Thursday, March 06, 2008
The Hemmings Auto Blogs have a post on a wonderful Wierd World War II vehicle: the Minenraumer, which apparently is kept in a Russian museum.
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Friday, December 14, 2007
With a strange sort of serendipity, just as I’m using superglue to attach the shields to a bunch of roman legionnaire miniatures, I see this article about how actual Romans used a superglue to attach bits to their helmets ... and it’s lasted for thousands of years:
Dec. 14, 2007—Roman warriors repaired their battle accessories with a superglue that is still sticking around after 2,000 years, according to new findings on display at the Rheinischen Landes Museum in Bonn, Germany.
Running until Feb. 16, 2008, the exhibition “Behind the Silver Mask” presents evidence that the ancient adhesive was used to mount silver laurel leaves on legionnaires’ battle helmets.
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Friday, December 07, 2007
An ancient Mesopotamian sculpture of a lioness (above) has sold at auction for a record $57 million dollars.
I think its a beautiful piece of work, and the top of the sculpture at least, would look good in one of those Wargods of Aegyptus armies. The article is below:
NEW YORK (AFP) - A tiny and extremely rare 5,000-year-old white limestone sculpture from ancient Mesopotamia sold for 57.2 million dollars in New York on Wednesday, smashing records for both sculpture and antiquities.
The carved Guennol Lioness, measuring just over eight centimeters (3 1/4 inches) tall, was described by Sotheby’s auction house as one of the last known masterworks from the dawn of civilization remaining in private hands.
“It was an honor for us to handle The Guennol Lioness, one of the greatest works of art of all time,” Richard Keresey and Florent Heintz, the experts in charge of the sale, said in a joint statement.
“Before the sale, a great connoisseur of art commented to us that he always regarded the figure as the ‘finest sculpture on earth’ and it would appear that the market agreed with him,” they said.
Five different bidders, three on the telephone and two in the room, competed for the sculpture. The successful buyer was identified only as an English buyer who wished to remain anonymous.
The sale easily broke the previous record for the highest price for a sculpture at auction, which had stood at 29.1 million dollars and was set just last month at Sotheby’s in New York by Picasso’s “Tete de Femme (Dora Maar).”
It also beat the 28.6 million dollars paid for “Artemis and the Stag,” a 2,000-year-old bronze figure which sold also at Sotheby’s in New York in June and held the record for the most expensive antiquity to be sold at auction.
Described by Sotheby’s as diminutive in size, but monumental in conception, The Guennol Lioness was created around 5,000 years ago—around the same time as the first known use of the wheel—in the region of ancient Mesopotamia.
The piece was acquired by private collector Alastair Bradley Martin in 1948 and has been on display in New York’s Brooklyn Museum of Art ever since.
Keresey described the work before the sale as “one of the oldest, rarest and most beautiful works of art from the ancient world.”
“This storied figure, in its brilliant combination of an animal form and human pose, has captured the imagination of academics and the public since it was acquired by the Martins in the late 1940s,” he added.
The figure depicts a standing lioness looking over her left shoulder, her paws clenched in front of her muscular chest.
Experts have speculated that the figure may have played a role in some ancient belief system or mythology in Mesopotamia, which today lies in parts of modern day Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran.
The proceeds of the auction are to go to a charitable trust formed by the Martin Family.
I hope that the high price of the auction doesn’t encourage even more looting of ancient archaeological sites.
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Monday, November 26, 2007
A Christian sect in Ethiopia claims to have the Ark of the Covenant. For an article for Smithsonian Magazine, reporter Paul Raffaele travels to Askum, Ethiopia to see the temple where it’s allegedly housed and covers the basics of the story:
According to the First Book of Kings, King Solomon built the First Temple in Jerusalem to house the ark. It was venerated there during Solomon’s reign (c. 970-930 B.C.) and beyond.
Then it vanished. Much of Jewish tradition holds that it disappeared before or while the Babylonians sacked the temple in Jerusalem in 586 b.c.
But through the centuries, Ethiopian Christians have claimed that the ark rests in a chapel in the small town of Aksum, in their country’s northern highlands. It arrived nearly 3,000 years ago, they say, and has been guarded by a succession of virgin monks who, once anointed, are forbidden to set foot outside the chapel grounds until they die.
This isn’t the first time I’ve read that the Ark is in Ethiopia. The connection seems to be between the son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, named Menelik. Late in Solomon’s reign, Memelik returned to Jerusalem to visit his father. Solomon gave him a copy of the Ark, along with the first born sons of Israel’s elders to take back to Ethiopia. The first borns, however, did not want to live away from the original, however, so they pulled a switch. It was not until they got to Ethiopia that Menelik discovered the ruse.
He had to be a bit worried, considering the Ark’s reputation as a weapon. But when he wasn’t destroyed, Menelik decided to keep it. The Ark then remained in the keeping of the Ethiopian royal families down through the ages. The last Emperor of Ethiopia was Haile Selassie. Interestingly, his official title was “His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, King of Kings of Ethiopia and Elect of God.”
On a Miniature Wargaming note, there’s a lot here for a pulp adventure in Ethiopia.
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Thursday, September 13, 2007
The ”Soviet Poster A Day” blog offers images—and analysis—of classic Soviet posters. It’s interesting to see read the history behind the events portrayed.
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Monday, September 10, 2007
I’ve spent the last year painting Vikings, Normans and Saxons, so I’m on the lookout for related stories in the news. On Monday, an AP story from Oslo broke about two bodies—both women—that have been exhumed from a mound in Norway:
OSLO — Archaeologists opened a Viking burial mound on Monday, seeking to learn more about two women — possibly a queen and a princess — laid to rest there 1,173 years ago.
In 1904, the mound in southeastern Norway’s Vestfold County surrendered one of the country’s greatest archaeological treasures, the Oseberg Viking longboat, which is now on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.
The 65-foot vessel was buried in 834 in the enormous mound as the grave ship for a rich and powerful Viking woman, according to the museum.
The remains of the two women, one believed to have been in her 60s and the other in her 30s, were first exhumed during the ship excavation. They were reburied in the mound in 1948 — in a modern aluminum casket placed inside a five-ton stone sarcophagus — in hopes that future scientific methods might reveal their secrets.
When experts opened the sarcophagus Monday, it was filled with water, although the casket itself may not have been flooded.
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Miniature Wargaming is part of the "adventure games" hobby, which includes r ole p laying and board games. Wargamers recreate battles on the tabletop with toy soldiers, like a more complicated game of chess. Models range in height from 6mm to 28mm tall, with 15mm and 25mm being the most popular. There also is a growing interest in toy soldiers and military models, such as the 1/32 and 1/35 scale plastic soldiers from Conte, and Marx.
The most popular miniature wargames are fantasy and science fiction based, such as Warhammer, Warhammer 40K, Warmachine and The Lord of the Rings. World War II games such as Flames of War and Axis and Allies are new favorites. Other favorite historical periods include Napoleonics, the American Civil War, and ancients, such as Romans or Greeks. Other gamers enjoy miniature naval wargames, recreating battles like Trafalgar, Jutland and the Coral Sea.
Hobbyists research historical periods and paint their tiny soldiers in accurate uniforms. Others develop "historically realistic" rules sets or build scale battlefield terrain using model railroad techniques.
For pictures, visit the gallery.
Some of the bigger hobby companies are Games Workshop, which produces Warhammer, Wargames Foundry and Old Glory Miniatures. Wizards of the Coast produces several lines of pre-painted miniatures games, such as the Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons miniatures games, and a historical game with pre-painted miniatures: The new Axis and Allies game. Wizkids produces a fantasy collectable miniatures game, such as the Mage Knight and Heroclick fantasy games, the science fiction games MechWarrior and Rocketmen, as well as the quasi-historical Pirates of the Spanish Main.
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