Posted on 08/25/2006 12:32:24 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
In was enlightening to read Mellaart's excavation reports from the 1960s [2] as well as other early writings. Contradictions between those texts and the current work indicated more than a runaway kilim theory and an overly fertile imagination at work. Technical and stylistic problems now combined with incriminating disclosures to reveal what seemed to be careless, poorly conceived fabrications -- possibly a deliberate hoax... The current controversy is not the first instance in which James Mellaart has offered flimsy evidence as the sole "proof" of revolutionary archaeological findings. In the mysterious Dorak Affair... Mellaart claims to have uncovered a cache of spectacular royal treasures (c. 2500 B.C.?) in a young woman's Izmir home in 1958, along with archaeological notes and a textile sketch -- a drawing of an excavator's drawing of a carbonized rug which supposedly had disintegrated after it was unearthed. A few months later, Mellaart published drawings of the objects in a London newspaper. In the meantime, however, all of the artifacts and their owner vanished. As for the alleged textile, Mellaart tells us it had pattern and color "well enough preserved to be recorded" but was so decayed it might have been either a "kilim" or "coloured felt." He says, "I prefer the kilim interpretation." In fact, Mellaart's colored design, published by Seyton Lloyd, is too linear for tapestry. The relevant aspect of this episode is, of course, Mellaart's attempt to establish a milestone in textile history -- a 4,500-year-old kilim -- on the basis of nothing tangible. A sketch of a sketch is shaky evidence at best, if evidence at all. The parallels are obvious between this case and Mellaart's current efforts to establish an 8,000-year-old kilim-weaving tradition in Anatolia.
(Excerpt) Read more at marlamallett.com ...
Letter, Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society 12 (1992/3), p. 80.Dear Sir,
by Peter James and Nikos Kokkinos
Regarding James Mellaart's review of Centuries of Darkness in BAIAS 11 (1991-2), while it contains several constructive comments, we note that the key evidence which he adduces against our case comes from two unpublished texts: an Arzawan document referred to as the 'Beyköy Text', and a letter of Assurbanipal to 'Ardu, king of Arzawa'. The information claimed to be recorded in them we find little short of fantastic. For example, that Assurbanipal should have written a letter to the king of Lydia (=Arzawa!), listing the latter's 21 ancestors with regnal years and detailed synchronisms with Assyria, seems far-fetched, to say the least.
Your reviewer states that translations of these texts, by A. Goetze and E. I. Gordon respectively, are "in press", but fails to specify where. Since Goetze and Gordon died in the early 1970s, both these documents must have awaited publication for a remarkably long time. Further, we find it extraordinary that no cuneiform expert we have consulted has heard of such discoveries. It is with regret that we have to point out that crucial evidence of this kind must always be accessible by some means before it is used as a basis for passing judgement on someone's work. We hope that no ramifications will arise from Mellaart's "vital material for chronology" - such uncorroborated citations merely muddy the waters of scholarship.
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Is there any truth in the rumour that scholars have fabricated or falsified evidence in order to disprove CoD?James Mellaart (1991/2), a famous archaeologist and, until recently, a lecturer at University College London... claimed to have access to an unpublished cuneiform text which gives a list of synchronisms between Lydia (a kingdom in western Turkey in classical times) and Assyria, running back 21 generations from the 7th century BC through to the Late Bronze Age. According to Mellaart it confirmed the conventional chronology and made "short shrift" of our model... Despite his best efforts, Professor David Lewis, an eminent epigraphist at Oxford, could find no trace of such a tablet. Other scholars, such as cuneiform expert Professor David Hawkins of the School of Oriental and African Studies, are confident that the text is simply not real. With evident embarassment, the editor of the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israel Archaeological Society, which had carried Mellaart's review, published a note, alongside letters from ourselves (James & Kokkinos 1992/3) and Lewis, stating that Mellaart's "alleged documents... should not be cited as valid source material." (Gibson 1992/3, 82). And there this extraordinary episode ended. Mellaart does not appear to have mentioned his tablet since.
The Dorak Affair's Final ChapterThere were drawings of an ancient comb with a dolphin motif, of jewel boxes again decorated with dolphins, of a vase in the shape of a bird of gold and silver; there were sketches of the gold leaf covering which was said to have extended over the surface of the wooden throne which could have been a present from Egypt, details of the rug which had disintegrated when the tombs had been opened, and even rubbings of the sword blade etched with ships and of a sherd of alabaster which had been marked with hieroglyphics. And every one of these drawings had been annotated in Mellaart's hand... Earlier this week in phone conversations I had with David Stronach, Professor of Near East Archaeology at the University of California - Berkeley, Stronach disclosed that Jimmie Mellaart invented Dorak. He called it a "dream-like epsidode"... But most important of all in relation to the Dorak mystery, Stronach's was the other handwriting Pearson & Connor refer to above in Mellart's memoirs.
Opinion: Suzan Mazur
Monday, 10 October 2005
Skullduggery in antiquities...
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0508/S00224.htm
"Jonah Cast up by the Whale" -- Ancient marble sold by Dikmen to Cleveland Museum Photo Credit: Art News
(Nothing to do with Catal Huyuk - but that's the strangest looking whale I ever did see...)
Looks more like a dogfish. ;')
If it is a whale, it sure isn't the Right one.
The Chimaera - or Chimera - was said to be made out of three different creatures: lion, goat and serpent. A savage beast, sprouting fire from its mouth, it devastated the land until it was killed by the hero Bellerophon who flew over it riding his winged horse Pegasus. Although simple in its basic lines, this story is among the most ancient ones of Occidental mythology and it hides some deep and still not completely known meaning...
http://www3.unifi.it/surfchem/solid/bardi/chimera/
:')
Here's one I didn't ping due to age of the original piece, but it's in the Digest 110. Enjoy!
thank you! i feel like i hit the jackpot! lol
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(At least I didn't compose a response, only to find the poster has been gone for 5 years.)
I thought I’d wait a few weeks, and re-re-bump this. ;’)
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