Amazing archaeological excavations. The most incredible archaeological finds made by modern scientists

People from the distant past did not have high-tech inventions, but this did not prevent them from having at their disposal objects that are familiar to us today. Archaeologists have found army knives, dentures, and even letters of complaint that are thousands of years old. In our review there are 9 items that can claim the title of “the most ancient” of their kind.

1. Zirconium crystal (4.4 billion years old)

Scientists date the crystal at 4.4 billion years old, making it the oldest piece of the planet's crust. The crystal was found in the Jack Hills (an arid region north of Perth, Australia) in 2001. The tiny translucent red crystal glows blue when bombarded with electrons. To appreciate, it is worth noting that the Earth itself, as a ball of molten rock, was formed 4.5 billion years ago in the form. The age of the crystal means that the earth's crust appeared just 160 million years after the formation of the solar system.

2. Prosthetic finger (3000 years old)

A prosthetic toe that was buried with a mummy 3,000 years ago is believed to be the oldest prosthetic in history. Scientists conducted tests to see if it could actually be used while walking. Researchers at the University of Manchester replicated a wooden toe and asked a volunteer who was missing a toe to wear prosthetic sandals similar to those worn in ancient Egypt. It turned out that the prosthesis would actually be made for convenience when walking, and not just for imitation.

3. Swiss Army Knife (1800 years old)

This may be the world's first army knife. If anything, it bears a striking resemblance to modern multitools and has at least six different functions. It's not actually a Swiss device - it comes from the Roman Empire, and was made in 200 AD. Tools include a pin for removing clams from their shells, a beak-shaped spatula for removing sauce from a bottle, a fork, spoon and knife for eating, and a toothpick.

4. Stash of cannabis (2,700 years old)

The world's oldest cache of cannabis was found in a 2,700-year-old tomb in the Gobi Desert in 2008. Almost two pounds of still green (despite being almost 3,000 years old) weed was found. Tests have proven that marijuana had powerful psychoactive properties, casting doubt on the theory that ancestors grew hemp only to make clothes, ropes and other objects from it.

5. Stone tools (3.3 million years)

This nondescript looking stone is actually one of the oldest stone tools ever found. It was made half a million years before the appearance of man. Scientists discovered this stone tool in Kenya, near Lake Turkana, where ancient artifacts are often found. Scientists suggest that this tool was made 3.3 million years ago by the early human ancestors Australopithecus.

6. Dildo (28,000 years old)

In 2005, German scientists discovered one of the oldest artificial phalluses in the world - a 20-centimeter long polished siltstone phallus that was created 28,000 years ago. The stone adult toy was discovered in the Höhle Fels cave in southwest Germany by a team of researchers from the University of Tübingen.

7. DNA Sample (150,000 years old)

Altamuri man became the oldest Neanderthal whose DNA scientists were able to study. About 150,000 years ago, a Neanderthal man fell into a well in southern Italy. In 1993, cavers spotted his skull in the Lamalunga Cave, deep beneath the city of Altamura. They decided to leave the skull and bones intact, since over tens of thousands of years the bones had literally grown into the stalactites and stone walls of the cave. In 2015, researchers took a sample of material from the skeleton's right shoulder blade and sent it to the laboratory for research.

8. Musical score (3,400 years old)

Clay tablets with cuneiform characters in the "Hurrian" language were found during excavations in the early 1950s in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit ( modern city Ras Shamra). One of the texts on these tablets was the complete score of a hymn to the wife of the moon god Nikali. It is the oldest known musical notation in the world. Its age dates back to approximately 1400 BC. It is noteworthy that the text even contains detailed instructions for a singer accompanied by a harpist, as well as instructions on how to tune the harp.

9. Letter of complaint (3750 years)

The oldest written complaint is 3,750 years old. The writing on the clay tablet, dated 1750 BC, corresponds to the Old Babylonian period. A complaint was filed by a certain Nanni against Ea-Nasir due to the supply of poor quality copper ore, as well as misinformation and delay in further deliveries.

They will allow you to get a more complete picture of the life of the ancients.

01.07.2013

This is the Top 10 The most important interesting

No. 10. Terracotta Army of Qin Shi Huang

The famous First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty represents approximately 700,000 soldiers carved from stone who were buried in one of the first halls of the tyrant's tomb. This unique creation of human hands would remain so unknown to history and science, if in 1947 local farmers had not started drilling wells, but instead of water they found one of the most striking and important finds in the entire history of archeology. Each warrior of this grave is individual and different from the others. All of them are created by hand, and the techniques for their processing have sunk into the centuries along with the great emperor. But not only ordinary soldiers were slaughtered by artisans over many years: statues of horses, officers were found in the tomb, warriors were fully equipped with weapons (swords, crossbows, spears). Qin Shi Huang was one of those people who know how to lead. Otherwise, this commander would never have been able to unite the vast territory into a single kingdom. Along with the soldiers, the emperor’s slaves were buried in the tomb, and by no means in stone. The ancient people believed that the army would help their emperor in the afterlife and protect him. The emperor also planned to take his wealth to the next world: jewelry, valuable products, chariots, simple peasants (70,000 of whom were buried alive with him). Excavations of the tomb are still ongoing and have entered the final stage. Be that as it may, this Army will remain the clearest example of the culture of Ancient China. And this amazing archaeological find opens our list.

No. 9. Dead Sea Scrolls

The Qumran manuscripts are the name given to one of the greatest gifts of the past millennia of humanity. Found from 1947 to 1956 in several caves in the Judean Desert. written mainly on biblical topics, but there are also apocrypha and a description of the Qumran community. Each text is supplemented with fragments from the book of the Old Testament. However, it does not include the book of Esther. But one completely preserved text of the book of Isaiah saw the light of day again. The texts help expand understanding of many previously unknown details of the Old Testament, a variety of textual traditions, and other interesting linguistic discoveries. There are texts containing the rules of the society of that time, the rules of warfare, etc. It is believed that these scrolls are none other than the entire documentation, or library, of the Jewish Sect, which was hidden during the First Jewish Revolt (66-70 BC). Dead Sea discover some connection with Christianity: after all, the Qumran community itself was a monastery in the Christian understanding, and this despite the fact that there were still several centuries before Christianity itself. And this is the ninth place among interesting finds.

No. 8. Royal Library of Ashurbanipal

This archaeological find, Discovered in the city of Neneveh in the mid-19th century. The library of Ashurbanipal is one of the irretrievably gone past. By order of the Assyrian king, it took more than 25 years to create. Since the king was more interested in issues of state governance than anything else, and magic and fortune-telling were considered the most effective methods of such governance, a significant part of the library is occupied by texts of prophecies, all kinds of rituals, conspiracies, and prophecies. The bulk of the texts were taken from Sumerian and Babylonian texts and rewritten. The library contained a huge collection of texts on medicine. There were lists of legends (for example, the epic of Gilgamesh), and of course tablets that lifted the veil on the life of ancient people (this includes legal documents, songs, economic records)
It was thanks to the library of Ashurban that a huge number of cuneiform texts reached us, which helped us better imagine the culture of Mesopotamia, and greatly facilitated the decipherment of texts in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages.

No. 7. Tomb of Tutankhamun

In 1922, one of the most remarkable events in the world of archeology occurred, amazing find- Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered perhaps the most subsequently famous tomb in history - the tomb of Tutankhamun. And although until the 20th century, Tutankhamun was of no interest to historians, with the discovery of his tomb a whole layer of ancient knowledge and things came into our world. The tomb of this young king is perhaps the best preserved from those times, despite the fact that it was broken into by tomb robbers. Since Tutankhamun died very early, it is obvious that they did not have time to build his tomb, which means he had to huddle in someone else’s grave. Consists of a burial room, chamber, hallway, treasury. The hallway leads to a sloping hallway. Of course, there were treasuries in the royal tomb. There, archaeologists discovered statues, jewelry, chariots - in short, everything that, according to the ancient Egyptians, a king might need in the afterlife. Although this young king was not the most powerful or famous among the kings of Egypt, and his tomb is not the most grandiose in architecture, its importance lies elsewhere - in the objects of life that have survived to this day and the components of ancient culture.

No. 6. Pompeii

Sixth place in the Top 10 Most Important amazing archaeological finds. Pompeii... There is probably no person in the world who has not heard about this and the tragedy that happened to him. It was founded in 6 BC. like a Roman colony. The settlement flourished due to the port and resort area. This is easy to understand because of the rich houses, temples, theaters and baths built within the boundaries of the colony. Like any self-respecting city, there was an amphitheater and a forum. Earthquakes began back in 63 BC, and destroyed the city until the ill-fated day. Despite the efforts of residents to restore the city, its fate was sealed. The ruthless forces of nature in the guise of Vesuvius decided to wipe the city off the face of the earth. This happened on August 24, 79. The lava completely destroyed the village. And so, the city rested under the cover of ashes until 1599, but research began only in 1748. Pompeii is the most successful example, an example of Roman life embodied in its practical application. It was on this basis that scientists were able to resolve many questions that interested them. Ash managed to stop time, and over the past centuries, preserve everything as it was on that last day: people and animals fleeing from there.

No. 5. Lascaux Cave

This cave complex is located in southwest France. One of the oldest monuments of human culture. Inside the caves there are hundreds of drawings dating back to the Paleolithic era. This truly magnificent treasury of human heritage was discovered as all great things are usually discovered - completely by accident, and by ordinary teenagers on September 12, 1940. On the walls of this stone complex there are about 2000 images of animals, people and symbols unknown to science. Animals are represented by deer and cattle. There are quite recognizable figures of cats, feathered inhabitants of the sky, and the kings of today's forests - bears. The Lascaux cave was used mainly for painting, and this is its value. Today, this complex is one of the largest caves with rock art that have reached us. Fifth place in the top 10 interesting finds.

No. 4. Sinanthropus

This type of man belonged to a hitherto unknown species of primitive man. In 1927, Her Majesty history wished to include this man in its pages, and it was then that the Chinese anthropologist Pei Wen-Zhong discovered him in the Zhoukoudian Cave near Beijing. The anthropologist was able to discover parts of the skull, pieces of the lower jaw, teeth and many well-preserved skeletal bones. It turned out that the cave was a shelter for 45 of our distant ancestors. Extensive and in-depth research has shown that Peking Man walked upright, knew how to make tools from stone, and used fire. Peking Man significantly added to the picture and ideas about ancient people. Thanks to him, we know more about our ancestors living in different parts of the world.

No. 3. Rosetta Stone

Another one interesting archaeological find. The Rosetta Stone is a basalt stele dating back to 196 BC. On this archaeological site a lot is carved: from the Egyptian decree about the veneration of Ptolemy V to the official Egyptian hieroglyphs. Intended for a temple, it found its place among the building stones of Fort Rashid. This unusual slab, dotted with signs, was discovered by Captain Pierre-François Bouchard in the hot July of 1799, during Napoleon’s famous campaign in the Egyptian lands. Since the text on the stele is written in several languages, scientists, having studied them in detail, were able to penetrate the mysteries of a civilization unknown to them.

No. 2. Behistun Rock

The rock is a unique monument from the time of Darius the Great. The inscriptions on it are made in many languages. It was discovered by the Englishman Robert Shirley in 1958. This text begins with the biography of King Darius, and covers what happened after the death of Cyrus the Great and Cambyses II. The Behistun Rock can be compared to the Rosetta Stone - the original inscription is repeated several times in both, albeit in completely different languages. The text on the Rock, for example, is written in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian. And just like the Rosetta Stone allows you to understand the psychology of ancient people, to look at the world through their eyes. It is certainly a unique example of cuneiform literature. Thanks to this rock, archaeologists further studied the civilization of Mesopotamia, Sumer, Persia, and Assyria.

No. 1. Olduvai George

First place in the Top 10 interesting and amazing archaeological finds. This large gorge in northern Tanzania, formed by the basin of one lake, opened itself to the world in 1911. However, humanity took action to study and excavate only 20 years later, in 1931. Three species of hominids were discovered in the gorge at once (the great ape large sizes), such as Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis and Homo erectus. In addition to everything, the remains of ancient animals were found there: large antelopes, indigenous people of Africa - elephants, hares, etc. This historical monument brought to this day all the remains of the various stages of development of our ancestors. Refuted any evidence that the cradle of humanity is not in Africa. The source of the way of life of hominids, their life, opened before us. And in 1975, following the discovery of hominid footprints, it was confirmed that they walked on two legs - one of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.

12 chosen

Humanity strives for the future, trying to predict what lies ahead. But it also looks back to the past to discover how ancient civilizations were born and developed. If traveling to the future is still only a fantasy, then traveling to the past happens every day. In search of secrets and discoveries, archaeologists go back thousands of years, whose amazing finds not only reveal the secrets of the past, but also give rise to many new questions: who are we, where are we from, what are we like? The most famous archaeological discoveries: excavations of Troy and Pompeii, Egyptian pyramids and the caves of Lascaux, are annually replenished with new finds, no less amazing. Sometimes a new archaeological discovery reveals the mystery and meaning of previous ones. Let's follow the path taken before us...

Ancient writings

Rosetta stone

In July 1799, near the village of Rashid (Rosetta), French sappers as part of Napoleon's army sent to the Egyptian expedition found a slab with text written in 3 languages. The text was written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, demotic script and... in ancient Greek. Thanks to this discovery, another great discovery became possible - the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphs made by Jean Francois Champollion. The Rosetta Stone can be seen in the British Museum in London.

It was not important government correspondence or the secrets of ancient inventions, but ordinary correspondence between soldiers and their wives on wooden tablets that was discovered by archaeologists during excavations of a Roman fort. Vindolanda. And yet, this is one of the famous discoveries, because thanks to these texts it became possible to plunge into ordinary life and the atmosphere of that distant time. 752 tablets with letters were found, but the search is still ongoing. Thousands of years ago people wrote simple letters...

In 1849, the British archaeologist Austin Henry Layard, in the ruins of a palace on the banks of the Euphrates, found the first part of the oldest Nineveh libraries, known as Library of Ashurbanipal. Three years later, his assistant, traveler and diplomat Ormuzd Rasam, discovered the second part of the priceless treasure. This is the oldest state archive of the first real civilization in human history. 25 thousand tablets with cuneiform texts have survived to this day, which were collected over 25 years by order of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal.

The found tablets from the library of Nineveh contain descriptions of rituals, astrological predictions, spells, prophecies, medical and legal tests, and even literary works.

Ancient temples, settlements and entire armies

Angkor Wat - the temple city, found by the French traveler Henri Mouhot in 1861, was built in the early 12th century and is located near the ancient capital of the Khmers Angkor Thoma. Angkor Wat became not only the grandest monument of Buddhist art, but also gave its name to an entire era in the history of Cambodia, and its towers became a symbol of the country and adorned the national flag.

Göbekli Tepe – the most ancient temple that has changed many ideas about our past. This temple complex on the territory of modern Turkey, which is the oldest known to date (approximately 12 thousand years). The upright stones are carved with quite complex images of animals, which are considered an example of early forms of writing.

Any schoolchild when asked “who discovered America?” will cheerfully report - Christopher Columbus! However, this is not so, because long before the Spaniards the Vikings arrived on the land of America and this happened five hundred years before the arrival of Columbus. A Viking settlement has been discovered on the island of Newfoundland, which has long been considered a legend set out in the saga of Eric the Red.

Terracotta Army Qin Shi Huang, found east of Mount Lishan near the city of Lintong by peasants digging a well, is one of the greatest and most amazing archaeological finds. An army of 8 thousand sculptures was discovered in the tomb of Emperor Shi Huang, ruler of the Qin kingdom, with whom 48 concubines and countless treasures were buried. Among the statues found in the tomb, it is impossible to find a single identical face! Details of clothing, weapons and equipment are reproduced with amazing accuracy. The burial area is about 56 square meters. km.

Ancient mummies

Mummy Xin Zhui, a noble rich Chinese woman who died in 168. BC. was discovered in Chinese city Changsha in 1971 Her body was hidden behind 4 sarcophagi and immersed in an unknown yellowish liquid, which evaporated immediately after opening. What is so amazing about this particular mummy? Unlike the famous ancient Egyptian ones, it retained joint mobility and muscle elasticity!

Princess Ukok– the famous princess of Altai - a mummy found in 1993 by the expedition of Natalya Polosmak. The age of the find, discovered in a mound on the Altai Ukok plateau, is more than 2.5 thousand years.

Residents of Altai consider the “princess” to be their ancestor and associate many negative things with her. natural phenomena, which they attributed to the anger of the princess, whose body was transported to National Museum in Gorno-Altaisk.

Mummy Maiden (maidens) – one of the latest finds by archaeologists was discovered on the slope of a volcano Llullaillaco on the border of Argentina and Chile. Two more baby mummies were found with her. All three bodies were not embalmed, but deep frozen!

According to the findings of archaeologists, they were all sacrificed, as gold, silver, vessels with food and a headdress made of feathers of unknown birds were found next to them.

Russian archaeologists have unearthed many amazing finds that help to better understand the history of the country and humanity. We remember the 7 biggest sensations of Russian archeology.

Princess Ukok

An amazing discovery by archaeologists in the Altai Mountains, on the Ukok plateau, which thundered not only throughout Russia, but became famous throughout the world. In 1993, Novosibirsk archaeologists found the burial of a woman there, dating back to the 5th-3rd centuries BC. Due to the climate of this place, as well as the depth of the burial, the grave was covered with ice, which means it was preserved from decomposition.
For several days, trying not to damage the burial, archaeologists melted the ice. Six horses with saddles and harnesses, a larch block with bronze nails were found in the burial chamber. The mummy of a young girl (she was about 25 years old at the time of death) was well preserved. She wore a wig and a silk shirt, a woolen skirt, felt socks and a fur coat. Scientists argue whether she was a noble person or whether she belonged to the middle layer of Pazyryk society.
The indigenous Altai people believe that the floods and earthquakes on their land are connected with the fact that the “princess” was moved to the museum, and demand that she be returned to the Ukok plateau. In the meantime, the amazing exhibit can be seen in the Gorno-Altaisk Museum, where an extension and a sarcophagus were specially created for it, maintaining temperature and humidity conditions.

Birch bark letters

It took a long time to get to this discovery: it was known from chronicles that in Rus' they wrote on birch bark; archaeologists sometimes found tools with which they wrote, but assumed that they were hairpins or nails. They were looking for birch bark documents near Novgorod, but the Great Patriotic War began, and the search stopped. Only in 1951, at the Nerevsky excavation site, “Birch bark letter No. 1” was finally discovered. To date, more than a thousand birch bark letters and even one birch bark icon have been found. Residents of Novgorod find them when laying communications, and a fragment of “Certificate No. 612” was found by a native of Novgorod, Chelnokov, in his own flower pot when transplanting flowers!
Now letters are known from various places in Russia, as well as Belarus and Ukraine. These are official documents, lists, educational exercises, drawings, personal notes containing a wide variety of vocabulary - from love to obscenity.

Scythian gold

On the vast territory between the Danube and Don there are many mounds. They remained here from the Scythian tribe, and each mound is “gold-bearing”, because only the Scythians put so much gold in the burial places of both the nobility and ordinary people. For the Scythians, gold was a symbol of life after death, and therefore it was placed in all mounds and in a variety of forms. Raids on Scythian mounds began in the Middle Ages, but even now archaeologists are finding treasures in them. In one of the mounds they found the burial of a female warrior with weapons and gold beads, in another - a bronze panel depicting the battle of the Greeks with the Amazons, in the third - a diadem made of sheet gold... The collections of the Hermitage and other famous museums are filled with hundreds of kilograms of Scythian gold jewelry.

Unknown type of person

On March 24, 2010, the journal Nature published a sensational article about the “Denisovo man,” whose remains were found in the Denisova Cave, located in the valley of the Anui River in Altai. The bone of the last phalanx of a child's finger, three huge molars belonging to a young man, and a phalanx of a toe were found in the cave. The researchers conducted a DNA analysis and found that the bone remains date back to 40 thousand years ago. Moreover, “Denisovan man” turned out to be an extinct type of person, whose genome is significantly different from ours. The evolutionary divergence of such a person and a Neanderthal occurred about 640 thousand years ago. Later these people became extinct or partially mixed with Homo sapiens. In the cave itself, archaeologists uncovered 22 layers corresponding to different cultural eras. Now any tourist can get into this cave.

White Sea labyrinths

There are labyrinths in all parts of the world among peoples at different stages of development. In Russia, the most famous labyrinths are located near the White Sea: there are about forty of them there, more than thirty of them are on Solovetsky Islands Arkhangelsk region. All northern labyrinths are made of medium-sized stones, have an oval shape in plan, and inside there are intricate passages leading to the center. Until now, no one knows the exact purpose of labyrinths, especially since there is more than one type of them. But most often archaeologists associate them with the cult of the dead and funeral rites. This theory is supported by the fact that on the large Zayatsky Island, under the stone heaps of the labyrinth, archaeologists discovered burnt human bones and stone tools. There is an assumption that the ancient people who lived by the sea believed that the soul of a deceased person was transported across the water to another island, and it should not return back. The labyrinth served this purpose: the soul “wandered” in it and returned back to the kingdom of the dead. Perhaps labyrinths were also used in initiation rites. Unfortunately, the study of labyrinths is difficult, because by excavating the labyrinth, the archaeologist destroys the monument itself.

1. Teminological troubles and their meaning. Was there liarcheology in the Ancient East and the ancient world? This question is not very simple, but solvable. But is it relevant? All this is so far from us and our interests... Don’t tell me! There are aspects here that are very topical these days. But let's start from afar.

Have you paid attention to the logical inconsistencies with the names of the branches of archeology?

With the fall of Soviet power and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the word “Soviet” finally turned into the same historical term as the word “ancient” - it began to designate a fragment of historical reality that had territorial and chronological boundaries and became a thing of the past. It seems to follow from this that the phrases “eastern archaeology”, “ancient (or classical) archaeology” and “Soviet archaeology”, constructed in the same way, denote branches of science from the same semantic range. Ah, no. Soviet archeology is the archaeological science as it operated in Soviet society, while the object of its study was monuments of any time and any country. But eastern archeology and ancient archeology are quite the opposite; it is an archaeological science aimed at studying the East and the ancient world and carried out by archaeologists of any time and any country. In one case, the adjective denotes the object of study, in the other, the subject.

Why this happened is not difficult to understand. Formally, such phrases are ambiguous, perhaps this or that understanding. But Soviet archaeologists are known, and Soviet material culture was not represented as an archaeological object. By the way, it’s completely in vain. Theoretically, one can imagine that in the future, dissatisfaction with Soviet written sources will prompt us to subject our culture to archaeological study. Even now, isolated acts of this kind have occurred. So, in Katyn, first the Germans, and then ours, dug up the mass burials of executed Polish officers to find out who actually shot them - the Nazis or the executioners from Stalin’s concentration camps. This was, of course, a contemporary policy, but it can also be framed as a historical issue. One way or another, the phrase “Soviet archeology” became attached to the activities of Soviet archaeologists.

The situation is different with “ancient archaeology”. The culture of the ancient world is known and has long been the object of archaeological study, while no one knows the archaeologists of the ancient world and one can assume that they never existed. Speaking about the problem of the birth of archaeology, I have already mentioned Daniel’s statement: “The ancient world gave historians, geographers and ethnographers, but not archaeologists. Primitive archeology is the only human science that we cannot trace back to the Greeks” (Daniel 1950: 16). I showed that Daniel attributed this not only to primitive archaeology, but to archeology in general. And in a collection in honor of Daniel, John Evans described everything that happened in the study of antiquities before the 17th century, under the heading “The Prehistory of Archaeology” (Evans 1981). This has become almost a general opinion.

But still not common. Those historiographers who adhere to the concept of the successive development of archeology speak of its gradual emergence and attribute its beginning to very early times, in particular to the Ancient East and especially to ancient times. Wace explicitly titled his article on this: “The Greeks and Romans as Archaeologists” (Wace 1949), and Cook titled his “Thucydides as an Archaeologist” (Cook 1955). About the interest of the Homeric Greeks in eastern antiquities, Zichterman writes: “they were engaged in archaeology, but not classical.” However, he states: “And in the ancient world there were already the first steps of what we today call classical archaeology.” He titled an entire chapter in his book “Cultural History of Classical Archaeology”: “The Ancient Roots of Classical Archaeology” (Sichtermann 1996: 28). Schnapp, although he did not dare to put forward such ambiguous formulations, nevertheless made it clear that those manifestations of interest in material antiquities that existed in the ancient world could qualify for inclusion in archeology, albeit with some reservations. “…Archaeology can be regarded as the product of a long evolution, probably begun in preliterate societies and continued by numerous and carefully carried out observations by antiquarians of all times and countries” (Schnapp 2002).

So was there archeology in the ancient world?

2. “Sacred Archeology”: archaeological knowledge in the Ancient East. Mathematics, medicine and philology appeared in the Ancient East. There was no archeology then. But excavations happened, and some knowledge about antiquity also existed - at least they were already known as antiquities. In some textbooks on the history of archeology, the chapters on the archaeological knowledge of the Ancient East are very extensive, but this is due to the fact that the narrative includes ancient Eastern ideas about time, ancient Eastern concepts of history and thoughts about the origin and destinies of peoples. This is interesting for archaeologists, but this is not archaeology.

To archaeological knowledge, that is, to what later became part of the science of archaeology, it makes sense to include the treatment of that time with archaeological monuments and knowledge related to these objects.

The essence of the then attitude towards material antiquities was religious veneration of shrines and generally speaking respect for everything traditional. These, of course, are not scientific goals, but they also led to identification and recording, study, protection, and often to extraction and preservation. Of course, tombs, especially royal ones, were revered and protected; old temples were revered, and their ruins were studied as role models; ancient treasures and ruins of settlements were associated with myths and endowed with holiness. One could roughly talk about " sacred archeology", if not for the danger that this designation would lose its convention and be equated with archaeology.

Already in the construction of the royal tombs of the XII dynasty of Egypt (1991 - 1786 BC), researchers (Edwards 1985: 210 - 217) note signs of intentional archaization, but for her it was necessary know characteristics of ancient role models, recognize them. During the XVIII dynasty (1552 - 1305 BC), scribes left marks (graffiti) on ancient and long-abandoned monuments - therefore, they visited them. The fragmented pre-dynastic palette is inscribed with the name of Queen Tiye (1405 – 1367 BC) (Trigger 1989: 29).

From the 19th dynasty, Khaemwaset (1290 – 1224 BC), son of Ramesses II, celebrated until Greco-Roman times as a magician and sage, carefully studied the cults associated with ancient monuments in the vicinity of the capital, Memphis, in order to restore these cults During the construction work of the temple in Memphis, where he was high priest, a statue was unearthed, which Khaemwaset identified as the image of Kawab, the son of Pharaoh Cheops, who lived 13 centuries earlier. This is carved on the found statue, now kept in the Cairo Museum (Fig. 1): “Haemwaset, the son of the king, the priest of Sema and the greatest of the stewards of the artisans, was happy, for the statue of Kawab, once condemned to turn into rubbish ... of his father Khufu (Cheops) , preserved intact...” Khaemwaset was happy because he loved so much those noble ancients who came before and the perfection of their works" (Gomaa 1973; Kitchen 1982: 103 – 109).

During the Saite period (664 – 525 BC), knowledge of the carved reliefs of the Old Kingdom was sufficient for attempts at stylistic revival (Smith 1958: 246 – 252).

Thus, the knowledge of ancient objects of material culture by the Egyptians of that time is obvious, and objects of material culture were extracted from the earth precisely as antiquities. Recognizing that excavation is not the whole of archaeology, French archaeologist and historian of archeology Schnapp regards excavations Khaemwaseta as archaeological in purpose and concludes: “Whether Hemua (as the French call Khaemwaseta - L.K.) was the “first” archaeologist or not, he was undoubtedly what the Romans (and after them all Western scientists) called antique, interested in antiquity and the remnants of the distant past" (Schnapp 2002: 135). And from antiquarians today's archaeologists grew up. But excavations are not only not all archaeologists, but may not be archaeological at all (for example, forensic exhumation), but the Egyptians need knowledge of antiquities was required not for history, but for solving practical religious problems.

The Babylonian evidence of excavations is even more strikingly reminiscent of archaeology. On clay bricks from Larsa in Iraq, laid at the base of the temple, the following inscription of a Babylonian king of the 6th century was discovered. BC e. (Fig. 2):

“I am Nabonidus, king of Babylon, the shepherd appointed by Marduk..., the one whom the king of the gods Marduk firmly proclaimed as the supplyer of the cities and the restorer of the shrines...

When the great lord of heaven, Shamash, shepherd of the black-headed people, ruler of mankind, […] Larsa, his city of residence, E-babbar, his house of control, which had long been empty and turned into ruins, under dust and rubbish, - a great heap of earth, was covered until its structure was no longer recognizable, and its plan was no longer visible, […] in the reign of my predecessor King Nebukadnezzar, son of Nabopolassar, the dust was removed, and the mound of earth that covered the city and temple revealed the temenos of E- babbara of the old king Burnarburiash, the predecessor, but the search for the temenos of the more ancient king was carried out without discovery. He built E-babbar on the temenos of Burnarburiash he saw in order to accommodate the great god Shamash...

So, in the 10th year and on the auspicious day of my reign, during my eternal greatness, beloved by Shamash, Shamash remembered his former settlement; he happily decided from his prayer house on the ziggurat to rebuild better than before, and it was to me, King Nabonidus, who provided for him, that he entrusted the task of restoring E-babbar and marking his house of dominion.

At the command of the great king Marduk, winds blew from four directions, great storms: the dust that covered the city and the temple rose; E-babbar, the mighty shrine, could be seen... From the seat of Shamash and Aya, from the towering chapel of the ziggurat, the eternal holy place, the eternal chamber appeared - temenos; their plan was now visible. I read there the inscription of the ancient king Hammurabi, who built for Shamash, seven hundred years before Burnarburiash, E-babbar on the ancient temenos, and I understood its meaning. I thought: “The wise king Burnarburiash rebuilt the temple and gave the great lord Shamash to live there. To me... this temple and its restoration... I swore to myself by the word of my great lord Marduk and the words of the lords of the universe Shamash and Adad; my heart rejoiced, my liver was on fire, my task became clear, and I set about gathering workers for Shamash and Marduk, holding a hoe, and clutching a spade, and carrying a basket. I sent them in large numbers to rebuild E-babbar, the mighty temple, my sublime shrine. The craftsmen examined the device where it was found temenos to understand decoration.

On an auspicious day... I placed bricks on the temenos of the ancient king Hammurabi. I rebuilt this temple in the ancient style and decorated its structure..." (Schnapp 1996: 13 - 17).

So, the Babylonian king Nabonidus (556 - 539) excavated the temple in Lars in order to establish its plan and decoration for the reconstruction of the shrine in its previous form. While excavating, he discovered that his predecessor Nebukadnezzar (Nebuchadnezzar II), who ruled shortly before him (605 - 562), had already carried out excavations there and unearthed a temple built 7 centuries earlier by King Burnarburiash (1359 - 1333). Moreover, Nabonidus found there an even more ancient (another four centuries) inscription of King Hammurabi (1792 - 1750) and read it. His tasks were not only find something ancient in a holy place, but also to identify And restore. It is also known (Daniel 1975: 16) that Nabonidus was generally fond of such activities. He excavated under the temple of Shamash in Sippar at a depth of 18 cubits under the foundation a stone with an inscription, laid by Naramsin, the son of Sargon of Akkad, - a stone “which no previous king had seen for 3200 years” (in fact, Sargon, who reigned ca. 2335 - 2279 BC, separated from Nabonidus by more than 17 centuries).

Alain Schnapp sums up the Lars episode: “it is not that far from what we today call archaeology” and calls Nabonidus’ inscription “the first written evidence of the consciousness and practice of archaeology” (Schnapp 1996: 17 – 18). The tasks of Babylonian excavators and modern archaeologists are undoubtedly similar, and therefore the practice is similar. But these are not the same tasks. The king only needed to establish where and how his predecessors built the temple, and restore it. He did not need any other antiquities, nor the establishment of their appearance and sequence, nor their preservation - he added his own postscript to Hammurabi’s inscription, and replaced the ancient temple with a new one according to the old plan. This is not archeology, but practical theology. If we can discern an element of archeology here, it is oriented not toward history, but toward church architecture. There is little more archeology here than in exhumation.

In addition to excavations, the Babylonians sometimes carried out another operation, in which one can see a feature of archeology - graphic recording of antiquities. During the reign of Nabonidus, a scribe named Nabuzerlishir copied an inscription dating from the time of Kurigalzu II (1332 - 1308) in Akkad. It is almost a contemporary of Burnarburiash. The same scribe found an inscription on a stone that belonged to Sharkalisharri (2140 - 2124), king of Akkad, and not only copied the inscription, but also noted where he found it (Fig. 3). By the time of the scribe, this inscription was already one and a half thousand years old. Another scribe, whose name we do not know, copied the inscription from the base of the statue, which a certain merchant from Mari dedicated to the god Shamash in the second half of the 3rd millennium BC. e. In Nippur, in the layer of Nebuchadnezzar's time, a vessel was found, inside of which there were objects from an older time: a tablet with a city plan, bricks and tablets of the Sumerian period, treaties of the end of the 2nd millennium BC. e.

But these, firstly, are not exactly archaeological objects - rather epigraphic, and secondly, the scribes collected and copied them not for study, but exclusively for practical needs - as documents from the royal archive and as religious texts.

Another feature characteristic of archeology can be noted among the Babylonians - this gathering And storage antiquities. The gods of another people are still gods. The cult statues of the enemy people could not be destroyed; the conqueror usually took them away to erect them in his temple. In the palace of Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon, German archaeologists discovered in one room a cluster of statues and tablets from different times - from the 3rd millennium to the 7th century BC. e. Eckard Unger was ready to believe that this was the first museum of antiquities (Unger 1931). The daughter of Nabonidus, Princess Bel-Shalti-Nannar, collected in the 6th century. BC e. a large collection of ancient Babylonian artefacts, including inscriptions, and it is described as the first museum of antiquities known to us (Woolley 1950: 152 – 154). This was not a museum: things were not collected for admiration or display to the public - it was a repository of sacred objects.

Trigger gives a more archaeological interpretation: "This growing interest in the physical remains of the past was part of the increased attention of the educated classes to earlier times. This interest had a strong religious component" (Trigger 1989: 29). With this interpretation, the difference is blurred. Like, there was a religious component (strong), there were others (scientific? educational?). But, in fact, there were no others.

Only in ancient China did the veneration of antiquities, while remaining religious, have a more noticeable philosophical component. Confucian scholars, who zealously defended respect for ancestors and traditions, regarded the systematic study of the past as the path to moral perfection. This may have been reflected in the collection of ancient bronze vessels, carved jade figurines, and other ancient art objects as family treasures (Wang 1985). The first use of archaeological materials for historical purposes took place in China. The great Chinese historian Sima Qian visited ancient ruins and examined the remains of the past along with the texts. But this was already in the 2nd century. BC e., i.e. simultaneously with the same actions of historians in the Western ancient world.

3. Ancient ideas about primitiveness. If we turn to the views of ancient authors on the origin of human culture (and historiographers turn to these views - see Helmich 1931; Cook 1955; Phillips 1964; Mustifli 1965; Müller 1968; Blundell 1986, etc.), then the picture turns out to be truly impressive : among the Greeks and Romans, and even among the ancient Chinese, we find the first discussions (historiographers call them “theories”) about the progress of humanity from the bestial state, about three centuries and other concepts that are currently of interest to archaeologists. There are three main concepts:

A. The concept of degradation (Dekadenztheorie in Helmich). It is called the concept of the “golden age” and is traced back to Hesiod (Baldry 1952, 1956), but already in Homer there are indications that people used to live better than now (Helmich 1931: 32 – 36), and ideas can be traced back to the Eastern mythology (Griffiths 1956, 1958).

Homer (VIII - VII centuries BC), an Ionian from Asia Minor, depicts the perfection of the state of the human race in heroic century But oh gold century he has no speech, although Helmich suggests that Homer was familiar with the tradition of the golden age - that he “did not remain in naive ignorance of the old tradition of mankind about the golden age” (Helmich 1931: 33). Helmich deduces this assumption from the fact that Homer portrays his old men of the heroic age (Nestor and Phoenix) as praising the old, even more blessed time, when the heroes were even more powerful (Il., I, 260; V, 302 - 305, 447 - 451) . But this may simply be a psychological characteristic of the usual old man's boasting and praising the days of his youth. Homer reports that far from the disasters of the Trojan War remained the blessed Hippomolgi, who fed on milk, and the Abii, the fairest people of the earth, and among later ancient authors the golden age was associated with the reign of the goddess of justice, and it was these peoples who were credited with longevity (more than a thousand years) - a sign of the golden age. century. The reflection of the golden age also lies in Homer’s Cyclopes from the Odyssey (Od., IX, 106 – 111): they do not plow, do not sow, but the earth itself feeds them (Helmig 1931: 34). A blissful and carefree existence is described in Livy (Od., IV, 85 - 89) and in Elysia (Od., VII, 561 - 568). But, one way or another, Homer (or the Homeric singers, if the Homeric epic had more than one author) does not directly mention the golden age.

The concept of five centuries - golden, silver, copper, heroic and iron - is set out in the great poem "Works and Days" (108 - 201) by Hesiod, writing in the 7th century. BC Hey. in Argolis among farmers. The “Golden Generation” lived carefree under the rule of the god Chronos, not knowing illness or pain, and the land bore fruit without cultivation. The golden age was followed by the silver age, when indifference to the gods appeared and worries began. During the Copper Age, giants grew on the earth, and Ares, the god of war, reigned. Then came the age of heroes who fought at Thebes and Troy and were nobler and more just than before. When they all died in battle, the Iron Age began. Evil and dishonor reigned, and poverty and disease spread among the people, and they began to die at a younger age.

It is easy to notice that the heroic age is included here from the outside - it falls out of the periodization of metals, and the curve, going down three centuries, soars up again in the fourth, to finally descend in the fifth (Helmig 1931: 39; Phillips 1964: 171) - apparently , the heroic age emerged as a reaction to Homeric and other epics. The sequence of metals more or less coincides with the real historical sequence and availability of smelting and processing: from soft to harder.

Echoes of the concept of five centuries - the concept of degradation - are found in Empedocles, Dicaearchus, Plato. For the latter, only that the primordial life of people in the ideal state of the past, headed by God, was depicted as a blissful kingdom, close to the mythical: no wild animals, no wars, no doublethink, no marriages, no agriculture ("The Statesman", 15 - 16), pious existence in peace and abundance, without gold and silver ("Laws", III, 2).

Of the Romans, Ovid, exiled to the far north, to the shores of the Black Sea, was also prone to pessimism and in the Metamorphoses he continued the tradition of Hesiod, painting five centuries. His people of the golden age lived in eternal spring, eating only milk, honey and fruits. In the Silver Age, when Saturn transferred power over the world to Jupiter, four seasons were established, and people took up agriculture and moved into caves. In the Copper Age, people acquired weapons and waged wars, and in the Iron Age, with technological progress, moral decline came, and the goddess of justice left the earth. He does not have a heroic age, and the age of giants falls out of the general presentation and is depicted separately.

Helmich notes three common places of the golden age that are repeated among all representatives of this concept: 1) the earth, which itself provides food for people; 2) the longevity of the people of that time; and 3) their fairness. They are based on the closeness of the first people to the gods. Eingof finds a similar concept among other peoples - Indo-Aryans and Germans, Jews

B. The concept of progress (Evolutionstheorie in Helmich) from the bestial state to the present well-ordered society in connection with discoveries and inventions goes back to the materialistic ideas of Democritus and to the desire of Epicurus to free humanity from the fear of the gods. An important basis for this concept was the myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods and gave it to people, introduced agriculture and cattle breeding, and taught how to build ships. This concept introduced the idea of primitiveness original, primitive people (Lovejoy and Boas 1935).

Ionian thinkers of the 6th century. BC e. Democritus, Xenophanes of Colophon and Protagoras of Abdera doubted the existence of mythical gods, they had to think about how people gained their superiority over animals, being neither the strongest nor the most protected. Democritus believed that they learned everything from watching animals - they learned weaving from a spider, construction from birds. Xenophanes believed that people rose above animals thanks to the possession of hands. Protagoras, in his lost work On Initial Conditions, assigned the credit to the culture hero Prometheus. It is believed that the account of the primitive life of the first people by Diodorus, a historian who lived in the 1st century, goes back to Democritus and Protagoras. n. e. – simple food gatherers, they lived in small groups; under the threat of attacks by wild animals, they learned to help each other, speak, dress, and first settled in caves, then began to build huts, and mastered fire.

Dicaearchus (IV century BC) was the first to construct a three-stage scheme for the development of the economy. According to Porphyry (De abstinent., IV, I, 2), Dicaearchus began with a golden age in which people simply fed on what nature provided (modern scientists would call this gathering), followed by shepherding, and then agriculture.

The Epicureans recognized that gods exist, but do not interfere in people's lives. To be afraid of them and rely on them is a prejudice, a superstition. Following the Epicurean teaching about the liberation of man from the fears and worries from which the world suffers, Lucretius Carus, who lived in the 1st century. BC e., turned Hesiod's scheme upside down, moving the age of bliss and prosperity into the future, and depicting the past as meager and miserable. In his poem "On the Nature of Things" (V, 911 – 1226) he built a concept of progress (Mahoudeau 1920). At the beginning of history he places a primitive animal-like existence. People were healthy and roughly built, so they lived long, but death was not painless and often came from hunger. They did not know agriculture, fire, had no laws, lived naked in forests and mountain caves, hunted animals with stones and clubs and had promiscuous sexual relations. In the second period, as a result of mastering fire (from lightning and natural fires), people moved from caves to huts, got dressed, invented a language and established the rules of marriage. In the third period, kings built cities and fortresses, divided the land between people, and agriculture and cattle breeding began, and gold appeared. But in the fourth period, the kings were killed and democracy was introduced, the best people received divine honor. Peering into the nature of things, people believed in gods. In the fifth period, metals were mastered - copper, iron and silver.

Primitive tools, according to Lucretius, were crude and primitive, made without the use of metals, and among metals, bronze came into use earlier than iron (V, 1270), because there is more copper ore and copper is easier to process. On this basis, some archaeologists (Görnes, Jacob-Friesen, etc.) said that Lucretius had already formed an idea of ​​​​the system of three centuries. In fact, Lucretius does not have three centuries, but there are five completely different periods, and there is an idea of ​​the sequence of the introduction of metals into use, from which idea a system of three centuries can be derived if we take the sequence of metals as the basis for periodization.

B. The concept of apogee (Kompromißtheorie by Helmich). Greek thinker of the 1st century. BC e. Posidonius of Apamea, very popular among the Romans (Cicero went to Rhodes to study with him), wrote, under the influence of the teachings of the Stoics, the work “Protreptikos”, the content of which came to us only in a letter from Seneca (letter 90), where he criticizes this work. Posidonius combined the doctrine of progress (from the bestial state) with the doctrine of degradation (from the golden age). He placed the bestial state at the beginning of human existence, and the golden age at the middle of history. This was the apogee, from which the degradation to the current state began.

The influence of Posidonius' interpretation is seen in Virgil's Aeneid.

These concepts of ancient thinkers are still closely connected with mythology and are purely speculative, completely not developed on factual material and not supported by it. Hellmich calls these semi-mythical concepts "theories." He was prompted to choose this word by “the huge mass of prehistoric material proposed by ancient writers.” He notes that “he attracted only such ancient writers who reflected the prehistory of man in a complete independent theory” (Helmich 1931: 31). This, of course, is not a reason to call the belief systems of ancient authors theories. As E. D. Phillips notes, “the great difference from modern prehistory is the complete lack of factual evidence for the theories, which seems to have only occasionally been felt as an obstacle” (Phillips 1964: 176). But a theory is a system of views that is developed on factual material and verified by independent facts, which the ancient authors did not have one iota of.

And the main thing for our consideration is that all these discussions about primitiveness, O primitivism primitive people, although interesting to archaeologists, do not constitute the topic of archaeology. Even if we ignore their purely philosophical nature, thematically they constitute the subject not of archeology, but of prehistory, the history of primitive society. It is modern English-speaking and German-speaking scientists who have merged two different sciences under one designation - prehistory And primitive archeology. Recoiling from material archeology and in pursuit of the relevance of their science, they likened it to history and lost even the terminological distinction. For the British and Americans this is all prehistory, for the Germans everything is Vorgeschichte or Urgeschicte. But these disciplines—prehistory and primitive archeology—are as different as ancient history and classical archeology (see Klein 1991, 1992; Klejn 1994).

Archeology developed from the study of material antiquities. How did this happen in the ancient world?

4. Antiquities in the Homeric epic. The first thing that comes to mind is to turn to the Homeric epic, since it deals with something that was ancient even for the ancient Greeks and for the Aedic and Rhapsodian singers themselves. Moreover, many of these antiquities were quite material - fortress walls, cities that disappeared later, ancient weapons, armor, burials of heroes. All these are archaeological sites for posterity. And we know that modern archeology constantly turns to the Homeric epic when analyzing the Cretan-Mycenaean culture and archaic Greece. But modern archeology turns to both written sources and language. We are not interested in the ability of the Homeric epic to serve as comparative material for modern archaeology, but in those components of it that themselves could claim the status of archaeological reports or reasoning.

The entire action of the epic takes place half a thousand years before Homer in Asia Minor under the walls of Ilion (archaeologically this is Troy VIIb), which by the time of Homer or the Homeric singers was already a Greek city (Troy VIII). Homer unfolds the action among the fortress walls, which he describes in detail (towers, Dardanian Gate, Scaean Gate) - these are, of course, architectural details of Troy VIII. These names show that the information is taken not from a mental reconstruction of the ruins, but from folklore - local names, stories of local residents, songs and legends.

On the Greek mainland, the capital of the kingdom of Nestor Pylos is mentioned, but by ancient times the Greeks were already arguing where it was located - in Triphylia or Messenia. By this time there were several cities with this name. Judging by the routes and distances described by Homer, the singer, or, rather, the singers, either had in mind the Triphilian Pylos, or the Messenian one. Now archaeological evidence has shown that layers and a palace from Mycenaean times exist only in Messenian Pylos. Homer (or Homer's singers) did not know this. The problem was solved without archaeology.

The epic features some things that no longer existed in the everyday life of the singers themselves (8th – 7th centuries BC). These were already fossil forms, extinct. For example, a helmet completely covered with boar tusks (Fig. 4). It appears only in images from Mycenaean times. Or the tower shield of Ajax (Fig. 5) is a thing characteristic of the Mycenaean time; such shields were no longer used in the Homeric era. But Homeric singers did not see them in reality - neither in museums nor in excavations. Descriptions of these things came to singers in old songs, in frozen folklore expressions - just as in Russian epics the “ringing harp” and “red-hot arrow” came down to us.

Canto XXIII describes the burial of Patroclus “on the banks of the Hellespont” - the cremation of a corpse in an urn under the mound. Before that, Patroclus appeared to Achilles in a dream and exclaimed (XXIII: 83 – 93):

My bones, Achilles, may not be different from yours;

Let them lie down together, just as we grew up together from our youth...

Let the tomb alone hide our bones,

A golden urn, Thetis's mother's precious gift.

The woodcutters built a fire on the shore, “where Achilles showed them, /Where Patroclus had a great mound and he assigned it to himself.” 12 captive youths, four horses and two dogs were sacrificed. When the log house burned down, it was extinguished with wine. The bones of Patroclus were placed in a golden urn, and the grave site was marked around. “Having freshly filled the mound, they dispersed.”

Hector's body was buried in the same way (XXIV, 783 - 805), but not on the shore, but near the city near the fortress wall. The urn was placed in a deep grave, covered with stones and a mound was filled.

Based on these descriptions, it can be assumed that the mound of Achilles with Patroclus should be on the shore, and the mound of Hector should be near the city. On the map compiled in the 19th century by Spratt and Forchhammer, there are the mounds of Achilles and Ajax north of Ilion, on the banks of the Hellespont, and the mound of Hector is marked eight kilometers south of Ilion on Mount Balidag. But this is a designation of a new time, made on a guess. Through half a thousand years of Turkish time, these local legends could not pass. None of the ancient sources, except Homer, mention these graves there. Archaeologists do not attribute the burial structures in these mounds to the end of Mycenaean times. And in ancient sources the graves of Achilles and Hector are located in other places. The heroes of Achilles are located in different places on the Balkan Peninsula, and his grave was also indicated in different places. Many sources place Hector’s grave in Thebes, the main city of Boeotia, and some (Peplos of Pseudo-Aristotle) ​​even report an inscription on the grave: “For Hector the great Boeotian men built a grave above the ground, a reminder to descendants,” but sources differ in the exact location of this graves in Thebes.

Thus, both heroes were transferred to the Trojan epic cycle from other legends, and the Homeric singers may have used some mounds that stood there to link these heroes to the Troas and the Hellespont, but there was no archaeological reasoning here, except perhaps the usual “folk archeology” ", and even that is questionable.

5. Interest in material antiquities as shrines (“sacred archeology”) in the ancient world. To a large extent, interest in material antiquities was guided by the same motives in the ancient world as in the Ancient East - for the ancient Greeks and Romans these were things associated with mythology, possessing miraculous properties, shrines (Hansen 1967). Three episodes reported by historians and geographers of Greece are characteristic.

A. Finding the grave of Orestes. Herodotus tells the story of the war between the Lacedaemonians and the Tegeans. During the war, the Lacedaemonians turned to Pythia for advice on how to defeat the Tegeans. She said that it was necessary to find the bones of the ancient hero Theseus and bury them at home. And you need to look for them in Tegea, in a place where two winds blow, a blow meets a counterblow and evil falls on evil.

During the truce, one of the Lacedaemonians named Lich (or Licha) went on his business to Tegea and went into the forge to marvel at the blacksmith while he was working. The blacksmith shared his adventure with him:

“Friend Laconian! You are amazed at how skillfully they work iron. But if you had a chance to see the same thing as me, then how much you would be surprised! I wanted to dig a well in my yard and, while digging, I came across a coffin at 7 cubits in length. Not believing, however, that people would ever be taller than today, I opened the coffin and saw that the deceased was indeed the same size as the coffin. Having measured the coffin, I again covered it with earth."

Likh came up with a brilliant idea: a tall dead man (an elbow is from 43 to 56 cm, seven elbows means from 3 to 4 meters!), besides, the blacksmith’s bellows are two winds, and the hammer and anvil are a blow and a counter-blow , well, the iron that bends during forging is evil upon evil, which was spoken of in the prophecy of the Pythia. Convinced that the burial of Orestes had been found, he hurried to Sparta, but his fellow countrymen did not believe it at first. Lichas went again to Tegea, rented a forge, then opened the grave, collected the bones and returned with them to Sparta. Since then, the Spartans have always defeated the Tegeans (Herod., I, 68).

This message from Herodotus lets us know how much we can trust the ancient legends about the graves of heroes - the coincidence with the vague prophecies of the Pythia was for them a sufficient signal of reliability. Three or four meters in length is also a fabulous detail, unless by the bones of Orestes they meant the bones of a mammoth.

B. Transfer of Theseus' bones. The Greek historian Plutarch, who lived already in Roman times, in the 2nd century. n. e., conveys the legend of another prophecy of the Pythia. After the Persian War, i.e. in the 6th century. BC e., Pythia ordered the Athenians to transfer the bones of Theseus to Athens from the island of Syros, where the hero was buried.

“But,” he says, “it was very difficult to open these bones, as well as to find the place where they lay, due to the inhospitality and savage character of the barbarian people who inhabited the island. However, after Cimon took the island [...] , and had a great passion to find the place where Theseus was buried, he accidentally tracked an eagle on a hill, pecking with its beak and tearing the ground with its claws, and suddenly, as if by divine inspiration, it occurred to him to dig in that place and look for the bones of Theseus. In the place was discovered the coffin of a man taller than normal height and a copper spearhead and a sword lying nearby, all of which he took with him on board the galley and brought with him to Athens. After which the Athenians, extremely joyful, went out in a solemn procession with sacrifices to meet and accept the remains , as if it were Theseus himself returning alive to the city" (Plut., Thes., 36).

Here again a huge skeleton figure appears, and the reliability of the identification rests only on the divine sign in the form of an eagle.

B. Discovery of the tomb of Alcmene, mother of Hercules. And here is how the same Plutarch conveys the story of a witness (although not an eyewitness) about the discovery by Agesilaus, king of Sparta, of the tomb of Alcmene, the mother of Hercules. Agesilaus, having captured Thebes, opened the grave of Alcmene in Haliarte on the shore of Lake Copaida and took the bones to Sparta. The witness is asked:

“You arrived very successfully, as if by inspiration,” said Theocritus. “I would just like to hear what objects were found and what was the general appearance of the tomb of Alcmene when this grave was opened in your country - that is, whether you were present , when the remains were transported to Sparta under orders received from Agesilaus."

In response to this:

“I was not there,” answered Fidonius, “and although, indignant, I expressed my strong indignation and discontent to my fellow countrymen, they left me without support. Be that as it may, no remains were found in the grave itself, but only a stone together with a bronze bracelet of small size and two clay urns containing earth, which, due to the passage of time, turned out to be a petrified and solid mass. In front of the grave, however, lay a bronze tablet with a long inscription of such amazing antiquity that nothing could be made out, although when the bronze was washed, everything was clearly visible; but the letters had a peculiar and alien outline, very reminiscent of Egyptian writing. Accordingly, Agesilaus, it was said, sent copies to the king with instructions to deliver them to the priest for possible interpretation. But Simius could perhaps tell us about this anything, since at that time, for the sake of his philosophical research, he saw many priests in Egypt. In Haliart, a large crop failure and the reduction of the lake were considered not accidental, but a punishment for us for allowing the excavation of the grave" (Plut., De Socr. daemon., 5, Moral., 577 – 578).

Later, the Greek priest Conufis tried to read this inscription; he spent three days selecting letters in old scrolls, but to no avail. Nevertheless, it was announced that the inscription implores the Greeks to observe peace and devote themselves to the muses and philosophy. As can now be judged, these were probably Mycenaean writings, although those on bronze are now unknown. The belonging of the grave to the mythical Alcmene remains, of course, as unproven as the previous graves: the foundations are unknown, the urns are unclear whether they contain ashes or accompanying food, bones were not found, the inscription was not read.

Even Alain Schnapp interprets all three episodes as “archeology of the holy forces” (Schnapp 1996: 52).

“Here...,” he writes, “the fabulous, symbolic and fantastic played a decisive role in the message. The discovery of the grave was not the result of observations, but only a consequence of the interpretation of the oracle. We do not have details of the hero’s weapons or clothing, only his gigantic height distinguishes him from others burials. In fact, to locate a grave there was no need to interpret the landscape or soil, but only to decipher the message. Identification was not tied to material signs, but only to the location of the symbols that had to be decoded. Likh was an archaeologist of words, not of soil " (Schnapp 1996: 54).

This is a very accurate assessment of all three reports from the point of view of a modern archaeologist. But Schnapp still included them in his review of the germs of archeology. Meanwhile, all these objects of search and excavation attracted attention because they had miraculous properties - they ensured military successes, consolidated victory, and brought crop failures and droughts. How does this differ from the sacred archeology of the Babylonians and Egyptians? Essentially nothing. Here are episodes from the history of Rome:

D. Opening of the grave of Numa Pompilius. According to Titus Livy, in 181 BC. e. The Romans opened the tomb of the Sabine king Numa Pompilius (7th century BC) and allegedly found the philosophical writings of this king in it. This is already some kind of mixture of holiness and politics.

D. Prediction to Vespasian. When Vespasian came into power over Rome, in Arcadian Tegea, on the basis of a mantle (fortune telling), excavations of a grave in a holy place were undertaken. Ancient vessels were removed from the grave, one of which was, as modern archaeologists would have determined, a facial urn, and the features of the mask on it were very similar to the face of Vespasian. This was seen as a favorable sign for his reign. The tendentiousness of the story is obvious, but the ancient vessel with the mask could not have been invented (there are such vessels among the antiquities of Italy). However, his discovery was not motivated by cognitive interests (in general, opening the grave was sacrilege) and was used for sacred and political purposes (Hansen 1967: 48).

6. Taste for antiquities. Compared to the eastern despotisms, the ancient world looks more advanced collecting antiquities and creation museums. Votives (sacrifices in the form of images of a diseased part of the body), and most importantly, donations of precious things - statues, dishes, weapons, clothes - from rulers and nobility accumulated in temples. These donations, often associated with famous names of legendary history, became a means of attracting pilgrims and contributed to the glory of the temples. Gradually, the antiquity of these things and their connection with famous heroes and events began to increase their value no less than the skillful craftsmanship of the manufacturers and the high cost of the material. Pausanias, describing the Parthenon, advised his readers: “To those who place works of art ahead of antiquities, this is what can be seen here” (Paus., I, 24).

The Romans developed a craving for everything Greek as more skillful, perfect, subtle, noble, and since Greek examples were, in general, older than Roman imitations, in Rome the passion for collecting everything ancient took the form of philhellenism. The rich accumulated collections of ancient, mostly Greek works of art, like private museums. For the servants of these museums, even a term appeared: astatuis(literally "harasser"). It is noteworthy that many masterpieces of Greek art have come down to us in Roman copies. This passion was expressed in almost archaeological manifestations. Suetonius reports that during the time of Caesar in Capua, when building houses, Roman colonists opened graves with valuable vases. On one relief from Ostia, 1st century. BC e. (Fig. 6) fishermen pull out a Greek bronze statue with a net; by the nature of the image, probably Hercules, around the beginning of the 5th century. BC e.

The Roman commander Lucius Mammius, having captured Corinth, undertook a massive export of Corinthian works of art. Strabo describes how Caesar founded a Roman colony on the site of ancient Greek Corinth in the second half of the 1st century. BC e.:

"Now, after Corinth had been abandoned for a long time, it was, because of its advantageous position, restored again by the divine Caesar, who colonized it with a people belonging to for the most part to the freedmen. And when they removed the ruins and at the same time dug up the graves, they found a large number of terracotta reliefs and also many bronze vessels. And since they admired the work, they did not leave a single grave unrobbed; so, well supplied with such things and having them at a great price, they filled Rome with Corinthian “escheated” things (νεκροκορίνθια), for that is what they called things taken from the graves, and especially ceramics. At first the pottery was valued very highly, as were the bronzes of Corinthian work, but then they ceased to care much for them, since the supply of ceramic vessels failed to meet expectations, and some of them were not even well executed" (Strab., Geogr., VIII, 6, 23).

Suetonius says that the colonists settled by Caesar in Capua also looked for urns for sale in old graves opened during construction, and at the same time they allegedly found a bronze tablet predicting the death of Caesar (Sueton., Divus Iulius, 81). Later, Caligula and Nero plundered all of Greece. Five hundred bronze statues were taken from Delphi alone. The famous orator and politician Cicero (106 - 43 BC) was a great lover of everything Greek. With obvious pleasure, Tacitus talks about Nero's greed for ancient treasures and his fiasco.

“Following this, fate made fun of Nero, which was facilitated by his frivolity and the promises of Caesellius Bassus, a Punic by birth, who, possessing a vain disposition, believed that what he saw in a dream at night undoubtedly corresponded to reality; having gone to Rome and achieved bribery, In order to be admitted to the princeps, he informs him that in his field he discovered a cave of immeasurable depth, concealing a great amount of gold, not in the form of money, but in rough ancient ingots... There lie golden bricks of enormous weight, and on the other side golden columns rise: all this was hidden for so many centuries to enrich their generation, but he suggested that these treasures were hidden […]

Without considering whether the narrator is worthy of belief and how credible his story is, without sending any of his own to verify the message he has received, Nero deliberately spreads rumors about hidden riches and sends people with orders to deliver them, as if he already owned them. Triremes with selected oarsmen are equipped to speed up the voyage. In those days, this was all they talked about, the people with their characteristic gullibility, reasonable people discussing the doubts that beset them. It so happened that at this very time the five-year games were being held - for the second time after their establishment - and the speakers, praising the princeps, turned mainly to the same subject. After all, now the earth produces not only the fruits it usually produces and gold mixed with other metals, but it bestows its bounties as never before, and the gods send the riches that lie ready. They added other servile inventions to this, being equally sophisticated in eloquence and flattery, convinced that their listener would believe everything.

Based on these absurd hopes, Nero became more and more wasteful day by day; The funds accumulated by the treasury were depleted, as if he already had in his hands such treasures that would be enough for many years of unrestrained spending. Counting on the same treasures, he began to distribute gifts widely, and the expectation of untold riches became one of the reasons for the impoverishment of the state. For Bass, followed not only by warriors, but also by villagers rounded up for work, constantly moving from place to place and each time claiming that it was here that the promised cave was located, dug up his land and the vast space around it and, finally, amazed , why only in this case the dream deceived him for the first time, although all the previous ones invariably came true, he abandoned his senseless persistence and by voluntary death avoided reproach and fear of retribution. However, some writers report that he was thrown into prison and then released, and in compensation for the royal treasury his property was confiscated" (Tacit., Annal., XVI, 1 - 3).

This episode is very reminiscent of the stories with “storeroom paintings”, with the only difference that it is more dramatic, since the role of peasants like Protsyuk or Nikifor Milin is played by the Carthaginian Caselius Bass, and in the place of the seduced landowner Likhman is the ruler of the half-world Nero. The result is, of course, the same, and the nature of the adventure is the same. As for collecting and the formation of museums, there is something new here compared to the Ancient East: not only temples and rulers, but also rich officials and nobles collected antiquities, and the purpose of collecting them was no longer the accumulation of relics and shrines, but the desire to luxury, admiring and boasting of the craftsmanship and antiquity of rare treasures.

But this is not an argument in favor of recognizing the occupation of ancient collectors as archeology. Although archeology, as Alain Schnapp puts it, is “the illegitimate sister of collecting,” he himself admits that “an archaeologist, as everyone knows, is not a collector” or “a collector, but a special kind - more meticulous than others, and accountable to various state institutions and the public" (Schnap 1996: 12 – 13). No, of course, archeology is involved in some types of collecting and has connections with them, but collecting is in no way included in the characteristics of archeology as a science. They have completely different natures (cf. Klein 1977).

Emperor Augustus, when decorating his country villa, preferred ancient things and weapons of heroes (Suetonius LXXII, 3). He created an entire museum in which antiquities prevailed over natural curiosities (Reinach 1889).

The passion for ancient culture gained particular momentum under the Emperor Hadrian, and it was Greek culture. Hadrian was born in the last quarter of the 1st century AD. e. - in 76. At the age of sixteen he went to Athens to complete his education - he knew Greek well, which was then the language of philosophy and culture for the Romans (something like Latin in later Europe). In Athens he studied for three years with the famous sophist philosopher Iseus. The Greek city-states had long since submitted to the Roman Empire, but their superior and ancient culture increasingly influenced the victors. From a young age, Adrian was not close to Rome and the Romans, he admired Greek culture and at that time earned the nickname “Greek boy” (Graeculus).

When Hadrian set out on a four-year journey through the northeastern provinces of the empire, he found himself stuck in his beloved Greece for a long time. In Athens, he carried out great work on the improvement and expansion of the city, led sports games, founded the huge temple of Olympian Zeus and was initiated into the mysteries of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Hadrian was not the first admirer of all things Greek. If Tiberius disliked the Greek spirit, then Claudius and Nero were philhellenes. The Romans generally treated the Greeks differently than the rest of the conquered countries. They did not install Roman garrisons in Greek cities (Roman detachments stood only on the borders), did not destroy the Greek way of life, replacing it with the Roman one, they preserved everything Greek in the Greek part of the empire - their polis, and in each polis an agora, a stand, temples, theaters, baths, gymnasiums. Moreover, they borrowed a lot from Greek culture, art and science. In the Roman Senate, not only the share of provincials increased, but also, in particular, the share of Greeks. Among the provincials in the Senate, the Greeks accounted for 16.8% under Vespasian, 34.% under Trajan, 36.% under Hadrian, and immediately after him, under Antoninus, already 46.5%, and under Commodus, all 60.8%. This was the result of the Hellenization of the Roman Empire by Hadrian. In Rome, Hadrian introduced the cult of the goddess Roma - like the Greek Athena.

From September 128 to March 129 he built a lot in Athens, in particular, he built an altar in the pantheon of Olympian Zeus, not to Zeus, but to himself - he joined God, became partly a god, the embodiment of Zeus on earth. His lover Antinous, as the favorite of the god, was clearly associated with Ganymede. The connection between Hadrian and Antinous had a sacred meaning for both of them - it repeated the Greek myth.

Since March 127, the emperor became seriously ill, then recovered, although not completely. Together with Antinous, Hadrian again took part in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and Hadrian felt renewed - the word “reborn” was now minted on the coins. But he became very interested in graves, especially the graves of lovers. In Greece, Hadrian erected a stele on the grave of Epaminondas of Thebes, the commander who broke the power of Sparta, buried next to his beloved youth Kaphisodorus (Pausanus 8.8 - 12, 8. 11. 8; Plutarch, On Love). When Antinous, Hadrian's lover, drowned in the Nile, the emperor, in accordance with the Egyptian belief about the holiness of such drowned people, declared him a god and transferred to Rome a number of elements of the ancient Egyptian funerary cult. At his villa in Tivoli, archaeologists found copies of Egyptian canopic jars - vessels for the body parts of the deceased.

So the even more ancient Egyptian culture joined the ancient Greek culture. It can be said that Hadrian was the most archaic of the Roman emperors. Russia is familiar with this passion for the ancient and Greek - let us remember the cultural admiration of Rus' for Byzantium. On the basis of such a powerful fascination with an older culture, archeology could arise. But Adrian didn't dig up anything; he was attracted not by material antiquities, but by the myths and cults of ancient culture, its art and spirituality, its living continuation.

7. Veneration of antiquities in ancient East Asia. In ancient times, the interest of the Chinese people in the material remains of the past was apparently the most stable. In Confucian China, veneration of antiquities was a natural element of a worldview based on observance of tradition. Under 133 BC. e. he talks about Li Shaozhong, a sage and magician who made himself immortal:

“When Li Shao-chung appeared before the emperor, the latter asked him about an ancient bronze vessel that was in the emperor’s possession. “This vessel,” answered Li Shao-chong, “was presented in the Cedar Room in the tenth year of the reign of Prince Huang Tzu.” When the inscription on the vessel was deciphered, it turned out that it actually belonged to Prince Huang Tzu. Everyone in the palace was full of admiration and decided that Li Shao-chung must be a spirit who had lived for hundreds of years" (Sima Qian 1971, 2: 39).

Having cited this quotation, Alain Schnapp evaluates it as follows: “Everything in this story is archaeological: an ancient vase belonging to the emperor, a dating confirmed by an inscription, the admiration of the court for a magician whose age is confirmed epigraphically” (Schnap 1996: 76). The veneration of antiquities is evident here, but there is nothing archaeological in this story: the ancient vase itself may or may not be an object of archeology, depending on what is done with it; the dating from the inscription is epigraphic, not archaeological.

But Chinese contemporaries of the ancient world were engaged in material antiquities and more closely related to archaeological research. The same Sima Qian devoted a significant part of his “Reports of Great Historians about China” to the discoveries of ancient tripods. He tried to read the inscriptions on them. He himself traveled a lot around China, trying to verify information about ancient cities with personal observations. He first noted the ruins of the Shan capital in Anyang - later the most famous archaeological site of Bronze Age China.

In the 1st century BC e. (this is close to the time of Lucretius) the Chinese author Yuan Tian sketched a periodization of tools and weapons very reminiscent of the later “three centuries system” and based on factual material from ancient artifacts (Cheng 1959: XVII; Chang 1968: 2; Evans 1981: 13). Philosopher Fen Huji reports:

“During Jianyuan, Shennong and Hezu, tools were made of stone to cut trees and build houses, and these tools were buried with the deceased... During Huandi, tools were made of jade to cut trees, build houses and dig earth... and were buried with the deceased. During the Yu, tools were made of bronze to build canals... and houses. Nowadays, tools are made of iron" (Chang 1986: 4 – 5).

As we can see, the ancient author mentions that all these tools were found in burials (obviously, the opening of burials gave rise to these observations), and between the Stone and Copper (or Bronze) periods he inserted the Jade period, and the latest data from Chinese archeology seems to confirm his conclusions. This is, of course, a significant breakthrough into the future.

However, these episodes, which partly anticipated current archaeological research, were still exceptions. As John Evans writes about China at this time,

"This early tradition of interest in antiquities petrified and did not develop in the end the promise that seems to have been discernible in its early stages. Known as "jing shi xiu" (literally "studies of bronzes and stones", but in fact they covered ancient artifacts, made in a variety of materials, including architecture), these activities became a kind of systematic antiquarianism with a relatively limited perspective and goals... Interest was focused on the objects themselves, in particular on any inscriptions applied to them, and both the objects themselves and the inscriptions were interpreted according to norms "the then standard Confucian model of Chinese history. Little consideration was given to origins and context, even when information about them was available, which was not very often, and for the most part there was no concept of independent historical information that these material remains could provide" (Evans 1981: 13).

8. Archaeological considerations in the ancient world: Herodotus and Thucydides. Already in Herodotus, who is called the “father of history,” one can find not only simple references to material antiquities (as geographical landmarks or landmarks), but also references to such antiquities as evidence of the reality of certain historical events and persons.

So, telling about Egyptian pharaohs Cheops and Khafre, Herodotus describes their pyramids, sets out the history of their construction, reports the costs of construction, according to Egyptian legends and according to inscriptions allegedly read to him (II, 127 - 129).

Talking about the ancient Lydian king Gyges (Gyges), Herodotus reports that, having ascended the throne, this king sent a large number of silver and gold things to Delphi as dedicatory gifts, and they are still kept in Delphi. Most of the silver objects at Delphi are dedicated to them. Six gold craters weighing 30 talents stand in the treasury of the Corinthians. King Midas of Phrygia also brought gifts to the Delphic sanctuary: his royal throne. “This remarkable throne stands in the same place where the craters of Gygos are. And these gold and silver vessels dedicated to Gygos are called by the Delphians Gygades, after the name of the dedicator” (Herod., I, 14).

The great-grandson of Giga Aliattes also brought gifts to Delphi: “a large silver bowl for mixing wine with water on an iron inlaid stand - one of the most remarkable offerings in Delphi, the work of Glaucus of Chios...” (Herod., I, 25).

Aliatt's son Croesus, from his countless wealth, donated gold bars in the form of half-bricks with a total of 117 to the temple, four of them were made of pure gold, the rest were made of an alloy with silver. “After this, the king ordered a statue of a lion weighing 10 talents to be cast from pure gold. Subsequently, during the fire of the sanctuary at Delphi, this lion fell from the [stand of] half-bricks on which it was installed. And to this day this lion still stands in the treasury of the Corinthians, but its weight is now only 6 1/2 talents, since 3 1/2 talents melted in the fire" (Herod., I, 50). He also sent gifts to Amphiaraia in Thebes - “a shield entirely made of gold and a spear, the shaft and tip of which were also made of gold. These two objects are still in Thebes in the sanctuary of Apollo Ismenias” (Herod., I, 52).

During the reign of Sethos, the priest of Hephaestus, Egypt was invaded by the Arabs. The king had a vision that God would help. At night, flocks of field mice attacked the enemy camp, gnawing quivers, bows and shield hilts, so that the enemies had to flee. “To this day, in the temple of Hephaestus there is a stone statue of this king. He holds a mouse in his hands, and the inscription on the statue reads: “Look at me and have the fear of God”" (Herod., I, 141).

Talking about the former residence of the Cimmerians before the Scythians in the Scythian land, Herodotus refers to the fact that “Even now in the Scythian land there are Cimmerian fortifications and Cimmerian crossings...”. The departure of the Cimmerians from Scythia is associated with a fratricidal war. “The Cimmerian people buried all those who fell in the fratricidal war near the Tiras River (the grave of the kings can still be seen there to this day). After this, the Cimmerians left their land, and the Scythians who arrived took possession of the depopulated land” (Herod., IV, 11 – 12). Of course, this is a fairy tale, and the mound, which is used as evidence, has nothing to do with the Cimmerians and their departure; this is typical “folk archaeology,” but the logic of the evidence has an archaeological sound.

However, the archaeological logic here is the most elementary - confirmation of the reality of events and persons by presenting their traces and remains.

A more complex archaeological argument was used by the famous historian of the late 5th century BC. e. Thucydides (Cook 1955). Under him, during the war, the island of Delos was cleansed and old graves were excavated. Thucydides noted that more than half of the graves contained weapons and armor that resembled those of the Carians. From this he concluded that the Carians, who inhabited the lands in Asia Minor and were engaged in piracy, once lived on this island.

"Piracy was equally prevalent in the islands among the Carians and Phoenicians, who actually colonized many of the islands. This was proven during the present war, when Delos was officially cleansed by the Athenians and all the graves on it were opened. More than half of them were Carian, which was evident from the type of weapon buried with the bodies and from the method of burial, which was the same as is still used in Caria" (Thucyd., I, 8, 1).

This is typically archaeological reasoning (Casson 1939: 31; Cook 1955: 267 - 269). Even more characteristic of archaeological thinking, and, admittedly, the most modern one, were the reflections of Thucydides in connection with the ruins of Mycenae - whether they, so small, could have been the main center of the Greek world.

“Mycenae,” Thucydides reflected, “was indeed a small settlement, and many cities of that period will not seem particularly impressive to us; but this should not be a reason for rejecting what the poets and general tradition say about the size of the campaign. Suppose, for example that the city of Sparta was abandoned and only the temples and foundations of buildings remained, I think that future generations, with the passage of time, will find it very difficult to believe that this settlement was in fact as powerful as it seemed, although Sparta occupies two-fifths of the Peloponnese and stands at the head not only of the whole Peloponnese, but also of numerous allies beyond it. But as the city was not regularly planned, and contains no temples or monuments of great magnificence, but is merely a collection of villages in the ancient Hellenic spirit, its appearance does not correspond to expectations. If , on the other hand, the same thing would have happened with Athens, one could conclude from the fact that it is clear that the city was twice as powerful as it actually was" (Thucyd., I, 10, 1 - 3).

As if he foresaw the temptations and illusions of archaeological interpretation. However, this is just a general logic, which we, of course, can apply to excavated cities, objects of archaeology, and form the basis of internal criticism of archaeological sources, archaeological interpretation (Eggers 1959: ???; Heider 1967: 55). Thucydides simply spoke about the ruins of powerful fortifications near the modest village of Mycenae, and tried to compare their size with the glory with which this capital was covered in legendary times. Archaeological argumentation was very rare among him. Cook calculates that of his references in the first book (Thucyd., I, 1 – 21) five are to “old poets”, three to tradition, three to modern analogies and only two to archaeological objects (Cook 1955: 269 ).

Periegetos I - II centuries. n. e. Pausanias, who left a detailed Description of Greece, noted that the blade of the supposed spear of Achilles in the temple of Athena at Phaselis was made of bronze. He cites this as confirmation of the literary tradition that all Homeric heroes were armed with bronze weapons.

"As for the weapons in the heroic age, which were all made of bronze, I can cite as evidence from Homer, the lines about the ax of Peisander and the arrow of Merion; the opinion that I cited can in any case be confirmed by the spear of Achilles, which is dedicated to the shrine of Athena in Phaselis , and the sword of Memnon in the temple of Asclepius in Nicomedia: the blade and butt of the spear and the whole sword are made of bronze" (Paus., III, 3).

This is also an archaeological argument. But such arguments are “notable for their rarity” (Trigger 1989: 30). In describing the revered ruins of the mythical past at Tiryns and Mycenae, Pausanias does not draw any conclusions. But he connects monuments with myths and legends.

"There are still parts of the ring walls, including a gate with lions standing on it. It is said that this is the work of the Cyclops, who built the wall of Tiryns for Pretus. In the ruins of Mycenae there is a spring called Perseus, and the underground chambers of Atreus and his sons, where they kept the treasuries of their wealth. There are the tombs of Atreus and the tombs of those who returned home from Troy to be killed by Aegisthus at his evening meal" (Paus., II, 16).

Schnapp believes that from the sacred archeology of the Babylonians and Egyptians, these reasonings of Pausanias “differ in his attempt interpret, the desire to place at a distance and explain" (Schnapp 1996: 46). He sees interpretation in the compilation of a chronology comparable to the mythical one. But archaeological finds do not serve for chronology, and the awareness of distance was already among the Babylonians. I do not see anything here other than identification with myths and legends, but the Babylonians and Egyptians already had it.The mention of the Cyclopes building the wall is a continuation of “folk archaeology.”

9. Terms and concepts. The ancient world not only provided us with a set of basic sciences and their names, but also gave us the main names used in archaeology.

First of all, in Greek times the very term “archaeology” was invented - αρχαιολογια from the words αρχαιος (ancient) and λογος (word, teaching). It was first used in Plato’s dialogue “Hippias the Great” (Socr., Hippias Maj., 285b – 286c). In this dialogue, Socrates discusses with the sophist Hippias, who boasted that his teaching was widespread throughout Greece, even in Sparta, where foreigners were generally forbidden to teach young people. But Socrates, skillfully leading the argument, showed that the success of Hippias among the Spartans does not extend to astronomy, geometry, or other sciences and is limited only to one science, which deals with “the genealogies of heroes and people ... and settlements (how cities were founded in ancient times), in one word with all ancient history (archaiologia)." That is, myths about the past. Hippias, as Socrates put it, played for the Spartans the role of a grandmother, “telling fairy tales to children.” “This archaiologia,” writes Schnapp, “was not defined as a special discipline aimed at specific knowledge” (Schnap 1996: 61). Legends about the origin of peoples and cities, genealogies of heroes, stories about the distant past - the books of Hellanicus (5th century BC) and “Archaeology” of Hippias were about this, but they have not survived.

The term archaiologia began to be widely used in the Hellenistic period. However, the Romans preferred another term - antiquitates (antiquities).

Italian historian Arnaldo Momigliano believes that in the 5th century BC. e. the term was used not for any discussion of antiquities, but for specific works. He divides historical works of that time into two categories - general stories, brought to the present day, like Herodotus or Thucydides, and histories of the distant past, centered on genealogy and morals, written by polymaths and full of detailed descriptions, like Hellanicus and Hippias. He calls the first histories proper, and the second - archaeologies or antiquitates, they are written by "antiquaries".

"1. In their description, historians emphasize chronology, while antiquarians followed a systematic plan.

2. Historians presented facts that served to illustrate or explain a certain situation; antiquarians collected all the material related to a given subject, whether there was a problem to solve or not" (Momigliano 1983: 247).

But Momigliano himself admitted that the term soon lost its distinctive meaning back in the ancient world. Already the “Roman Archeology” of Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the “Jewish Archeology” of Josephus were typical histories, in the first sense of the word.

Saving Momigliano's postulate, Alain Schnapp puts forward the book of Terence Varro "Antiquitates" ("Antiquities") for the role of "archaeology". Like the book of Hippias, it has not reached us, but is known to us from a brief description in the work of Augustine the Blessed. Judging by this bibliographic description, Varro's work consisted of 41 books, of which 25 were devoted to human affairs, and 16 to divine ones. The books were organized according to a systematic plan and themes correspond to Momigliano's definition of "archaeology". One thing follows from all this: that Momigliano’s division of historical works may be fair, but his binding of these divisions to terms has absolutely no justification. From the very beginning there is no firm evidence that the authors used the term "archaeology" as opposed to the term "history" and limited to systematic and descriptive works.

It simply meant a general study of antiquities, research in ancient history. Based on several thoughts of Thucydides, Alain Schnapp writes:

"The commentators were not mistaken when they called this part of Thucydides' books "archaeology", not in our sense of the word, but in the true Greek sense - the study of ancient affairs... That this form of archeology can overlap with what we call archeology today is easy to show, and the famous passage on the purification at Delos provides an excellent example of this. In this sense, knowledge of the past - archaiologia in the Greek sense of the term - is very close to that specialized branch of history which for the last two centuries we have called archaeology" (Schnapp 1996: 50).

It's hard to agree with this. Ancient artifacts were rarely used by the Greeks and Romans to study and draw conclusions from. As Trigger (1989: 30) writes, “scientists have made no attempt to systematically discover such artifacts,” and these artifacts “have not been the subject of special study.”

10. Vitality of “sacred archeology”. To summarize, we have to admit that the archeology of the Ancient East (“Asian formation”, according to Marx), and in a significant part of the ancient world, was “sacred,” that is, far from the goals of knowledge and science. Oddly enough, this aspect of handling antiquities is very vividly felt in modern life. When I observe the successful struggle of the present church for the return of ancient icons from museums (not to mention the calls of politicians, recent communists, for the consecration of the Duma and the exorcism of demons from it), I recognize the same mystical mentality that prompted King Nabonidus to restore the ancient temple as a working one. shrine, and the ancient Hellenes to fulfill the instructions of the Pythia. We see this archaic spirit in the claims of the Orthodox Church to influence the historical understanding of the country's past and to the disposal of church buildings and sacred antiquities.

Of course, church communities have the right to buildings and things of church use, but when these things become ancient and acquire the status of the most valuable evidence of cultural history, one must understand that their everyday use in church services and the lack of proper storage (conservation, restoration) leads to their intensive wear and tear, and also increases the risk of theft. Instead of restoration, the church usually prefers renovation, which harms the historical monument. Laws are needed that would limit the disposal of antiquities and even remove them from church use, and the church, striving to be considered enlightened, should not interfere with this. Unfortunately, the separation of church and state in our country is much less radical than, say, in France, and the church enjoys too much influence.

11. Was archeology necessary? But even minus the “sacred archeology” in ancient world has little in common with archeology as a science. We must admit that the arguments of supporters of the extreme antiquity of archeology are untenable, even if we accept that it did not exist in its modern form. As Phillips writes,

“No more than the rest of humanity before the Europeans of the last two centuries, the Greeks practiced archeology, although they made discoveries that were archaeologically interesting, and even drew correct conclusions... But in previous centuries these discoveries were accidental and were never made in a deliberate hunt for knowledge. Even less so they were compared and classified, and no chronology could be deduced from them" (Phillips 1964: 17).

There was no archeology either in the Ancient East or in the ancient world. And, actually, why? Those who try to prove the opposite proceed from the natural conviction that archeology is a necessary component of the system of knowledge and that as soon as the opportunity to recognize antiquities arises, there are people ready to do it.

But this is what the English historian of antiquity, Moses Finley, who was generally prone to paradoxical thinking and provocative posing of questions, noticed. Finley discovered that the ancient Greeks, not to mention the Romans, were quite capable of systematically excavating ancient sites if they wanted to do so. “Technically,” stated Finley (1977: 22), “Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans had little new at their disposal that the Athenians did not have in the fifth century.” A shovel, a spade, a trowel, a knife, brushes, brushes - the Greeks possessed all of this. They knew how to draw and draw. Write too. There was no photograph, but it was possible to do without it. There was no paper for drawings, but there was papyrus and clay tablets. There was no crafting, but you could pack your finds in fabrics or boxes. The Greeks also knew how to connect excavated things with their legendary past. Individual reflections of Herodotus and especially Thucydides, too rare to talk about archeology as a science, nevertheless show that archaeological thinking was also accessible to the ancient Hellenes.

“The ancient Greeks,” Finley continued, “already had the skills and personnel with which to excavate the shaft tombs of Mycenae and the Palace of Knossos, and the intelligence to connect the excavated stones (if they had excavated them) with the myths of Agamemnon and Minos. What could they do? there was a lack, there was interest - that’s the huge gap between their civilization and ours, between their view of the past and ours.”

They did not conduct systematic excavations for the purpose of knowledge because they did not need it. They dug for the purpose of robbery or obtaining shrines. But with the goals of knowledge, no.

It turns out that society does not always need all sciences. By the way, this is a very important question for those who are concerned about the future of archeology, in particular in our country. In England, Gordon Childe thought a lot about this sacramental question. Artamonov, I remember, in the midst of excavations on the Volga-Don, when scrapers were biting into mounds and dump trucks were cruising in the dust, and 400 prisoners were hammering away at the dried earth, he stopped and muttered to himself: “And who needs all this?”

The ancient Greeks did not need this. Why?

Archeology, as a source study aimed at processing material sources, suggests that the limitation to written sources does not suit historians. And this suited the Greeks in history, because the questions they asked history did not need to involve material sources. History was seen as a series of actions of rulers and heroes, as well as actions under certain laws, morals and the natural environment. For all this, written sources and oral traditions were sufficient. In addition, the ancient world was extremely trusting of sacred myths and literary authorities. It simply did not occur to me to question and test them.

Society is not yet ripe for archaeology. Even as brilliant as the Greek, and as civilized as the Roman. For its emergence and existence, archeology requires a very advanced civilization and a humanity so wise that it has learned to doubt. Doubt authorities. To doubt comforting myths and divine truths. Doubt, check and prove.

Questions to think about:

Do you find the arguments of supporters or opponents of deepening archeology in the ancient world convincing and why?

Is it possible to exclude reflections on the origin of culture and civilization from archeology, as is done in the proposed interpretation?

Do you still find any messages or discussions of an archaeological plan in Homer?

Is every use of archaeological material archaeology? (cf. use by Herodotus, Dionysius, Strabo).

What are the reasons for linking collecting to archaeology?

Summarize, what new did the ancient Eastern studies of objects that later became part of archeology bring, compared to the primitive ones? How are they superior to “folk archaeology”?

What was the reason for this excess? What characteristics of ancient Eastern civilization allowed the ancient Eastern rulers to rise a step higher in the development of antiquities and which ones kept them close to the level of “folk archaeology”?

Is it possible to say that the development of studies in material antiquities in China was ahead of the development in the European ancient world, and if so, in what ways was it ahead?

Is the history of a discipline related to the history of its name?

Are biblical archaeology, church archeology and “sacred archaeology” the same thing?

Are the reasons why archeology did not exist in the ancient world sufficiently explained? Do you find any other reasons?

Could the situation with the uselessness of archeology repeat itself?

Literature (3. Sprouts of archeology in the ancient world).

Klein L. S. 1991. Dissect the Centaur. On the relationship between archeology and history in the Soviet tradition. – Questions of the history of natural science and technology (Moscow), 4: 3 – 12.

Klein L. S. 1992. The methodological nature of archaeology. – Russian Archeology (Moscow), 4: 86 – 96.

Klein, L. S. 1977. "Rain Man": Collecting and Human Nature. – Museum in modern culture. Collection of scientific papers. St. Petersburg State Academy of Culture. St. Petersburg: 10 – 21.

Baldry H. C. 1952. Who invented the Golden Age? – Classical Quarterly, n. ser., XLVI, 2: 83 – 92.

Baldry H. C. 1956. Hesiod's Five Ages. - Journal of the History of Ideas, 17: 553 – 554.

Blundell S. 1986. The origins of civilization in Greek and Roman thought. London, Routledge.

Brundell S. 1986. The origins of civilization in Greek and Roman thought. London, Routledge.

Chang Kwang-Chih. 1968. The archeology of Ancient China. New Haven and London, Yale University Press.

Cheng Te-Kun. 1939. Archaeology in China, vol. 1. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Cook R. M. 1955. Thucydides as archaeologist. Annual of the British School at Athens, L: 266 – 277.

Edwards I. E. S. 1985. The pyramids of Egypt. Revised ed. Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Eichhoff K. J. L. M. 19??. Über die Sagen und Vorstellungen von einem glücklichen Zustande der Menschheit bei den Schriftstellern des klassischen Altertums. - Jahresbücher für Philologie und Pädagogik, Bd. 120: ???????????????.

Evans J. D. 1981. Introduction: On the prehistory of archaeology. – Evans J. D., Cunliffe B. and Renfrew C. (eds.). Antiquity and man. Essays in honor of Glyn Daniel. London, Thames and Hudson:12 – 18.

Finley M. I. 1975. The use and abuse of history. London, Chatto & Windus (n. ed.: 1986 – London, Hogarth).

Gomaa F. 1973. Chaemwese Sohn Ramses" II und hoher Priester von Memphis. Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz.

Griffiths J. G. 1956. Archaeology and Hesiod's Five Ages. – Journal of the History of Ideas, 17: 109 – 119.

Griffith J. G. 1958. Did Hesiod invent the Golden Age? – Journal of the History of Ideas, 18: 91 – 93.

Hansen G. Chr. 1967. Ausgrabungen im Altertum. – Das Altertum, 13 (1): 44 – 50.

Heider K. H. 1967. Archaeological assumptions and ethnographical facts: A cautionary tale from New Guinea. – Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 23: 52 – 64.

Helmich F. 1931. Urgeschichtliche Theorien in der Antike. – Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, Bd. 61: 29 – 73.

Kitchen K. A. 1982. Pharaoh triumphant: The life and times of Ramses II. Mississauga, Benben Publications.

Klejn L. S. 1994. Prehistory and archaeology. – Kuna M. and Venclova N. (eds.). Whither archeology? Papers in honor of Evžen Neustupny. Prague, Institute of Archaeology: 36 – 42.

Lovejoy A. O., Boas G., Albright W. F. and Dumont P. E. 1935. Primitivism and related ideas in antiquity. Baltimore, Hopkins Press.

Mahoudeau P.-G. 1920. Lucrèce transformiste et précurceur de l'anthropologie préhistorique. – Révue archaeoologique, 30 (7 – 8): 165 – 176.

McNeal R. A. 1972. The Greeks in history and prehistory. – Antiquity, XLVII: 19 - 28.

Momigliano A. 1983. L'histoire ancienne et l'antiquaire. - Problemes d "historiographie ancienne et moderne. Paris, Gallimard: 244 - 293.

Müller R. 1968. Antike Theorien über Ursprung und Ebtstehung der Kultur. ß Das Altertum, 14 (2): 67 – 79.

Mustilli D. 1965. L'origin della vita l'evoluzione della civiltá umana nella tradizione degli scritori classici. – Atti del VI Congres Internazional delle szienze preistorici e protostorici, 2. Firenze: 65 – 68.

Phillips E. D. 1964. The Greek vision of prehistory. – Antiquity, XXXVIII (151): 171 – 178.

Reinach S. 1889. Le Musee de l"Empereur Auguste. - Revue d"Anthropologie, 4: 28 – 36.

Schnapp A. 1996. The discovery of the past. The origins of archaeology. Transl. fr. French (origin. 1993).

Schnapp A. 2002. Between antiquarians and archaeologists – continuities and ruptures. – Antiquity, 76 (291): 134 – 140.

Sima Qian. 1961. Records of the Grand Historian of China. Transl. by Burton Watson. 2 vols. New York, Columbia University Press (n. ed. Hong Kong, Renditions - New York, Columbia University Press 1993).

Sichtermann H. 1996. Kulturgeschichte der klassischen Archäologie. München, C. H. Beck.

Smith W. S. 1958. The art and architecture of Ancient Egypt. Baltimore, Pengwin.

Trigger B. G. 1989. A history of archaeological thought. Cambridge et al., Cambridge University Press.

Unger E. 1931. Babylon die heilige Stadt nach der Beschreibung der Babylonier. Berlin, De Gruyter.

Wace A. J. B. 1949. The Greeks and Romans as archaeologists. – Bulletin de la Société royale d "archéologie d" Alexandrie, 38: 21 – 35.

Wang Gungwu 1985. Loving the ancient in China. – McBryde I. (ed.). Who owns the past? Melbourne, Oxford University Press: 175 – 195.

Illustrations:

Statue of Kawab, son of Cheops, with inscription of Khaemwaset, son of Ramesses II (Schnap 1996: 328).

Stele with Nabonidus inscription from Larsa (Schnapp 1996: 17).

Tablet with an inscription from the end of the 3rd millennium BC. e. on one side, and on the other there is an inscription from the 6th century. BC e. (Schnap 1996: 32).

A warrior wearing a helmet lined with boar tusks. Bone plate from the island of Delos (late 15th – early 13th century BC). (Klein 1994: 12).

A change in shield types: figure-eight and tower (1 and 2) existed only in the Achaean (Mycenaean) time, dipylon (3) characterizes the Homeric time (Klein 1994: 78).

Roman relief from Ostia, 1st century. BC e. Fishermen net a Greek bronze statue, probably of Hercules, early 5th century. BC e. Hercules is also shown in the center of the relief (Schnapp 1996: 59).