M.J. Rose

Happy Halloween to our dear Museum-goers!

From news.com.au,

Mummified cats, ‘witch marks’ and children’s boots in your walls: The secret objects and hidden magic symbols used to trap evil spirits

by Candace Sutton

“IT STARTED off with the discovery of an old shoe and a lace collar hidden in the dark recesses of an 1830s house in one of the oldest parts of Sydney.
Next it was a tradesman’s boot in a chimney breast of a country house in the NSW town of Mudgee.

Soon Ian Evans was finding mummified cats, children’s shoes and anti-witch symbols known as hexafoils and merels, and ritually burnt marks hidden on and in the walls of homes and other buildings around Australia.

The Newcastle University historian knew he was on to a great hidden secret about an unspoken but widespread ritual of magic in Australia that has no recorded history.

But it was all confirmed by the spine tingling moment he was called to an isolated Tasmanian farmhouse where five members of the same family had died in a month in 1860, and the family had concealed 38 shoes, children’s toys and dolls clothes in the building’s voids.

“They were absolutely terrified,” Dr Evans said.

All the houses had been built before 1935 and secret marks and “ritual magic” objects were part of a terrible secret held by early Australian settlers.

They were deliberately concealed under floorboards, in roofs and the voids of houses by a population gripped with a fear that there was an underworld of evil spirits bringing death and destruction into their lives.

As part of a story which Dr Evans believes has its roots in medieval times, the objects were hidden and the symbols inscribed to decoy witches and devils….”

For the rest, click here.

All that glitters…

From smithsonian.com,

Gold Rings Found in Warrior’s Tomb Connect Two Ancient Greek Cultures

By Jason Daley

Analysis of four gold rings and some 2,000 other recently uncovered objects points to the exchange of ideas and goods between two ancient peoples

“The Minoan Civilization flourished on the Island of Crete from around 2600 B.C. to 1200 B.C., building the foundation for classical Greek culture. The ancient Greece of ancient Greece, if you will, the people developed religious concepts, art and architecture that would go on to influence the whole of Western civilization. But their reign was believed to fall when the Mycenaean civilization, which developed on the Peloponnese Peninsula (and gave rise to the heroes of The Iliad), plundered the Minoans and absorbed some aspects of their civilization into their own culture.

But the grave of a Mycenaean warrior uncovered last year in Pylos in the southwest of Greece may tell a different tale, reports Nicholas Wade at The New York Times. In May 2015, archaeologists Shari Stocker and Jack Davis from the University of Cincinnati uncovered the pristine warrior’s grave near the Palace of Nestor in Pylos. The body was that of a warrior in his mid-30s who died around 1500 B.C., Rachel Richardson writes for UC Magazine. Buried with him were some 2,000 objects, including silver cups, beads made of precious stones, ivory combs, a sword and four intricately decorated solid gold rings…”

Read the rest here.

Something to stare at in awe for a while…

From cairoscene.com,

9 of the Rarest Photos Ever Taken of Ancient Egypt

The photographs, which are part of a rare card collection titled “Égyptie, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie”, are valued at over $20,000 by Antiquarian Auctions…

See them all here.