Tea at Trianon: The Maccabees Rediscovered

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, December 2, 2013

The Maccabees Rediscovered

Their home in Jerusalem has been found. To quote:

From the start, Theo Siebenberg strongly suspected that the site of his house must have been inhabited by Jews in the Second Temple period, given its proximity to the Temple Mount where the Holy Temples once dominated the skyline. He was assured that archeological surveys had not revealed anything of interest.

“But he insisted,” Miriam Siebenberg tells ISRAEL21c during a tour of the unusual museum.

Engineers advised the Siebenbergs first to support their newly built house by putting up a multi-section retaining wall with anchors each holding up to 60 tons of pressure. That process alone took eight years.

Half-hour tours of the house museum begin with a slide show depicting the ensuing excavation process.

The earth under the house was packed so densely that it amounted to five times the volume of the dug-out space, Siebenberg explains. Modern machinery couldn’t fit in the narrow alley outside, so all the dirt was lifted out manually in buckets, sifted for artifacts and carried on donkeys’ backs to waiting trucks.

The key ring was discovered first, followed by glass perfume bottles and bracelets; a device for spinning fine cotton thread; an ivory pen and inkwell; 2,600-year-old arrowheads probably made to fight off Babylonian invaders; and a glass drinking cup shaped like a horn of plenty – only seven cups like this have ever been found. (Read more.)