Henry P. Colburn

On the whole I prefer not to review books–ever. It is a great deal of work to do well, and there is always the risk of annoying someone by pointing out the shortcomings of their scholarship. If I am going to review anything, I prefer it to be manuscripts submitted to journals or publishers, where I can point out potential problems beforehand. But once in a while I must make an exception, and this was certainly the case for Aršāma and his World: The Bodleian Letters in Context, edited by Christopher Tuplin and John Ma and published by Oxford University Press in 2020. This is a long-anticipated three-volume work on the Aramaic correspondence of Arshama, the Achaemenid satrap of Egypt in the second half of the fifth century BCE. Despite being satrap, it seems that Arshama was usually somewhere else, and therefore had to manage his province by mail, of which this is a very small sample published in a very big way.

The first volume contains texts and translations of the letters, and a very extensive commentary. The second discusses the sealed bullae that were acquired with the letters, though it goes well beyond that. The third volume has essays contextualizing the letters. I provide further detail in my review, in Ancient West and East 22 (2023), 486-9. 2020 was definitely a banner year for the study of Achaemenid Egypt, thanks in large part to this book, which I recommend unreservedly to anyone interested in this period.

“Look out, sire! There’s a bug on you!”

A few weeks ago I saw another review of my book, this time by Christopher Tuplin in the Journal of the American Oriental Society (143.3, 726-8). Like all of Tuplin’s scholarship, it is balanced and thoughtful, and his criticism is fair, as it gets at the main difficultly of any study of Achaemenid Egypt: identifying the material. I appreciate that he took the time to write this.

Now the latest news from the world of shameless self-promotion: my paper on the coins in the Metropolitan Museum of Art excavated at Qasr-e Abu Nasr (Old Shiraz) in the 1930s has now been published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences! This paper was the brainchild of Omid Oudbashi, a scientific research fellow at The Met (and now a lecturer at the University of Gothenburg). He’s the one who carried out the technical analyses that are the raison d’être of the paper; I merely supplied the archaeological and numismatic discussions.

I like this paper in part because these coins were excavated ninety years ago, and yet now, thanks to Omid, they have something new to say. Some of the coins are pretty wild, too, especially this one:

There’s also a gold Byzantine solidus that was converted into a pendant, and probably came to Iran in that form, and a Chinese bronze cash of the Song Dynasty, which probably came by sea via Siraf on the Persian Gulf.

It’s been great fun reexamining these excavated but long-ignored objects. As Indiana Jones said, this “represents everything we got into archaeology for in the first place!”

I am very pleased to report that both of our kittens have developed a fondness for books, despite spending their formative weeks at a truck stop in the wilds of eastern Pennsylvania. Here’s Hilda getting into ancient Greek sculpture:

And here we see Iris using literature (looks like some spy fiction and memoirs) to elevate herself:

This, more than any course evaluation, is the clearest evidence for how great a teacher I am.

I finally saw Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny last weekend. It quite clearly tried to evoke the look and feel of Raiders of the Lost Ark, with partial success. I won’t review it, because that would be like reviewing an uncle (or in this case, a great-uncle). Instead, I’d like to make some archaeological observations on the film, being well aware, of course, that, as Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. says in The Last Crusade, “this isn’t archaeology!”

First, the titular dial is of course identified as the Antikythera Mechanism, which it only superficially resembles:

In the film it is often called just ‘The Antikythera,’ but this is meaningless, since Antikythera is the name of the island near where it was found. In fact, the name just means ‘opposite Kythera,’ as Antikythera is across the strait from the larger island of Kythera.

As Alexander Jones has recently argued in his book A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World (Oxford University Press, 2017), the Antikythera Mechanism was probably made to calculate astronomical data, such as eclipses. This does not exclude the possibility that it could also calculate rifts in space-time that look unsettlingly like a cat’s anus, but it does seem unlikely. Moreover, Jones suggests that it was made on Rhodes in the first century BCE, not Syracuse in the late third century, as the film has it. This means it was not the work of Archimedes; more likely, it builds on the work of Hipparchus of Rhodes.

The hunt for a magic (remember, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”) device made by Archimedes gives rise to an evitable comparison with another film, Quest of the Delta Knights (1993), in which Leonardo da Vinci and an annoying kid go looking for something from Archimedes’ ‘storehouse’ that can save the world. David Warner plays multiple roles. (It was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, where one of the robots calls it ‘Quest of the Delta Burkes’). In fact, it has a lot in common with The Dial of Destiny, such as the, uh, ‘quality’ of the dialogue.

The Dial of Destiny is set in 1969, with Indy teaching at Hunter College in New York. I cannot help but wonder in what department he teaches. Classics? Religious studies? Biblical anthropology (if such a thing exists)? In the scene in the lecture hall he appears to be describing the characteristics of Assyrian pottery. Neo-Assyrian pottery usually looks like this:

The vessel Dr. Jones was describing, however, looked much more like Chalcolithic Iranian pottery:

I guess that’s understandable; prehistoric Iranian pottery is confusing! What’s even more confusing, however, is why he immediately segues to Archimedes. It’s no wonder that his students have no idea what he’s talking about; presumably they had prepared for a class on Assyrian pottery, not the history of Sicily. What course is this, anyway?

And speaking of Sicily, on their way to the Ear of Dionysius in Syracuse, Indy and Helena somehow ended up in Segesta, which is all the way on the northwestern end of the island. Pretty poor navigation on their part I daresay. I’m not surprised the Nazis caught up with them so quickly.

Finally, I can’t resist taking an archaeological jab at Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, even though that film has nothing in it that could remotely be identified as archaeological, except perhaps for the moment when Indy rides through the library on a motorcycle and dispenses the following piece of advice to a student: “Read Vere Gordon Childe. He spent most of his life in the field.” On the one hand, this is good advice. Gordon Childe was among the most important archaeological thinkers of the first half of the 20th century, and the author of many influential books, such as Man Makes Himself. On the other, Childe rarely went into the field, and was described by Robert Braidwood (American Anthropologist 60 [1958], 734) as an ‘indifferent excavator.’ Instead, Childe was one of the first archaeologists to think about how ancient human society in general–not any one specific society at any specific time–worked. So Dr. Jones gave good advice for completely the wrong reason! Then again, since his precise area of expertise remains unclear, perhaps, like an elderly family member, we should forgive him his ignorance.

I am very happy to announce that In Search of Cultural Identities in West and Central Asia: A Festschrift for Prudence Oliver Harper now has a place on the Brepols website. For you visual learners out there, here is the cover:

I can claim no credit for designing the cover (though I did suggest the image), nor can I claim any responsibility for the contents, beyond some basic editing and organizational work. Instead, the real credit goes to my co-editors Judith Lerner and Betty Hensellek for envisioning the project, arranging publication and recruiting the contributors, and of course to the contributors themselves, who are listed on the Brepols page in the Table of Contents for the book.

Publication is expected by the end of the year. I am looking forward to it very much!

I was very distressed to learn yesterday that the recently discovered fresco from Pompeii depicting what some thought to be the first pizza is in fact a pomegranate focaccia (evidently Pompeii was the Roman equivalent of Brooklyn, filled with idiot foodie hipsters possessed of neither taste nor sense).

Why is this such a disappointment? Pizza means tomatoes, and tomatoes are a New World fruit. So if this fresco did indeed depict a pizza, it would be proof — irrefutable proof — that the Phoenicians had made it to Michigan or Tennessee, or that the Jews had made it to Arizona. Sadly, such proof is not forthcoming from this discovery, and instead we must await an Egyptian tomb painting depicting the first avocado toast.

I am not prone to self-aggrandizement, but this is my website, after all. Therefore, I am pleased to announce the publication of my latest [insert superlative here] article, ‘A Brief Historiography of Parthian Art, from Winckelmann to Rostovtzeff,’ in the Journal of Art Historiography. It is part of a special issue entitled ‘A Historiography of Persian Art: Past, Present, and Future,’ guest-edited by Yuka Kadoi and András Barati. I recommend checking it out — it includes a number of great articles (and also mine).

I’m famous! Well, not really. But I am in the latest issue of Archaeology magazine, quoted in a wonderful article about my old friend Udjahorresnet.

The article is by Daniel Weiss, the editor of Archaeology, and is a lovely (and well-illustrated) distillation of the recent research on Udjahorresnet. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Achaemenid Egypt or the Achaemenid Empire more broadly.