He who saw the abyss E-Book

Stefan Brill

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 373

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

The Bible as the foundation of the Christian faith, Greek philosophy as the basis of thought, the Age of Enlightenment as the basis of scientific knowledge - the three pillars of today's view of the world. That philosophy began with the ancient Greeks is just as invented as the myth of the Sea Peoples, who ushered in the end of the Bronze Age. Nor does the story of the Flood originate from the Bible. The Age of Enlightenment not only destroyed a medieval view of the world, but at the same time created new myths that are rarely questioned even today.With a good portion of irony, the stories are scrutinised and filleted. Where they come from and since when they have been told holds the one or other surprise. We accompany the first archaeologists to Nineveh and take part in a Greek symposium with Herodotus. We meet Rousseau in Annecy and learn what 'Haute Cousine' and 'Guillotine' have in common. We attend Hegel's lectures in Berlin and accompany Wallace to Borneo. From Noah to Kant, from Uruk to Ulm, from Cinderella to flying orangutans, the stories are so numerous that one or two souvenirs are likely to remain from this journey through time.

Leseprobe

The book

The Bible as the foundation of the Christian faith, Greek philosophy as the basis of thought, the Age of Enlightenment as the basis of scientific knowledge - the three pillars of today's view of the world. That philosophy began with the ancient Greeks is just as invented as the myth of the Sea Peoples, who ushered in the end of the Bronze Age. Nor does the story of the Flood originate from the Bible.

The Age of Enlightenment not only destroyed a medieval view of the world, but at the same time created new myths that are rarely questioned even today. With a good portion of irony, the stories are scrutinised and filleted. Where they come from and since when they have been told holds the one or other surprise.

We accompany the first archaeologists to Nineveh and take part in a Greek symposium with Herodotus. We meet Rousseau in Annecy and learn what 'Haute Cousine' and 'Guillotine' have in common. We attend Hegel's lectures in Berlin and accompany Wallace to Borneo.

From Noah to Kant, from Uruk to Ulm, from Cinderella to flying orangutans, the stories are so numerous that one or two souvenirs are likely to remain from this journey through time.

The author

Stefan Brill (1967) is a political scientist, economist and holds a PhD on philosophy. He was living in Central America, Europe and Asia, but now prefers to spend his time at his home in the sunny south, hoping not to lose too much money on the stock market again.

Invitation

Feel invited to join a colourful journey through time, enjoying a number of very beautiful stories. A number of them are extremely old, but surprisingly actual, some may sound completely ridiculous, some are absurd in deed, an some are true simply because they are believed to be so. And yet they are nothing but entertaining stories.

It is an entertaining journey to places one would not have guessed what happened there and to the days in which they were invented. They are often marvellous stories, that still shape our ideas of the world today. However, when asking for their origins and since when they were told, one often receives a surprising answer.

Join in, if you got curious. It's just another story which you may believe or not. Get on board, we're heading for

… Bodenwerder!

Content

Prehistory

A Castle in Bodenwerder

The beginning of the Story

A walk in the park

Coitus Interruptus in Arabia

Coffee black as ink

Rendezvous in Baghdad

Bel-Air in Persia

The bet

Excavated Stories

Ninive retrouvée

Ashurbanipal's library

Naked at the museum

The Babel-Bible-Controversy

Stories about Gilgamesh

The story of the thirty fertile women

Discworld

The stories of Sîn-lēqi-unninni

Sea Peoples with colander

Stories about myths

Biblical Stories

Ox-House-Camel

Astruc's knife

Smartphones and Camels

The bride sold

Biblesex

A sheep called 'Daisy'

Stories from the Levant

Café Levant

Cinderella for adults

Va pensiro Babylon

Aida's End

Greek stories

Don't trust in swans with morning glory

Woman with Stockholm syndrome

Hellenic fantasies

Farting philosophers

Pre-Socratic lifestyle

Bizarre deaths in philosophy

Herodotus in Bodenwerder

Greek Symposium

Athenian triumvirate

Stories of a new time

Hermann der Lame

Confessions of a late riser

The story of the new thinking

Falling Stones

Heaven on earth

Let there be light

Royal droppings

I stink therefore I am

Bouillon Rectal

Lac du Annecy

Story of the Haute Cuisine

Interesting Times

Fabricated Stories

Archangel Francesco

Göttingen makes history

An unfinished age

Cocktail Fatal

The story of the German Greeks

Dessert with bad taste

Stories from Islands

Present Not Voting

Enlightenment in a kilt

Abyss of time

Homo Diluvii Testis

About giraffes

Sailing the Pacific

The story of the flying Orang-Utan

Welcome to the Bermuda triangle

The Malayan archipelago

Of flatheads and big beans

He who saw the Abyss

Of false rabbits and mouse-dogs

Ark of a Dream

A castle in Bodenwerder

'Liar, liar, pants on fire'

Many may be familiar with the outrages tall tales of Baron Munchhausen, in which he mounted a cannon ball and let himself shot over a town, changed saddles in the air, and flew right out again on another ball.

Although the Baron's stories were probably a tiny little bit exaggerated, only few people know that this Hieronymus Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Munchhausen was in fact a very real person. The Hanoverian storyteller very much enjoyed to tell his stories to a small, very private audience at his 'castle' in Bodenwerder.

Baron Munchhausen was one of the 'Brunswick Cuirassiers' sent by his sovereign to serve in Russia, from where he not only brought back his wife, but also some old gold coins with the coinage of Ivan III. When some time later Tsarina Elisabeth came to power, she let destroy everything that reminded of her predecessor, including the coins with the portrait of the previous ruler. Munchhausen, thus, came unexpectedly into possession of a rare treasure of his time, which soon would cause him some serious trouble.

He fared quite well after his return from the east, living quietly and contentedly on his small country estate for decades and enjoyed the best health. The baron was a marvellous storyteller, and soon his anecdotes were circulating all around Bodenwerder.

One of his most attentive listeners was Rudolf Raspe, a true polymath and 'bon vivant', who was interested in everything that was fashionable at the time. This not only included the baron's coin collection, but also his new young wife. Some time after becoming a widower, the old baron had fallen foolishly in love with his only twenty years old goddaughter Bernhardine Brunsig von Brunn. Money and young women have driven many elderly gentleman to ruin, and Munchhausen was not to be spared. What all this has to do with Mr Raspe is probably known to only very few.

Rudolf Raspe was a typical child of the Enlightenment, had studied at Göttingen, later became the curator at the Ottoneum in Kassel and was even elected to the highly respected Royal Society in England.

Things were actually going very well for him, except that his private expenses as a 'bon vivant' did not quite correspond with his income as a curator. He could not resist, and it was only a matter of time when he was charged with stealing from the Landgrave’s gem collection. He fled to England, wanted by the police as a 'red-haired man of medium height'.

Installing himself in London and suffering from a constant money shortage, Raspe remembered the Baron's tall tales and soon published them under the title 'Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia'. The book became a bestseller and the first editions were quickly sold out. His success however, had fatal consequences for the actual baron himself.

For the Munchhausens, the ideas of marriage were understandably not exactly equivalent. What the baron expected to be his last love affair, his fifty years younger wife regarded more as a care facility for senior pensioners in need. Of course, young Bernhardine, very soon needed a little money for a rather comprehensive cure in the spa of Bad Pyrmont.

Raspe seized his chance, visited the young woman and thus came into possession of the baron's valuable coin collection for little money. Whatever may be understood by a 'comprehensive cure', it was an extremely fruitful period for Bernhardine. Nine months later, her daughter was born, and it cannot be ruled out entirely that Raspe was somehow connected with this.

To the old baron it was immediately clear that he was cheated and not to be held responsible for this 'accident'. He immediately accused his young wife of adultery and filed for divorce. In the long lasting divorce proceedings, his newly acquired title as the 'Lying Baron' took its revenge.

His heavily pregnant wife accused him in court that all his accusations were fabrications. As proof, she presented the stories that Raspe had circulated. The judges finally believed the young wife, and so the baron's last adventure ended in a financial fiasco.

Of course, this story had to begin with Baron Munchausen, with him and a university that is just being founded. It was his uncle, Gerlach Adolph Freiherr von Munchhausen, Prime Minister to King George II, who established the University of Göttingen in 1734 in the name of his Majesty, from which Rudolf Raspe graduated a few years later.

It was soon to become a globally respected institution, where figures such as the English crown princes, the Humboldt brothers, the brothers Grimm, a Baron von Stein, and many others were to study.

'My whole trust rested on men like Heyne, Michaelis and many others; my most ardent wish was to sit at their feet and take note of their teachings', wrote Johann Wolfgang Goethe, a contemporary of the Baron and probably one of the most influential literary figure a few years later.

The uncle of the 'Lying Baron', Gerlach Adolph Freiherr von Munchhausen, soon brought the very professors Goethe mentioned here to his new university. Michaelis was to become one of the first 'Orientalists', and Heyne the most famous Greek scholar of his time.

We will soon find out what this university was all about and what significance it had. But let us finally begin our story. Let's start out journey and travel to a small park in nearby Göttingen...

The beginning of the Story

A walk in the park

Coitus Interruptus in Arabia

Coffee black as ink

Rendezvous in Baghdad

Bel-Air in Persia

The bet

A walk in the park

Welcome to the famous city of Göttingen. Let's take a seat on one of the benches near by and let us enjoy a moment of silence in the warming summer sun. We are still quite undisturbed, as the new century has only just begun. The nineteenth, to remind you.

Just around the corner comes a young student named Georg Grotefend, arguing with his fatherly friend Fiorillo about what has just happened in the world outside.

It was the Age of Enlightenment, and people were well aware of it. For those who were not, a certain Immanuel Kant, who was known all over the place already, was blaring out from Königsberg to his listeners that they should switch on their brains for a change and free themselves from their 'self-incurred immaturity', as he called it.

'Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-incurred immaturity', he said.

'Immaturity is the incapacity to use one's mind without the guidance of another. Such immaturity is self-incurred if it is not caused by lack of understanding, but by lack of determination and courage to use one's mind without being guided by another.

Sapere Aude! Have the courage to use your own mind is therefore the motto of the enlightenment'.

Slowly, people began to realise why the world was the way it was. Mankind began after the Deluge, and wisdom came with the Greeks. That's how it was written, that's how it was told, and that's how it had to be.

However, the world was changing rapidly. Before Georg was born, there was order. In France, the king carried his head on his shoulders and sat firmly on the throne. Louis XVI was France, France was great, and Paris was the centre of the world. Now, chaos had broken out. The king was found below the guillotine and his head in the basket in front of it. Together with his head the whole old order seemed to have fallen.

Everywhere in the Holy Roman Empire of German Nations, the 'Reich', there was talk of 'citizens', of a 'nation', and of 'freedom and equality' that had come with the revolution. Many were waiting for Napoleon, who had just returned from Egypt. In the salons and at the universities there was no other topic than the French Revolution, and many wished that the Frenchman would finally come, and with him the long desired change.

Georg had some serious difficulties with this kind of thinking. His sovereign was George III, King of England and Ireland, and German 'Kurfürst', the Duke and Prince-elector of Brunswick-Lunenburg. Which nation should one belong to?

England used to be a dwarf, but now it was rapidly developing into a world power. George III owned colonies all over the world, from America to India. Steam engines fogged entire cities and drove the 'industrial revolution'. The economy was the hot topic on the island and new factories mushroomed everywhere. There was a huge rumble in Europe at the moment.

Georg Grotefend tried to escape from all these new developments. He was interested in ancient history, a rather new topic at his University. Over the past few weeks, he had been searching through the archives of the library and found some old travel reports from the Orient. In the reports were drawings of ancient ruins, and on these ruins was an ancient script that no one had yet been able to decipher. Well, to be honest, no one was really interested in it, and no one could only imagine, that these few lines held the key to an extraordinary treasure.

Absolutely no one could have foreseen that these ancient characters of a long forgotten language would soon contribute to the collapse of an entire world view. How these reports with its ancient inscriptions came into the possession of his University is again a story of coincidences.

Coitus Interruptus in Arabia

Some forty years ago, the above mentioned Professor Michaelis had managed to set up the first really scientific research expedition to Arabia. Actually, it was failed expedition, and the professor had not taken any further notice of the results. Now, Georg had rediscovered the report of that journey in the dusty realms of the university library.

When initiating the expedition, the old professor wanted to check what was true about the stories in the Bible. He had no doubt about the Holy Scriptures, not at all. One was living in the age of enlightenment, the age of reason, and no one of sound mind doubted the Scriptures of God, the creation and the deluge. There was absolutely no reason to do so.

Michaelis was rather looking for scientific evidence for the authenticity of the Bible. So, what could be more obvious than sending someone to Arabia to check the informations set out in the Scriptures?

Like many of his colleagues, the professor believed that Arabia had not changed very much since biblical times. So he sat down, picked up his Bible and wrote down all the questions that seemed to be of importance.

There were questions about the climate, the cities and landscapes, about the animals that were living, and the plants that could be found there. Specifically, he was interested in where the Red Sea got its colour from, whether there were flying snakes, how the manna was prepared, or whether the Arabs, like the Hottentots, lined up their oxen with their horns close together for protection against wild animals.

The ideas about the Orient were, to put it mildly, still somewhat simple-minded, if not gawkish. Most likely, the professor had never left northern Europe and drew his knowledge mainly from the bible. Many of his colleagues were no different.

Michaelis summarised all these important questions in a book, 'Questions for the Society of Wise Men', a veritable cabinet of delicacies. The professor asked whether toothaches were less frequent in Arabia, and what this had to do with warm coffee. Or whether 'uncircumcised' men were more often plagued by carbuncles in the warm climate of Arabia than 'circumcised' men, and what the whole thing had to do with skin colour. Of course, he was also interested in the different types of emasculation, especially whether the 'testicles were squeezed out or the rut was cut off'. Michaelis knew his Bible by heart, and there it says that: 'He whose testicles are crushed or whose male member is cut off shall not enter the assembly of the Lord' (Deut. 23.1).

He was also interested in ancient customs and was wondering, whether the despised sister-in-law was still allowed to pull off her brother-in-laws shoe and spit him in the face calling him 'the man that had his sandal pulled off'. What seems to us rather odd today was a perfectly understandable and normal question for that time. You only need to know the biblical story of Judah and Tamar, which goes as follows:

Tamer had married Judah's eldest son Ger, and both seem to have lived happily together. However, they had not yet produced a male offspring when Ger suddenly died. Without a son, however, the widow was left without inheritance, so her father-in-law sent his second son Onan to take care of the matter. The two tried their very best, but whenever the time came, Onan preferred to drop the semen on the floor, says to the Bible. This first 'coitus interruptus' in worlds literature did not please the Lord at all, and so Onan had to die, too.

Interestingly, however, 'onanism' today is synonymous with 'masturbation', with which the biblical Onan had nothing whatsoever to do. The 'coitus interruptus' on the other hand, to which Onan ultimately fell victim, is still considered the only permissible method of contraception in many Christian religious circles. Actually, a completely upside down interpretation of the words of the Bible, but that's the way it is with many religions. But let's go back to the story.

Tamer was still without an heir and waiting for son number three to finally produce a male offspring with her. Little Shelah, that was his name, was obviously not yet ready for such experiences, and so Papa Judah soon forgot to fulfil his obligation. Obviously, Tamer was less enthusiastic about this and figured out a plan on how to get what she deserved.

So she disguised herself as a prostitute by putting on a headscarf - it seems to have been that easy in those days – and this heavily masqueraded, she sat down outside the city waiting for her father-in-law. He actually came along, did not recognize her, of course, booked her for one night, paid, got her pregnant, and left satisfied the next morning. That's the way, Tamer finally got her heir, so it is written in the Bible, and that's how it had to be (Genesis 38).

So far so good, but there is still the matter of the 'shoe-thing', and of course, it is also part of the Bible stories. If the brother refuses to go to bed with his sister-in-law, which may well occur in real life, then:

'his brother’s wife shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, and pull his sandal off his foot, and spit in his face; and she shall answer and say, ‘So shall it be done to the man who does not build up his brother’s house.’ And the name of his house shall be called in Israel, The house of him that had his sandal pulled off.' (Deut. 25:9-10).

Wonderfully absurd things are written in the Scriptures, but let us return to our story. Equipped with a whole catalogue of such unintentionally weird questions, the expedition set out by ship from Copenhagen on 4 January 1761. It consisted of six former students from Göttingen University, among them a certain Carsten Niebuhr.

The notes of this gentlemen tell us of a total fiasco of the expedition right from the beginning. Soon after the departure they were hit by strong winter storms, the sailors were blown out of the masts and died like flies. It finally took them nine months before they arrived in Egypt, from where the six expedition members made their way to 'Arabia Felix', to the south of the Saudi Arabian peninsula.

They expected to find the 'original' way of biblical life, almost unchanged for centuries. What they encountered were 'original' swarms of malaria mosquitoes that attacked the completely perplexed and unprepared travellers and feasted on them in the best possible manner.

In May, the first participant, Friedrich Christian von Haven, died of malaria in Mokka, six weeks later Peter Forskal on the way to Sanaa. The survivors decided to leave for Bombay by ship, but two more participants, Baurenfeind and Berggren, died while still at sea. When the expedition arrived in India in September 1763 - after just one year of effective exploration - four of the six participants had already died. The British East India Company had just driven its French competitors from the subcontinent during the Seven Years' War. India was now one of the colonies of the English king, who was also the founding father of the University of Göttingen, which finally explains the destination India.

In Bombay, however, also the last travelling companion died, and Niebuhr decided to travel alone and anonymously under the name 'Abdallah' for the next four years. Slowly the last survivor realized, that the ideas of his professor had little to nothing in common with reality.

The Arabs, noted Niebuhr, had less toothache not so much because they consumed hot coffee, but because they simply cleaned their teeth after every meal. In general, he no longer seemed to think much of Michaelis and his catalogue of questions.

'If it is true that the oxen of the Hottentots are accustomed to stand close together in a row at night in order to oppose the incoming wild animals with a whole line of horns (Michaelis 46th question), then the Arab oxen must be more stupid, for I have never heard of such virtues from them', he noted.

Niebuhr wrote down and mapped everything he saw. When he finally reached the ruins of Persepolis in March 1765, he made some drawings, including a detailed copy of a script that no one in Europe had yet been able to read.

'Of the beautiful wedge-shaped script, one finds almost constantly three inscriptions of three different alphabets next to each other... The seal may perhaps be useful to the linguist; for the animal it contains is certainly a mythical animal of the Persians, and thus the writing around it is likewise Persian', he noted in the report.

Niebuhr passed by Mosul, but had no idea of the archaeological treasures under the hills not far from the city. When he finally returns home in 1767, all his notes were in vain.

Disappointed that the reports did not meet his expectations, Professor Michaelis declared the expedition a failure, and many of his maps and drawings ended up in the library archives. It were these records that Georg Grotefend encountered when digging through the depths of his university's library.

In addition, there were three other books that the young student had come across that gave certain clues to the ancient history of Mesopotamia. One by an old Augsburg 'medico', another by an Italian nobleman, and finally one by a Parisian jeweller. All three wonderful stories, which shall therefore be told briefly.

Coffee black as ink

The first book was was written by a German doctor entitled: Leonhart Rauwolf's 'Actual Description of the Journey which he himself made before this time towards the Orient, namely Syria, Judea, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, Assyria, Armenia, and not without little trouble and great danger: besides reporting many strange and memorable things, all of which he inquired about, saw and observed'.

In 1582 books still bore titles that unequivocally revealed what they were about. More than a hundred years later, when book titles already became much shorter, the English title decreased to a simple: 'Dr. Leonhart Rauwolf's Travels into the Eastern Countries' for its English translation in 1693.

Rauwolf was an expert in medicinal herbs from Augsburg, and fulfilled a childhood dream with his journey in 1573. The Orient with its knowledge of medicine and medicinal herbs had fascinated him for a long time. When his brother-in-law's trading company was looking for someone to provide more information from Arabia that Leonhardt took the chance of his life.

His journey lasted about three years, and he was probably one of the first Europeans to describe the pleasure of a hot coffee: 'A very good drink they call Chaube that is almost as black as ink and very good in illness, especially of the stomach'.

Leonhardt describes the Tower of Babel as a castle mountain with a ruined fortress 'near which stood the Babylonian high tower, which the children of Noah (who first inhabited this land after the Flood) began to build up to heaven'.

For Leonhardt it is the biblical landscape and was the first inhabited land after the deluge. It was probably the first time a traveller described the reasonably correct location of biblical Babylon in a book.

He also passes through Mosul and notices the beautiful hilly landscape, unaware of the archaeological treasures that lied buried beneath. Today, however, Rauwolf is known less for his description of the Tower of Babel than for the Rauwolf plants named after him.

Rendezvous in Baghdad

Georg had found another clue to the cuneiform script in the travelogue of Pietro della Valle. It is not only the diary of an unusual journey at a time when Europe was heading straight for the Thirty Years' War, when witches were burned on funeral pyres and superstition was booming. It is also an eerily beautiful love story of two persons who could not have been more different.

Pietro della Valle was a young nobleman in his late twenties when he fell head over heels in love with an 'exceedingly beautiful lady, from whom he had the certain and sincere promise of her fidelity, but was deceived', writes Abbot Filippo Maria Bonini in the description of della Valle's life. The Abbot describes his character as of

'moist and warm temperament, which, because it was in great excess in him, caused him to think highly, briskly resolute in his business, and exceedingly fierce in his sensual performance for why he took everything else for a joke and threw it to the winds'.

What this moist temperament is all about is probably left to the reader's imagination, but the fact that he doesn't take life too seriously and rather as a big joke makes della Valle a very likeable character. Bonini's character description is simply delicious. It is the language of the lush and sultry baroque that is presented here.

In Naples, della Valle initially tried to gain distance from the gruelling thoughts of his lost love affair. Finally, his friend Schipano advised him to make a pilgrimage to Palestine to forget his heartbreak. He had no idea in 1614 that his friend would now be travelling for almost 12 years and his journey will bring him as far as to India.

Pietro regularly sends his 'missives' to his friend, and is almost ready to return home to Italy when he falls in love with an extremely beautiful but completely unknown Aurora, whom he knows only by reputation. Pietro writes his friend:

'that in this country the rumour of the beautiful Aurora has reached my ears, that I am compelled, out of fervent desire to see her, even to possess her, to take in hand another journey, not so long, but just as long and arduous, and then no less strange'.

The very next day he sets off for Baghdad, quickly describes the Tower of Babel and the lion's den into which Daniel was thrown, and finally meets his Aurora, who turns out to be Sitti Ma'ani Gioerida.

'She is Assyrian by birth, sprung from ancient Christian blood, about eighteen years old, and, besides her gifts of mind, which are quite uncommon in her person, of such pleasing bodily form that, if it were not indecent for a husband to praise his wife, I might well say, without glorification, that she was worthy of love'.

Yes, you read quite right, 'veni, vidi, nupsi', the old Latin would say, I came, saw and got married. Almost on arrival he is wedding his beloved Aurora, whom he had never seen before. By now, at the latest, he had forgotten all his Italian despair and pain, and cannot stop romanticizing about his new wife:

'The length of her body is neither too long nor too short for a woman's image, but her whole body in all parts is in stately proportion, together with her lovely gracefulness, noble gestures, and wondrous pleasantness when she speaks, and still more when she smiles, and lets her small and snow-white teeth be seen, and other such circumstance, in which I fell in love'.

This is how a young Italian nobleman of a Baroque 'moist and warm temperament' writes about his young wife. Both were travelling together for the following years and also reached Persepolis, where della Valle made the first documented copy of the cuneiform script. It is for these few lines that he would later enter the history books. However, he had no clue about it.

Already on the way back to Italy, his Ma'ari died of a fever, and when Pietro della Valle arrived back in Rome after a twelve-year journey, he had in his luggage not only a few souvenirs, the copies from Persepolis with the strange cuneiform writing, but also the mummified body of his deceased and dearly beloved wife, which he had buried in the family tomb.

Pietro was indeed a rum one, but a very likeable and sympathetic one.

Bel-Air in Persia

The last book with references to cuneiform writings that Georg had found was the report of a jeweller's son from France named Jean Chardin. He had learned his trade in his father's shop in the Place Dauphine in Paris.

When he was born in 1643, the Thirty Years' War was already over and the only five-year-old Louis XIV, the later 'Sun King', was sitting on the French throne while civil war was just breaking out in England. At that time, France was developing into a major European power and expanding its colonies and trade relations all over the world, including the East Indies. Also the French king had colonies in India at this time, although it sometimes seems to have been forgotten.

Chardin was only twenty-one years old when his father became a shareholder in the newly founded Compagnie des Indes Orientales, the French East India Company. The father immediately sent his son to Persia to establish new trade relations. The young man quickly became court jeweller to the Persian king and brought home several copies of the cuneiform script from Persepolis. Twenty-six more books with this ancient cuneiform are said to be in Isfahan, he wrote in his book 'Journal du Voiages du Chevalier Chardin en Perse'.

And while the plague hit hard on London and King Charles II fled London with his family and took up residence in Oxford with the entire court in 1665, young Chardin raved about the pure air in faraway Persia.

'The air is cool in this country, and this cool air has the wondrous property that the people, except on the borders towards the south and north, are altogether very healthy, beautiful in colour, and of both sexes of body strength, limber and shapely', he noted. A bid of fresh air can work out wonders and is extremely good for ones health. It was already known hundreds of years ago.

The bet

Let's return to the university in Göttingen, where Georg Grotefend had been discussing for hours with his friend Fiorillo all that he had found in the bowels of the library. Deciphering ancient writings was envogue at this time, but no one was interested in the ancient cuneiform that Georg had found in the dusty corridors of the university library.

To put an end to the whole discussion, Fiorillo proposed a wager to his youthful friend. If he actually managed to decipher the signs, Georg would receive his first scientific publication. This was, of course, a challenge the young student accepted immediately. A short later, in the summer of 1802, he locked himself in his student room, sat down in front of his overcrowded desk, took the ancient cuneiform inscriptions, and began his work.

What experts need years for, Georg solved the puzzle within only a few weeks and was actually able to decode about a third of all the yet completely unknown cuneiform characters. In September 1802, he presented his groundbreaking findings to the professors of the university, and what followed this sensation was... absolutely nothing!

The scientific community took almost no notice of him and his findings. He received an encouraging pat on the back, and that was the end of his steep scientific career. Georg Grotefend was the right man, in the right place, but unfortunately at the wrong time.

Georg had found a key to a secret that was still buried under metre-thick layers of collapsed clay ruins near Mosul. He was not to experience the actual sensation, which had to do with a young Englishman standing stark naked in the British Museum. But we'll get to that story later. In the meantime, we have to do a little archaeology, a completely new field of research that didn't exist until now. The cuneiform texts that Georg translated so far really didn't give too much away, but that was soon to change. The explosive power that was associated with it is hardly imaginable today.

So let's say goodbye to Göttingen for now. We will now join two of the most famous 'archaeologists' who excavated the ancient ruins in Mesopotamia. They probably made their finds more by mere chance and due to infinite boredom, but have a look for yourself.

Let's go to France, at a time when Napoleon was already history...

Excavated Stories

Ninive retrouvée

Ashurbanipal's library

Naked at the museum

The Babel-Bible-Controversy

Nineveh retrouvée

In early nineteenth-century Europe, the vast majority of people were absolutely convinced of the validity of the Bible. The stories of the divine creation were considered universally accepted, and the biblical accounts of the Assyrians, the Babylonians and the Egyptians in no way doubted. There were, however, some few scientists who claimed that something might not be quite right with the whole story, but with minor modifications even these observations could be brought in line with the Bible. There was no real reason to be alarmed in any way.

Moreover, since Napoleon's campaign to Egypt in 1798, vast quantities of ancient Egyptian inscriptions had been brought back to France, which were now gradually being deciphered. The Frenchman Champollion was the first to be able to correctly interpret the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the events described in the deciphered texts often corresponded to the accounts in the Bible.

What was missing, however, was real evidence from Mesopotamia, where the ancient empires of Assyria and Babylonia must have been located, where Abraham came from, and where Noah survived the Deluge. Mesopotamia was the origin of man, so it was said in the Bible, and the Bible speaks the truth, people were convinced. So, it was time to take a closer look at the region and search for evidence.

Let's go on board the 'Heros', a French merchant ship, where we will meet the first protagonist of this story. After departure from France, the ship headed south to the Atlantic, circumnavigated Cape Horn, and cruising northwards to California. Even the captain, August Bernard Duhaut-Cilly, did not know exactly what the hell they were doing here. He had been trying to sell his merchandise for two years, constantly sailing back and forth between Hawaii and San Francisco.

Out of pure boredom, the young doctor on this ship, Paul-Émile Botta, had already started compiling a French-Hawaiian dictionary. Of course, Botta had no idea that he would one day find the biblical Nineveh while sailing in paradise on the other end of the world. When he finally returned to France after three years, he was probably just as ignorant as the young Charles Darwin, who was soon to set off for the Pacific with the 'Beagle'.

Many great discoveries, one might assume, are made out of sheer boredom. Years later, when Botta became consul in Mosul, it seems, he must have got heavily bored again. This time, however, he did not start with a dictionary, but grabbed a spade and dug through the beautiful hills outside the city to the east of Mosul. It was the year 1842.

As it soon turned out, these beautiful hills, called 'tells', were not just natural elevations, but nothing more than the overgrown remains of long-decayed cities. Botta quickly found the first shards, but unfortunately his companion convinced him to continue digging further north. There was much more to be found there, he told the Frenchman, and so Botta set off north and continued his work there. He had just discovered the long-sought Nineveh, and then carelessly left it behind. Of course he did not have the faintest idea at the time.

As soon as he started with his new excavation north of Mossul, he was immediately successful. Just below the surface, he came across palace walls decorated with reliefs and inscriptions in cuneiform writing. At the main entrances were huge winged bull sculptures almost five metres high.

'I believe I am the first to have discovered sculptures which, it may be supposed, belong to that period when Nineveh was in its prime' Botta noted in his book. He was so excited and overwhelmed that he telegraphed to France: 'Ninive etait retrouvée' - Nineveh has been found.

The problem, however, was that no one had yet been able to decipher the cuneiform inscriptions that were now being found all over the ruins. Georg Grotefend's discovery had not interested anyone at the time, otherwise Botta would have known intermediately, that it was not Nineveh but Dûr-Sharrûkin, the palace of Sargon II, he discovered.

On one of the clay tablets that were excavated, the following was written in cuneiform: 'Sargon, king of the universe, built this city: Dûr-Sharrûkin is its name; within it he had this incomparable palace built'. It's that simple sometimes in archaeology, you just have to be able to read.

Anyway, Botta had everything packed into boxes and sent it to the Louvre, triggering a veritable stampede in Paris. Everyone wanted to see with their own eyes what was left of Nineveh. The Bible tells the truth, people were convinced, and there was no doubt about it.

A short time later, however, when the cuneiform writing was finally completely deciphered and the error was discovered, this only fuelled the enthusiasm even more. Suddenly there was clear scientific proof. After all, the Holy Scriptures read: 'In the year that the commander in chief, who was sent by Sargon the king of Assyria, came to Ashdod and fought against it and took it...' (Isaiah 20.1). So the Bible was right, Sargon really existed, and Botta had discovered his palace.

However, just before Botta could set out to correct his mistake and seek the right Nineveh, he got caught up in the mills of politics. After the February Revolutions of 1848, he lost his post in Mosul and had no other choice but to observe Austen Henry Layard doing his job.

So it is time to visit the other great archaeologist. Let's go to London, where a very depressed young lawyer is sitting at his desk, about to shoot a bullet in his brain out of deadly dullness. A good indication that a great discovery is about to be made. In fact, the life of this young man was going to change so drastically that it almost knocked him off his feet. He just had to wait for a Mr Mitfort to finally get going.

Ashurbanipal's Library

Austen Henry Layard was certainly not the kind of person who liked to stay at home as a young man. Well, he didn't like to stay in one place in his later years neither, and making his living in his uncle's lawyer's office wasn't exactly an appealing idea of his future lifestyle.

Layard was born in 1817 in a hotel in Paris, a circumstance that might have had a decisive influence on his later life. He grew up in Florence, Geneva and in France, and was later sent to boarding school in England at the age of twelve. Some ten years later he finally became a lawyer in his uncle's office and understandably quite depressed.

His opportunity for a life as an adventurer and explorer only arose when an acquaintance of his uncle, Edward Mitfort, was looking for a companion to travel to Ceylon to set up a coffee plantation. Only, Mitfort had a panic fear of water, so he wanted to go all the way to India by land. Layard was thrilled to finally get out of the stuffy office.

They both decided to take only the bare essentials, and those were some double-barrelled pistols, a compass, a sextant and a bed. It is somewhat amusing to imagine the two travellers arriving in Mosul in April 1840, observing the great 'tells' on the east bank of the Tigris - with their bed on their back. However, south of Mosul they passed by a stately hill in the shape of a pyramid, which reminded Layard to the story of the old Greek Xenophon, who must have come along here some two thousand years ago.

Xenophon was a pupil of the famous philosopher Socrates and took part in a battle against Atraxerxes II with ten thousand Greek mercenaries in 401 B.C. Of course he wrote a book about his heroic deeds entitled 'Anabasis'. The background were disputes over the succession to the Persian king Darius II. His younger son Cyrus had gathered troops in Asia Minor, including ten thousand Greek mercenaries, to march against his older brother Artaxerxes II, who was in Babylon. Unfortunately, Cyrus was killed in battle north of Babylon, and so it fell to Xenophon to lead the Greek mercenaries back home.

The fact that he left behind the entire entourage of wives and children, prostitutes, catamites and jugglers, blacksmiths, butchers, bakers, millers and whoever else, does not detract from his heroic deed, of course. After all, Xenophon wrote the book himself.

In any case, these ten thousand mercenaries moved north along the Tigris, and Xenophon reports of a deserted city that had previously belonged to the Medes, with huge ring walls and impregnable. 'Near the city was a stone pyramid, one plethron wide, two plethrons high', Xenophon writes in his book.

Layard never made it to Ceylon. For two years he vagabonded more or less aimlessly through the Middle East, became entangled in political intrigues, was attacked and got robbed several times, and finally stood half-naked with bleeding feet and without a bed at the city gate of Baghdad, where he collapsed unconscious.

After his uncle also stopped his alimony payments, the young man was literally stuck in Mesopotamia. By sheer coincidence the British consul in Istanbul was just looking for an 'assistant' for special diplomatic purposes, and it took Layard several years before he finally got the opportunity and sufficient funds for his own excavations.

In 1845 he took his spade and milled his way through the middle of the ancient palaces of the vanished empires of Assyria. Of course, he started near the pyramids south of Mosul, which he had come across years before. As soon as he started digging, he found what he was looking for.

He immediately came across palace walls decorated with ivory, cuneiform texts and wonderful pictorial reliefs. Like Botta years before him he was convinced that he had found the real Nineveh. He packed everything into boxes, sent his finds to London, and when he finally returned there eight years after his departure, he was a famous man.

At the end of 1847, he rushed to his new employer, the British Museum. London was by now the greatest city in the world. On display in the bookshops was Robert Chambers' latest book on the 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation', an absolute bestseller. All the new scientific discoveries were signs of God's work, the author wrote, hitting the nerve of its readers.