotiri on the Aegean Island of Thera, China’s Tomb of 10,000 Warriors, Nineveh and its Royal Assyrian Library of King Ashurbanipal, and the work of the Leakey family at Olduvai Gorge and elsewhere in the African Great Rift Zone. These are all excellent candidates for a global circle of discovery across many continents between 1750 and the end of the twentieth century.
Some of these discoveries were entirely accidental—for example, Pompeii, the Rosetta Stone, the Dead Sea Scrolls and even the Tomb of 10,000 Warriors. In some cases, amateurs first performed lengthy work, but eventually the discoveries all proceeded under professional archaeological teams. Other discoveries only culminated in triumph after hard years of persistent and logical searching, such as King Tut’s tomb, Akrotiri on Thera, Nineveh, Olduvai Gorge and Machu Picchu. If we can accept Heinrich Schliemann’s diaries and later accounts, which might be very risky, finding Troy might also fall in the latter category. Some of these discoveries were excavated first in the early days of archaeology, when treasure hunting was a more likely motive, and yet have continued for centuries as field models reflecting current archaeological philosophies and methods. Pompeii and Troy both fall into this category, as they continue to be studied up to the present. Other sites, including the Tomb of 10,000 Warriors, have been found fairly recently and only excavated within the past few decades. Sometimes politics and tourism make unlikely bedfellows with archaeological research, yet if increasing awareness of archaeological resources and commitment to protecting such cultural and historic resources results, this is probably a just end as well as a reasonable incentive to continue the search for human history.
This book examines each of these ten selected discoveries—whether deliberately sought or accidentally found—in the context of the evolving discipline of archaeology since the eighteenth century. Each chapter also briefly explores the intellectual, political and philosophical climate of the period when the discovery was made and evaluates it relative to the present. Although archaeology has changed greatly since 1750, it is questionable whether we should ever judge previous generations by our present values. What we understand and write about history has also changed greatly because of archaeology and the material cultures unearthed. How each of these events changed perceptions of history and the future directions of field research is also a considerable focus of this book. Subsequent generations of scholars may not agree over what are the most important archaeological discoveries of previous eras, but it is highly likely that these ten discoveries will stand out forever for archaeologists as well as for those who love ancient history and reading stories of discovery.
The precise accounts of the moment when each of these great discoveries was made differ somewhat. Some happened a century or more ago; others were unrecorded except by multiple spectators after the fact, each with different memories or observations; still others were written in often contradictory diaries by the same person. Although they are not overtly fictionalized, some of the first details of these discoveries can still only be guessed at. I have therefore tried to amalgamate the individual discovery details I consider most reliable. For this reason, any faults in reconstructing these discoveries or errors of detail in this book are entirely my own. Samuel Johnson once suggested that books record all we can know about history. But with all due respect, any decent archaeologist would choose to disagree, because the actual artifacts coming out of the ground may tell us far more than texts. Material history is at least as important as textual history and often foundational to it. That is why archaeology and its discoveries are so vital to understanding the past. When ancient texts are not enough or simply don’t exist, this is when archaeology often rewrites history.
Chapter 1
Rosetta Stone
The Key to Egyptian History
Nile Delta, Egypt, 1799
It was 1799 and Napoleon’s dream of a military and scientific campaign to the Nile had filled the desert with soldiers and the river with boat traffic. The intense heat of the Egyptian sun caused sweat to run down the necks of the French officers overseeing the local workers along the sluggish water’s edge. This same water, once clear but now muddy, had traveled thousands of miles from the south, descending first through rapids in deep tropical Africa until it passed through almost lifeless deserts of sand and stone and finally slowed as it entered the Mediterranean in the delta. The French engineers were working on the defenses of their growing encampment, Fort-St.-Julien, on the west bank of an old port along the Nile, and to extend their fortifications along the water they had to tear down an old wall fairly close to it. The French had already had several battles with the Egyptians and needed to consolidate their power. They also had military intelligence that the British would likely be wanting to take Egypt for themselves, and they hoped this fort would deter the eventual British attack.
A French officer named Pierre Bouchard was supervising the workmen. He decided the unneeded dusty wall had been there a long time and was instructing the men to find the seams between the heavy stones for moving them. As they groaned and pulled, the wall finally tumbled and the individual stone slabs fell outward. Bouchard saw one large stone, about three feet long and a foot thick, land flat side up in a cloud of dust. It had one squared edge and the rest were broken. But what immediately caught his eye as the dust settled was that the face of this large flat stone was highly planed and totally covered with script, many lines of finely written text. He called for a halt to the workers and bent down to look closely. What he saw in the bright sun intrigued and then astonished him. He blinked his eyes to make sure. This stone, unlike so many other fragments of Old Egypt, had three distinct ancient scripts, each different. He had been in Egypt long enough to recognize the mysterious pictorial hieroglyphs of forgotten Egypt, but this top section—the most fragmentary—was followed by a section of language unrecognizable to him and then a far more familiar classical language text, with recognizable letters like A, E, N and what appeared to be an H, along with many other unfamiliar Greek letters.
Bouchard did not know that day that he had just discovered the world’s most important key to decoding ancient Egyptian, but luckily he was curious and followed a hunch. Bouchard had his workers set the stone aside and set off to tell his superior officers. He must have been persistent going up the chain of command, because within an hour or so he reported it to his commander, General Abdallah-Jacques Menou. This extraordinary discovery would culminate a few decades later in the most exciting decipherment the world has ever known, that of the Rosetta Stone.
The discovery of “the stone” spread like wildfire among the French and, soon after, the British, who together helped decipher the text to give the world knowledge that had been lost for millennia. No credible historian or archaeologist, and certainly no Egyptologist worth reading, would argue with its importance. Decoding it, in the early 1820s, opened up ancient Egyptian language and texts—without it, the textual history of ancient Egypt would have remained locked away in forgotten history. Its triple script, sharing known with unknown language, also makes it the most important document in history. Yet, for all of its earthshaking implications for revealing ancient history, it actually recorded a rather mundane event in the Egypt of its day. The stone’s surprising discovery and sensational reception in Egypt caused an international tug-of-war for years between France and Britain, who not only fought over it diplomatically but also competed in deep scholarship to decode it. The exciting tale of its deciphering is a great detective story shared by two of the most important rival geniuses of the nineteenth century.
It’s fair to ask where ancient historians would be without the Rosetta Stone. This one stone monument above all others changed the world, although no one would have known this when it was inscribed in 196 BC. Because its inscription was set down in several languages, the Rosetta Stone provided the key to understanding ancient Egyptian at a time when its meaning had been lost for almost two thousand years. Since 1822, only a few decades after it was found in the Nile and quickly translated by the polymath physicist-doctor Thomas Young (1773-1829) in England and the brilliant young Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) in France, the Rosetta Stone has revolutionized our knowledge of the past.
Why is it called the Rosetta Stone?
The stone is called “Rosetta” after the place where it was found in 1799 in the Nile Del
ta, near the modern town of El-Rashid, where the French were building Fort-St.-Julien. In the wide and very flat Nile Delta, the great river forks into several branches before emptying into the Mediterranean. This particular one of its western branches has been called the Rosetta fork of the Nile River for centuries. But even though the name “Rosetta Stone” is firmly fixed in modern history, the Rosetta fork was not the stone’s original home; it had earlier been moved there from an unknown location within Egypt.
The Rosetta Stone is incomplete because it was broken sometime in the past. At about three feet, nine inches long and two feet, five inches wide, it is now little more than two-thirds of its original size, just about five feet high. Originally it had a rounded top customary on a Ptolemaic stela (a small standing monument shaped like a grave headstone, only a little larger—an example is even shown on the last line of the Rosetta hieroglyph text). The remnant text—still enough to change ancient history—contains only fourteen of the likely twenty-nine hieroglyph lines, all of the thirty-two demotic lines (except for the top right-hand portion) and all of the fifty-four Greek lines (except for the bottom right-hand corner).
When was the Rosetta Stone carved and what was Egypt like at the time?
The Rosetta Stone dates to the Ptolemaic period in 196 BC, when Ptolemy V Epiphanes ruled Egypt. Actually more Greek than Egyptian, Ptolemy V was part of Alexander the Great’s legacy from conquering Egypt along with the rest of the ancient world. Ptolemy V’s ancestor Ptolemy I, after whom he was named, was a Macedonian, like Alexander himself. When Alexander died, worn out and sick, in 323 BC, Egypt quickly became the personal territory of Ptolemy I, one of Alexander’s favorite companion generals, as the Mediterranean world was carved up between Alexander’s lesser but still powerful successors. Ptolemy apparently even seized Alexander’s sarcophagus en route to Greece and built a temple for its repose in order to legitimize his rule in Alexandria, the new city most exemplary of Alexander’s ideals of unifying peoples. Displaying Alexander’s trophy sarcophagus was a cunning public relations coup, especially because so many people still believed he was semidivine even when dead.