April 14, 2025 • 40 mins
The first part of our springtime edition of Unearthed! for 2025 features so many updates! There are also finds related to Egypt and artwork.
Research:
- Roque, Nika. “Maria Orosa, fellow World War II heroes laid to rest at San Agustin Church.” GMA Integrated News. 2/14/2025. https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/936107/maria-orosa-fellow-world-war-ii-heroes-laid-to-rest-at-san-agustin-church/story/
- Adam, David. “Does a new genetic analysis finally reveal the identity of Jack the Ripper?” Science. 3/15/2019. https://www.science.org/content/article/does-new-genetic-analysis-finally-reveal-identity-jack-ripper
- Jeffries, Ella. “These Everyday Artifacts Tell the Story of Harriet Tubman’s Father’s Home as Climate Change Threatens the Historic Site.” Smithsonian Magazine. 3/14/2025. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-everyday-artifacts-tell-the-story-of-harriet-tubmans-fathers-home-as-climate-change-threatens-historic-site-as-climate-change-180986204/
- The History Blog. “Lavish private baths found in Pompeii villa.” 1/18/2025. https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/72199
- Balmer, Crispian. “Rare frescoes unearthed in Pompeii shed light on ancient rituals.” Reuters. 2/26/2025. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/rare-frescoes-unearthed-pompeii-shed-light-ancient-rituals-2025-02-26/
- Lawler, Daniel. “How did this man's brain turn to glass? Scientists have a theory.” Phys.org. 2/27/2025. https://phys.org/news/2025-02-brain-glass-scientists-theory.html
- The History Blog. “Footprints fleeing Bronze Age eruption of Vesuvius found.” 1/31/2025. https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/72318
- net. “Archaeologists Identify ‘Lost’ Anglo-Saxon Site Depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry.” 1/2025. https://www.medievalists.net/2025/01/archaeologists-identify-lost-anglo-saxon-site-depicted-in-the-bayeux-tapestry/
- Lawson-Tancred, Jo. “Fragment of Epic Medieval Bayeux Tapestry Rediscovered in Germany.” Artnet. 3/5/2025. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/bayeux-tapestry-fragment-rediscovered-in-germany-2615620
- Schrader, Adam. “Is There Graffiti of a Legendary Film Star Under the Lincoln Memorial?.” Artnet. 2/23/2025. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/graffiti-of-a-legendary-film-star-under-the-lincoln-memorial-2611242
- National Museums Northern Ireland. “Further research Suggests Remains Found in Bellaghy Likely to be Female.” https://www.nationalmuseumsni.org/news/ballymacombs-more-woman
- Boucher, Brian. “Who Owned This Fabulous Hoard of Viking Treasure? A New Translation Offers a Clue.” ArtNet. 2/21/2025. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/galloway-hoard-communal-wealth-translated-inscription-2611850
- Randall, Kayla. “Josephine Baker’s Memoir Is Now Being Published for the First Time in English.” Smithsonian. 3/2025. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/josephine-baker-memoir-now-published-first-time-english-180985963/
- Anderson, Sonja. “Archaeologists Discover Intricately Decorated Tomb Belonging to a Doctor Who Treated Egyptian Pharaohs 4,100 Years Ago.” Smithsonian. 1/10/2025. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-discover-intricately-decorated-tomb-belonging-to-a-doctor-who-treated-egyptian-pharaohs-4100-years-ago-180985788/
- University of Vienna. “Analysis of skull from Ephesos confirms it is not Cleopatra's sister.” 1/10/2025. https://phys.org/news/2025-01-analysis-skull-ephesos-cleopatra-sister.html
- Weber, G.W., Šimková, P.G., Fernandes, D. et al. The cranium from the Octagon in Ephesos. Sci Rep 15, 943 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-83870-x
- Ferguson, Donna.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm not sure how time has already rolled us around
to this point, but here we are with our quarterly
Unearthed episodes. Again, if you're new to the show, this
is when we talk about things that have been literally
and figuratively unearthed over the last few months. And as usual,
this Unearthed is a two parter, and this time around,
I want to start by acknowledging that while I was
(00:38):
working on these episodes, I was struggling. I'm still struggling,
to be honest, and normally this is the kind of
stuff that we would talk about in our Friday behind
the scenes, but not today. It's not what we're doing today. First,
the day I started working on these episodes, Plain closed,
Federal agents grabbed PhD student Remesa oz Turk off the
street in Somerville, Massachusetts, and as she was on her
(01:00):
way to break her Ramadan fast. I lived in Somerville
for five years and Tuft's University, which is where she
was studying, that was in walking distance of my apartment
in Somerville. So even though I don't live in Somerville anymore,
she feels like my neighbor. So that happened on March
twenty fifth. It was still weighing heavily on my mind
(01:21):
on March twenty seventh, when President Trump issued an executive
order called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, which
among other things, characterizes the Smithsonian Institution in its museums
as needing to be saved from quote improper ideology. Basically
following the descriptions and the language in this executive order,
(01:43):
our podcast is insane and full of improper ideology because
we talk about ways that racism and sexism and oppression
have always been part of American history. And that followed
another executive order called Ending Radical Indoctrination in K through
twelfth Schooling that was on January twenty ninth. Then those
(02:05):
two executive orders have a lot of common themes. Based
on that January twenty ninth one, our podcast is also
not appropriate for use in K through twelve schools for
pretty much the same reason that it's quote insane, and
also because we recognize that trans people exist, and we
try to talk about trans people with respect compassion and dignity.
(02:27):
I sound angry because I am. The next thing that
also happened just recently was the continuing the reduction of
the Federal Bureaucracy executive order from March to the fourteenth.
That one eliminated the Institute of Museum and Library Services
to the maximum extent allowed by law. That's like a
(02:47):
way to shut it down without going through Congress to
shut it down, which would normally be how that would work.
It was reported that the entire staff of the Institute
of Museum and Library Services was placed on leave as
I was doing the final read through of this outline
before sending it to Holly last night. There've also been
(03:11):
other executive orders and actions by the Department of Government
Efficiency that have cut other funding for scientists and other researchers.
And then there's the removing the names and accomplishments of
black people and Indigenous people and Japanese Americans and women
and LGBTQ people and others from an array of historical
(03:31):
sites and museums and Arlington National Cemetery and on and
on in the wake of executive orders about ending DEI.
This is not even a tenth of what has been
going on with this federal administration, and it might not even.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Be a tenth of only the things.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
That have directly impacted my friends and family in negative ways.
But this is some of what's been happening that has
most directly been connected to our work, and it's made
it kind of hard to focus. We do a lot
of episodes that contextualize current political and social issues, and
(04:08):
a lot of what we talk about is inherently political,
but we have not really made a ton of explicitly
political statements on the show. Even without explicitly political statements,
it really should be obvious to anybody who listens to
us that our approach is rooted in a core belief
that oppression is bad, and we're all human beings and
(04:31):
we all deserve dignity and equal rights, and a lot
of history all over the world has not really lived
up to that ideal. That is also true of the present.
But this is a history podcast and not a current
events show. These executive orders and other directives are calling
for a view of history that is focused only on
(04:51):
patriotism and the idea of American greatness. But you can
only arrive at such an interpretation of history by willfully
ign a lot of stuff. It is not anti American
to acknowledge these realities, and it is absurd to try
to pretend that they don't exist and don't still influence
(05:12):
the world today. Executive orders are not laws, and we
are not federal employees, So in terms of what we
write and say on the show, we can just say no,
we will not be doing that. But also we rely
on the work of museums and libraries and researchers from
a range of disciplines, including the sciences, for our show.
(05:36):
That doesn't just apply to Unearthed, but it especially applies
to Unearthed because these episodes draw so heavily from newly
published research. Basically, I tried to pull these episodes together
while the institutions I rely on to do it and
the people who work at those institutions were actively under attack.
(05:56):
I don't know what will happen to these episodes as
researchers in the US the United States lose their funding,
and as that loss of funding ripples through the entire
academic community here, and as universities and other institutions scale
back on work that's focused on people who are not cisgender,
straight white men. Because of these executive orders about Dei.
(06:18):
It is obvious to me, though, that we will be
poorer for it. That was the longest introduction I've ever
written for one of our shows, and as far as
what was unearthed this quarter, we're starting as we usually
do with the updates. So in May of twenty twenty four,
we did an episode on Filipino food scientist Maria Rosa,
(06:39):
whose most famous food invention today is banana ketchup. That
episode ends very sadly because Arosa was killed in the
Battle of Manila in nineteen forty five. When we recorded that,
her burial place was not exactly known because she was
buried in a mass grave at Malate Catholic School with
others who were killed over the course of the That
(07:02):
has now changed after a five year project involving that
mass grave, which was underway as we recorded our episode
on her. On February thirteenth, Orosa and others were laid
to rest in the crypt of the Sant Agustin Church
in Manila after a funeral mass that honored her and
other World War Two heroes. The other people who were
(07:23):
re interred with her included a doctor at the hospital
where she was working, along with hospital volunteers and civilian patients.
The identity of Eurosa's remains had been confirmed through both
DNA testing and physical examination. Also, thank you to listener
Dandy for sending us this story. It was not really
widely reported beyond the Philippines, and I don't really think
(07:46):
I would would have heard about it without that listener email.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
We did a two parter on Harriet Tubman in June
of twenty sixteen, and in twenty twenty three we talked
about archaeological work being done at the likely site of
the home of her father Ben Ross. At the time
that work was ongoing. Now, the Maryland Department of Transportation
has launched a virtual museum detailing their findings and showcasing
(08:11):
some of the objects from the site. It's an unwieldy
URL to read off, but it's easily findable by searching
Ben Ross home Place. This archaeological site is in Blackwater
National Wildlife Refuge, and one of the reasons for a
virtual museum is that the site of the home place
is not an area that's accessible to the public. Also,
(08:34):
the whole area is at risk of destruction due to
sea level rise. They wanted to really preserve and document it.
The virtual museum has pages for the home place, the archaeology,
kitchen items, personal items, and Native people's artifacts. The Native
people's artifacts are things that are mostly very very small.
They're like fragments of pottery, projectile points, and flaked stones. Next,
(08:58):
we talked about the Viking era Galloway Horde in one
of last year's installments of Unearthed. A metal detectorist found
this hord in Scotland back in twenty fourteen, and research
into it has been ongoing. There's a lot that's still unknown,
like why the horde of metal objects also includes wrapped
balls of dirt. We don't know who it belonged to
(09:20):
or why it was buried. This horde contains four armorings
that are marked with runs, and that had led to
some speculation that this was the combined wealth of.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Four different parties. But only three of those armbands had
old English name elements in the runes. The fourth band,
which has the longest runic inscription, had not been decipherable.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
There's still some uncertainty about this fourth armband, but one
possible interpretation is that they're basically saying the horde was
community property. That interpretation only works though if part of
the inscription is misspelled. But researchers have been pointing out
that we shouldn't necessarily assume that every region and dialect
(10:08):
was using the same spellings of words. We see this
in English all the time.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, we've talked about times that spellings of things were
not standardized, or sometimes people just misspell things when spellings
are standardized. We're going to take us quick sponsor break
and then have some more updates. There's been some new
(10:34):
stuff unearthed at Pompeii, which was the subject of a
two thousand and nine episode of the show and is
just also a regular feature on Unearthed. First in Pompeii,
homes with private baths were really only for the rich,
and the bath complex that has just been discovered there
was for the really rich. There are only three other
(10:58):
villas in Pompeii that have been to discovered so far
that have comparable bath facilities, and it's still being studied,
but it's likely that this one is even bigger than those.
It may have belonged to Alis Rustius Verus, who was
a politician and would have hosted large numbers of guests
at home.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
This was a multi room complex. It had a changing
room that could accommodate about thirty people, plus separate rooms
for hot, warm, and cold bathing, which people would progress
through from hot to cold. That final cold room had
a plunge pool more than a meter deep, and of
course all of these rooms were impressively decorated, including frescoed
(11:42):
walls and inlaid marble floors. This bathing facility was also
connected to the banquet hall, so it seems likely that
if guests came for a banquet, they might also be
treated to a luxury bathing experience. In another Pompeii discovery,
a set of frescoes depicting the initiation rights of the
(12:03):
cult of Dionysus has been found on the walls of
a banquet hall. These frescoes are really enormous. They're depicted
at almost life size and they cover three walls of
the room. They depict the person who's being initiated into
the cult, as well as several women. Some of the
women are dancing, and some of them are dressed as hunters.
The hunters carry a goat and its entrails, and there
(12:25):
are also satyrs with flutes and wine. These depictions were
probably created sometime between forty and thirty BCE, and they
are similar to those at Pompey's Villa of the Mysteries,
which is not very far away. While they're shown in
these frescoes, these rites were also secret, so these newly
discovered frescoes corroborate some of what we know about religious
(12:49):
practices in the cult of Dionysus.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Moving on, in March of twenty twenty, we talked about
the discovery of some glassy matter at Pompeii, which turned
out to be part of a person's brain. Subsequent research
concluded that this glassy matter contained neurons, and research that
was published in February offers a hypothesis on how that
(13:13):
glassy material came to be, like how does someone's brain
turn into glass? According to the researchers, the only way
this could have happened would have been for the person's
brains who have been exposed to extremely high temperatures hotter
than the pyroclastic flow that buried the city, But that
could only be exposed to those temperatures for an extremely
(13:35):
short time. So their hypothesis is that this person was
exposed to a cloud of superheated ash ahead of that
pyroclastic flow with that ash then dissipating and everything cooling
off very quickly.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
This is very different from my guess that a James
Bond's era villain was somehow involved and in Pompeii adjacent news,
Archaia working in the Salerno area have found footprints of
people and animals running away from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius,
not from the eruption that destroyed Pompeii, but from one
(14:12):
that happened around the year two thousand BCE. The footprints
included those of adults and children, some in bare feet
and some wearing shoes, moving on from Pompeii. Previous hosts
of the show did an episode on the Bayou Tapestry,
which is really an embroidery that was back in twenty eleven,
(14:32):
and it's also come up on Unearthed, including in our
Year End twenty twenty four episodes. Two of the scenes
depicted in the Tapestry show King Harold Godwinson at his
residence in West Sussex. Archaeologists working there believe they may
have found the location of that residence. This conclusion follows
(14:52):
a lot of different work, including analysis of historical maps
and re examination of the findings of some archaeological that
happens back in two thousand and six. One of the
things that was unearthed in that archaeological work was a
private latrine, which would not have been common at the time,
and helps back up the idea that this might have
(15:13):
been one of the structures at Harold's residence, because who
else besides the king would have had a private latrine.
There's also a piece of the Bio Tapestry that has
been rediscovered in state archives in northern Germany that's now
being repatriated to France. While this embroidery depicts the Norman
conquest of Britain, it is considered to be a French
(15:36):
cultural asset. The Bayou Tapestry is currently undergoing a major
conservation project, and it's going to be taken off display
later this year because the museum where it is housed
will be undergoing its own renovation. The museum is going
to close on August thirty first, twenty twenty five, and
it's expected to reopen in twenty twenty seven next. There's
(15:58):
graffiti in the basement of the Lincoln Memorial, also called
the Undercroft. This was first found in nineteen eighty four,
and according to statements given to The Washington Post earlier
this year, the subject of that graffiti might be past
podcast subject Theta Bara. We covered her on May fourth,
(16:19):
twenty twenty two. The evidence that this is who is
being depicted is described as compelling but circumstantial. This is
a drawing done in Carpenter's pencil. It shows someone in
profile smoking a cigarette with curly hair and pretty pronounced makeup.
Considering that it's done in Carpenter's pencil, including dramatic lipstick
(16:40):
and blush and I makeup, and the next to that
image is the word vamp in loopy script. Next in
our Spring twenty twenty four on Earth, we talked about
the discovery of a bog body in Ballachy, Northern Ireland,
which was nicknamed the Blachy Boy. When this body was
first discovered, people thought it was a recent murder victim,
(17:01):
but it was estimated to actually be somewhere around two
thousand years old. Subsequent research has confirmed that approximate date,
but osteological study suggests that the person was female. A
significant majority of bog bodies that have been found from
this period are male, which makes this one unusual. They
also found cut marks at the neck vertebrae that suggest
(17:24):
that this person was intentionally decapitated before being put in
the bog. The skull is not present. Researchers are now
calling this bog body the Bally Maccombs more woman and
in our last update this time around, Josephine Baker, who
prior hosts it, an episode about on March eighth, twenty ten,
(17:44):
wrote a memoir which was originally published in French in
nineteen forty nine. This is not available in English until now.
It is titled Fearless and Free. It's been translated, as
I said, into English for the first time. It has
been published by Tiny Reparations Books, which is an imprint
of Penguin Books. Moving along, we have quite a few
(18:07):
findes related to Egypt in some way. First, a four
one hundred year old burial in the Sacara Necropolis appears
to be that of a royal doctor. It's possible that
this doctor served under Pharaoh Peppi the Second, who was
also entombed at Sakara. Like many other tombs at Sacara,
this one had been looted long before archaeologists found it,
(18:30):
but its intricately painted walls have led to its being
described as an exceptional discovery. In addition to being a
royal doctor, this person was also a dentist and an
expert in medicinal plants and venomous bites.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Next, an international interdisciplinary team of researchers has concluded that
skeletal remains that were speculated to be that of Arsenoway
the Fourth, the half sister of Cleopatra, belonged to someone else.
This person does seem to have died at around the
same time that Arsnoway did, but it's more likely that
(19:07):
the skull belongs to a male child, likely between the
ages of eleven and fourteen, with what the paper described
as showing evidence of developmental disturbances. Those disturbances included asymmetry
in the bones, which could have come from a variety
of different causes. This person also likely came from Italy
(19:29):
or Sardinia rather than Northern Africa. In February, a team
led by British archaeologist Peers Lytherland discovered the rock cut
tomb of Tutmos the Second. The tomb itself was largely
empty because it had been flooded at some point. It
was built under a waterfall, and this probably happened within
a few years of it being built, but there is
(19:51):
still a lot of debris inside, including chunks that have
fallen from the ceiling, pieces of wall decorations, fragments of
wooden shafts, and other objects. This includes some alabaster fragments
with Tutmos's name on them. Tutmos the Second was both
half brother and husband to Hedge Shepsit, and we talked
about both of them in our episode on Hudspsit and
(20:13):
the Voyage to Punt. Not long after that find was announced,
Lytherland announced that he may have discovered another tomb, also
belonging to Tutmos the Second, which may have been the
one where his mummy and grave goods were housed. I
wasn't able to find more updates about that second discovery.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And speaking of HUDs Sheepsit, archaeologists and Luxor have found
more than one thousand intricately decorated blocks at the entrance
to her funeral complex, as well as a collection of
limestone and quartzite tablets. These blocks are brightly decorated with
paint that is still vivid and are described as showing
the artistic mastery of this era. In addition to those
(20:54):
tomb discoveries. A different team working at the ancient necropolis
of a Nubis Mountain and Abydos have found a pharaoh's tomb,
but which pharaoh is not yet known. This tomb is
about thirty six hundred years old and excavations there are ongoing.
Tracy had really thought that we talked about some research
(21:15):
similar to what we're about to mention recently on the show,
but looking back, she did not see any such thing.
I know, I talked about it on a different project
not that long back. Researchers at University College London have
investigated the aroma of well preserved Egyptian mummies, finding that
they smell, in the words of the news release, pretty good.
(21:36):
They were characterized with words like woody, spicy, and sweet,
as well as having some floral notes. This work involved
chemical analysis and human beings just smelling the mummies. This
of course doesn't necessarily reflect what they smelled like at
the time they were mummified.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
This was not just for fun, even though that to
me does sound like kind of a fun project getting
people to and if mummies, but odors can help researchers
determine how well preserved a money is without invasive testing.
And oders can also help pinpoint which substances were used
in the mummification. And our last Egypt find is kind
(22:17):
of more Egypt adjacent. A leather suitcase belonging to Howard
Carter has been rediscovered in England. Carter is the person
who's credited with finding the tomb of King tut. After
its rediscovery, this leather suitcase sold at auction in February
for twelve thousand pounds. That's roughly fifteen thousand dollars. Let's
(22:39):
take another little sponsor break, and then we're going to
talk about some art. There is so much artwork to
talk about in this installment of Unearthed, just so much.
(23:00):
I love art, so it's great, so much art to
talk about that it's going to be the entire rest
of this episode. First, a painting that was bought for
ten dollars at a thrift store outside of Philadelphia has
turned out to be the work of William Henry Dorsey.
Dorsey was a free black man born in Philadelphia in
(23:20):
eighteen thirty seven, and in addition to being an artist,
he was a coin collector and a scrapbooker and an
art collector, especially focused on the work of other Black artists.
I have put him on the list for a future
episode of his own because he sounds very interesting to me.
This painting depicts a black man fishing by the edge
(23:40):
of a river next to a mill with its own
water wheel attached. Andy Robbins, who bought this painting at
the thrift store, has given it to the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania, where it is now on display. A double
sided portrait by eighteenth century artist Ammy Phillips was discovered
in an abandoned storage unit back in twenty twenty four,
(24:02):
but it made headlines at the start of this year
when it went up for auction. It's not known who
the sitter is, but it's believed that the same person
is shown on both sides of the painting. Her pose
is similar on both sides, and there's a small birthmark
on her face in each of them. She's sitting in
the same chair, wearing the same dress and the same necklace,
(24:24):
with her left arm on the same book, but the
face doesn't look the same between the two portraits. On
one side, blondish hair is covered by a bonnet and
on the other, brown hair is up in a bun.
The face shapes and mouth shapes are different. Are these
two different people or two different versions of the same person.
(24:47):
It's a bit of a mystery. This artist was an
itinerant portrait painter who worked in a range of portrait styles,
and his career spanned for more than fifty years, in
that time, producing as many a two thousand portraits.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
It could be the original Doublemint twins.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I was looking at it. I was like, are these
sisters cousin right? They're just friends, I don't know, or
the same person in two different drafts.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Back in twenty twenty three, we did an episode on
Venetian painter Caniletto, who was known for his large scale
city scapes which are spectacularly beautiful, and we talked about
how one of his assistants was his nephew, Bernardo Belotto,
and how Blotto became really skilled at copying Caniletto's technique
and would sometimes even signed Caniletto's name to his own work. Well,
(25:38):
one of the paintings that had been attributed to Caniletto
has now been reattributed to his nephew, that is the
Grand Canal with San Simeon Piccolo from seventeen thirty seven.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
This determination came through research for a new book called
Caniletto and Guardi Views of Venice, which was published by
the Wallace collect Part of this attribution about who actually
did the painting came from the way the painting uses
color and light, because Belotto was known for being sort
(26:11):
of colder and less vibrant in the color that he
used than his uncle was.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Speaking of artists that we have covered on the show,
we are now to Lavinia Fontana, who we covered in
twenty twenty two. A miniature portrait of an Italian noble
woman came up for auction in Texas, which used to
belong to another past podcast subject, Horace Walpole. Walpole displayed
the painting at Strawberry Hillhouse. It is believed to depict
(26:40):
Bianca Cappello, grand Duchess, consort of Tuscany and wife of Francesco,
the first de Medici, who Walpole had a fascination with.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Walpole also believed this painting had been created by a
different artist, mannerist painter Bronzino, who lived in the sixteenth century,
But after this portrait was found at auction, it was
reattributed to Lavinia Fontana. This miniature has been loaned to
Strawberry Hill House and it will be on display there
until April twenty third of this year, which is twenty
(27:12):
twenty five if you're listening when this episode is actually publishing. Also,
another painting has also been reattributed to Lavinia Fontana. This
one was previously attributed to Flemish Renaissance artist Peter Porbuss,
but it was reattributed after an expert spotted the painting
in a storage room at the Musee de la Chartreuse
(27:35):
in Duay, France. This one depicts a family with a
girl passing flowers to her father and a servant behind
them with a basket of fruit. This painting is going
to go through restoration before becoming part of the museum's
permanent collection. Next up, conservators in France have digitized and
analyzed a set of cathedral wall paintings that have been
(27:58):
hidden for centuries. These date back to the thirteenth century
and they cover seven bays in the apse of Algers Cathedral,
and based on research that was involved in this project,
two different groups originally created them. Then back in fourteen
fifty one, the cathedral was damaged by a fire and
the walls were whitewashed That's probably why these paintings were
(28:21):
not destroyed during the French Wars of Religion. Then in
the eighteenth century, wooden choir stalls were built in front
of those whitewashed walls. These wall paintings were rediscovered back
in the nineteen eighties, but it took a decade just
to remove the whitewash before they could be conserved. This
whole process was made more difficult and time consuming because
(28:45):
the choir stalls are backed by tall wooden panels which
cannot be removed, so everything had to happen in this
very narrow space between the wood panels and the wall.
It sounds very awkward and tedious the descriptions. It sounds
like that whole thing of like building your spite house
an inch from the house next to it, Like how
(29:06):
do you get anything done in there? How are you
going to repaint that? While ever never h Digitizing these
paintings involved taking more than eight thousand total photographs, which
then had to be stitched together into one image, and
that was a whole other, multi year process. These paintings
depict the life and works of Saint Mauria, who was
(29:26):
the Bishop of Algier in the fifth century. Next, researchers
working with a thirteenth century fresco in Ferrara, Italy, have
published research suggesting that one of the things depicted in
the fresco is a tent from the Islamic world. The
fresco is in the apse of a church, and it's
believed that it depicts a real tent that was used
(29:47):
in that church to conceal the altar, either all the
time or during particular parts of the liturgical year. This
tent is brightly colored, it's covered in jewels, and the
round shape it matches the curve of the apse. Its
borders feature sort of a pseudo Arabic style of inscription,
and there are color combinations that were really popular in
(30:10):
thirteenth century and to Lucy's silks. The depiction in the
fresco is similar to surviving fragments of those silks and
to artistic representations of tents like these being used in
the Islamic world.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
This research suggests that textiles made their way from the
Islamic world to Christian churches, possibly through the textiles being
taken as spoils of war and then gifted to churches
or church leaders. Popes are known to have gifted altar
curtains to churches going back to at least the ninth century,
so it's possible that this tent was a gift to
(30:47):
the church from the pope or another high ranking person
within the church, or this also could have been a
gift from a wealthy family. Moving on, we have kind
of a saga about art attribute.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Back in twenty eighteen, someone who had bought a painting
at a garage sale in Minnesota for fifty dollars submitted
an inquiry to the Vang Museum in Amsterdam about whether
this painting might be that artist's work. The following year,
the museum said no, it wasn't quote based on stylistic features.
(31:21):
From there, a data science company called LMI Group bought
the painting and did its own analysis of it. LMI
Group was co founded by Maxwell L. Anderson, who's an
art historian and has served as the director of a
number of museums.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
LMI Group concluded that the painting was Van Goes work.
The name Elmar is in one corner of the canvas,
which has been adopted as the painting's name, and LMI
Group speculates that it's a reference to a character in
Hans Christian Anderson's eighteen forty eight novel The Two Baronesses.
LMI sent its conclusion to the Vango Museum, which maintained
(32:02):
that it still did not believe that this work was
van Goes. On January thirty first, LMI Group gave a
statement that read, in part quote, we are puzzled why
the Vango Museum invested less than one working day to
summarily reject the facts presented in our four hundred and
fifty six page report without offering any explanation, let alone
(32:24):
studying the painting directly rather than looking at it reproduced
as a JPEG. LMI Group has published this report on
its website, and that PDF is indeed more than four
hundred and fifty pages long. Obviously we cannot go through
a document that long here, but it looks at where
the painting would fit in Vango's ouvre, material science DNA analysis,
(32:47):
including on a hair found on the painting, and the
comparison of the handwriting used to write Elmar to other
words that appear on Vango's paintings.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
This is currently unresolved, but there are other experts who
have offered a completely different alternative explanation. And that is
that Elmar is not a reference to a Hans Christian
Andersen character, but is the name of the artist who
made the painting. That's Danish artist Henning Elmar, who died
in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Mysteries, Uh, hopefully we'll find out. A man in northern
Greece found a headless statue in the trash and turned
it over to authorities, and that statue has been confirmed
to be roughly two thousand years old, dating back to
the Hellenistic period. It's made of marble, and it's about
thirty inches tall, and it is missing its head and arms.
(33:42):
It depicts a woman in flowing garments, and since statues
of human women during this period were more likely to
be made of other materials like wood, this likely represented
a goddess. Based on its size, it may have been
a votive statue from a temple. Authorities in Greek including
the Cultural Heritage Protection Office, are trying to learn more
(34:04):
about the statue and find out how it came to
be in the trash.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Speaking of things found in the trash, an eighteenth century
sketch by English portrait painter George Romney was pulled out
of a dumpster in Hudson, New York last year. The
id on who made this one was not all that difficult.
In addition to having Romney's signature on it, his studio
stamp is on the reverse side of the sketch. A
(34:31):
private collector bought this at auction in March.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
This sketch is believed to be of Henrietta Greville, Countess
of Warwick, possibly in preparation for the oil painting of
her and her children that he painted in the late
eighteen seventies. This doesn't look at all like the oil painting, though,
since it's a very basic sketch, a person who didn't
recognize the name would probably think this was just scribbles. Yeah,
(34:56):
if you don't sort of know the context of what
his work sketches looked like, you could look at it
and think a child did this, a small child just
learning how to hold a crayon. It absolutely does not
surprise me that it would have wound up in the trash.
In nineteen seventy four, a painting called Woman Carrying the
(35:17):
Embers by Peter Breugel the Younger was discovered to have
been stolen from the National Museum in Danks, Poland. It
had been replaced with a magazine cutout, which was discovered
when a worker accidentally knocked it off the wall. Now
that painting has been found in the Gouda Museum, where
it was being described as being on loan from a
(35:40):
private collection. This discovery was made with the help of
art detective Arthur Brand and it started after the Dutch
arts magazine VIND covered an exhibition at the museum. A
photo of the painting in Vinn looked like a photo
from an article about the theft, which also involved another painting,
which i'd been published back in nineteen seventy four. It
(36:03):
is not currently clear how the theft originally happened or
how the painting wound up on loan to the Gouda Museum.
I have thoughts.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah, it does seem very lucky or very lucky that
somebody recognized the similarity to something from a publication from
back in the seventies. Next, a portrait that has gone
on display at Rest Park in England may depict Lady
Jane Gray and if so, it may be the only
portrait painted of her before she was executed. Our episode
(36:35):
on Lady Jane Gray and the nine days she spent
as Queen ran on March fifth of twenty seventeen. This
painting was added to the collection at Rest Park Way
back in the early eighteenth century, and at that time
it was described as a painting of Lady Jane Gray,
who had died in fifteen fifty four, but eventually that
(36:56):
identity was called into question. The English Herita website frames
this return to the interpretation that it does depict Lady
Jane Gray as still somewhat speculative. This conclusion has involved
tree ring dating of the wood panels it was painted on,
X ray, fluorescent studies, and infrared reflexology, plus the work
(37:18):
of historical experts who have pointed out similarities between the
painting and portraits that were painted after her death, and
they use words like compelling and possible. And lastly, we
have previously talked about how in the ancient Greek world
marble statues that appear white today were painted in vibrant colors.
(37:40):
They were also clothed and adorned with jewelry, and according
to recent research, some of them were perfumed. So people's
experiences with these statues would have been both visual and olfactory.
That sounds lovely, yeah, would have spelled nice, not overwhelming.
I could be a little sensitive to fragrances this is,
(38:02):
so whether I would enjoy that would kind of depend
on what the fragrances were. So that is the first
part of our two parter on Unearthed for Today, and
I have a little listener mail. This is from Joni.
Joni wrote after our episode on exem Clement and said, hello,
(38:24):
Holly and Tracy. I love your show and I'm a
longtime listener. While not a first time writer, I am
definitely an infrequent one. While I was listening to the
March tenth episode on exem Clement, you made a comment
about being a bit confused by her being referred to
as brother Exam by the other legislators. I don't know
the real story behind the brother reference, but I do
(38:47):
have a story from my own past that may or
may not be relevant. When I was in college, I
joined a fraternity called Alpha Fi Omega APO is a
national co ed service fraternity that is focused on leadership, friendship,
and community serus. All members were called brothers as opposed
to brothers and sisters, in the spirit of acknowledging that
we are all equal members. As a woman, I appreciated
(39:09):
and preferred being called a brother. I have no idea
if exem Clement would have felt the same way, or
if the rationale behind her being called brother was the same.
I just wanted to share that perspective. Thank you so
much for everything you do. Your podcast is among my favorites.
I often listen when I am working out or doing
chores around the house. All the best, Joni, Thank you
so much for this email. I like that a little
(39:32):
bit of perspective.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Yeah, we kind of talked about a similar thing, but
from a fictional world, because I think I have mentioned
how on Star Trek people call even the women captain sir.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Everyone's sir. Yeah, so yes.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Kind of fundamentally the same concept.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
If you'd like to send us a note about this
or any other podcast, we are at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to our show
on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like to
get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
(40:13):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
I'm not sure how time has already rolled us around
to this point, but here we are with our quarterly
Unearthed episodes. Again, if you're new to the show, this
is when we talk about things that have been literally
and figuratively unearthed over the last few months. And as usual,
this Unearthed is a two parter, and this time around,
I want to start by acknowledging that while I was
(00:38):
working on these episodes, I was struggling. I'm still struggling,
to be honest, and normally this is the kind of
stuff that we would talk about in our Friday behind
the scenes, but not today. It's not what we're doing today. First,
the day I started working on these episodes, Plain closed,
Federal agents grabbed PhD student Remesa oz Turk off the
street in Somerville, Massachusetts, and as she was on her
(01:00):
way to break her Ramadan fast. I lived in Somerville
for five years and Tuft's University, which is where she
was studying, that was in walking distance of my apartment
in Somerville. So even though I don't live in Somerville anymore,
she feels like my neighbor. So that happened on March
twenty fifth. It was still weighing heavily on my mind
(01:21):
on March twenty seventh, when President Trump issued an executive
order called Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, which
among other things, characterizes the Smithsonian Institution in its museums
as needing to be saved from quote improper ideology. Basically
following the descriptions and the language in this executive order,
(01:43):
our podcast is insane and full of improper ideology because
we talk about ways that racism and sexism and oppression
have always been part of American history. And that followed
another executive order called Ending Radical Indoctrination in K through
twelfth Schooling that was on January twenty ninth. Then those
(02:05):
two executive orders have a lot of common themes. Based
on that January twenty ninth one, our podcast is also
not appropriate for use in K through twelve schools for
pretty much the same reason that it's quote insane, and
also because we recognize that trans people exist, and we
try to talk about trans people with respect compassion and dignity.
(02:27):
I sound angry because I am. The next thing that
also happened just recently was the continuing the reduction of
the Federal Bureaucracy executive order from March to the fourteenth.
That one eliminated the Institute of Museum and Library Services
to the maximum extent allowed by law. That's like a
(02:47):
way to shut it down without going through Congress to
shut it down, which would normally be how that would work.
It was reported that the entire staff of the Institute
of Museum and Library Services was placed on leave as
I was doing the final read through of this outline
before sending it to Holly last night. There've also been
(03:11):
other executive orders and actions by the Department of Government
Efficiency that have cut other funding for scientists and other researchers.
And then there's the removing the names and accomplishments of
black people and Indigenous people and Japanese Americans and women
and LGBTQ people and others from an array of historical
(03:31):
sites and museums and Arlington National Cemetery and on and
on in the wake of executive orders about ending DEI.
This is not even a tenth of what has been
going on with this federal administration, and it might not even.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Be a tenth of only the things.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
That have directly impacted my friends and family in negative ways.
But this is some of what's been happening that has
most directly been connected to our work, and it's made
it kind of hard to focus. We do a lot
of episodes that contextualize current political and social issues, and
(04:08):
a lot of what we talk about is inherently political,
but we have not really made a ton of explicitly
political statements on the show. Even without explicitly political statements,
it really should be obvious to anybody who listens to
us that our approach is rooted in a core belief
that oppression is bad, and we're all human beings and
(04:31):
we all deserve dignity and equal rights, and a lot
of history all over the world has not really lived
up to that ideal. That is also true of the present.
But this is a history podcast and not a current
events show. These executive orders and other directives are calling
for a view of history that is focused only on
(04:51):
patriotism and the idea of American greatness. But you can
only arrive at such an interpretation of history by willfully
ign a lot of stuff. It is not anti American
to acknowledge these realities, and it is absurd to try
to pretend that they don't exist and don't still influence
(05:12):
the world today. Executive orders are not laws, and we
are not federal employees, So in terms of what we
write and say on the show, we can just say no,
we will not be doing that. But also we rely
on the work of museums and libraries and researchers from
a range of disciplines, including the sciences, for our show.
(05:36):
That doesn't just apply to Unearthed, but it especially applies
to Unearthed because these episodes draw so heavily from newly
published research. Basically, I tried to pull these episodes together
while the institutions I rely on to do it and
the people who work at those institutions were actively under attack.
(05:56):
I don't know what will happen to these episodes as
researchers in the US the United States lose their funding,
and as that loss of funding ripples through the entire
academic community here, and as universities and other institutions scale
back on work that's focused on people who are not cisgender,
straight white men. Because of these executive orders about Dei.
(06:18):
It is obvious to me, though, that we will be
poorer for it. That was the longest introduction I've ever
written for one of our shows, and as far as
what was unearthed this quarter, we're starting as we usually
do with the updates. So in May of twenty twenty four,
we did an episode on Filipino food scientist Maria Rosa,
(06:39):
whose most famous food invention today is banana ketchup. That
episode ends very sadly because Arosa was killed in the
Battle of Manila in nineteen forty five. When we recorded that,
her burial place was not exactly known because she was
buried in a mass grave at Malate Catholic School with
others who were killed over the course of the That
(07:02):
has now changed after a five year project involving that
mass grave, which was underway as we recorded our episode
on her. On February thirteenth, Orosa and others were laid
to rest in the crypt of the Sant Agustin Church
in Manila after a funeral mass that honored her and
other World War Two heroes. The other people who were
(07:23):
re interred with her included a doctor at the hospital
where she was working, along with hospital volunteers and civilian patients.
The identity of Eurosa's remains had been confirmed through both
DNA testing and physical examination. Also, thank you to listener
Dandy for sending us this story. It was not really
widely reported beyond the Philippines, and I don't really think
(07:46):
I would would have heard about it without that listener email.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
We did a two parter on Harriet Tubman in June
of twenty sixteen, and in twenty twenty three we talked
about archaeological work being done at the likely site of
the home of her father Ben Ross. At the time
that work was ongoing. Now, the Maryland Department of Transportation
has launched a virtual museum detailing their findings and showcasing
(08:11):
some of the objects from the site. It's an unwieldy
URL to read off, but it's easily findable by searching
Ben Ross home Place. This archaeological site is in Blackwater
National Wildlife Refuge, and one of the reasons for a
virtual museum is that the site of the home place
is not an area that's accessible to the public. Also,
(08:34):
the whole area is at risk of destruction due to
sea level rise. They wanted to really preserve and document it.
The virtual museum has pages for the home place, the archaeology,
kitchen items, personal items, and Native people's artifacts. The Native
people's artifacts are things that are mostly very very small.
They're like fragments of pottery, projectile points, and flaked stones. Next,
(08:58):
we talked about the Viking era Galloway Horde in one
of last year's installments of Unearthed. A metal detectorist found
this hord in Scotland back in twenty fourteen, and research
into it has been ongoing. There's a lot that's still unknown,
like why the horde of metal objects also includes wrapped
balls of dirt. We don't know who it belonged to
(09:20):
or why it was buried. This horde contains four armorings
that are marked with runs, and that had led to
some speculation that this was the combined wealth of.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
Four different parties. But only three of those armbands had
old English name elements in the runes. The fourth band,
which has the longest runic inscription, had not been decipherable.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
There's still some uncertainty about this fourth armband, but one
possible interpretation is that they're basically saying the horde was
community property. That interpretation only works though if part of
the inscription is misspelled. But researchers have been pointing out
that we shouldn't necessarily assume that every region and dialect
(10:08):
was using the same spellings of words. We see this
in English all the time.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Yeah, we've talked about times that spellings of things were
not standardized, or sometimes people just misspell things when spellings
are standardized. We're going to take us quick sponsor break
and then have some more updates. There's been some new
(10:34):
stuff unearthed at Pompeii, which was the subject of a
two thousand and nine episode of the show and is
just also a regular feature on Unearthed. First in Pompeii,
homes with private baths were really only for the rich,
and the bath complex that has just been discovered there
was for the really rich. There are only three other
(10:58):
villas in Pompeii that have been to discovered so far
that have comparable bath facilities, and it's still being studied,
but it's likely that this one is even bigger than those.
It may have belonged to Alis Rustius Verus, who was
a politician and would have hosted large numbers of guests
at home.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
This was a multi room complex. It had a changing
room that could accommodate about thirty people, plus separate rooms
for hot, warm, and cold bathing, which people would progress
through from hot to cold. That final cold room had
a plunge pool more than a meter deep, and of
course all of these rooms were impressively decorated, including frescoed
(11:42):
walls and inlaid marble floors. This bathing facility was also
connected to the banquet hall, so it seems likely that
if guests came for a banquet, they might also be
treated to a luxury bathing experience. In another Pompeii discovery,
a set of frescoes depicting the initiation rights of the
(12:03):
cult of Dionysus has been found on the walls of
a banquet hall. These frescoes are really enormous. They're depicted
at almost life size and they cover three walls of
the room. They depict the person who's being initiated into
the cult, as well as several women. Some of the
women are dancing, and some of them are dressed as hunters.
The hunters carry a goat and its entrails, and there
(12:25):
are also satyrs with flutes and wine. These depictions were
probably created sometime between forty and thirty BCE, and they
are similar to those at Pompey's Villa of the Mysteries,
which is not very far away. While they're shown in
these frescoes, these rites were also secret, so these newly
discovered frescoes corroborate some of what we know about religious
(12:49):
practices in the cult of Dionysus.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Moving on, in March of twenty twenty, we talked about
the discovery of some glassy matter at Pompeii, which turned
out to be part of a person's brain. Subsequent research
concluded that this glassy matter contained neurons, and research that
was published in February offers a hypothesis on how that
(13:13):
glassy material came to be, like how does someone's brain
turn into glass? According to the researchers, the only way
this could have happened would have been for the person's
brains who have been exposed to extremely high temperatures hotter
than the pyroclastic flow that buried the city, But that
could only be exposed to those temperatures for an extremely
(13:35):
short time. So their hypothesis is that this person was
exposed to a cloud of superheated ash ahead of that
pyroclastic flow with that ash then dissipating and everything cooling
off very quickly.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
This is very different from my guess that a James
Bond's era villain was somehow involved and in Pompeii adjacent news,
Archaia working in the Salerno area have found footprints of
people and animals running away from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius,
not from the eruption that destroyed Pompeii, but from one
(14:12):
that happened around the year two thousand BCE. The footprints
included those of adults and children, some in bare feet
and some wearing shoes, moving on from Pompeii. Previous hosts
of the show did an episode on the Bayou Tapestry,
which is really an embroidery that was back in twenty eleven,
(14:32):
and it's also come up on Unearthed, including in our
Year End twenty twenty four episodes. Two of the scenes
depicted in the Tapestry show King Harold Godwinson at his
residence in West Sussex. Archaeologists working there believe they may
have found the location of that residence. This conclusion follows
(14:52):
a lot of different work, including analysis of historical maps
and re examination of the findings of some archaeological that
happens back in two thousand and six. One of the
things that was unearthed in that archaeological work was a
private latrine, which would not have been common at the time,
and helps back up the idea that this might have
(15:13):
been one of the structures at Harold's residence, because who
else besides the king would have had a private latrine.
There's also a piece of the Bio Tapestry that has
been rediscovered in state archives in northern Germany that's now
being repatriated to France. While this embroidery depicts the Norman
conquest of Britain, it is considered to be a French
(15:36):
cultural asset. The Bayou Tapestry is currently undergoing a major
conservation project, and it's going to be taken off display
later this year because the museum where it is housed
will be undergoing its own renovation. The museum is going
to close on August thirty first, twenty twenty five, and
it's expected to reopen in twenty twenty seven next. There's
(15:58):
graffiti in the basement of the Lincoln Memorial, also called
the Undercroft. This was first found in nineteen eighty four,
and according to statements given to The Washington Post earlier
this year, the subject of that graffiti might be past
podcast subject Theta Bara. We covered her on May fourth,
(16:19):
twenty twenty two. The evidence that this is who is
being depicted is described as compelling but circumstantial. This is
a drawing done in Carpenter's pencil. It shows someone in
profile smoking a cigarette with curly hair and pretty pronounced makeup.
Considering that it's done in Carpenter's pencil, including dramatic lipstick
(16:40):
and blush and I makeup, and the next to that
image is the word vamp in loopy script. Next in
our Spring twenty twenty four on Earth, we talked about
the discovery of a bog body in Ballachy, Northern Ireland,
which was nicknamed the Blachy Boy. When this body was
first discovered, people thought it was a recent murder victim,
(17:01):
but it was estimated to actually be somewhere around two
thousand years old. Subsequent research has confirmed that approximate date,
but osteological study suggests that the person was female. A
significant majority of bog bodies that have been found from
this period are male, which makes this one unusual. They
also found cut marks at the neck vertebrae that suggest
(17:24):
that this person was intentionally decapitated before being put in
the bog. The skull is not present. Researchers are now
calling this bog body the Bally Maccombs more woman and
in our last update this time around, Josephine Baker, who
prior hosts it, an episode about on March eighth, twenty ten,
(17:44):
wrote a memoir which was originally published in French in
nineteen forty nine. This is not available in English until now.
It is titled Fearless and Free. It's been translated, as
I said, into English for the first time. It has
been published by Tiny Reparations Books, which is an imprint
of Penguin Books. Moving along, we have quite a few
(18:07):
findes related to Egypt in some way. First, a four
one hundred year old burial in the Sacara Necropolis appears
to be that of a royal doctor. It's possible that
this doctor served under Pharaoh Peppi the Second, who was
also entombed at Sakara. Like many other tombs at Sacara,
this one had been looted long before archaeologists found it,
(18:30):
but its intricately painted walls have led to its being
described as an exceptional discovery. In addition to being a
royal doctor, this person was also a dentist and an
expert in medicinal plants and venomous bites.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Next, an international interdisciplinary team of researchers has concluded that
skeletal remains that were speculated to be that of Arsenoway
the Fourth, the half sister of Cleopatra, belonged to someone else.
This person does seem to have died at around the
same time that Arsnoway did, but it's more likely that
(19:07):
the skull belongs to a male child, likely between the
ages of eleven and fourteen, with what the paper described
as showing evidence of developmental disturbances. Those disturbances included asymmetry
in the bones, which could have come from a variety
of different causes. This person also likely came from Italy
(19:29):
or Sardinia rather than Northern Africa. In February, a team
led by British archaeologist Peers Lytherland discovered the rock cut
tomb of Tutmos the Second. The tomb itself was largely
empty because it had been flooded at some point. It
was built under a waterfall, and this probably happened within
a few years of it being built, but there is
(19:51):
still a lot of debris inside, including chunks that have
fallen from the ceiling, pieces of wall decorations, fragments of
wooden shafts, and other objects. This includes some alabaster fragments
with Tutmos's name on them. Tutmos the Second was both
half brother and husband to Hedge Shepsit, and we talked
about both of them in our episode on Hudspsit and
(20:13):
the Voyage to Punt. Not long after that find was announced,
Lytherland announced that he may have discovered another tomb, also
belonging to Tutmos the Second, which may have been the
one where his mummy and grave goods were housed. I
wasn't able to find more updates about that second discovery.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
And speaking of HUDs Sheepsit, archaeologists and Luxor have found
more than one thousand intricately decorated blocks at the entrance
to her funeral complex, as well as a collection of
limestone and quartzite tablets. These blocks are brightly decorated with
paint that is still vivid and are described as showing
the artistic mastery of this era. In addition to those
(20:54):
tomb discoveries. A different team working at the ancient necropolis
of a Nubis Mountain and Abydos have found a pharaoh's tomb,
but which pharaoh is not yet known. This tomb is
about thirty six hundred years old and excavations there are ongoing.
Tracy had really thought that we talked about some research
(21:15):
similar to what we're about to mention recently on the show,
but looking back, she did not see any such thing.
I know, I talked about it on a different project
not that long back. Researchers at University College London have
investigated the aroma of well preserved Egyptian mummies, finding that
they smell, in the words of the news release, pretty good.
(21:36):
They were characterized with words like woody, spicy, and sweet,
as well as having some floral notes. This work involved
chemical analysis and human beings just smelling the mummies. This
of course doesn't necessarily reflect what they smelled like at
the time they were mummified.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
This was not just for fun, even though that to
me does sound like kind of a fun project getting
people to and if mummies, but odors can help researchers
determine how well preserved a money is without invasive testing.
And oders can also help pinpoint which substances were used
in the mummification. And our last Egypt find is kind
(22:17):
of more Egypt adjacent. A leather suitcase belonging to Howard
Carter has been rediscovered in England. Carter is the person
who's credited with finding the tomb of King tut. After
its rediscovery, this leather suitcase sold at auction in February
for twelve thousand pounds. That's roughly fifteen thousand dollars. Let's
(22:39):
take another little sponsor break, and then we're going to
talk about some art. There is so much artwork to
talk about in this installment of Unearthed, just so much.
(23:00):
I love art, so it's great, so much art to
talk about that it's going to be the entire rest
of this episode. First, a painting that was bought for
ten dollars at a thrift store outside of Philadelphia has
turned out to be the work of William Henry Dorsey.
Dorsey was a free black man born in Philadelphia in
(23:20):
eighteen thirty seven, and in addition to being an artist,
he was a coin collector and a scrapbooker and an
art collector, especially focused on the work of other Black artists.
I have put him on the list for a future
episode of his own because he sounds very interesting to me.
This painting depicts a black man fishing by the edge
(23:40):
of a river next to a mill with its own
water wheel attached. Andy Robbins, who bought this painting at
the thrift store, has given it to the Historical Society
of Pennsylvania, where it is now on display. A double
sided portrait by eighteenth century artist Ammy Phillips was discovered
in an abandoned storage unit back in twenty twenty four,
(24:02):
but it made headlines at the start of this year
when it went up for auction. It's not known who
the sitter is, but it's believed that the same person
is shown on both sides of the painting. Her pose
is similar on both sides, and there's a small birthmark
on her face in each of them. She's sitting in
the same chair, wearing the same dress and the same necklace,
(24:24):
with her left arm on the same book, but the
face doesn't look the same between the two portraits. On
one side, blondish hair is covered by a bonnet and
on the other, brown hair is up in a bun.
The face shapes and mouth shapes are different. Are these
two different people or two different versions of the same person.
(24:47):
It's a bit of a mystery. This artist was an
itinerant portrait painter who worked in a range of portrait styles,
and his career spanned for more than fifty years, in
that time, producing as many a two thousand portraits.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
It could be the original Doublemint twins.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I was looking at it. I was like, are these
sisters cousin right? They're just friends, I don't know, or
the same person in two different drafts.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
Back in twenty twenty three, we did an episode on
Venetian painter Caniletto, who was known for his large scale
city scapes which are spectacularly beautiful, and we talked about
how one of his assistants was his nephew, Bernardo Belotto,
and how Blotto became really skilled at copying Caniletto's technique
and would sometimes even signed Caniletto's name to his own work. Well,
(25:38):
one of the paintings that had been attributed to Caniletto
has now been reattributed to his nephew, that is the
Grand Canal with San Simeon Piccolo from seventeen thirty seven.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
This determination came through research for a new book called
Caniletto and Guardi Views of Venice, which was published by
the Wallace collect Part of this attribution about who actually
did the painting came from the way the painting uses
color and light, because Belotto was known for being sort
(26:11):
of colder and less vibrant in the color that he
used than his uncle was.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Speaking of artists that we have covered on the show,
we are now to Lavinia Fontana, who we covered in
twenty twenty two. A miniature portrait of an Italian noble
woman came up for auction in Texas, which used to
belong to another past podcast subject, Horace Walpole. Walpole displayed
the painting at Strawberry Hillhouse. It is believed to depict
(26:40):
Bianca Cappello, grand Duchess, consort of Tuscany and wife of Francesco,
the first de Medici, who Walpole had a fascination with.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
Walpole also believed this painting had been created by a
different artist, mannerist painter Bronzino, who lived in the sixteenth century,
But after this portrait was found at auction, it was
reattributed to Lavinia Fontana. This miniature has been loaned to
Strawberry Hill House and it will be on display there
until April twenty third of this year, which is twenty
(27:12):
twenty five if you're listening when this episode is actually publishing. Also,
another painting has also been reattributed to Lavinia Fontana. This
one was previously attributed to Flemish Renaissance artist Peter Porbuss,
but it was reattributed after an expert spotted the painting
in a storage room at the Musee de la Chartreuse
(27:35):
in Duay, France. This one depicts a family with a
girl passing flowers to her father and a servant behind
them with a basket of fruit. This painting is going
to go through restoration before becoming part of the museum's
permanent collection. Next up, conservators in France have digitized and
analyzed a set of cathedral wall paintings that have been
(27:58):
hidden for centuries. These date back to the thirteenth century
and they cover seven bays in the apse of Algers Cathedral,
and based on research that was involved in this project,
two different groups originally created them. Then back in fourteen
fifty one, the cathedral was damaged by a fire and
the walls were whitewashed That's probably why these paintings were
(28:21):
not destroyed during the French Wars of Religion. Then in
the eighteenth century, wooden choir stalls were built in front
of those whitewashed walls. These wall paintings were rediscovered back
in the nineteen eighties, but it took a decade just
to remove the whitewash before they could be conserved. This
whole process was made more difficult and time consuming because
(28:45):
the choir stalls are backed by tall wooden panels which
cannot be removed, so everything had to happen in this
very narrow space between the wood panels and the wall.
It sounds very awkward and tedious the descriptions. It sounds
like that whole thing of like building your spite house
an inch from the house next to it, Like how
(29:06):
do you get anything done in there? How are you
going to repaint that? While ever never h Digitizing these
paintings involved taking more than eight thousand total photographs, which
then had to be stitched together into one image, and
that was a whole other, multi year process. These paintings
depict the life and works of Saint Mauria, who was
(29:26):
the Bishop of Algier in the fifth century. Next, researchers
working with a thirteenth century fresco in Ferrara, Italy, have
published research suggesting that one of the things depicted in
the fresco is a tent from the Islamic world. The
fresco is in the apse of a church, and it's
believed that it depicts a real tent that was used
(29:47):
in that church to conceal the altar, either all the
time or during particular parts of the liturgical year. This
tent is brightly colored, it's covered in jewels, and the
round shape it matches the curve of the apse. Its
borders feature sort of a pseudo Arabic style of inscription,
and there are color combinations that were really popular in
(30:10):
thirteenth century and to Lucy's silks. The depiction in the
fresco is similar to surviving fragments of those silks and
to artistic representations of tents like these being used in
the Islamic world.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
This research suggests that textiles made their way from the
Islamic world to Christian churches, possibly through the textiles being
taken as spoils of war and then gifted to churches
or church leaders. Popes are known to have gifted altar
curtains to churches going back to at least the ninth century,
so it's possible that this tent was a gift to
(30:47):
the church from the pope or another high ranking person
within the church, or this also could have been a
gift from a wealthy family. Moving on, we have kind
of a saga about art attribute.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Back in twenty eighteen, someone who had bought a painting
at a garage sale in Minnesota for fifty dollars submitted
an inquiry to the Vang Museum in Amsterdam about whether
this painting might be that artist's work. The following year,
the museum said no, it wasn't quote based on stylistic features.
(31:21):
From there, a data science company called LMI Group bought
the painting and did its own analysis of it. LMI
Group was co founded by Maxwell L. Anderson, who's an
art historian and has served as the director of a
number of museums.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
LMI Group concluded that the painting was Van Goes work.
The name Elmar is in one corner of the canvas,
which has been adopted as the painting's name, and LMI
Group speculates that it's a reference to a character in
Hans Christian Anderson's eighteen forty eight novel The Two Baronesses.
LMI sent its conclusion to the Vango Museum, which maintained
(32:02):
that it still did not believe that this work was
van Goes. On January thirty first, LMI Group gave a
statement that read, in part quote, we are puzzled why
the Vango Museum invested less than one working day to
summarily reject the facts presented in our four hundred and
fifty six page report without offering any explanation, let alone
(32:24):
studying the painting directly rather than looking at it reproduced
as a JPEG. LMI Group has published this report on
its website, and that PDF is indeed more than four
hundred and fifty pages long. Obviously we cannot go through
a document that long here, but it looks at where
the painting would fit in Vango's ouvre, material science DNA analysis,
(32:47):
including on a hair found on the painting, and the
comparison of the handwriting used to write Elmar to other
words that appear on Vango's paintings.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
This is currently unresolved, but there are other experts who
have offered a completely different alternative explanation. And that is
that Elmar is not a reference to a Hans Christian
Andersen character, but is the name of the artist who
made the painting. That's Danish artist Henning Elmar, who died
in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Mysteries, Uh, hopefully we'll find out. A man in northern
Greece found a headless statue in the trash and turned
it over to authorities, and that statue has been confirmed
to be roughly two thousand years old, dating back to
the Hellenistic period. It's made of marble, and it's about
thirty inches tall, and it is missing its head and arms.
(33:42):
It depicts a woman in flowing garments, and since statues
of human women during this period were more likely to
be made of other materials like wood, this likely represented
a goddess. Based on its size, it may have been
a votive statue from a temple. Authorities in Greek including
the Cultural Heritage Protection Office, are trying to learn more
(34:04):
about the statue and find out how it came to
be in the trash.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Speaking of things found in the trash, an eighteenth century
sketch by English portrait painter George Romney was pulled out
of a dumpster in Hudson, New York last year. The
id on who made this one was not all that difficult.
In addition to having Romney's signature on it, his studio
stamp is on the reverse side of the sketch. A
(34:31):
private collector bought this at auction in March.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
This sketch is believed to be of Henrietta Greville, Countess
of Warwick, possibly in preparation for the oil painting of
her and her children that he painted in the late
eighteen seventies. This doesn't look at all like the oil painting, though,
since it's a very basic sketch, a person who didn't
recognize the name would probably think this was just scribbles. Yeah,
(34:56):
if you don't sort of know the context of what
his work sketches looked like, you could look at it
and think a child did this, a small child just
learning how to hold a crayon. It absolutely does not
surprise me that it would have wound up in the trash.
In nineteen seventy four, a painting called Woman Carrying the
(35:17):
Embers by Peter Breugel the Younger was discovered to have
been stolen from the National Museum in Danks, Poland. It
had been replaced with a magazine cutout, which was discovered
when a worker accidentally knocked it off the wall. Now
that painting has been found in the Gouda Museum, where
it was being described as being on loan from a
(35:40):
private collection. This discovery was made with the help of
art detective Arthur Brand and it started after the Dutch
arts magazine VIND covered an exhibition at the museum. A
photo of the painting in Vinn looked like a photo
from an article about the theft, which also involved another painting,
which i'd been published back in nineteen seventy four. It
(36:03):
is not currently clear how the theft originally happened or
how the painting wound up on loan to the Gouda Museum.
I have thoughts.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
Yeah, it does seem very lucky or very lucky that
somebody recognized the similarity to something from a publication from
back in the seventies. Next, a portrait that has gone
on display at Rest Park in England may depict Lady
Jane Gray and if so, it may be the only
portrait painted of her before she was executed. Our episode
(36:35):
on Lady Jane Gray and the nine days she spent
as Queen ran on March fifth of twenty seventeen. This
painting was added to the collection at Rest Park Way
back in the early eighteenth century, and at that time
it was described as a painting of Lady Jane Gray,
who had died in fifteen fifty four, but eventually that
(36:56):
identity was called into question. The English Herita website frames
this return to the interpretation that it does depict Lady
Jane Gray as still somewhat speculative. This conclusion has involved
tree ring dating of the wood panels it was painted on,
X ray, fluorescent studies, and infrared reflexology, plus the work
(37:18):
of historical experts who have pointed out similarities between the
painting and portraits that were painted after her death, and
they use words like compelling and possible. And lastly, we
have previously talked about how in the ancient Greek world
marble statues that appear white today were painted in vibrant colors.
(37:40):
They were also clothed and adorned with jewelry, and according
to recent research, some of them were perfumed. So people's
experiences with these statues would have been both visual and olfactory.
That sounds lovely, yeah, would have spelled nice, not overwhelming.
I could be a little sensitive to fragrances this is,
(38:02):
so whether I would enjoy that would kind of depend
on what the fragrances were. So that is the first
part of our two parter on Unearthed for Today, and
I have a little listener mail. This is from Joni.
Joni wrote after our episode on exem Clement and said, hello,
(38:24):
Holly and Tracy. I love your show and I'm a
longtime listener. While not a first time writer, I am
definitely an infrequent one. While I was listening to the
March tenth episode on exem Clement, you made a comment
about being a bit confused by her being referred to
as brother Exam by the other legislators. I don't know
the real story behind the brother reference, but I do
(38:47):
have a story from my own past that may or
may not be relevant. When I was in college, I
joined a fraternity called Alpha Fi Omega APO is a
national co ed service fraternity that is focused on leadership, friendship,
and community serus. All members were called brothers as opposed
to brothers and sisters, in the spirit of acknowledging that
we are all equal members. As a woman, I appreciated
(39:09):
and preferred being called a brother. I have no idea
if exem Clement would have felt the same way, or
if the rationale behind her being called brother was the same.
I just wanted to share that perspective. Thank you so
much for everything you do. Your podcast is among my favorites.
I often listen when I am working out or doing
chores around the house. All the best, Joni, Thank you
so much for this email. I like that a little
(39:32):
bit of perspective.
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Yeah, we kind of talked about a similar thing, but
from a fictional world, because I think I have mentioned
how on Star Trek people call even the women captain sir.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
Everyone's sir. Yeah, so yes.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Kind of fundamentally the same concept.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
If you'd like to send us a note about this
or any other podcast, we are at History Podcast at
iHeartRadio dot com, and you can subscribe to our show
on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else you'd like to
get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class is
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
(40:13):
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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