By: The Scribe on Saturday, April 14, 2007
Around 750 AD, a tribe of people from the Polynesian islands arrived in New Zealand. These Maori people remain in New Zealand today, and the descendants of the original settlers continue to maintain a sense of connection with their ancient ancestry.
Some of the most well-recognized elements of ancient Maori culture are small, carved figures, called Hei-tiki. These were most commonly carved from pounamu (greenstone), or nephrite, a stone similar in quality and appearance to jade. Nephrite is an extremely hard stone, and would have been immensely difficult for the Neolithic Maori to work.
Hei-tiki were likely worn around the neck, and it has been suggested that the figures were fertility charms worn only by women, intended to represent human embryo. This is highly speculative, for there is almost no contextual evidence from the archaeological record through which their purpose might be surmised. Indeed, it was probably Europeans settlers who first proposed the fertility theory after seeing an unfamiliar symbol used by aboriginals with whom they were unable to communicate. A second theory suggests that they were used as memorials to ancestors.
The forms of hei-tiki can vary: the head may be tilted right or left, or even placed upright. This may be representative of changes in the tools being used to carve the figures, since different blade styles would allow different kinds of cuts.
One theory of the hei-tiki’s origin suggests a connection with Tiki, the first man created by Tane in Maori mythology. Today, replica hei-tiki are sold in New Zealand tourist shops, while modern-day Maori may pass on their family’s hei-tiki as heirlooms or wear them as prestige items.
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Tomorrow: India’s vanishing city
By: The Scribe on Friday, April 13, 2007
The Leaning Tower of Pisa, or Torre pendente di Pisa in Italian, is a freestanding bell tower (campanile) of the cathedral of the Italian city of Pisa. The tower stands behind the Cathedral as the third structure in Pisa’s Campo dei Miracoli (“Field of Miracles”).
The tower’s construction began in 1173, and it was intended to stand vertically as the Cathedral’s bell tower. However, before the structure was even finished, the poorly laid foundation causing the tower to begin leaning during construction. The tower itself was built in three successive stages, the entire process taking around 174 years. The bottom floor was built using white marble, and construction was led by Bonanno Pisano, a twelfth-century artist. The first floor is surrounded by pillars with classical-style capitals and arches.
Inside the tower, there is a winding staircase which leads to the top floor, a bell terrace. Before their removal due to weight concerns in 1990, the tower was home to seven bells dating from the 17th to 19th century. It was from this upper terrace that Italian scientist Galileo Galilei is said to have dropped two cannonballs of differing weights, in order to demonstrate that their descending speed was independent of their mass.
On the lowest side, the tower is 55.86m high, and 56.70m on this highest side. The spiral staircase inside has 294 steps.
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Tomorrow: Something that is hard to pronounce, but interesting anyway.
By: The Scribe on Thursday, April 12, 2007
“I bind down Aristaichmos the smith before those below and Pyrrhias the smith and his work and their souls and Sosias of Lamia and his work and soul and what they say and what they do…”
– lead curse tablet from Athens, 4th C BC; found in the walls of a house
A curse tablet , or ‘binding spell’, was a certain kind of curse used to ask the gods to bring harm to someone; generally this would be a person against whom one was competing – in a law court, at an athletic event, or even a rival lover. For example, a curse tablet written by a court prosecutor might ask the gods to bind the wits and tongue of his opponent, to prevent him from mounting a strong defense. In athletic competitions, a curse might ask that a various parts of a rival’s body be ‘bound’ – his arms, shoulders, eyes, or whatever part that would be most important for the competition – so that the rival would not perform effectively.
In the classical world, curse tablets were usually very thin sheets of lead upon which the text of the curse could be inscribed. Then, the entire sheet was rolled up or folded, and pierced with an iron nail. These tablets were often buried in the ground, either inside of a grave or a well, or in a relevant area – if the curse was against a rival lover, the tablet could be buried next to his house, or in the arena for a curse against a fellow athlete. The simplest texts consisted of just the person’s name, though much longer and more elaborate curses were not uncommon.
The second type of binding spell was slightly more bizarre: lead ‘voodoo dolls’ were physically bound, stabbed with nails, and placed inside lead boxes. These types of curses are considered ‘sympathetic’, in the sense that the victim was persuaded by the curse to become like the lead material: “…as this lead is valueless and cold, so let him and his deeds be cold and valueless…”*.
It is likely that curse tablets were also written on perishable materials such as wood or papyrus, however these have long disappeared from the archaeological record. What is very interesting is that this seemed to be a common practice in Greek and Roman society – indeed, there was a very real fear of curses in the ancient world. In Selinous, a 5th C BC city in Sicily, the city government set up a column in the town square, explaining how a person could rid themselves of an avenging spirit brought on by a curse!
*Christopher A. Faraone, “Aeschylus’ umnos desmios (Eum. 306) and Attic Judicial Curse Tablets”,
The Journal of Hellenic Studies 105 (1985), pp. 150-154.
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Tomorrow: Who wants Pisa?
By: The Scribe on Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Execration texts were a type of Egyptian hieratic text, believed to possess magical qualities. Egyptian priests or state magicians would write the names of individuals or groups that were considered hostile or dangerous to Egypt on small statues or jars; these were then broken and buried, symbolizing the destruction of the enemy.
Pieces of these magical texts have been found near a number of tombs in Thebes, Saqqara, and the Nubian fortresses. One text near a fortress was written on a skull, which suggests that it may have belonged to an enemy – the capture, decapitation, and composition of the text on his skull was probably an attempt at magically transferring the fate of the one individual onto the entire enemy group.
Although execration texts were popular throughout Egyptian history, they were most frequently used during the New Kingdom. The example shown here is dated to the First Intermediate Period, and is currently on display at the Louvre. The statue’s missing arms were likely a deliberate attempt to magically ensure that the cursed enemy could not cause any harm.
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Tomorrow: Do do that Voodoo!
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