The Archaic Artemisia

1908 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 338-338 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. G. Hogarth
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Mental Confusion ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Tribal Leader

May I be allowed to correct and hereby to do penance for a blunder which defaces three or four passages in the recent British Museum publication on Ephesus ? A mental confusion between Lygdamis, the leader of the Cimmerians or Treres, who probably burned one of the earlier Artemisia, and Pythagoras, a pre-Persian tyrant, who is said to have had to build a temple at Ephesus in expiation for desecrating ‘the Hieron,’ took possession of me during the lapse of a year between writing Chapters I. and XIV., and led me to make the absurd suggestion on p. 245 that Temple B was completed ‘perhaps at the cost of Lygdamis by the middle of the seventh century,’ and to call the latter a ‘tyrant’ and a ‘traitor.’ The last epithet is particularly uncalled for, since the little we know of Lygdamis shows him as a bold tribal leader who died at the head of his horde. If he burned Temple A, neither he nor Pythagoras was the builder of Temple B; and if the latter built any Artemision it can only have been either Temple A (after desecrating a pre-existent hieron) or Temple C. But, as I have stated on p. 7, it is so doubtful whether there is any reference to the Artemision at all in the solitary extant passage regarding Pythagoras, that the suggestion of his responsibility for any of the primitive shrines on the site is hardly worth making. This mental confusion passed away from me in Syria while reflecting on the westward expeditions of Assurbanipal, in attacking whose Cilician vassal Lygdamis came by his death; but it was then too late to make amends even in a list of errata, as I had left the book passed for press on quitting England.

VI.—St. Manchan's Shrine

Archaeologia ◽  
1937 ◽  
Vol 86 ◽  
pp. 105-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. D. Kendrick ◽  
Elizabeth Senior
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
British Museum ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
The Church

Very little is known about St. Manchan. He died of the plague in 664, composed a poem of which two lines survive, and may have been the author of a commentary, parts of which are quoted in an early twelfth-century manuscript (British Museum, Harley 1802). But though various attempts were made to establish his genealogy, there were other saints of the same name, so that the references to him are sadly confused, and all that is certain is that he lived in the first half of the seventh century, and gave his name to the place now called after him Lemanaghan, i.e., Manchan's grey land (Manchan's church). This was a small monastery in co. Offaly that has little recorded history and can never have been a house of much importance. In 1531 it was under the charge of the prior of the neighbouring monastery of Gallen, and by the beginning of the seventeenth century it was almost unknown, being described at that time as situated in the middle of an impassable bog. Its chief treasure, the shrine, attracted no notice from the outside world; but it was still preserved there, and there is a record of its existence in the church at Lemanaghan about 1630.

The Excavations at Ur, 1924–1925

1925 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-402 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Leonard Woolley
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Report ◽  
British Museum ◽  
University Of Pennsylvania ◽  
Card Index ◽  
University Museum ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The University ◽  
First Time

The Joint Expedition of the British Museum and of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania restarted its excavations at Ur on 1st November 1924 and closed down on 28th February 1925 after a most successful season. For the epigraphical side of the work I had associated with me this year Dr. L. Legrain, of the University Museum, to whose help I owe much more than I can express: even in this preliminary report it will be clear how greatly our discoveries gained in interest and value from his study of the inscriptions. Mr. J. Linnell, who was in the field for the first time, assisted on the general archaeological side and kept the card index of objects. Unfortunately there was no architect on the staff, and we had to make what shift we could without, in a campaign peculiarly rich in architectural results; all the time I had reason to regret the loss of Mr. F. G. Newton, whose skill and experience had proved invaluable in former years. The main reason for the lack of an architect was shortness of funds: the British Museum was unable to provide from its own resources its due half of the cost of the Expedition, and we could not have taken the field at all but for the generous help given by friends in London; and even so I should have been obliged to bring the season to a premature end in January had not the British residents in Iraq come forward with subscriptions for the British Museum's side of the work which, met by Philadelphia with an equal sum, enabled me to carry on for another month. To all these I wish to acknowledge my gratitude.

scholarly journals Art. XXV.—Three Arabic MSS. on the History of the City of Mayyāfāriqīn

1902 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 785-812
Author(s):  
H. F. Amedroz
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Mayyāfārīqīn, like many a Moslem city, was not without its historian, but hitherto he has been a name only—Ibn al-Azraq al-Fāriqi—known to us by the quotations from his history in the biographies of Ibn Khallikān. Now, however, the British Museum has acquired a nearly complete copy of the Ta'rīkh Mayyāfāriqīn, Or. 5,803. Its date of composition is 572 a.h. The MS. is written in a good hand, and wascopied probably at Damascus, and in the seventh century of the Hijra. It contains 200 folios of about twenty-two closely written lines a side: the first eight folios, to 17 a.h., are wanting; a gap, covering the years 567–9, follows folio 194, and the years 571–2 are wanting at the end.

The Aegina Treasure Reconsidered

1957 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 42-57
Author(s):  
R. A. Higgins
Keyword(s):  
British Museum ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Archaeological Knowledge

The Aegina Gold Treasure in the British Museum has always been something of a mystery, because no other ancient jewellery has been found sufficiently like it to give any indication of its date or its fabric. At the time of its first appearance it was generally regarded as Late Mycenaean (i.e. L.H. III). More recently there has been a tendency to put it in the seventh century B.G., and one scholar even sees it as Phoenician. The Greek archaeologist Stais, moreover, held from the start that it was not a homogeneous deposit, but a mixture of Mycenaean and later elements. The time is clearly ripe for a thorough re-examination in the light of present archaeological knowledge.What, in fact, do we know of the circumstances of its discovery? It was offered to the British Museum in 1891 through the agency of a member of a firm of sponge-importers, and was said to have been recently found in a tomb in Aegina. Although no other details were disclosed, this find-spot is inherently reasonable, since Aegina was at that time the centre of the Greek sponge trade. The Museum bought the Treasure in the following year, and in 1893 Evans published it, but could give no further details. Indeed, he implied that since the export of all antiquities from Greece was illegal, the jewellery must have been secretly excavated and smuggled out of the country, and nothing more would ever be known.

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