Tea at Trianon: An Ancient ‘Golden Tomb’ in Armenia

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

Thursday, April 6, 2023

An Ancient ‘Golden Tomb’ in Armenia

From ArtNet News:

Archaeologists at Metsamor, an ancient necropolis in Armenia, have discovered a tomb filled with gold pendants and more than a hundred amber and carnelian beads. Dating to the late Bronze Age (1,300 to 1,200 B.C.E.), the grave also held the remains of a man and a woman, who appear to have be buried at the same time.
“Their death is a mystery to us, we do not know the cause, but everything indicates that they died at the same time, because there are no traces of tomb reopening,” Krzysztof Jakubiak, an archaeology professor at the University of Warsaw, said in a statement. Laid to rest in an eternal embrace, the couple was buried in a cist, a stone-lined chamber dug into the ground. Believed to have died in their 30s, one wore bronze bracelets, the other a tin wire ring.

The grave also included a wooden burial bed, a faience flask, and about a dozen ceramic vessels. According to researchers, the beads and pendants were originally part of three necklaces, and the flask would have been imported from the Syrian-Mesopotamian borderland. (Read more.)