Tea at Trianon: One of Archaeology’s Most Controversial Discoveries

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

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

One of Archaeology’s Most Controversial Discoveries

From Smithsonian:

“Life-sized painted bust of the queen, 47 cm high. With the flat-cut blue wig, which also has a ribbon wrapped around it halfway up,” Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt wrote in his diary on December 6, 1912. “Work absolutely exceptional. Description is useless, must be seen.”

The discovery that the German Egyptologist believed was exceptional beyond words was the iconic limestone and stucco bust of Nefertiti, one-time queen of Egypt and wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten, who ruled in the 14th century B.C.E.
But what began as a profound appreciation of the 18-inch-high sculpture’s beauty in Borchardt’s diary 112 years ago quickly became an archaeological scandal for the ages, prompting questions of ownership and repatriation even in modern times.
The controversy started at an excavation of an ancient city on the Nile. Tell el-Amarna, also known as Akhetaton, captured the imaginations of Borchardt and the European archaeological community around the turn of the century as the capital city built under Akhenaten after he focused the spiritual life of his kingdom on a single god, Aten. (Read more.)