EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Jesus Painting Recently Discovered is a real Leonardo da Vinci drawing, Expert Says

Jesus Painting Recently Discovered is a real Leonardo da Vinci drawing, Expert Says

Italian scholars credit a recently found drawing of Jesus Christ to Leonardo da Vinci. Biblical figure’s red chalk drawing has been locked in a private collection for decades.

Art historians may have come upon the art world’s Holy Grail after discovering a new master’s work, by the Renaissance master, reports The Telegraph

Da Vinci, who died in 1519, is one of the world’s most influential artists, behind such works as the Mona Lisa and the painting of the Last Supper.

A newly discovered drawing is being attributed to Leonardo da Vinci by an Italian expert.

The newly discovered drawing depicts a calm Christ with a Mona Lisa-Esque gaze and bears a striking resemblance to other works by Leonardo.

It is now set to undergo rigorous scrutiny as the art world attempts to authenticate whether it is the real deal. The sketch had been hidden in a private collection locked away in a bank in Lombardy.

Lab tests have already found the paper dates back to the early 16th century and it bears a striking resemblance to other works by Leonardo.

Annalisa Di Maria, an Italian art historian who has studied the picture, said the pose, perspective, and style all appear to be that of the master.

She said: “It has that dynamism and sense of movement that is typical of Leonardo.

“The rendering of the beard is practically identical to Leonardo’s self-portraits, as are the eyes.

“And the painting is in red chalk, which the artist used a lot, including in the sketches for The Last Supper.”

Experts are due to present a 60-page study of the artwork at a press conference in Florence once Italy comes through its second wave of the coronavirus.

Ms. Di Maria added: “It is a remarkably beautiful and refined work and I’m absolutely convinced it is a sketch by Leonardo.”

The sketch is currently in the hands of a pair of collectors in the town of Lecco, northern Italy.

It is not clear where the artwork had been hiding over the centuries after it was discovered in the vault of the bank. Martin Kemp, a professor in the history of art at Oxford University, was cautious about the Italians’ attribution.

He has often had to bat away claims about Leonardo due to the intense popularity of Dan Brown’s book and movie The Da Vinci Code. The story claims the hidden secrets of Christianity – such as Jesus’s descendants and the Holy Grail – can be deciphered from Da Vinci’s work.

Mr. Kemp told The Telegraph: “I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand but I simply can’t tell without seeing the drawing and the scientific evidence.

“I would need to see if it is drawn left-handed. Leonardo drew everything with his left hand.”

The dating of the paper needs to be independently verified. He also suggested it’s possible the sketch could have been produced by a pupil of Leonardo.

Prof Kemp said: “There is quite a crop of paintings of Christ and Salvator Mundi that were produced by followers of Leonardo,”

The painting of Jesus – the Salvator Mundi – was rediscovered in 2005 and became the most expensive painting ever sold, going for £340million.

However, it remains unclear exactly how much involvement he had in the work.

The expert said: “‘m not dismissing it but it has got a long way to go. It would be dangerous to write it off but even more dangerous to accept it at this point.”

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

Emerald Tablets Of Thoth, 50,000-Year-Old Tablets Reportedly From Atlantis

Emerald Tablets Of Thoth, 50,000-Year-Old Tablets Reportedly From Atlantis

The Thoth Tablets are imperishable, resistant to all elements, acids, and corrosion. According to Bibliotecapleyades, in truth, the atomic and cellular structure is set and no change can take place, thus violating the material law of ionization.

Upon them are engraved characters in the Ancient Atlantean language;
characters who respond to the attuned thought waves of the reader and which release much more wisdom and information than the characters do when merely deciphered.

The Tablets are fastened together with hoops of a golden-colored alloy suspended from a rod of the same material. Dr. M. Doreal has translated this Work and has published through the Brotherhood of the White Temple, a translation of ten of these twelve Tablets.

He has divided the ten into thirteen parts for the sake of convenience. The last two Tablets are found in the “Interpretation of The Emerald Tablets”, also by Dr. Doreal.

THOTH, THE ATLANTEAN

When Thoth, the Atlantean and Master raised the people of Khem (Egypt) to a great civilization, and when the time came for him to leave Egypt, he erected The Great Pyramid over the entrance of the Great Halls of Amenti.

In the Pyramid, he posited his records and appointed Guards for his secrets from among the highest of his people. In later times, the descendants of these guards became the Pyramid Priests, while Thoth was deified as the God of Wisdom, the Recorder, by those in the age of darkness which followed his passing.

In legend, the Halls of Amenti became the underworld, the Halls of the Gods, where the soul passed after death for judgment.

During later ages, the ego of Thoth passed into the bodies of men
in the manner described in The Emerald Tablets, a Book of Record and Occult Wisdom, which he wrote and left in the Pyramid for those of a future Age of Light.

This is the first episode on the Emerald Tablets and its engravings by Lou Benedetto, written by Thoth, the Atlantean from the Lost city in Time of Atlantis. Thoth is an immortal who was once a very long time ago a regular human being who lived in a time over 50,000 years ago.

Second Video release of the Emerald Tablets by Lou Benedetto. Like all the Tablets they are written by an Atlantean King-Priest who ruled and lived in the Great Lost City in Time of Atlantis, over 50,000 years ago.

Thoth is a Human being that lived in a time long ago during an age now lost to us at present. Atlantis was a great civilization that thrived & flourished for many Tens of Thousands of Years.

Not only were they rulers of the sky and the land around them. But they were beings of peace, wisdom, and most importantly, a people with Great Soul Force.

Originally published in mimeographed form in the 1930s by a mysterious “Dr. M. Doreal,” these writings quickly became an underground sensation among esotericists of the time.

Tablets 1-13 are part of the original work; tablets 14 and 15 are supplemental. No one has ever seen the original tablets mentioned here, and in all likelihood, these writings would be considered channeled material today.

Dr. M. Doreal is a spiritual teacher of a multitude of seekers of light, having founded the metaphysical church and college. Doreal is the author of all of the organization’s writings and teachings and was granted permission for the esoteric wisdom to be remitted in the public forum, by the Great White Lodge and the Elder Brothers of mankind who shape and form the spiritual evolution for mankind.

Dr. M. Dorea

Doreal writes of the secrets of the symbolism of all mystery schools and gives a precisely and beautifully written step by step progression all seekers have searched for in their quest for oneness with God and attainment of the cosmic consciousness.

After traveling the world for knowledge of the light and truth, Doreal began publishing his findings in a spiritual retreat in Colorado named Shamballa.

Doreal studied the ancient teachings of the emerald tablets, the wisdom of the Kabbalah, and the light Jesus brought to mankind.

He has translated many ancient texts into English and other languages for the masses to read in order for all of us to reach atonement within ourselves and the cosmic universe. All his publications are available through the brotherhood of the white temple publication office.

However, the Emerald Tablets of Thoth the Atlantean are still part of the modern Corpus Hermeticum, for they elaborate and deepen the meaning of the historical Emerald Tablet and writings of Thoth/Hermes.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

A lost interview with a survivor of the last U.S. slave ship surfaced

A lost interview with a survivor of the last U.S. slave ship surfaced

A schooner named Clotilda arrived in Mobile Bay, Alabama, on the warm and unusually unsuspecting day of July 1860, on board by captain William Foster and eleventy African slaves. Clotilda was the U.S. slave ship last known to bring captives to the United States from Africa.

Photo of Cudjo Lewis (c.1841 – 1935), the third to last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the United States.

Among more than one hundred enslaved African people, there was also Cudjo (sometimes spelled as Cudjoe) Kazoola (or Kossula) Lewis – the last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the United States.

Cudjo Lewis, originally named Kossula (American listeners would later transcribe Cudjo’s given name as “Kazoola”), was born around 1840 into the Yoruba tribe, in the Banté region, which today belongs to the West African country of Benin. His father’s name was Oluwale (or Oluale) and his mother’s – Fondlolu. Kossula had five siblings and twelve half-siblings, who were the children of his father’s other two wives.

Mobile Bay and the wreckage of slave ship Clotilda are pictured above.
In the spring of 1860, when Cudjo was only 19 years old, he was taken as a prisoner by the army of the Kingdom of Dahomey.

After the Dahomian tribe captured him, Cudjo was taken to the coast. There, he and more than one hundred other men and women were sold into slavery and crammed onto the Clotilda – the last slave ship to reach the shores of the continental United States. The captives were brought to Mobile Bay, Alabama.

The international slave trade was not legal at that time already for more than 50 years. Along with many European nations, the U.S. had outlawed the practice in 1807, but Lewis’ journey proves how slave traders went around the law to continue bringing over human cargo.

However, to avoid detection of the authorities, the captors of the slaves snuck them into Alabama at dark hours and made them hide in the swamp for several days. To get rid of any hard evidence, they put the 86-foot Clotilda on fire on the banks of Mobile-Tensaw Delta. Ship’s remains are believed to be uncovered in the upcoming month.

If it wasn’t for Zora Neale Hurston – an anthropologist and a known figure of the Harlem Renaissance – we may have never heard Cudjo’s story from Cudjo himself. Some 60 years after the abolition of slavery, she made an amazing discovery and located the last surviving captive – Cudjo – of the last slave ship to bring African slaves to the United States.

Zora went on to conduct numerous interviews with Cudjo, but struggled to get them published. One of the main reasons for rejection, was that Zora refused to alter Cudjo’s words for them to fit into the frames of the standard American English. At that time, her anthropological interviews were often seen as controversial due to the use of vernacular dialogue.

Even some black American thinkers thought that the use of vernacular might enforce the caricaturist views of the black people inside the minds of the white people. Zora wasn’t the one to back down, and the book with interviews with Cudjo was only published in May 2018 and it was named Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”.

Zora’s book tells the story of Cudjo Lewis and his life. The heartbreaking narrative provides a first-hand look at the trauma enforced by slavery.

After Cudjo was abducted from his home, he was forced onto a ship with hundreds of strangers. They wound up spending several months together, only to be separated in Alabama to go to work in different plantations.

“We very sorry to be parted from one ’nother,” Lewis recalled. “We seventy days cross de water from de Africa soil, and now dey part us from one ’nother. Therefore we cry. Our grief so heavy look lak we cain stand it. I think maybe I die in my sleep when I dream about my mama.”

Cudjo also describes what it was like to arrive on a plantation where no one could speak his language and explain to where he was, what was going on, what was he ought to do. “We doan know why we be bring ’way from our country to work lak dis. Everybody lookee at us strange. We want to talk wid de udder colored folkses but dey doan know whut we say.”

Understandably, Mr Lewis expected to receive compensation for being captured and forced into slavery and was angry to find out that the long-awaited emancipation didn’t come with the promise of “forty acres and a mule,” or any other kind of reparations. Bitter and frustrated, Cudjo, together with a group of 31 other free people saved up enough money to buy land near the state capital Mobile, which they called Africatown.

Today, the monument of Cudjo Lewis proudly stands in Africatown, Mobile, Alabama, reminding of the struggles its people endured. It was sculpted back in 2016 by April Terra Livingston and is located in front of the Union Missionary Baptist Church.

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

200-year-old shipwreck discovered in Florida

200-year-old shipwreck discovered in Florida

Beach erosion has revealed a shipwreck in St. Johns county.

The ship is possibly 200 years old.

“My wife and I walk the beach almost every day,” Mark O’Donoghue said. Saturday he spotted “some timbers and metal spikes,” exposed in the sand.

Sunday, even more, had been exposed and he had a hunch that it was a shipwreck. Part of the ship was poking through the sand. 

He notified the Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program, and they told him he was right.

Archaeologists were out Sunday and Monday, documenting the site in Crescent Beach, just north of the Matanzas Inlet. They believe the ship is from the 19th century, based on its construction and the frequency of ships wrecking on the northeast Florida coast during the 1800s.

A 200-year-old shipwreck was discovered on Crescent Beach in Florida. Archaeologists have said that it was most likely a cargo ship about the size of a semi-truck.

Archaeologist Chuck Meide stood near the middle of the exposed wooden beams in the sand and said, “If I were standing on this ship when it was a living ship, I would be in the cargo hold, standing on the very bottom. So this would be the floor of the cargo hold. 

“This is the centre line of the vessel,” he said, pointing with his foot, “so the bottom of the hull would be here and then over my head is going be the deck.”

Pat Lee lives in the condos, on the dune just above the shipwreck. He told First Coast News that no one knew there was a ship buried here until erosion started ripping away the beach.

“The wreckage there used to be under 10 feet of sand. In the last three years, we lost it. We lost it all,” Lee said. 

“It’s very cool to see the shipwreck. It is very disturbing to see the sand leave our beach,” he added.

Of course, beaches change over time. Just as this coastline is experiencing erosion now, at one point, sand accumulated along this beach.

Meide said, “The sand dune wasn’t here when the shipwrecked. We know topography and the landscape of a coast changes a lot.”

When the ship did get pushed far onto the beach, possibly by a storm, Meide speculated, sand formed around it — sealing in its secrets until now.

And for at least a year, O’donoghue was walking right by a shipwreck!

EUROPE, ITALY, WORLD

Petrified Horse with saddle and harness unearthed intact in a stable near Pompeii

Petrified Horse with saddle and harness unearthed intact in a stable near Pompeii

In a missed escape to safety from the Vesuvius eruption, some horses recently found in a 2,000-year-old stable seem to be frozen.

Just at the top of the equestrian iceberg was a horse recently discovered stuck in the ruins of a residential Pompeii villa. After the finding was confirmed last week, archaeologists have revealed that during the volcanic eruption of Vesuvius that famously buried the ancient Roman settlement, at least three horses died in the villa’s stable.

When they were struck by the toxic, pyroclastic floods that swept through Pompeii and its surroundings after midnight in the summer of 79 A.D., at least two of the animals were harnessed and may be prepared for a frantic evacuation. 

The stunning, complete plaster cast of one of the villa’s horses is the first of its kind from Pompeii. When the volcano erupted, many of the town’s residents and animals collapsed and died in place after being struck with waves of superheated poisonous gas and ash. Their decaying bodies then left hauntingly shaped voids in the hardened ash layer.

In the late 19th century, archaeologists developed a method of injecting plaster into these voids to capture more details about the dead. Since then, it’s mostly been used on humans—and an infamous chained dog—but this was the first attempt on a large mammal.

The team also cast two legs from another horse discovered nearby, but the rest of the void left by that body had been destroyed by tomb robbers, known locally as tombaroli, who were tunnelling around of the walls of the ancient villa to steal artefacts they could sell on the black market.

The bodies of several horses side-by-side in their stables.

Newfound survivor camp may explain the fate of the famed Lost Colony of Roanoke

The void and skeletal remains of a third horse were also almost completely destroyed by tombaroli, zooarchaeologist Chiara Corbino, who studied the horses, tells National Geographic.

Evidence for bits and bridles around the two cast horses suggests that they were harnessed by people trying to flee the eruption, says Massimo Osanna, general director of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. The remains of the third horse are too incomplete to determine whether it was also harnessed at the time of death, says Corbino.

Operation Artemis

The villa, located in the Civita Giuliana area outside the walls of ancient Pompeii, was originally discovered at the beginning of the 20th century, then partially excavated in the 1950s and later sealed.

Investigators spotted the tombaroli tunnels last summer and alerted archaeologists from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, who then excavated the previously unknown stable area.

Italian authorities have since confirmed to National Geographic that the find is the result of a significant criminal investigation known as Operazione Artemide (Operation Artemis), led by Italy’s national gendarmerie, the Carabinieri.

This multi-year investigation took off in 2014 after thieves stole a frescoed depiction of Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt, from the walls of an ancient Pompeiian house that is currently closed to the public.

By early 2015, the operation had swept up more than 140 suspects—tombaroli, illegal art dealers, and even some mafia members—in simultaneous dawn raids across 22 Italian provinces. Teams recovered some 2,000 ancient artefacts, including illegally excavated vases, coins, and architectural fragments.

According to Osanna, research at the villa has been concluded for the time being, but the archaeologists do not rule out continuing excavations in future, which might reveal yet more tragic moments frozen in time.

AFRICA, EGYPT, WORLD

This 4,500-Year-Old Ramp Contraption May Have Been Used to Build Egypt’s Great Pyramid

This 4,500-Year-Old Ramp Contraption May Have Been Used to Build Egypt’s Great Pyramid

In a 4,500-year-old quarry in Egypt, archaeologists have uncovered an ancient ramp structure that could justify how the ancient Egyptians constructed the pyramids.

According to researchers from the University of Liverpool and Cairo’s French Institute for Oriental Archaeology, the Daily Mail says, the sloping ramp lined with two staircases and wooden poles may have been the location of a pulley device intended to make it easier to move large blocks of stone.

In a statement, Yannis Gourdon, co-director of the project, said This system is composed of a central ramp flanked by two staircases with numerous post holes.”

“Using a sleds which carried a stone block and were attached with ropes to these wooden posts, ancient Egyptians were able to pull up the alabaster blocks out of the quarry on very steep slopes of 20 per cent or more.”

The ancient ramps, which are located in the Hatnub quarry, are steeper than archaeologists expected.

This 4,500-year-old system used to pull alabaster stones up a steep slope was discovered at Hatnub, an ancient quarry in the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Two staircases with numerous postholes are located next to this ramp. An alabaster block would have been placed on a sled, which was tied by ropes to the wooden poles.

Previous calculations had suggested that ramps could not have been steeper than a 10 per cent grade in order to raise the blocks to the necessary height, which would have required ramps of absurdly long distances.

But by using the post holes, workers would have been able to move the stones with more force, and without dragging the massive blocks behind them.

The world has long marvelled at the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, the last of the Seven Wonders of the World that still exists.

Many archaeologists favour the theory that ramps were used to move the massive stone blocks that comprise the pyramids, but the exact nature of such a system has long remained a mystery.

“Since this ramp dates to the reign of Khufu (builder of the Great Pyramid at Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the World), our research offers the exciting possibility for offering further insights into the logistics and technologies used in constructing that astonishing building,” said Roland Enmarch, an Egyptologist who worked on the project, in a statement.

A new graphic reveals the complex system of ramps and pulleys that may have been used by the Egyptians to construct the ancient pyramids. The system raised stone blocks weighing several tonnes hundreds of feet into the air via enormous sleds, archaeologists believe

Other experts, however, aren’t so sure. Although the blocks removed from the quarry would have been about the size of those used to construct the pyramids, the site’s alabaster is much softer than the pyramids’ hard granite stone.

“It’s a stretch to take an alabaster quarry and say this is how the pyramids were built because the pyramids weren’t built out of alabaster,” Kara Cooney, a professor of Egyptian art and architecture at the Los Angeles’s University of California, told the History Channel.

“The way that the ancient Egyptians cut and moved stone is still very mysterious.”

NORTH AMERICA, U.S.A, WORLD

Another Possible Lost Cemetery Site Found in Florida

Another Possible Lost Cemetery Site Found in Florida

An investigation into the whereabouts of a segregation-era lost cemetery has found possible burial sites with ground-penetrating radar on MacDill Air Force Base property, according to a report in The Tampa Bay Times.

This would be the fifth lost cemetery found in the Tampa Bay area over the last 16 months. The Port Tampa Cemetery for Blacks was once near the corner of Interbay Boulevard and Manhattan Avenue. That land is now part of the base. The cemetery disappeared around the time the base opened in 1941.

There are no known records of the at least 38 bodies buried there being moved. Archaeologists began looking for the cemetery earlier this year and their report was sent to MacDill on Friday.

The red square indicates where possible graves from the Port Tampa Cemetery for Blacks were discovered on MacDill Air Force Base.

NAACP Hillsborough County Branch President Yvette Lewis also received a copy of the report. She shared it with the Tampa Bay Times. MacDill has not yet replied to a Times request for comment via email. Voicemail to a base spokesman did not pick up.

A report on Tampa cemeteries — written in the 1930s but issued in 1941 by the federal Works Progress Administration — said the Port Tampa Cemetery could be reached by starting at the corner of Interbay Boulevard and Manhattan Avenue, heading south 884 feet, turning east and going 1,327 feet.

Ground-penetrating radar in that area “identified anomalies as possible burials,” the archaeological report provided by the NAACP said. “While these anomalies were not clustered or arranged in patterns typically seen in historic cemeteries, their spacing is consistent with the use of an area as an expedient informal burial ground, where intermittent burials took place and where individual burials would not be in family groups or arranged in obvious rows.”

According to that report, there are four other areas where the cemetery could have been located:

• Immediately west of where the radar discovered grave-like anomalies. That spot is suspect because aerial maps from 1938 show it as a cleared square area.

• A 45-acre “wooded area in the northwestern area” of the base near where the radar possibly found graves. Because the archaeologists could not confirm the cemetery’s boundaries, the archaeologists recommend the “wooded tract be treated with caution in the event that human remains may be present.”

Archaeologists investigated each of those other areas with radar and dogs that can sniff human remains but found no evidence of burials. Still, those areas should be considered “sensitive,” the report read, and any work that could disturb possible graves should be avoided.

Overall, the report said, the archaeologists found obituaries and death certificates for 38 people buried in the cemetery. That included 12 stillborn infants.

The Works Progress Administration report stated it was a Black cemetery, but archaeologists did find one death record for a white burial.

The base suggests erecting a marker near Dale Mabry Gate that will honour the cemetery, according to an email from MacDill to the NAACP that Lewis also shared with the Times.

“Be it known that this plaque serves as a memorial to those dearly departed love ones who are believed to be buried on MacDill AFB at what was known as the Port Tampa Cemetery,” is suggested language for the marker.

It would also include this quote from Hillsborough County Judge Lisa D. Campbell, whose maternal grandparents buried a stillborn in the cemetery: “Through the curtain of time, we find you here, in infinite peace. We call your name and you answer in legacy and honour. Rest. Eternally.”

Port Tampa was established in the 1890s as a separate city. African Americans moved there for the jobs at the port, but they dried up once Port Tampa Bay opened to the east in the mid-1920s.

MacDill opened in 1941 and Port Tampa was annexed by the city of Tampa in 1961.

Graves from four other cemeteries have been discovered in the Tampa Bay area over the last 18 months — two in Tampa and two in Clearwater. Three of those were for Blacks. The fourth, Ridgewood Cemetery found on Tampa’s King High School campus, was for the indigent and unknown, but records indicate nearly all the burials Black.

EUROPE, FRANCE, WORLD

Intact Roman Glass Vase Discovered in France

Intact Roman Glass Vase Discovered in France

According to the French National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Studies, an unusual vase from the late Roman period was uncovered in central France during the excavations of an ancient cemetery.

The archaeologist Michel Kasprzyk named it the “first complete specimen found to date in Gaul,” in a virtual press conference after its discovery, referring to the Celtic tribes that populated Western Europe during the 4th century and ultimately came under Roman rule.

The artefact is a diatretic vase, which means it is made from reticulated glass. Just 10 intact diatretic vases were ever recovered, according to Kasprzyk, the last of which was discovered in North Macedonia in the 1970s.

The glass vase recovered earlier this year in the French town of Autun is the first uncovered in the ancient territories of Gaul. It measures around 4.7 inches high and 6.3 inches in diameter, and is adorned with a message in relief reading “Vivas feliciter,” or “live happily.”

Deputy excavation manager Nicolas Tisserand said during the conference that for now, the piece will be “kept away from light, under drastic security conditions, before being studied and meticulously restored.”

Per a report in Le Figaro, the excavations were carried out from June to mid-September on the Gaul necropolis near Saint-Pierre l’Estrier, one of the oldest Christian churches in Burgundy.

Around 150 plots have been unearthed at the site, and they have led to the discovery of sandstone sarcophagi and lead and wooden coffins.

An array of precious gems, furniture, and jewellery have also been uncovered, including small gold earrings likely crafted for a child. 

“These exceptional and extremely rare discoveries are interesting avenues for the study of the aristocracy of Autun, precociously Christianized at the beginning of the 4th century,” said Kasprzyk.

The entire site, which includes an 11th-century basilica and monastery, has been under study by archaeologists and historians since the mid-1970s due to its rich repository of local and regional history. In 1979, the religious structure was designated a historic monument.

All In One Magazine