Tea at Trianon: Meidum Geese

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

Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Meidum Geese

From Live Science:

Nearly five millennia ago, an artist inked an incredibly detailed painting of geese in the tomb of an Egyptian vizier and his wife. This "Mona Lisa" of ancient Egypt may depict a previously unknown and now extinct species of goose, a new analysis suggests.

The 4,600-year-old painting, known as "Meidum Geese," was discovered in the 1800s in the tomb of Nefermaat, a vizier, or the highest-ranking official who served the pharaoh (and was likely also his son) and his wife Itet in Meidum, an archaeological site in lower Egypt, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The painting was discovered in the Chapel of Itet inside the tomb.

The vivid painting, which was once part of a larger tableau that also depicted men trapping birds in a net as offerings for the tomb owner, has since been described as "Egypt's Mona Lisa," study author Anthony Romilio, a technical assistant at The University of Queensland's school of chemistry and molecular biosciences in Australia, said in a statement. But "Apparently no-one realized it depicted an unknown species." (Read more.)

From Smithsonian:

Anthony Romilio, a paleontologist at the University of Queensland in Australia, noticed that the animals somewhat resembled modern red-breasted geese. But they aren’t quite the same—and researchers have no reason to believe that the species, which is most commonly found in Eurasia, ever lived in Egypt.

To investigate exactly which kinds of geese are shown in the artwork, Romilio used what’s known as the Tobias method. Essentially, he tells the Brisbane Times, this process involved comparing the painted birds’ body parts to real-life bird measurements. The resulting analysis, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, found that two species shown in the artwork corresponded to greylag geese and greater white-fronted geese. But two slightly smaller geese with distinctive color patterns had no real-world match.

“From a zoological perspective, the Egyptian artwork is the only documentation of this distinctively patterned goose, which appears now to be globally extinct,” says Romilio in a statement. (Read more.)

From ArtNet:

Called Meidum Geese, the painting was discovered in the 1800s in the Chapel of Itet at Meidum. Itet was the wife of the vizier Nefermaat, who ruled Egypt from 2610 to 2590 B.C. The powerful couple was able to commission works from the most sought-after artists of the day, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (A facsimile of Meidum Geese hangs in the New York institution; the original is in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.)

Bearing unique patterns over many parts of its body, the bird pictured doesn’t look anything like modern red-breasted geese, Romilio observed.
“Apparently no one realized it depicted an unknown species,” Romilio said in the university’s announcement of the find. “Artistic license could account for the differences with modern geese, but artworks from this site have extremely realistic depictions of other birds and mammals.”

Another point supporting his hypothesis: Archaeological digs haven’t turned up the bones of any modern geese at ancient Egyptian sites.

“From a zoological perspective, the Egyptian artwork is the only documentation of this distinctively patterned goose, which appears now to be globally extinct,” said Romilio, who used the “Tobias criteria” for identifying avian species. (Read more.)