JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

“The Assassin Cult, a name that may be derived from the Arabic “hashashin,” meaning hashish user, is surrounded in mystery and legend. This is in part because they were secretive, but also because the historical record we have of their activities is written from many different and conflicting perspectives. One of the best known of these, and probably least accurate, is that of Marco Polo. He is supposed to have visited Alamut in 1273, seventeen years after it was destroyed by the Mongols. The Mongols, under Hulagu Khan, grandson of Genghis, had proceeded from Alamut to sack Baghdad in 1258 and Damascus in 1260.”

Iran’s Castle of the Assassins in the National Geographic. I first heard of the hashashin in Terry Jones’ series The Crusades.

A group claiming descent from the Knights Templar is suing Benedict XVI for 100 billion euro. They claim that when Clement V dissolved the order in 1307, the church seized over 9,000 properties including real estate, mills, and businesses. The Templars were a secret society of warrior-monks founded after the First Crusade to protect pilgrims en route to Jerusalem. They became spectacularly wealthy, financed wars, and incurred the ire of powerful enemies who tried them on charges of heresy, devil worship and sodomy. Many Templars, including their Grand Master, were burned at the stake.

“The legal move by the Spanish group comes follows the unprecedented step by the Vatican towards the rehabilitation of the group when last October it released copies of parchments recording the trials of the Knights between 1307 and 1312. The papers lay hidden for more than three centuries having been “misfiled” within papal archives until they were discovered by an academic in 2001. The Chinon parchment revealed that, contrary to historic belief, Clement V had declared the Templars were not heretics but disbanded the order anyway to maintain peace with their accuser, King Philip IV of France.”

Experts have dismissed the lawsuit as cuckoo. If it prospers, does it mean we can sue the Catholic Church for seizing vast tracts of land in the Philippines during the Spanish colonial period? 

“Lying to the northwest of ancient Herculaneum, this sumptuous seaside mansion was buried beneath 30m of petrified volcanic mud during the catastrophic eruption of Mt Vesuvius on August 24, AD79. Antiquities hunters in the mid-18th century sunk shafts and dug tunnels around Herculaneum and found the villa, surfacing with a magnificent booty of bronzes and marbles. Most of these, including a svelte seated Hermes modelled in the manner of Lyssipus, now grace the National Archeological Museum in Naples.

“The excavators also found what they took to be chunks of coal deep inside the villa, and set them alight to illuminate their passage underground. Only when they noticed how many torches had solidified around an umbilicus — a core of wood or bone to which the roll was attached — did the true nature of the find become apparent. Here was a trove of ancient texts, carbonised by the heat surge of the eruption. About 1800 were eventually retrieved. . .”

The library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, in The Australian. Via 3Quarks.

Reading the Old Testament as a child gave me my interest in ancient civilizations, as well as some of my favorite verbs (smite, slay, cleave). I could still drop everything to be an archaeologist, but for now I am content to read about antiquities. In the bargains table at National Bookstore I found The Medici Conspiracy: The Illicit Journey of Looted Antiquities, From Italy’s Tomb Raiders to the World’s Greatest Museums (Clearly, they want you to know what you’re getting) by Peter Watson and Cecilia Todeschini, hardcover, P175. The book traces how priceless artifacts stolen from graves, churches, and small town museums have made their way to the world’s major museums and to million-dollar auctions at Sotheby’s.

Watson, a British journalist, starts with a 6th century krater—a large, two-handled bowl—painted by Euphronius, who is to vases what Michelangelo is to ceilings and Bernini to statues. The krater was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of New York in 1972 for a million dollars—the first time a million dollars had ever been paid for an antiquity. From the start the museum was very cagey about the provenance of the object—an assistant curator who opposed the purchase because he believed it was looted was fired, but reinstated. Turns out that it was looted, and the museum knew that it was probably looted, but they wanted it badly. The Medici of the title is a powerful antiquities dealer who at the time of publication was standing trial for conspiracy, smuggling, failing to report and receiving illicit material. (He is not related to the Florentine nobles of the Renaissance. ) The authors follow the Italian Carabinieri Art Squad on the trail of stolen treasure and detail the routine deceptions of curators, auctioneers, and collectors who drive the trade in stolen antiquities.

Apart from the huge benefits of scoring famous objects for their collections, the errant museum officers probably thought, Hey, most of the stuff in the world’s greatest museums was looted anyway. The Venetians brought home shiploads of treasure from Constantinople, and Napoleon’s legions carted back tons of artifacts from Egypt. But that was in the past; today museums are bound by rules. Or should be. Recently the British returned the Elgin Marbles to Greece. No, wait, they didn’t.