Oh What A Time... - #30 Discoveries (Part 2)

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed from yesterday! Get the shovel and the pastry brush, because this week we’re unearthing some of history’s greatest discoveries! The magnificent ancient bronze statues that have been found in Rome, the incredible story of Sutton Hoo, the marvel that is the Rosetta Stone and what a tough nut it was to crack; and the OWAT: Full Timers this week will get the proof that the Vikings made it to North America in our bonus part. Are there any historical discoveries that you’ve made that could possibly be on a par with Tom’s revelation that Oreos, milk and salt and vinegar crisps in your mouth at the same time is a taste sensation? Please let us know about that or anything else by emailing: [e-mail] If you want both parts in one piece with the bonus bit of history, why not become an Oh What A Time: FULL TIMER? In exchange for your £4.99 to support the show, you'll get: - the 4th part of every episode and ad-free listening - episodes a week ahead of everyone else - a bonus episode every month - And first dibs on any live show tickets Subscriptions are available via AnotherSlice, Apple and Spotify. For all the links head to: ohwhatatime.com You can follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepod And Instagram at @ohwhatatimepod Aaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice? Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk). We'll see you next week! Chris, Elis and Tom x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Eligibility and member terms apply. Looking for a collaborator for your career? A strong ally to support your next level success? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. Hello and welcome to part two of Discoveries. Part one was yesterday. Let's just crack on with the show.

Right, okay, I'm taking you back. It's the 15th of July, 1799. And a group of French soldiers, part of Napoleon's invading army, they accidentally uncover this large carved stone that crucially has got three languages carved into it. And as they were digging for the foundations for an extension to their fort at the Egyptian town of Rashid, better known in English as Rosetta. Okay, so a lot of you obviously will have guessed what I'm about to talk about. Extension to their fort.

We think like side return, what we're thinking. Yeah, yeah, it was a conservatory actually. No, that's nice. Okay, that's good. You have a barbecue in the garden and then in the summer you move inside, but it's still kind of half inside, half outside. It's just nice, isn't it? It's a way of bringing the garden inside

I've said yeah that's how people yeah but I actually to be honest I find them quite miserable

in the winter when it's raining okay never mind that's why I haven't got one anyway now the store had been built into an ancient wall

which the soldiers had dug out of the sand now the officer commanding was a man called Pierre-Francois Bouchard who was about 28 and he was a member of the engineering corps and he realised quite quickly that this was a potentially valuable discovery. So he ordered his men to excavate what had been found. Now Napoleon had previously given orders to seize any artefacts for France. So the discovery of the Rosetta Stone

as it's now known or La Pierre de Rosette as the French called it, was first published in a Courier de l'Egypte which was a sort of propaganda newspaper published by Napoleon's army during its occupation of Egypt. And... Interesting. The whole point of the Courier was that

it publicised scientific and archaeological discoveries that were made, right? Now, the stone contained one section that was in Greek. A translation of a part of its contents could quite easily be made. And the detail from that summary was fairly boring, right? It noted that Ptolemy IV, who reigned in the 3rd century BC, had ordered all of the canals to be reopened. So, like, OK, well, that's fine.

The thing is, people thought it was quite boring. I think any information from that long ago is quite interesting. Yeah, absolutely. I completely agree. It's a bit like, if I found, I never kept a diary when I was a kid. If I found a diary entry from when I was like eight, even if it was really dull, the dullness actually, I would find quite charming.

So you're like, all right, it's a bit of admin. He's reopening canals. That's fine. You're right, though. I'd be a bit hurt, I think, if I chiselled something into the rock and then thousands of people found it and went, that's a bit dull.

Boring. Boring. Tom was it. What are they expecting? Sort of gossip You'll never guess who's Who's just been seen out with Yeah like a Hello Magazine

Carved into a story This is the thing about history Like when you go back a thousand years Or any length of time really You end up talking about the emperors The kings, the leaders And actually the mundanity of the admin is something that gets overlooked. And that's what's so interesting about the Rosetta Stone, I think.

But it was recognised that the stone might at last lead to the translation of hieroglyphs. Interesting. And this could provide the key. So in 1801, the Rosetta Stone was surrendered to the British, who successfully removed the French from Egypt, and the object was transferred to London, where it was surrendered to the British who successfully removed the French from Egypt and the object was transferred to London where it was placed in the British Museum with plaster casts produced for the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Dublin so they could all have a go of it. So French scholars they were able to make use of lithographic copies of the

inscriptions housed at the Institut de France in Paris. And they were made when the stone was still in French possession in Egypt. So two years later, in 1803, the full translation of the Greek text was published. And this I find really interesting. This then sparked a race to discover the meaning of the hieroglyphs themselves. Because they were thinking, if we can provide a link between the Greek and the Egyptian, then at last, this ancient world, which has fascinated but also flummoxed academics for centuries, they'll be able to enter it through its writing.

So now a lot of people got involved because they thought, we've got it, we just need to work it out. So numerous individuals were involved in trying to discover what the links were and whether a translation was possible. So a Swedish diplomat called Johan Ackleblad, he identified the other language on the stone as Demotic and not Syriac, which is what they thought it was. That's what the Courier had said it was.

But in the end, it came down to two. Thomas Young was an Englishman and Jean-Francois Champollion, who was a Frenchman. Now this I found fascinating. Despite the hostilities between Britain and France at the time because of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, initially, Young and Champollion were friendly. They were sharing ideas and they were sharing notes.

But as they honed their approach to translation, this relationship began to sour. So Young made a breakthrough in the mid-1810s, recognising that proper names were housed in cartouches present in the hieroglyphic inscription. So this led him to work out that the Greek telemios, or telemi, had been transliterated phonetically into characters representing P-T-O-L-M-E-S, although his solution wasn't quite correct. And also the grammar, that still confused him, right?

He just couldn't work out the relationship of, you know, between the grammar and the words. Now Champollion, he was working in a similar way, but he was identifying proper names and establishing the characters used in their transliteration. So in contrast with Young, he worked out that each hieroglyph represented a separate and individual character. So, for instance, he was working out that some stuff that Young thought was fairly inessential was actually really, really significant. So from this, he created a phonetic alphabet.

Wow, that's incredible but it was such an enormous intellectual effort when when he worked out the puzzle when he at last resolved it he shouted out i've done it and then he fell into a faint that lasted for days days. Wow. Now, there have been times, right? What is that about? Now, Tom and I work together on a programme called Fancy Football League, right? So I present it and Tom is the lead writer

so we're in a writer's room and occasionally we know we want to write a sketch or a joke about a certain thing or a certain footballer but it's a bit like when you're doing a cryptic crossword and you can't quite work out the answer. So we're searching for a punchline and Tom,

because he's so talented, it's like five to five. I've got it! And then he'll faint. We'll have to put him into a taxi and just say, take him home because... Get the smelling salts out. Yeah, yeah. He went to such effort writing that punchline. He could be out of action

for days now. I one Christmas, when I was about 15, I got a Rubik's Cube and I worked on doing it on Christmas afternoon for so long. It must have been like two hours. And when I finally finished it, I got

the worst headache I've ever got in my entire life and I had to go to bed and I was like ruining Christmas Day it was like two hours of Christmas Day

after that I didn't come down again until like eight o'clock I just was such a terrible headache after cracking the Rubik's Cube A Rubik's Cube based migraine

yeah exactly yeah that's incredible that's amazing I remember I'm not looking to compare myself to a man who's who's cracked the

phonetic alphabet of hieroglyphics but all i'm saying is we both achieve things we've all done that's amazing i've completed a ruby's cube on a similar note i think it was christmas 94 or 95 when the game boy came out oh yeah i sat playing tetris from 6 a.m till about till bedtime whatever that would have been, 8pm. And I went up and went into bed and closed my eyes. And I'm not joking, Tetris bricks started coming down like closed eyes. And I couldn't stop playing.

Even when I was closing my eyes, I played it for so long. Couldn't stop playing. I was playing it in my mind. Is that your superpower, that you're able to close your eyes and play Tetris? So your superpower is you've got Tetris on your eyelids. You've got Tetris eyes? That's

incredible. Wow. But that guy must have gone insane trying to solve hieroglyphics. The thing with a cryptic crossword, I don't do that, my brain doesn't work it that way, but occasionally I have given them a go.

If you wait 24 hours, the answers are in tomorrow's paper. Yeah. With this guy. He'd have worked all day, gone to bed, and his housemate or his wife would have said, you're right, and he'd be like, not really. It's so complicated. How long was he out for? Well, after he fainted, days.

Days. Well, fair play to him. Now, between 1822 and his death in 1832, at the age of just 42, I should add, Champollion used various inscriptions and texts to establish a grammar and a dictionary of ancient Egyptian, both of which were published after his death in 1836 and 1841, respectively. Now, not only had he discovered the meaning of hieroglyphs,

which is absolutely huge. Yeah. He'd also enabled scholars to determine how ancient Egyptian writing had evolved from its hieratic form into its demotic script and how to read documents from different periods. So, I mean, if you study ancient Egypt, you've got so much to thank him for. He's unlocked it.

Now, I love this. He's unlocked it. Now, I love this. The satisfaction, by the way, as you're approaching the end of your life, thinking, no matter what happens, as I depart this earth, I will forever be the guy who cracked hieroglyphs. Yeah, yeah. I've given that to the world. I bloody finished that Rubik's Cube, and it took me

absolutely ages, but I got there. Regret nothing. Now now there were sour grapes from British scholars which I find hilarious because in the age of imperial competition they couldn't believe they'd been beaten by a Frenchman they were like

what? a Frenchman? so for years afterwards it was thought Champollion had either stolen the work of thomas young which was an argument young encouraged before his own death in 1829 come on mate or had simply made up his discoveries so sir george lewis was a liberal politician eaten and oxford educated he refused to believe that the puzzle of hieroglyphs had been cracked he kept saying listen it's just impossible. There's no way a Frenchman could have done it.

But in 1866, the discovery of the Trilingual Decree of Canopus at Tannis, which could be read using Champollion's methods, proved that the Frenchman had been right after all, and he is now credited with the discovery of how to read ancient Egyptian. I'm just impressed at his ability to keep going. Yeah. Because there must have been times when he would have thought, I'm not getting anywhere with this.

And that must be so demoralising. Absolutely. But then if you've got a mind which is set and has that you know, that need to crack puzzles, that logic, that sort of thing, it's completely counter to the way my mind works. Yeah, yeah. So I would absolutely give up immediately. But I completely get if you are of that leaning,

that that need to work it out would remain. Imagine tinkering with it and then every now and then, like when Izzy was on the toilet thinking, I'll give it another go. And then after a couple of minutes, you're like, no, I can't do it. It's fine. Like when you leave a puzzle on the table after Christmas for a couple of weeks,

and you'll go, I'll stick another piece in. Yeah, it's January the 6th. I'll give Solitaire one more go. If I can just find the corner pieces and some flat edges, then we could be onto something. Also, I reckon you'd have had people offering really bad advice. Yeah.

Well, I don't know. Have you worked out what A is yet? No. Right, have you worked out what B is yet? No. Have you worked out what... Listen... They don't conform to our alphabet.

It doesn't really work. Yeah. They may not even be an A. There probably isn't an A. Please, Mum, leave it. Leave it. Breaking news coming in from Bet365, where every nail-biting overtime win,

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It was too hot. It was far too hot when I went. That's what my mum and dad said when they went. Too hot. Yeah. Did you see the Colosseum? It was very hot. That's hot when I went. That's what my mum and dad said when they went. Too hot. Yeah. Did you see the Coliseum? It was very hot. That's not what I asked. I went to Rome, did all the touristy stuff.

A few things happened. Firstly, went to the Coliseum, had a tour guide who looked like Arnold from Hey Arnold. He's obviously like a failed actor or something and he was doing this. And his cadence was this. Okay, here's where the gladiators go. They would come down here, get changed,

and they'd come up with their feather boas on. That's a joke. And they would come up here and they'd battle the lions and the Christians would die. Some would escape. That's a joke. And if we go over, like... I was like, well, hang on.

That's useful. I didn't know you were allowed to do that my life as a stand-up would be so much easier if only I'd known that trick

it was rapid fire how can they do that at Westminster Abbey so that that is where that is where Queen Victoria is buried

and that is where Bluey the the cartoon character, is buried. That's a joke. The cadence was machine gun fire. And you're having to pick through it to figure out, hang on, is that going to be a joke? Or did that actually happen? That's a joke. That's a joke.

And over here is where... That is where the gladiators used to eat their snickers and mars bars before that's a joke it could just be 12 it's quite a clever way to cover yourself if you're not really entirely sure about many of the facts he's sort of done a he knows a bit about the coliseum yeah if you always say that's a joke after everything then nobody can really sort of you know whore you over the coals i admire that that's a joke after everything, then nobody can really sort of, you know, haul you over the coals for anything. I admire that. That's a joke.

Yeah, exactly. And then there was a couple of us. We went to a restaurant in the evening and the restaurateur came up to us and said, hey guys, do you like live music? And we all went, oh, we just love a chat. Is that a joke? And then there was like an archway,

like a brick archway right next to the table. And then he went, oh, and walked off. And a man with a guitar stood at the top of our table for the next two hours playing guitar, like right next to our faces. Yeah. Wow. That's annoying. Yeah. But the other thing.

Noisy pasta. The main thing about Rome, which I found absolutely mad, is there's just so much history everywhere. We're just walking through random streets and it's like, you saw the palace where Julius Caesar was assassinated. That's there. You could just walk past, you'd just walk right around. If that was London, it would be a super drunk. In a weird way, it's kind of amazing that Rome has persisted as a city

because you think, there's so much here you shouldn't really be allowed to touch. It's kind of amazing. Yes, yeah, yeah. But in the 1880s, when Rome was undergoing this kind of construction boom, of course, people were finding stuff everywhere all the time. And on Saturday the 7th of February, 1885, workers were busy preparing land on the south face of the Quirinal Hill for the construction of the National Theatre. They were tidying away some rubbish, just tidying up slightly, and they caught a part of a bronze

statue. The site foreman insisted that the discovery be kept secret, removing what had been found to a place of greater safety so that government officials could meet at the site the following day and decide what to do. Do you know what struck me about these discoveries? at the site the following day and decide what to do. Do you know what struck me about these discoveries? The person who makes the discovery, their initial decision is so important. Yes, yeah.

Because if they think, oh, it's far, fuck it, it's just, you know, it can't be that important, and then they break it or they bury it or they carry on as normal, then you could be destroying a historical study for the next, well, forever. Yeah. But if you've got someone who's a bit savvy and goes, hang on, to me that looks significant, that then completely changes the game.

So you're relying on being sensible and being on. Do you know what I thought with all this, which will have definitely happened? Someone has made an incredible discovery and not told anyone. Of course. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like, that must have happened.

Yeah. Anyway, so back to the Quirinal Hill. What to do with the statue? So the statue they'd found was a two-metre-high statue of an athlete, which is now known as the Hellenistic Prince. And, yes, he has his knob out. A lot of these bronze statues that they're discovering, they've all got knobs out. Now

it's just weird to my modern eye. You don't get too many statues now do you with knob out? I just find it, why was it everywhere? Why was every statue knob out? Was everyone, no one was naked, were they?

I know that hands are hard to sort of draw. Is it really hard to sculpt pants? I don't know what the, is it famously a really tricky thing to chisel? Genuinely question. But, you know, no one, everyone was walking around with pants on. It's not an authentic replication of what people were actually doing.

So why, what's the deal? Well, there's a chance on it's not that it's not an authentic replication of what people were actually doing so why that why what's the deal well there's a chance that when the statues were initially displayed in ancient rome that they also had robes on they had clothes that were just draped over so it was purely for if someone wanted to dress them and add like a mannequin in a shop window and they dress them in clothes and then as they fell to the sands of time, those clothes have fallen away to reveal the brutal truth. That's a very funny idea. Because in the same way that there's a statue of Nijbeven in Cardiff

on Queen Street, and every Saturday night, someone puts a coat on his head. The NHS gets a coat put on his And every Saturday night, someone puts a coat on his head. The founder of the NHS gets a coat put on his head every Saturday night. And then on Sunday morning, someone from the council takes it off. Like every statue in Rome, 2,000 years ago,

had a pair of Bermuda shorts on. But they have perished in time. Same as the traffic cone will have expired in 2,000 years. Exactly. Anyway, a month after Hellenistic prints was discovered, a month later, a second discovery was made, and in similar circumstances.

This time, experts were summoned immediately so they could present the statue as it was, quite literally unearthed. A photographer joined them, producing an image that showed the discovery in a context of mud and the ladders and space basically where it's found in the context of modern building work so this is the first hand account what i'm going to read to you now from one of those present that afternoon for the second discovery uh this is from a then resident in rome an art critic novelist poet and journalist her

name is anne hampton brewster a descendant of William Brewster was one of those who sailed to America aboard the Mayflower and Miss Brewster penned her account for the San Francisco Chronicle one of the newspapers to whom she sold stories in the period her this appeared on the 3rd of May 1885 upon first seeing the Hellenistic prince while we were on our way to the place where the Hellenistic Prince is deposited, news came through that another bronze statue had been found a few moments before near the very same spot. Wow. And they're finding statues one after the other. She raced off accompanied by an archaeologist called Rodolfo Lanciani. It is impossible, Brewster wrote, to describe the emotion the discovery caused to all present. She watched as laborers guards contractors builders

and archaeologists all became excited and as full as joy as lanciani and my humble self she wrote in a notebook she recorded her observations i sat down on a stone and watched the men lift the earth carefully away from the precious bronze lanciani the archaeologist also wrote i have witnessed in my long career many discoveries but i have never felt such an extraordinary impression as the one created by the sight of this magnificent specimen of a semi-barbaric athlete slowly coming out of the ground as if awakening from a long repose after his gallant fights. So the statue is called the Boxer at Rest,

and it depicts a kind of gladiator, they think, shortly after a fight, maybe resting in a dressing room with his hands bandaged. And it is incredible. This is how Brewster described the statue. She says, reposing after combat and waiting to re-enter the arena. His head turned to the right. He seemed to be listening to someone or watching a combat. His elbows rested on his legs.

The hands were folded over one another. The hands and forearms had on them costas, thongs or bands of leather, So they discovered multiple statues, one after the other. And what they now know about these statues was that they were quite carefully buried at the time. Interesting. They weren't kind of like found under rubble. They think they were buried with real care and attention in the hope that hundreds of years later they would be found. That's incredible.

I didn't know that. I'm looking at it now. The Boxer at Rest is unbelievable. It's extraordinary. It's haunting almost, isn't it? it yeah it's a haunting quality to it that is laid for hundreds thousands of years under the soil in rome waiting to be discovered i think there is something particular about art that is discovered from ancient times and especially statues i went to the british museum a month ago and there's this

tiny little bronze age statue and you could see in it the little markings where it's been chiseled or cut or whatever whatever skill the artist would have used at the time and i'm always fascinated by that those those little marks it's thousands of years ago, someone would have, or hundreds, whatever the piece is, the care, the time, you can still see that now. But that someone would have been sat there slowly working and forming this piece for, you know, I just find it really just moving, the care and the love that throughout the centuries you can still see it now. And you realise that to create is a very human impulse and a very human instinct. Exactly. And people have always wanted to do it in the same way that, you know,

in 2,000 years' time people go, I don't know, there's just something about history podcasts from the 2020s. I just find it very moving moving the idea that three friends who've got other stuff on actually could just every week at 8am get their girlfriends or wives to do the school run. They could just talk about Sutton Hoo for a bit. But what's great is because the subject is history, it's still relevant today and we can still enjoy it.

It still makes sense. It's not bedded in 2024. They're talking about stuff that's still enjoy it. It still makes sense. It's not bedded in 2024. They're talking about stuff that's still history today. This reminds me of a bit of Stuart Lee's stand-up in which he says that he lives in Hackney. In Hackney, there are many, many chicken shops. And he worries that in 2,000 years, historians will try to dig up Hackney

and just find millions of chicken carcasses and assume that this was the place of an ancient chicken battle between two rival chicken tribes. All right, that's it for Discoveries. Thank you for listening. Actually, if you want to make one more discovery, you could discover the fourth part to this episode, which is on ancient travelers to

newfoundland have i got that right tom yes it is on proof that the vikings made it all the way to north america finally proof that the sagas were correct there you go if you want to get that bit you can just if you're listening on apple you can just go on the show and you see subscribe you can click that button and subscribe that way you can also go to another slice.com forward slash oh what a time and get a subscription to listen on any podcast app you want and then there's also spotify if you want all the options though head to oh what a time.com and support the show thank you so much for listening we'll see you next week thanks Thanks so much, guys. Bye. Thank you.