Friday, September 21, 2012

A Re-evaluation of Carthiginian Baby Cemetery

Ancient Baby Graveyard Not for Child Sacrifice, Scientists Say

Date: 19 September 2012 Time: 07:03 AM ET
A

Carthaginian burial site was not for child sacrifice but was instead a graveyard for babies and fetuses, researchers now say. 

A new study of the ancient North African site offers the latest volley in a debate over the primary purpose of the graveyard, long thought to be a place of sacred sacrifice.

"It's all very great, cinematic stuff, but whether that was a constant daily activity ― I think our analysis contradicts that," said study co-author Jeffrey Schwartz of the University of Pittsburgh.

The city-state of Carthage was founded in the ninth century B.C., when Queen Dido fled Phoenicia (along the eastern Mediterranean shore) for what is now Tunis, Tunisia. The empire became a powerhouse of the ancient world and fought several wars against the Romans.

When archaeologists began excavating the ancient civilization last century, they found urns with the cremated remains of thousands of babies, young goats and lambs at a graveyard called the Tophet, which had been used from 700 to 300 B.C. At its peak, the Tophet may have been bigger than a football field and had nine levels of burials.

Based on historical accounts, scientists believed Carthaginians sacrificed children at the Tophet before burying them there. For instance, the Bible describes child sacrifice to the deity Baal, worshipped by a civilization in Carthage. A Greek and a Roman historian both recount gory tales from this time period in which of priests slit the throats of babies and tossed them into fiery pits, Schwartz said.

However, those accounts came from Carthage's enemies. "Some of this might have been anti-Carthaginian propaganda," Schwartz told LiveScience.

In 2010 Schwartz and his colleagues used dental remains from 540 individuals to argue that the site was not primarily for ritual child slaughter, and they reiterate that stance in this month's issue of the journal Antiquity. In the new article, the researchers cite several older studies to validate their methods for estimating infant ages from tooth fragments.

The team argues that many tooth fragments found at the Tophet were actually developing tooth buds from the jaws of fetuses and stillborn babies who could not have been live sacrifices. As evidence, they showed that half of the teeth lacked a sign of birth called the neonatal line. The stress of birth temporarily halts tooth development in newborns, creating a tiny, dark line in their tooth buds; however, the line doesn't form until a week or two after birth.

Other researchers still believe the Tophet was a place for sacred killing.

"This is not a regular cemetery; the age distribution suggests they were sacrificing infants at the age of 1 month," said Patricia Smith, an anthropologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Smith's team published a 2011 paper questioning Schwartz's dental analysis. [Hmmm, well, consider the source of this criticism...]  The incredible heat and pressure generated during cremation usually erase the neonatal line, she said, so its absence isn't a reliable measure of age. Schwartz's team miscalculated how much teeth shrink in cremation, leading to an underestimate of infant ages, Smith argued.

Smith also doubts Carthage would have routinely cremated stillbirths or infants. Because of sky-high infant mortality rates, babies were probably not considered people until they were at least 1 or 2 years old. The Carthaginians chopped down most of their trees to plant crops and wouldn't have used the precious wood to burn babies, she said.

"The Carthaginians were seafarers [so, they wouldn't bring wood home them, on their trading/raiding missions?]; they needed wood for ships [they never stole ships from others???], they needed wood for cloth [wood for cloth?  They didn't trade for cloth, wool, flax?], they needed wood for their tools," she said.

2012 FIDE Women's Grand Prix - Ankara

Standings after R5:

RankSNo.NameRtgFED123456789101112PtsRes.SB
18GMKONERU HUMPY2593IND*½½111407,25
22GMMUZYCHUK ANNA2606SLO*½½111406,00
310WGMRUAN LUFEI2492CHN*½1½11405,00
49GMCMILYTE VIKTORIJA2520LTU½*101106,50
56GMZHAO XUE2549CHN½½0*11308,00
611WGMJU WENJUN2528CHN½0*11½304,75
71IMMUNGUNTUUL BATKHUYAG2434MGL½*½½½1304,50
85WGMYILDIZ BETUL CEMRE2341TUR0010½*05,00
912GMKOSINTSEVA TATIANA2524RUS00½*½½02,50
107GMSTEFANOVA ANTOANETA2502BUL0½00½*102,75
113WGMOZTURK KUBRA2294TUR000½½*102,25
124GMSOCKO MONIKA2463POL000½0*½01,50

Results today:
Round 5 on 2012/09/21 at 15:00
SNo.NameRtgRes.NameRtgSNo.
3WGMOZTURK KUBRA2294½ - ½GMKOSINTSEVA TATIANA252412
4GMSOCKO MONIKA24630 - 1GMMUZYCHUK ANNA26062
5WGMYILDIZ BETUL CEMRE2341½ - ½IMMUNGUNTUUL BATKHUYAG24341
6GMZHAO XUE25491 - 0WGMJU WENJUN252811
7GMSTEFANOVA ANTOANETA2502½ - ½WGMRUAN LUFEI249210
8GMKONERU HUMPY2593½ - ½GMCMILYTE VIKTORIJA25209

Match-ups tomorrow:
Round 6 on 2012/09/22 at 15:00
SNo.NameRtgRes.NameRtgSNo.
12GMKOSINTSEVA TATIANA2524-GMCMILYTE VIKTORIJA25209
10WGMRUAN LUFEI2492-GMKONERU HUMPY25938
11WGMJU WENJUN2528-GMSTEFANOVA ANTOANETA25027
1IMMUNGUNTUUL BATKHUYAG2434-GMZHAO XUE25496
2GMMUZYCHUK ANNA2606-WGMYILDIZ BETUL CEMRE23415
3WGMOZTURK KUBRA2294-GMSOCKO MONIKA24634

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Etruscans Toss In Some Underground Surprises

The article calls these latest discoveries "pyramids" - well, that remains to be seen.  I don't suppose they've done any sonar testing to get an actual image of what they may be dealing with in terms of size and scope???  Nah, that would be too easy!  And expensive.

From Discovery News

First Ever Etruscan Pyramids Found in Italy

The pyramids were spotted by a series of ancient stairs that had been carved into the wall of what is now a wine cellar.

By Rossella Lorenzi
Tue Sep 18, 2012 11:49 AM ET

The first ever Etruscan pyramids have been located underneath a wine cellar in the city of Orvieto in central Italy, according to a team of U.S. and Italian archaeologists.

Carved into the rock of the tufa plateau --a sedimentary area that is a result of volcanic activity -- on which the city stands, the subterranean structures were largely filled. Only the top-most modern layer was visible.

"Within this upper section, which had been modified in modern times and was used as a wine cellar, we noticed a series of ancient stairs carved into the wall. They were clearly of Etruscan construction," David B. George of the Department of Classics at Saint Anselm, told Discovery News.

As they started digging, George and co-director of the excavation Claudio Bizzarri of the Parco Archeologico Ambientale dell'Orvietano noted that the cave's walls were tapered up in a pyramidal fashion. Intriguingly, a series of tunnels, again of Etruscan construction, ran underneath the wine cellar hinting to the possibility of deeper undiscovered structures below.

After going through a mid-20th century floor, George and Bizzarri reached a medieval floor. Immediately beneath this floor, they found a layer of fill that contained various artifacts such as Attic red figure pottery from the middle of the 5th Century B.C., 6th and 5th century B.C. Etruscan pottery with inscriptions as well as various objects that dated to before 1000 B.C.

Digging through this layer, the archaeologists found 5 feet of gray sterile fill, which was intentionally deposited from a hole in the top of the structure.

"Below that material there was a brown layer that we are currently excavating. Intriguingly, the stone carved stairs run down the wall as we continue digging. We still don't know where they are going to take us," Bizzarri told Discovery News.

The material from the deepest level reached so far (the archaeologists have pushed down about 10 feet) dates to around the middle of the fifth century B.C.

"At this level we found a tunnel running to another pyramidal structure and dating from before the 5th century B.C. which adds to the mystery," George said.

Indeed, the Etruscans have long been considered one of antiquity's greatest enigmas.

A fun-loving and eclectic people who among other things taught the French how to make wine, the Romans how to build roads, and introduced the art of writing to Europe, the Etruscans began to flourish in Etruria (an area in central Italy area that covered now are Tuscany, Latium, Emilia-Romagna and Umbria) around 900 B.C., and then dominated much of the country for five centuries.

Known for their art, agriculture, fine metalworking and commerce, they started to decline during the fifth century B.C., as the Romans grew in power. By 300-100 B.C., they eventually became absorbed into the Roman empire.

Their puzzling, non-Indo-European language was virtually extinguished and they left no literature to document their society. Indeed, much of what we know about them comes from their cemeteries: only the richly decorated tombs they left behind have provided clues to fully reconstruct their history.

The subterranean pyramids in Orvieto could offer a unique insight into this civilization as the structures appear to be unique.

"The caves have indeed a shape unknown elsewhere in Etruria," Larissa Bonfante, professor emerita of classics at New York University and a leading expert on the ancient Etruscans, told Discovery News.

According to Bizzarri, there are at least five Etruscan pyramids under the city. Three of these structures have yet to be excavated.

"Clearly, they are not quarries or cisterns. I would say that there is nothing like these structures on record anywhere in Italy," Bizzarri said.

According to George, the underground pyramids could represent some sort of a religious structure or a tomb. In both cases, it would be a discovery without precedent.

"Most likely, the answer waits at the bottom. The problem is we don't really know how much we have to dig to get down there," Bizzarri said.

*****************************************************************

Could the Etruscans be connected to the Hattians?  Both spoke non-Indo-European languages, and the Etruscans have been genetically linked to the Anatolian peninsula....

2012 FIDE Women's Grand Prix - Ankara

The ladies have a free day today, play resumes on September 21st.  There is another free day on September 25th.

I just have to comment on this photo of the top two seeds during the opening ceremonies, Hump Koneru and Anna Muzychuk:

Humpy: You know I'm going to wipe you all over the board.
Anna: (Gasp!)  Humpy: I'm going to win this sucka!
But in order to win, at the very least Humpy has to come out on top of the Chinese contingent.  Good luck with that; they probably conspire (gasp!) to achieve a certain result -- but I sure hope Humpy threw a wrench into at least part of their plan to garner points for themselves by her R4 win with the black pieces!  Well done, Humpy!

I had been thinking that Ruan Lufei had died; I mean, where has she been?  Not playing chess -- not unless she's disguising herself as a chess dude these days and/or going by a fake name.  I haven't seen her name listed in the more popular or prominent events.  Of course, I don't examine each and every chess tournament everywhere around the world, either...  But here she is now, voila!  Resurrected from the ashes, as it were.  Did she piss somebody off and had she been banished to the never-never land of not playing chess?  Did she get bored with her graduate school studies?  Whatever, darlings.  She sassshays into Ankara with her artificially low ELO (kept that way in purpose, I think) and is rolling through the players while filing her nails, snore.  Don't be fooled by the R4 charade enacted by Ruan and Zhau Xue.  It was like scripted Michael Jackson video from "Thriller."

Stay tuned for the next batch of rounds.  If I'm reading the schedule correctly, 2012 Ankara is the last event in the Women's Grand Prix for 2011-2012.  Figuring out points and all that stuff -- I'll leave that for someone else. 

Here's some info from the FIDE.com website -- beware, however, relying on this as writ on stone because FIDE regualrly changes things depending on which way the chess political winds (and who's coming up with the most money) are blowing...

************************************************************************

FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2011–2012
The FIDE Women's Grand Prix 2011–2012 is a series of six chess tournaments exclusively for women, which formed part of the qualification cycle for the Women's World Chess Championship 2013. The winner of the Grand Prix (the one with most Grand Prix points) will challenge the 2012 Women's World Chess champion.
 
Blah blah blah...
 
...160 grand prix points for first place, 130 for second place, 110 for third place, and then 90 down to 10 points by steps of 10. In case of a tie in points the grand prix points are shared evenly by the tied players. Players only counted their best three tournament results. The player with the most grand prix points is the winner.
 
Grand Prix standings
Hou Yifan won the Grand Prix with a perfect score of three sole wins at the fifth Grand Prix in Jermuk [she won Rostov, Shenzhen and Jermuk, top 3 scores are counted for the total.]. Should Yifan win the 2012 World Championship[,] the runner-up will be her challenger in the 2013 Championship. Muzychuk, Humpy, Ju Wenjun and Zhao Xue are the only in contention of the Grand Prix runner-up.
PlayerRostovShenzhenNalchikKazanJermukAnkaraBest 3
Hou Yifan160160100160480
Anna Muzychuk100130145375
Kateryna Lahno1308050110320
Koneru Humpy65145110320
Ju Wenjun10013075305
Zhao Xue7516060295
 
So, it's pretty much been decided already who the challenger in 2013 will be, and the other players are only in this event now for the prize money, which is very good for female-only events, and I don't blame them one bit for participating.  Hey, chess femmes have to make a living too and chess dudes do this stuff all the time.  No wonder Stefanova is sleep-walking her way through Ankara. 
 
Do you see, now, why introducing Ruan Lufei into the mix in this final tournament of this Women's Grand Prix series is dirty pool?  She doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of becoming a challenger, not even if she wins Ankara outright, but she's a great spoiler for other player's chances, and the Chinese know that full well.  All rigged as far as can be arranged in favor of the Chinese "winning" the women's world chess championship title.

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Herstory: Why All Eligible American Women Should Vote!

This was sent to me by long-time friend Ann:

Powerful images of what happened to women in our country fewer than a 100 years ago........
 
Woodrow Wilson (D) was a man who treated women who were fighting for the right to vote with disdain. This is a story that many women today don't even know. Our daughters and granddaughters don't know this story. We need to remind them.
 
This is the story of our Mothers and Grandmothers and Great Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.
 
 
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
 

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of 'obstructing sidewalk traffic.'




Lucy Burns
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.      
                          
Dora Lewis
 
They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack. Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the
'Night of Terror' on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food--all of it colorless slop--was infested with worms.

 
Alice Paul
 
When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.
So, refresh my memory. Some women won't vote this year because -why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn't matter? It's raining?


 
Pauline Adams, in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence

In 2004 HBO released a move, "Iron Jawed Angels" which is now available on Netflix. It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
 
Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown , New York
 
Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate
 
I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.
 
Conferring over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at [National Woman's Party] headquarters, Jackson Pl [ace] [ Washington , D.C. ]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right))
 
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men: 'Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.'

Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know. We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democrat, republican or independent party - remember to vote.
 
Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, 'Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.'
 
History Herstory is being made. 


See Wikipedia Women's suffrage in the United States for some interesting herstory. 

Ladies, it wasn't that long ago I remember my father "instructing" my mother how she would cast her vote.  My first recollection of seeing this take place was in 1960 - an historical election -- when John F. Kennedy was elected.  I was 9 yeas old then.

Now I'm 61, my mother is 85.  While I cannot say what Mom actually did once she was inside the voting booth and confronted with a ballot during the years prior to her marriage (if she voted at all - I've no idea, actually) and during her marriage to my dad, I do remember what I consider her "liberating" moment.  It was the 1984 Presidential election.  Dad had already voted.  Mom had not.  I don't know what happened, and Mom never said.  They had always gone together before, so I think they quarreled over Dad's "instructions" on how she was supposed to vote this time.  I was living at home at the time, being stone cold broke after finishing up some post-secondary education.  I arrived home from work.  Mom and Dad were not speaking. Tense.  Very tense.  It was about 7 p.m. and the polls closed at 8.

Mom had a drivers license earned a few years prior, when she finally passed her behind the wheel test, but driving made her very nervous. Very nervous.  Mom asked me if I had voted.  I said no.  She said, well, I think we should.  I said well, let's walk up to the school and go vote.  She said instead "let's drive."  I nearly fainted!  She took the keys to my brother Dennis' car (he wasn't home but his jazzy car was there) and off we went!  Alexander Mitchell School was perhaps a mile away from our house, we could have walked it easily, but it was sheer adventure instead, with Mom behind the wheel and me simultaneously calming her down and reciting the rules of the road to remind her to put on her blinker, how to ease into a turn, how to check her mirrors, etc. etc.  Lessons from me - who never drove a car a foot in my life!  We stuck to side streets and managed to find a parking spot where Mom didn't have to parallel park. LOL!  Oh, the look on her face as we walked from the car across the school playground to go in and vote.  PRICELESS. 

There was a long line of people waiting to vote. We joined it.  We didn't get home until around 9 p.m.  True tale - as we pulled up in front of the house, I saw dad peeking out of the upstairs front picture window, watching for us to come home.  Ha!  After we voted, I had suggested to Mom that we go down to Casey's Corner Bar and have a shot, but she just laughed. 

As per usual in our stoic family, nothing was said -- at least, as between Mom and Dad, not in front of me :)  The episode was not discussed.  Funny how this memory came up into my mind tonight, after reading this email that Ann sent to me.  After visiting Mom in the hospital earlier this evening.  I had totally forgotten it!  Oh, I'm so glad that memory resurfaced!  Wow.  I wonder if Mom would remember this now?  1984.  What exquisite irony, heh?  OHMYGODDESS, I wonder if she voted for Ronnie Ray-Gun? 

Biblical Archaeology: Did Jesus Have a Wife?

One female scholar says a qualified YES.  Now, the evidence she presented at an international congress is being attacked by - well, you can probably figure that out:

September 19, 2012 12:05 PM
Papyrus suggesting Jesus had wife scrutinized

Updated 1:06 PM ET

(CBS/AP) ROME - Is a scrap of papyrus suggesting that Jesus had a wife authentic?

This Sept. 5, 2012 photo released by Harvard University shows a fourth century fragment of papyrus that divinity professor Karen L. King says is the only existing ancient text that quotes Jesus explicitly referring to having a wife. (AP Photo/Harvard University, Karen L. King)
 
Scholars on Wednesday questioned the much-publicized discovery by a Harvard scholar that a 4th century fragment of papyrus provided the first evidence that some early Christians believed Jesus was married.

And experts in the illicit antiquities trade also wondered about the motive of the fragment's anonymous owner, noting that the document's value has likely increased amid the publicity of the still-unproven find.

Karen King, a professor of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School, announced the finding Tuesday at an international congress on Coptic studies in Rome. The text, written in Coptic and probably translated from a 2nd century Greek text, contains a dialogue in which Jesus refers to "my wife," whom he identifies as Mary.

As correspondent Allen Pizzey reported on Wednesday for "CBS This Morning," the tattered piece of papyrus resembling perhaps a discarded business card dates back to the 4th century. Written in an ancient dialect, it contains just eight broken lines in faded black ink.

King's paper, and the front-page attention it received in some U.S. newspapers that got advance word about it, was a hot topic of conversation Wednesday during coffee breaks at the conference.

Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was unmarried. Any evidence pointing to whether Jesus was married or had a female disciple could have ripple effects in current debates over the role of women in the church.

"The whole idea of the priesthood being male and being celibate is based on the historical assumption that Jesus was male and was celibate and single," Serene Jones, president of New York City's Union Theological Seminary, told CBS News. [Of course, that "assumption" centuries after many married Popes and married priests had served in what became the Roman Catholic Church.]

Stephen Emmel, a professor of Coptology at the University of Muenster who was on the international advisory panel that reviewed the 2006 discovery of the Gospel of Judas, said the text accurately quotes Jesus as saying "my wife." But he questioned whether the document was authentic.

"There's something about this fragment in its appearance and also in the grammar of the Coptic that strikes me as being not completely convincing somehow," he said in an interview on the sidelines of the conference.

Another participant at the congress, Alin Suciu, a papyrologist at the University of Hamburg, was more blunt.

"I would say it's a forgery. The script doesn't look authentic" when compared to other samples of Coptic papyrus script dated to the 4th century, he said.

King acknowledged Wednesday that questions remain about the fragment, and she welcomed the feedback from her colleagues. She said she planned to subject the fragment to ink tests to determine if the chemical components match those used in antiquity.

"We still have some work to do, testing the ink and so on and so forth, but what is exciting about this fragment is that it's the first case we have of Christians claiming that Jesus had a wife," she said.

She stressed that the text doesn't provide any historical evidence that Jesus was actually married, only that some two centuries after he died, some early Christians believed he had a wife.

Wolf-Peter Funk, a noted Coptic linguist, said there was no way to evaluate the significance of the fragment because it has no context. It's a partial text and tiny, measuring 4 centimeters by 8 centimeters (1.5 inches by 3 inches), about the size of a small cellphone.

"There are thousands of scraps of papyrus where you find crazy things," said Funk, co-director of a project editing the Nag Hammadi Coptic library at Laval University in Quebec. "It can be anything."

He, too, doubted the authenticity, saying the form of the fragment was "suspicious."

Ancient papyrus fragments have been frequently cut up by unscrupulous dealers seeking to make more money.

An anonymous collector brought King the fragment in December 2011, seeking her help in translating and understanding it. In March, she brought it to two papyrologists who determined it was very likely authentic.

On Tuesday, Harvard Divinity School announced the finding to great fanfare and said King's paper would be published in January's Harvard Theological Review. Harvard said the fragment most likely came from Egypt, and that its earliest documentation is from the early 1980s indicating that a now-deceased professor in Germany thought it evidence of a possible marriage of Jesus.

Some archaeologists were quick to question Harvard's ethics, noting that the fragment has no known provenance, or history of where it's been, and that its owner may have a financial interest in the publicity being generated about it.

King has said the owner wants to sell his collection to Harvard.

"There are all sorts of really dodgy things about this," said David Gill, professor of archaeological heritage at University Campus Suffolk and author of the Looting Matters blog, which closely follows the illicit trade in antiquities. "This looks to me as if any sensible, responsible academic would keep their distance from it." [Really?  That's a particularly vituperative remark - basically accusing King of being a willing participant in attempting to perpetrate a fraud!  I wonder, was he born a schmuck or did his momma drop him on his head one too many times so he can't help himself?]

He cited the ongoing debate in academia over publishing articles about possibly dubiously obtained antiquities, thus potentially fueling the illicit market.

The Archaeological Institute of America, for example, won't publish articles in its journal announcing the discovery of antiquities without a proven provenance that were acquired after a UNESCO convention fighting the illicit trade went into effect in 1973.

Similarly, many American museums have adopted policies to no longer acquire antiquities without a provenance, after being slapped with successful efforts by countries like Italy to reclaim looted treasures.

Archaeologists also complain that the looting of antiquities removes them from their historical context, depriving scholars of a wealth of information. [Yes, of course - but when was it proven that THIS is a looted antiquity?]

However, AnneMarie Luijendijk, the Princeton University expert whom King consulted to authenticate the papyrus, said the fragment fit all the rules and criteria established by the International Association of Papyrologists. She noted that papyrus fragments frequently don't have a provenance, simply because so many were removed from Egypt before such issues were of concern.

She acknowledged the dilemma about buying such antiquities but said refraining from publishing articles about them is another matter.

"You wouldn't let an important new text go to waste," she said.

Hany Sadak, the director general of the Coptic Museum in Cairo, said the fragment's existence was unknown to Egypt's antiquities authorities until news articles this week.

"I personally think, as a researcher, that the paper is not authentic because it was, if it had been in Egypt before, we would have known of it and we would have heard of it before it left Egypt," he said. [The Egyptians would have known about it?  OH YEAH, RIGHT.  This is one instance where I am actually rolling on the floor laughing my ass off!]


© 2012 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved

2012 FIDE Women's Grand Prix - Ankara

Standings after R4:

RankSNo.NameRtgFED123456789101112PtsRes.SB
18GMKONERU HUMPY2593IND*½11103,50
210WGMRUAN LUFEI2492CHN*½11103,00
32GMMUZYCHUK ANNA2606SLO*½½11304,25
411WGMJU WENJUN2528CHN½*1½1303,25
59GMCMILYTE VIKTORIJA2520LTU*1011303,00
61IMMUNGUNTUUL BATKHUYAG2434MGL½*½1½02,75
76GMZHAO XUE2549CHN½½0*1204,00
85WGMYILDIZ BETUL CEMRE2341TUR0001*103,00
912GMKOSINTSEVA TATIANA2524RUS00½*½101,50
104GMSOCKO MONIKA2463POL0½00*½01,50
113WGMOZTURK KUBRA2294TUR000½*½01,25
127GMSTEFANOVA ANTOANETA2502BUL000½*½00,50

Hmmm, strategic draw between two Chinese players in R4 may end up being a costly mistake.  Meanwhile, GM Koneru Humpy has won back-to-back games with the black pieces against highly-regarded and experienced players.  Very interesting...

Round 3 on 2012/09/18 at 15:00
SNo.NameRtgRes.NameRtgSNo.
2GMMUZYCHUK ANNA26061 - 0GMKOSINTSEVA TATIANA252412
3WGMOZTURK KUBRA2294½ - ½IMMUNGUNTUUL BATKHUYAG24341
4GMSOCKO MONIKA2463½ - ½WGMJU WENJUN252811
5WGMYILDIZ BETUL CEMRE23410 - 1WGMRUAN LUFEI249210
6GMZHAO XUE25490 - 1GMCMILYTE VIKTORIJA25209
7GMSTEFANOVA ANTOANETA25020 - 1GMKONERU HUMPY25938
Round 4 on 2012/09/19 at 15:00
SNo.NameRtgRes.NameRtgSNo.
12GMKOSINTSEVA TATIANA25240 - 1GMKONERU HUMPY25938
9GMCMILYTE VIKTORIJA25201 - 0GMSTEFANOVA ANTOANETA25027
10WGMRUAN LUFEI2492½ - ½GMZHAO XUE25496
11WGMJU WENJUN25281 - 0WGMYILDIZ BETUL CEMRE23415
1IMMUNGUNTUUL BATKHUYAG24341 - 0GMSOCKO MONIKA24634
2GMMUZYCHUK ANNA26061 - 0WGMOZTURK KUBRA22943
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