Fellini's Early Escapism

ANSA: "Fellini sketches fantasy galore"

A valuable and little-known collection of sketches by legendary Italian film director Federico Fellini is now on show in the northern town of Adro.

The pictures are on loan from a collection that once belonged to one of Fellini's closest aides and collaborators, Liliana Betti. Betti, who was born in Adro, worked with the director for over two decades.

Unlike drawings produced by other filmmakers, who used sketching as a way to clarify their ideas about the set and the development of the film, Fellini turned to art for escapism and fantasy.

He started drawing as a boy in Rimini, producing caricatures of Hollywood stars in exchange for free entry into his local cinema.

As a young man, he turned this knack to comic drawings and cartoons, which he sold to different newspapers. This eventually led to him working as a journalist, scriptwriter and film director.

But his love of drawing and caricature lingered in a life-long passion for cartoons and doodling.While other exhibitions have explored this side of Fellini's talent, the pieces on display in Adro are from a rarely shown private collection. (...) article and images >>>

Hadrian's Fateful Consolidation

Art Daily: "The British Museum Presents Hadrian: Empire and Conflict Exhibition in London"

The British Museum presents Hadrian: Empire and Conflict, on view through October 26, 2008. The Roman Emperor Hadrian (117 to 138AD) is best known for his passion for Greek culture, interest in architecture, his love for Antinous, and of course the eponymous wall he built between England and Scotland, then Caledonia. (...)

- Caption: Bronze head of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (117–138) AD found in the River Thames at London Bridge in 1834. The head comes from a statue, one-and-a-quarter life-size, that may have been erected in a public space in London in AD 122 to commemorate Hadrian's visit to Britain. -

Incorporating recent scholarship and the latest spectacular archaeological discoveries, the exhibition will feature over 180 objects from 28 lenders from Italy to Georgia, from Israel to Newcastle. Loans of dramatic sculpture, exquisite bronzes and architectural fragments will be brought together and displayed for the first time in the UK, alongside famous objects from the Museum’s own collection such as the iconic bronze head of Hadrian and the Vindolanda tablets. (...)

By the time of Hadrian’s accession, the Roman Empire covered much of Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. (...) His first act on coming to power was to withdraw the Roman forces from Mesopotamia, present- day Iraq. Another example of this consolidation was the wall he had built in the north of England to mark the furthest reach of his empire. Hadrian was remarkable in that he travelled extensively across his empire, meeting more of his people than any other emperor before him. Hadrian was a man of great contradiction in both his personality and reign (...) >>>

Belgium: Ground Zero of Transnational Politics

In honour of the ongoing political and constitutional crisis at the neighbours herewith a very early vid noir of the unique artist Jacques Brel, who died much too young and whose biography truly fits that illusive multicultural epithet, Belgian.

Just as there are no Macedonian or European people, the Belgians are the doubtful owners of a non-existent pseudo ethnic label. The tribal Belgae have just as much relation to the present Flemish and Walloons as the ancient tribe of the Teutons have with modern Germany. Here's the historical Wiki of the region through the ages and here's the Wiki for the intricacies of modern Belgium.

The BBC earlier this week made short shrift of the long, complicated story of postmodern Belgian politics. The Brussels Journal has details and suspects the imploded Government was just an EU ploy to get the infamous Lisbon Treaty signed. Now that the document has been ratified, the cabinet served its purpose and has become redundant. We may never know if this conspiracy theory holds a kernel of truth.

However, this might be a good time to acknowledge that the Kingdom of the Belgians is a historical mistake. Belgium, the seat of NATO and the European Union stands model for the EU and is just as synthetic an entity: no nation, but a multicultural state. The sole concept binding them was the originally German royal house of Saxe Coburg, but even they are seen by the Flemish as a bulwark of Francophone dominance.

Going from crisis to crisis is symptomatic of the postmodern propping up of multinational non-nations at the expense of the no longer politically correct sovereign nation-state: multicultural kitch and faux imperial goulash is all the rage.

No democratic nation-state has waged war over the last half a century, but the forces of postmodernism have long made up their mind: nation equals nationalism, equals a machine of war. Belgium may with right be seen as a major battle ground of the postmodern onslaught of transnational progressivism on the old Westphalian guard.

When Flanders was an agricultural backwater Wallonia was an industrial revolution power house. It has run to seed by its inability to adjust to the times, as well as the corruption of its monolithically Socialist politicians. Today the economical shoe is on the other foot: while Wallonia continues to import foreign labour on Socialist principles, poorly educated and under-adjusted Muslims make a bee-line for the ranks of the unemployed, for which Flanders foots the bill. But the squabbles over power and which language group is financially propping up who, are ultimately of secondary importance.

The Brussels Journal ventures another interesting observation: "Belgium can continue to flourish without a national government for the simple reason that the cabinet doesn’t have to decide much anyway. Most authority has devolved to the regions […] The central government is left to deal with foreign policy, defense and finance policy – all issues that are increasingly taken care of at the EU level."

This accurately describes the transnationalist plan of operation: the national apparatus of state is very gradually stripped of authority and powers, to the point of becoming an empty shell. Once redundant, the 'regions' take over while foreign affairs, defence, and monetary policy is taken care of on the supranational level: curtains for the offensive nation state, hello to the nascent transnational entity consisting of multicultural regions.

The hypothesis is taking shape, that this project was started decades ago on a micro level, when villages, municipalities and town councils were stripped of their historical identity and began a process of re-structuring into administrative clusters under fantasy names that had no root in local history.

An example would be three villages - Oakborough, Bridgewick and Weathertown, administered by the new council of Goodchange (motto: "Change for Progress"). It is preferably well infiltrated by transies, professional key posts being manned by fifth columnists trained by the Common Purpose school of progressive thought. IngSoc exists ...

We'd like to hear your story, if such processes have taken place in your area. Belgium needs careful watching, it being the model for the transnational future.

Back to Brel, Sotheby's just announced an auction of a collection of memorabilia, manuscripts, records, and photos to be held at the Paris office on October 1st. We'll keep you posted.

Till then, enjoy an early performance by a very young Jacques Brel.

Wishing the neighbours all the strength and wisdom they need.



Related:

- "For Flanders"

Early Politically Correct Furniture: constructivism

Art Daily: "UEA Collection of Abstract and Constructivist Art Exhibit at Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts "

Constructed, the most extensive exhibition of the UEA Collection of Abstract and Constructivist Art, Architecture and Design, opened at the Sainsbury Centre. The collection, which was founded in 1968, features sculpture, painting, graphics and design, together with architectural models, stage sets and furniture. Works by David Bomberg, Marcel Breuer, Charles Eames, Le Corbusier and François Morellet will be amongst those on display.

- Caption: Rietveld chair -

The UEA collection began in response to the modernity of the University of East Anglia’s architecture. In 1968, UEA was one of England’s ‘New Universities’ with a bold concrete campus designed by architect Denys Lasdun to reflect the ambitious inter-disciplinary approach of the young institution. (...)

The earliest group of works in the exhibition date from between circa 1910 and 1930 and reflect the origins of a modern ‘movement’. Early exponents included artists and architects associated with the De Stijl Group such as Gerrit Rietveld and those associated with the Bauhaus in Germany such as Wassily Kandinsky.

Works in the 1910 - 1930 section of the show include a Le Corbusier chair and architectural model, a painting by Sonia Delaunay, the Pravda Tower model by the Vesnin brothers, Rietveld chairs, a charcoal drawing by David Bomberg and 2D works by Wassily Kandinsky and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy.

Artists began making work now described as ‘constructivist’ in the second decade of the twentieth century. The First World War and the creation of a new social order through the Revolution in Russia were instrumental in causing many artists to rethink how art and design shapes the way people live.

A visual language of order and clarity drew some inspiration from other abstract movements but more importantly, embraced the possibilities presented by rapid technological development and engaged with other disciplines such as mathematics, science and architecture. (...) >>>

Described here are the attempts by the Leftist movement to deconstruct Western civilization. Across the board they have been extremely successful. Hardly anything has retained its original meaning: the most favored rhetorical trick is the 'Orwellian' practice of changing definitions: 'true freedom through the state' and other such oxymorons.

This is related to the subjectivist, Kantian notion that thought creates reality: "art and design shapes the way people live." This is not just wishful thinking, it also objectively a mistake; but it does corrupt reality to a shocking extent.

The 'modern' movement is another misnomer suffering from a corrupted definition. In fact, the movement set in motion by subjectivism was anti-modern. Modernism itself stands for the values of the Enlightenment, which the anti-modernists sought to counter: reason, individual liberty, limited government and free trade. Today, we know them as Postmodernists. We often think of them as monolithically Leftist, but they have a closeted Rightist branche as well ...

Ode to the Collective: Totalitarian Temples

Art Daily: "Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed at Chicago Architecture Foundation"

‘Startling,’ and ‘idiosyncratic’ describe the architecture in the newest exhibition at the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) 224 S. Michigan Avenue. Free and open daily through October 3, Cosmic Communist Constructions Photographed consists of 48 photographs of Modernist buildings that were designed and built behind the iron curtain during the 1970s and 1980s.

A map of the building locations is also included in the exhibition. French photographer Frederic Chaubin documented the structures during a five-year period. The exhibition was originally produced by the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. (...) >>>

CCCP: During the course of his travels in the former Soviet Union, French photographer Frederic Chaubin documented an extensive collection of startling architectural artifacts built during the last two decades of the Cold War. The exhibition is a compendium of film stills, drawings, magazine articles, and historical timelines that maps out the complex genealogy of this overlooked but compelling chapter in the history of 20th century design. (...) >>>

Metropolis: the Pre-Dystopia of the Weimar Republic

Art Daily: "Lost Footage of "Metropolis" Film By Fritz Lang Is Found in Buenos Aires, Argentina"

The Pablo Ducrós Hicken Film Museum in Buenos Aires, Argentina has found in its archives a copy of the movie “Metropolis” directed in 1927 by Fritz Lang, with lost footage. The silent film was one of the most expensive ones (around $200 million dollars) and was cut heavily to make it more accessible. It was initially thought as a movie that would last two and a half hours. The footage that was found will add around 25 minutes to the film, but there will still be around five minutes missing. (...)

Metropolis is a science fiction film created by the Austrian-German director Fritz Lang. It was produced in Germany in the Babelsberg Studios and released in 1927. The screenplay was written in 1924 by Lang and his then wife, Thea von Harbou, and novelized by von Harbou in 1926.

It is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and examines a common science fiction theme of the day: the social crisis between workers and owners in capitalism. The film is set in the year 2026, in the extraordinary Gothic skyscrapers of a corporate city-state, the Metropolis of the title.

Society has been divided into two rigid groups: one of planners or thinkers, who live high above the earth in luxury, and another of workers who live underground toiling to sustain the lives of the privileged. The city is run by Johann 'Joh' Fredersen (Alfred Abel). >>>

IMDb has extensive documentation: slideshow, and 61 images.

The German interbellum, also known as the Weimar Republic, was initially dominated by Leftist revolutionary activities inspired by Russian Bolshevism. The terrified pragmatist 'third way' Governments of the time - which were characterized by ineffective compromizing and amoral pragmatism - thought they could cancel out Spartacist Leftist collectivist brutality by unleashing on it Rightist collectivist brutality, the Freicorps - remnants of the former Imperial paramilitaries.

A posting dated 8th February pictures the surrealism of the German Revolution that was the basis of German society at the time the film was produced, the chaos and decadence that shot the Hitler's National Socialist Workers Party to power just six years later.

The theme of the film is typical of the Marxist dialectic: the paranoid bipolar division of humanity in oppressors and oppressed, in this case the proletariat against a caste of city planners.

Objectivist author Leonard Peikoff in "The Ominous Parallels" has made a dramatic effort to collate the current cultural and political constellation with that of the Weimar Republic. He maps the underlying philosophical currents, which indeed partly overlap:

the peculiar paradox of relativist pragmatism with absolute dogmatism, and mystical subjectivism coupled with sexual permissiveness, all blanket-covered by the deeply ingrained sense of ethics in which individual sacrifice to the collective is the highest standard of human achievement. Pending ominous developments related to anti-human animal rights and its consequences for values, the parallel stops short at this moment in time.

The Impression of Fort Worth

Art Daily: Kimbell Opens The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago"

Some of the most celebrated and iconic works of the great Impressionist painters are on view at the Kimbell Art Museum (Fort Worth). The loan of about 90 paintings from Chicago’s world-renowned Impressionist collection is possible because of an ambitious reinstallation and expansion project at the Art Institute (...) Impressionist collection has never before left Chicago in such a large group, and it is being shown exclusively at the Kimbell.

The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago is a feast for the eyes more sumptuous than even the great Barnes Collection exhibition, seen at the Kimbell in 1994. It features masterpieces of painting by the world’s most beloved artists, including Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec—a succession of geniuses who, through a miracle of history, worked largely in the same country and within the span of a single lifetime. (...) >>>


- Caption: Gustave Caillebotte (1848-1894) - "Rainy Day" (1877) -

Glorious Grain from the Berlin Blockade: update

Art Daily: "Photographs of the Berlin Blockade in 1948-9 by Henry Ries Opens at the German Historical Museum"

The currency reform and subsequent blockade of West Berlin carried out by the Soviet Union was a key event which resulted in the partition of Berlin, Germany and Europe.

The division of the occupation zones into two separate economic and political systems had been becoming increasingly palpable since 1947. In 1949, this resulted in the foundation of the two German states and the GDR's closure of the interior borders, finally culminating in the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961.


In 2007, the German Historical Museum acquired the photographic legacy of Henry Ries, whose photographs of the Berlin Blockade and the reaction of the Western Powers, the Berlin Airlift, occupy an important place in his work. Henry Ries was born in Berlin in 1917. In 1937, Ries, who was Jewish, fled Germany for New York, where he embarked on his career as a photographer. In 1945, he returned to Europe as a soldier, where his first job was as a photojournalist for the OMGUS Observer. He went on to work (...) >>>

"On the initiative of the US military governor Lucius D. Clay the West-Berlin population was supplied by means of an airlift. With almost 200,000 flights, around 1.5 million tons of vital goods were transported to Berlin. A transport plane landed at one of the three West-Berlin airports every two or three minutes. In the popular German phrase the airplanes were called “raisin bombers”.

"In this way the Americans, British and French succeeded in safeguarding the basic supply of goods to the city. The airlift was a gigantic logistic undertaking that had begun with uncertain outcome and ended as a success story. On 12 May 1949 the Soviet Union rescinded the Berlin Blockade."

More about the Berlin Blockade can be found on History Research Guide. Check out the exhib's site at the German Historical Museum.

Update:

Juliette Ochieng on Pajamas Media has a comprehensive article on the subject which is especially interesting for those who have missed the details of the historical events. The title is interesting in itself. It alludes to Gail Halvorsen, the Candy Bomber who retired from the USAF at the rank of Colonel, who is now 87 and a revered figure in Germany. On a philosophical level the title illustrates the Kantian ethics with which the German people are saturated - a blessing as well as a curse - "‘Service Before Self’: Honoring the Berlin Airlift."

"(...) The Soviet ban of Allied land traffic in East Germany didn’t happen all at once; it started with simple harassment in March 1948 with the demand to inspect every train from the West and was brought into full effect by late June. At that point, the city was left with barely more that a month’s worth of subsistence and since the Western powers had never negotiated access rights to the three land routes to Berlin with the Soviets, there was nothing they could do about the ban. However, access to the three corresponding air lanes had been negotiated, making the West’s choice clear. They would supply the city by air, daring the Russians to break their agreement and shoot them down.

On June 26, 1948, the first two of many USAF cargo aircraft (C-47s and later C-54s and C-82s) made their way from Frankfurt Airport to Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin. The Royal Air Force followed suit the next day (...) During the 479-day effort, the deliveries had become so systematic that one aircraft touched down at Tempelhof every three minutes 24/7. (...)" Read it all >>>

Liberty Ditched for Sausages: boycott these cowards!

Last Friday Politeia reported that Jordan is seeking the extradition and prosecution of Dutch Freedom Party politician Geert Wilders on three counts:

- racism - incitement to hatred - insulting Muslims and Islam -

An Amman Court last Monday accepted the charges against Wilders on account of the short film "Fitna" pressed by a Jordanian group called "The Messenger of Allah Unites Us." "Fitna" outlines the dangers of radical Islam for democratic society. (Link to "Fitna")

Today we know which Dutch companies have 'distanced themselves' from Fitna. Politeia proposes a ban of its own against these companies which sell out democratic principles for sausages:

- Caption: "We WillNot Submit!" -

- Zwanenburg (Zwan sausages and luncheon meat)
- KLM (KLM-Air France-North West Airlines)
- Philips ("We make things better")
- Friesland Foods (dairy products:
- Friso (Nutricia, Olvarit, Nutrilon, Bambix dairy and baby foods)
- Milupa (Aptamil - we believe the latter two are all one and the same parent company Nutricia, now part of Danone)

The companies advertise their condemnation of Wilders' equation Islam=violence and distribute posters, stating that the film only serves to provoke.

President Zakaria Sheikh of "The Messenger of Allah Unites Us" is calling for the travel industry to ban KLM.

The publisher of weekly Fact International says the film has no relation with the freedom of expression. "Wilders has insulted all Muslims. He must be punished."

At the companies no one was available for comment, writes De Volkskrant. A KLM spokesman repeated an earlier statement that the airline is unrelated to political and religious movements and distances itself from this controversial film."

Post will be updated throughout.

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who
maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
Dante Alighieri
Italian national epic poet (1265 - 1321)

Of the Sacred, the Crude and the Ridiculous

Chiesa: "Christian Pop Art Takes the Stage in the Alps," by Sandro Magister - with a commentary by Timothy Verdon

The Sacred Mountain of Varallo is a triumph of "total art" at the service of the faith. Architects, sculptors, painters, scenographers, have reproduced the life of Jesus in 45 chapels on the mountain. After a period of neglect, the Church wants to restore their splendor.

An exceptional triduum concluded yesterday on the Sacred Mountain of Varallo, made up of conferences, exhibits, concerts, masses, pilgrimages, entitled: "Imago Veritatis. L'arte come via spirituale [Image of truth: art as spiritual path]."

While Pope Benedict XVI was visiting Brindisi and Santa Maria di Leuca, on the southern tip of Italy, facing the east – where, the story goes, the apostle Peter landed on his voyage to Rome – cardinal secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone went to Varallo, in the Alps in the northern part of the country. It is an unequivocal sign of the importance attributed to the event by the Vatican authorities.

In Varallo stands the first of the Sacred Mountains that dot northern Italy. It was created between the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. It was conceived by a Franciscan, Bernardino Caimi, who had been the guardian of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem. After the fall of Constantinople to Muslim domination, the pilgrimage to the Holy Land had become too dangerous. It was practically impossible. The response was to reproduce, in Italy, the routes and stations of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. For a pilgrimage that could be made without leaving the country. Many little Jerusalems were reproduced in scenographic form, for the devotion and edification of the faithful.

Varallo is the first of the Sacred Mountains, and the largest. From (...) >>>

"Christian art between liturgical rite and nature," by Timothy Verdon

The chapels in the middle of the woods of the Sacred Mountain of Varallo invite to reflection not only on the subjects that are represented – for the most part episodes from the Old and New Testament – but, in a broader way, on the role that architecture and art have in the history of Christian spirituality.

The paths up the mountain, the difficulty of the ascent, the arrival at chapels connected by galleries and arranged around piazzas: everything echoes biblical themes like the journey, the ascent, the city of God, while the Assumption of Mary and the basilica where the pilgrimage is completed evokes the universal aspiration for an otherworldly destination. (...) >>>

Audio Slideshow World War II Aerial Photographs

BBC: "Audio Slideshow: D-Day and Auschwitz from the air"

One of the world's largest collections of aerial photography is being moved from Keele to Edinburgh. More than 10 million military photographs are stored in The Aerial Reconnaissance Archives, or Tara. Most were taken by surveillance aircraft in World War II.

(...) military historian Ian Daglish, and retired Wing Commander Michael Mockford, explain the significance of just a few of the photographs from the war. >>>

- Caption: Omaha beach aerial view draws - Wikimedia

Esbjorn Svensson: thanks!

BBC: "Jazz champion Svensson dies at 44"

The Swedish jazz pianist and composer Esbjorn Svensson has died in a scuba diving accident near the Swedish capital Stockholm. He was 44.

His Esbjorn Svensson Trio, known as EST, became renowned for bringing jazz to a younger audience. (...)

"His music inspired people in all corners of the world." (...) >>>

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident

On America's Flag Day Europe honors the embodiment of the self-evident truths of Human Equality and Liberty. May your light shine for ever more ... from sea to shining sea ...! -



Hat Tip: Ironic Surrealism II

- Filed on Articles in "Americana" -

Raoul's Riots

You've got to love Raoul Dufy's (1877-1953) impressionist riots. All style from a great period in Modernism. From a private collection, on paper: "Two Bridges Over East River," New York city-scape under the hammer at Sotheby's London on 26th June. Estimate: 40,000—60,000 GBP.

Greek Drama Kings

Time for introducing Athens [perspective] for a daily dose of great photography and a view of every day life in one of the world's greatest capitals.

Found on Amalias Avenue right opposite Syntagma Square (Parliament) - the three great tragedians of classical Athens: Sophocles (of Oedipus and Antigone fame) , Euripides (known for his strong female characters) and Aeschylus (recognised as the founder or father of tragedy.

Every Greek loves a bit of melodrama. It's our collective inheritance. Thus the drama queen antics on the streets of Athens everyday. Explains the taxi drivers too. >>>

Prehistoric Drama

CNN: "Divers battled Komodo dragon before rescue"

Five Europeans rescued Saturday after an Indonesia diving trip went wrong had to fight off a Komodo dragon while they were waiting to be found, according to reports.

The group was found at Mantaolan, on the island of Rinca off the Komodo National Park, after going missing Thursday.


The divers -- three Britons, a Frenchman and a Swede -- spent two nights on the deserted island, which is home to the large Komodo dragon, before rangers found them Saturday.

Frenchman Laurent Pinel, 31, said the group had to fight off one dragon with rocks and scavenged for shellfish as they waited to be rescued, Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper reported. (...) >>>

The Pre-History of St Peter's and A Stereo View of Rome

Chiesa: "Pilgrims at the Tomb of Peter. As in Ancient Rome," by Sandro Magister

Ten meters beneath the Vatican basilica, it is possible to walk the same path that led to the tomb of the apostle, among rows of Roman tombs that have emerged, intact, from the excavations. The latest restoration was presented just a few days ago. A marvel of art, history, faith (...)

Almost all of the 22 tombs of the necropolis are pagan, with traces of oriental cults. The only completely Christian one is that of the Iulii family. Its vault boasts a marvelous mosaic depicting Christ as the Sun, in the manner of Apollo, ascending to heaven on a chariot drawn by white horses, holding the earth in his left hand. On the walls are images of the Good Shepherd, of Jonah being swallowed by the sea monster, and of a fisherman throwing into the waves a hook that one fish is swallowing while another swims away, a symbol of the souls that accept or reject salvation.

The most astonishing thing about this necropolis is that it is almost intact. Just as it was shortly before Constantine had it buried. In walking through it, one retraces the steps of the citizens of ancient Rome, but also those of the pilgrims who have come to pray at the tomb of the apostle Peter. The prehistory of the basilica of Saint Peter is in its bricks, its marble, it statues, its lettering, in the decorations of this ancient road that leads (...) >>>

Picture material is hard to come by, but we did unearth an old photo of the Tomb of St Peter in a great collection for the historically inclined: early photographs of Rome from the 1850s onward in World Stereo Views: original stereo pictures from places all over the world. Some sites do not even exist anymore, for example the old town of Rotterdam which was flattened in World War II. Originals can be ordered ... highly recommended viewing!

Helen of the Dung-Hill: a puzzle contest

Read the following article carefully. Spot the crap (all of it) and win this month's Golden Ari. Send in your findings before 5th June.
The Guardian/The Observer: "DNA explodes Greek myth about women," by Robin McKie, science editor - Hat Tip: Phantis

British researchers have unearthed evidence that proves Helen was much more than a chattel.

Women in Ancient Greece were major power brokers in their own right, researchers have discovered, and often played key roles in running affairs of state. Until now it was thought they were treated little better than servants.

The discovery is part of an investigation by Manchester researchers into the founders of Mycenae, Europe's first great city-state and capital of King Agamemnon's domains.

'It was thought that in those days women were rated as little more than chattels in Ancient Greece,' said Professor Terry Brown, of the faculty of life sciences at Manchester University. 'Our work now suggests that notion is wrong.'

- Caption: Helen of Troy, by Frederick Sandys -

Mycenae is one of the most important and evocative archaeological sites in Europe. According to legend, Agamemnon led his armies from Mycenae to Troy to bring back Helen - the wife of his ally, Menelaus - who had run off with the Trojan prince Paris.

The citadel was first excavated in the 1870s by Heinrich Schliemann, who uncovered tombs containing crumbling bones draped with jewels and gold face masks. 'I have discovered the graves of Agamemnon, Eurymedon, and their companions, all slain at a banquet by Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthos,' he told the King of Greece.

In fact, the graves have since been dated and shown to be too old for those of Agamemnon. Nevertheless, Mycenae has since proved to be a treasure trove of archaeological riches. Most recently, these have involved scientists using a range of new techniques, including facial reconstruction work carried out by Manchester researchers John Prag and Richard Neave. They recreated the faces of seven individuals whose skeletons had been excavated at a circle of graves inside the citadel.

The images provided scientists with a family picture album for the rulers of Europe's first great city-state. However, genetics experts have now taken this work a stage further by attempting to extract DNA from 22 of the 35 bodies found in the grave circle. 'The facial reconstructions were carried out 10 years ago, but it is only now that scientists have developed sensitive enough techniques to get DNA from skeletons as old as these,' said Brown. 'In each case we had to deal with a single cell's worth of DNA.'

The genetic material isolated by the scientists is known as mitochondrial DNA, which humans inherit exclusively from their mothers. However, of the 22 skeletons that were tested, only four produced enough DNA for full analysis. Nevertheless, findings from these provided a shock for the team from Manchester.

While two of the males had DNA that indicated they were unrelated, the genetic material extracted from the remaining pair, a man and a woman, revealed they were brother and sister. They had been thought to have been man and wife.

'To be precise our DNA evidence suggests the pair were closely related, possibly siblings or possibly cousins. However, the facial reconstruction work of Prag and Neave also shows they were very similar in appearance which indicates they were brother and sister,' said Brown.

The critical point, he said, was that the woman was thought to have been buried in a richly endowed grave because she was the wife of a powerful man. That was in keeping with previous ideas about Ancient Greece - that women had little power and could only exert influence through their husbands.

'But this discovery shows both the man and the woman were of equal status and had equal power,' he said. 'Women in Ancient Greece held positions of power by right of birth, it now appears.

'The problem has been that up until recently our interpretation of life in Ancient Greece has been the work of a previous generations of archaeologists, then a male-oriented profession and who interpreted their findings in a male-oriented way. That is changing now and women in Ancient Greece are being seen in a new light.' >>>

And while we are at it, we might as well distill the irrational hogwash from this piece of postmodern 'science' reporting as well. Take the weekend too. Good for another Golden Ari.

Yahoo!News: "Key to All Optical Illusions Discovered" and "Cool Optical Illusions"