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16th c. murals, burials found in Cuzco church
During the restoration of the 16th century Church of Saint Francis of Assisi in the Peruvian town of Maras, 25 miles northwest of Cuzco, researchers discovered a crypt with skeletal remains and the original murals that had been covered with more fashionable artworks by a famous native son in the 17th century. Experts from the Dirección Desconcentrada de Cultura de Cusco (DPDDC), the governmental organization in charge of administering the cultural patrimony of the Cuzco region in southeastern Peru, found the crypt under the floor of the Virgen de las Nieves chapel. Inside are a jumble of human bones that researchers estimate belong to 32 people interred in the early days of the church. The remains are disarticulated and scattered likely as a result of deliberate and repeated desecrations that are known to have occurred in the region.
The Templo Mayor San Francisco de Asís was built in 1556, 22 years after the conquest of Peru, the same year the town was founded by Spanish general Pedro Ortiz de Orué. It was constructed in colonial style with adobe walls on a masonry foundation and a tile roof and packed with religious art. Since the restoration of the church is a top-to-bottom project covering the building and all the art inside of it, paintings on the presbytery wall by Antonio Sinchi Roca were removed for conservation.
Antonio Sinchi Roca, born in Maras, was one of the most prominent artists of the Cuzco School, many of whom are unfortunately anonymous today. Bishop Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo, born to a wealthy Madrid family in 1626 and the powerful bishop of Cuzco from 1673 until his death in 1699, was his patron. His painted a series of portraits of the saints and scenes from the Gospel for the church of Saint Francis in his hometown. There are some great views of them in this video from right before the refurbishment began.
Underneath Roca's paintings researchers found a multi-panel mural with scenes of the Virgin Mary. Covered up barely a century after their creation, the murals are in remarkable condition with beautifully bright colors. Another mural was discovered on the wall of the central nave that has more abstract geometric and zoomorophic designs.
These murals predate the Cuzco School of religious art, the first organized artistic movement in the New World of which Roca was one of the most famous exponents. Keen to dive right into the conversion of the Inca people after the conquest, Spain sent artists to Cuzco, the former capital of the Inca Empire, to found a school that would teach the local Quechuas and mestizos to paint religious art in the European style. The Cuzco School artists painted scenes integral to the Catholic catechism — the Holy Family, the Virgin and Child, Christ in Glory, saints, angels (often depicted as warriors), the Final Judgement, the sacraments — using a palette of bright reds, yellows, earth tones and shining gold. They eschewed perspective, focusing instead of emphasizing the important figures by making them dominant in size and in the splendour of their robes.
Restoration of the church began in July 2013 and is scheduled to be complete by July of 2016. The art has been removed to a lab for conservation. No word on whether or how they'll integrate the original murals with the works that have been covering them for more than 300 years.
Chauvet Cave replica opens in France
The walls of the Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave in the Ardèche region of southern France are decorated with the earliest known pictorial drawings made during the Aurignacian period, between 30,000 and 32,000 years ago. More than 1,000 drawings of animals — including horses, bison, lions, cave bears, panthers, eagle owls, woolly mammoths and rhinoceroses — hand prints and abstract line and dot designs cover 91,000 square feet of space. The art has unique qualities like incised outlines that give figures depth and a sense of dynamic movement conveyed by multiple legs as if we were seeing the animals in motion.
The cave was discovered in December of 1994 by three speleologists: Jean-Marie Chauvet (after whom it was named), Eliette Brunel-Deschamps and Christian Hillaire. They were the first people to see the splendour on the walls since the cave opening was sealed by a rockfall 23,000 years ago. France learned a hard lesson with the Lascaux Cave which was discovered in 1940, opened to the public in 1948 and in dire condition by 1955 thanks to the carbon dioxide, moisture, contaminants and lichens introduced by unwitting visitors. This time they took no chances. The French government declared the Chauvet Cave a protected heritage site almost immediately and only made it available to fewer than 200 researchers a year.
Because of its excellent condition, the density and quality of the art, which includes some species of animals like the panther and owl seen in no other Paleolithic art, and the rich remains of prehistoric fauna and human footprints found on the ground, the cave was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in June of 2014. But how to share said heritage with said world without causing irreparable harm to it? Again Lascaux paved the way. Lascaux II, a replica of the main sections of the cave and its art, opened in 1983 and has been very popular to the tourists who can no longer see the original cave.
In 2008, a contest was launched to select the architect who make a replica of the Chauvet Cave. French architects Fabre and Speller won, but their design for the concrete building that would house the replica cave was only one part of a complex whole. This construction and art project would ultimately requiring the close collaboration of 500 people employed by 35 different companies. A 3D laser scanning survey was carried out in 2011 so that every feature of the cave interior could be duplicated. Since the cave is very long, it was rearranged in the replica, basically folded into a circle with all the art consolidated, but meticulously mapped out to its original topography. The original 91,000 square feet were thus reduced to a more manageable but still vast 32,000 square feet, 10 times the size of Lascaux II.
The construction of the walls, ceilings and floors with their accurate topographic features was achieved by bending thousands of metal rods to precisely match the natural lumps and bumps mapped by the 3D scans. The rods were then welded together in sections that could be affixed to steel beams in the ceiling of the new structure. Before they were installed in place, the cage-like sections were covered with two layers of mortar: one of landscape mortar and a top layer of finishing mortar the same colors and textures as the clay and limestone of the original. Even the cracks were reproduced exactly. A thin layer of fine mortar sprayed with a retardant to keep it damp while the artists work was used for the walls with engraved images and finger paints.
Once the sections were prepped, the artists got their turn. Painters used the same kind of charcoal made from Sylvester pine trees and the ocher pigment used by the Aurignacian artists tens of thousands of years ago. Pictures of the originals were projected onto the wall sections, ensuring they were reproduced accurately to the millimeter. Thanks to the mortars used as a base, these materials will sink into the walls over time just the original ones did.
Because they wanted to reproduce not just the art but convey the experience of being in the original cave, geological features like stalactites and calcite concretions were recreated out of epoxy resin or concrete. Crushed or powdered glass was added to the resin to give it that beautiful glittery look you see in natural cave formations. Some of the pieces were treated with glossy topcoat that make them look wet, like the water that formed them is still dripping.
Once all 27 large panels were complete, they were installed in the building along with replicas of the bones and footprints found on the ground in the original cave. It took only 30 months from the time construction began in 2012 until its completion. The cost was $59 million, sure to be recouped many times over by the expected influx of 300,000 to 400,000 visitors a year. On Saturday, April 25th, 2014, the replica opened to the public.
This video is in French, but even if you don't speak any you should still be able to follow it roughly based on the descriptions above, and you really should watch it because it is mind-blowing how they put this thing together.
Also, if you have Netflix, you have to watch Werner Herzog's breathtaking documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. He was allowed very rare access to the original cave and the result is an artistic tour de force as much in execution as in subject matter.
Posted in Ancient, Modern(ish), Museums | 5 Comments »
Mystery basilica under Porta Maggiore opens to the public
In April of 1917, construction of the Rome-Cassino railroad line just outside the gates of the Porta Maggiore on the Via Praenestina in Rome was halted by a cave-in. The cause turned out to be the collapse of an ancient roof of a building nobody knew was under their feet. As it happens, most ancient Romans probably had no idea it was under their feet either. It was deliberately built about seven or eight meters (23-26 feet) below the level of the ancient Via Praenestina in the early decades of the 1st century A.D. and constructed in such a way as to give little indication that something was going on down there.
The part that caved in was the barrel vaulted roof of a dromos, a long entrance gallery that sloped down from the surface and then turned at a right angle for a short passageway into a small square atrium topped by a domed vault. Light was provided by a skylight at the beginning of the dromos, another where it corners into the short passageway and a third in the atrium vault. The atrium opens into a rectangular hall 12 meters (40 feet) long and nine meters (30 feet) wide divided into three barrel-vaulted sections. Two rows of three square pillars separate the central nave from the aisles on either side. The nave is wider than the aisles and opens into a semi-circular apse at the bottom. The main hall was lit by chandeliers and lamps.
This is the classic basilica design, used by the Romans as loci for business transactions, court proceedings and imperial audiences. What makes this building unique in the Roman world is that it is a basilica built for a pre-Christian religious purpose. Roman temples had columned porticos, a main room where the deity's image was housed and one or more back rooms to store equipment, sacrifices and treasure. When Christianity was decriminalized by the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D., Constantine wanted to build impressive churches, as opposed to the cramped underground chapels, catacombs and private homes used when it was a suppressed religion. He turned to the basilica as a public building of widely-recognized civic importance that was not associated with pagan religious practices, and Christian churches have embraced that ancient design ever since.
The Porta Maggiore basilica is not a temple and it's not Christian, but it's definitely a religious building. The decoration attests to that, as does the fact that it was built underground in the first place. Above a wainscoting-like band of red paint of which there are sections extant, the walls and vaults are covered with exquisite white stucco reliefs of mythological scenes like Sappho's legendary suicide by throwing herself off the Leucadian cliff into the ocean, Zeus' eagle abducting Ganymede, Medea offering a magical narcotic beverage to knock out the dragon guarding the Golden Fleece, Orpheus leading Eurydice back from the underworld, Hercules rescuing Hesione from the sea monster, Paris and Helen, Hippolytus and Phaedra, the centaur Chiron teaching Achilles, and one of the Dioscuri kidnapping one of the Leucippides for his bride. There are also heads of Medusa, children at play, animals, plants, a wedding, winged Victories, Nereids, bacchantes, herms, urns, a pygmy returning to his hut after a successful hunt, a table groaning with food and drink, stylized landscapes with garlanded columns and votive trees, worshippers praying to or decorating altars, ritual devotions, and all kinds of geometric and floral flourishes. The quality of the reliefs is exceptionally high and the consistency of style confirms a first century A.D. date.
The method of construction is one of the most fascinating aspects of this unique structure. Nothing else like it has been found. Builders dug seven or eight meters down into the soft volcanic tufa creating trenches where the perimeter walls would go and squared pits where the pillars would go. They then poured that fabulous Roman concrete into pits and let it set. No need for forms or scaffolding; the tufa itself provided the support necessary. Once the concrete had hardened, they poured the concrete for the arches over the pillars and the barrel vaulted ceilings. Lastly they dug out all the tufa from the interior and voila: underground basilica. So damn ingenious. Even though the walls were painted and stuccoed, you can still see the rough texture imprinted on them by the tufa as they dried.
The mosaic floors have remained essentially intact. Made primarily of white tiles with black borders around the walls and pillars, there are untiled areas whose outlines suggest they were once the bases of statues or large urns. In the center of the nave and aisles are small pits that archaeologists believe were the anchor points for the chains used to raise and lower the chandeliers. The skeletal remains of a dog and a pig were found underneath the floor of the apse, likely a sacrifice made during the consecration of the basilica.
Since its discovery, historians have proposed several possible uses for the building — tomb, nymphaeum, site of a funerary cult of the dead — but the prevailing theory at the moment is that it was a place of worship for members of a Neopythagorean mystery religion. Neopythagoreanism was a revival of an earlier school of thought espoused by the mathematician Pythagoras of Theorem fame that held that union with the divine was possible through ascetic living and contemplation of the cosmic order. Metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, was a central tenet. The presence of multiple scenes dealing in the movement of souls to and from the underworld (Orpheus, Sappho) and transitions from one state of being to another (Ganymede, the Dioscuro and Leucippid) on the basilica decorations are clues to its possible association with this Hellenistic mystery cult. There is so much variety in the stucco reliefs, however, and so much we don't know about the symbolism behind them, that the basilica's usage may remain a mystery forever, which is fitting, really.
This marvelous space was filled with rubble and sealed just a few years after it was built. Its location may explain its fate. The basilica is believed to have been built on property belonging to the Statilius family. This is evidenced by a burial ground nearby for the servants and freedmen of the Statilii. This family was new, only a few generations from its first consul Titus Statilius Taurus I who had fought for both Anthony and Octavian during the Triumvirate and ultimately backed the right horse at the right time leading Octavian's armies at Actium.
The Statilii were very wealthy (gotta have big money to come from nothing and successfully climb the cursus honorum) and one of them,
Titus Statilius Taurus IV, became a target of imperial greed because of his wealth. Titus Statilius Taurus IV was consul in 44 A.D., proconsul of Africa from 51 to 53 A.D. and the great-uncle of the future empress Statilia Messalina, third wife of Nero. After his return from Africa, he was caught in the cross-hairs of Emperor Claudius' notorious wife Agrippina.
Tacitus describes the events in his Annals, Book XII, Chapter 59:
Statilius Taurus, whose wealth was famous, and whose gardens aroused [Agrippina's] cupidity, she ruined with an accusation brought by Tarquitius Priscus. He had been the legate of Taurus when he was governing Africa with proconsular powers, and now on their return charged him with a few acts of malversation, but more seriously with addiction to magical superstitions. Without tolerating longer a lying accuser and an unworthy humiliation, Taurus took his own life before the verdict of the senate.
Rubble found in the basilica dates to the middle of the first century, and archaeologists believe it was sealed during the reign of the Emperor Claudius. So we have a brilliantly built, expensively decorated, secret underground basilica constructed on Statilius land just outside the ancient walls of the city. Sounds like something a very rich person with "an addiction to magical superstitions" might build, no? The missing statuary and urns and missing altar could have been confiscated and/or destroyed by imperial order, or they could have been removed by his people before the basilica was sealed to prevent them from getting into any more trouble.
That theory was proposed by French historian Jérôme Carcopino who was Director of the French School in Rome in 1937. More recently, historian and professor of Roman art and archaeology Gilles Sauron proposed that the basilica was constructed by an earlier Statilius, Titus Statilius Taurus III, second son of the original new man Titus Statilius Taurus, who was consul in 11 A.D. Recent conservation work has found different sizes of mosaic tiles and possible indications that some of the stucco reliefs may have been done at different times, so both historians may be right after all.
Once it was rediscovered by the railway workers, the basilica was restored several times. To provide access to the structure which is now 13 meters (about 43 feet) below street level, a staircase was built from the Via Praenestina connecting to the short passageway right before it opens into the atrium. It has very rarely been open to the public, however, because of its delicate condition. Stucco is extremely susceptible to moisture and as early as 1924, just seven years after it was found, water damage became such a concern that conservators covered the top with a cap of pipe-clay to form an impermeable membrane. It proved not to be impermeable, unfortunately, so 25 years later they tried again. In 1951 the railway paid for construction of a dome of reinforced concrete to protect the delicate basilica beneath from the vibrations of the trains and water damage. It was a stop-gap measure and the basilica continued to deteriorate.
Because of its precarious condition, this beautiful basilica, unique in the world, is barely known. That may change now that a new restoration more than 10 years in the making has addressed long-term issues with water penetration, cleaned out the plague of parasitic microorganisms that feast on stucco, and installed eight machines that filter the air to operating-room cleanliness and monitor the temperature and humidity. Work on the dromos, atrium and apse is complete, but it is ongoing on the vaulted ceilings. They're still raising funds to restore the naves.
The basilica will be open to guided tours only, reservations obligatory (call 0639967700 to book a visit). Because an excess of human bodies with their breathing and sweating and greasiness and germs can drastically alter the precarious environmental balance of the structure, tours are offered on the second and fourth Sunday of the month.
This Italian news story shows the basilica before restoration:
[youtube=https://youtu.be/eJP2mT4buKs&w=430]
This is a fly-through with some CG effects of the basilica as it is now:
Posted in Ancient | 12 Comments »
Goya's witches back together again at long last
In November of 1792, the great Spanish artist Francisco de Goya, then 46 years old, was afflicted with a severe illness that almost claimed his sanity if not his life. Symptoms included deafness, dizziness to the point of being unable to stand and vision loss. He spent six months, the first half of 1793, convalescing at the home of financier and collector Don Sebastián Martínez in Cádiz. Martínez secured the best medical attention available for his friend but Goya never did fully recover. He lost his hearing permanently. Martínez described his slow recovery in a letter to Goya's close friend Martín Zapater, an Aragonese merchant Goya had known since they were schoolboys together at the Escuela Pia in Zaragoza:
The noises in his head and the deafness have not improved, but his vision is much better and he is no longer suffering from the disorders which made him lose his balance. He can now go up and down stairs and in a word is doing things he was not able to do before.
Some doctors today speculate that his symptoms may have been caused by Ménière's disease, an inner ear disorder which can cause vertigo, tinnitus (a ringing in the ears), migraines, vomiting, abnormal eye movements and temporary of permanent deafness. Whatever the cause, the illness had a profound effect on Goya. It altered his understanding of his body, and therefore of the body in general, profoundly. He wrote to Zapater at the end of 1792 saying "Now I don't fear witches, hobgoblins, ghosts, giants, rogues and liars or any kind of body except human ones."
That would turn out to be a prophetic vision of his art after his recovery. Goya, who up until that point had focused on idealized beauty, relatively sunny compositions and portraits commissioned by the wealthy and aristocracy of Spain, began to explore darker subjects, starting with a series of 11 small oil-on-tinplate pieces that would become known as the Fantasy and Invention series. In a 1794 letter to his friend Bernardo de Yriarte he wrote: "Vexed by my illnesses, and to compensate in part for the great wastes of time they have cost me, I have dedicated myself to painting a group of cabinet pictures in which I have succeeded in making observations that ordinarily find no place in commissioned works." He mentions one in particular, a courtyard in a madhouse "in which two nude men fight with their warden beating them and others with sacks (a subject which I witnessed in Zaragoza)." Yard with Madmen (1794), now at the Meadows Museum in Dallas, could not be starker in contrast to the Watteauesque tapestry cartoons of his early career, religious paintings and royal portraits painted just three years before his illness.
Although Goya continued to be court painter and make flattering portraits by commission, in his private art he wrestled with those witches, hobgoblins, ghosts, giants, rogues and liars that so compelled him since his own body had turned traitor. Most of these were not for public consumption, although he did paint several witch-themed canvases for the country home of the Duke and Duchess of Osuna. In 1799 he published Caprichos, a group of aquatint etchings depicting "numerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society," whose most famous plate today is The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, but he quickly withdrew it from sale out of concern that the Inquisition might come calling over his depictions of clerical folly.
Later in life, between 1819 and 1823, his explorations of haunted humanity came to their fullest fulgor in the Black Paintings, 14 murals he painted on the walls of his country house outside of Madrid called the Quinta del Sordo, meaning the House of the Deaf Man (named after a previous owner). Black because of the dark palette and because of the subject matter, their unflinching horror and modernity have deeply influenced and continue to influence artists ever since. Saturn Devouring His Son remains unparalleled in its depiction of cannibalistic madness, and The Great He-goat (Witches Sabbath), originally on the wall to the left of Saturn on the ground floor of the Quinta del Sordo, is probably the second best-known masterpiece of the collection. The Black Paintings were removed from the walls and transferred to canvas in 1873 and are now in the collection of the Prado.
In the same period when he was so uniquely decorating his walls at Quinta del Sordo, Goya also created an album of drawings known today as the Witches and Old Women album. It was one of eight albums Goya filled with his private visions, imaginings and dreams after his illness and you can see parallels between the small drawings and the figures in this vast Witches Sabbath mural. After his death in 1828, Goya's son Javier rearranged the drawings into three large albums and after Javier's death in 1854, his son Mariano sold the three albums. Eventually the drawings were removed and sold piecemeal winding up in collections all over the world.
In the dismantling of the albums, Goya's careful numbering of each drawing was sometimes cut off, so even though we know, for example, that the 22 ink drawings of witches and old women were once all together in one of the original eight albums, their order was lost. Now for the first time since were sold at auction in Paris in 1877, the witches are all together again and on display at the Courtauld Gallery in London, and in their original order.
In what the noted Goya scholar Juliet Wilson-Bareau calls a "feat in forensics", conservators and curators spent months examining the sheets to determine the pictures' correct order. Although Goya (1746-1828) meticulously numbered each sketch, eight lost their numbers over the years. The team analysed the brown and grey ink marks on the back of the drawings and "realised that some stains might be more than just accidental workshop marks", says Stephanie Buck, the Courtauld's curator of drawings. These offset marks corresponded with the sketches on the front, which means that the Spanish master drew the pictures in a bound sketchbook and not on loose sheets of paper that were later bound. Buck says that the discovery of the offset marks was instrumental in determining the correct sequencing.
This is not only the first time the drawings from the Witches and Old Women album have all been together again in a public exhibition; it's the first time any of the eight albums' drawings have been shown together. Goya only ever shared them with close friends and associates. If you'd like to share the great artist's unfettered examinations of human nature as he originally composed them, The Witches and Old Women Album exhibition runs through May 25th, 2015.
Viking blacksmith grave even greater than expected
Sunday, April 26th, 2015
Last fall, farmer Leif Arne Nordheim borrowed his neighbor's backhoe to remove some pesky flagstones from his garden in Sogndalsdalen on the southwestern coast of Norway. Lifting the last flagstone revealed tools — a hammer and tongs — which Nordheim first assumed were of relatively recent manufacture. When he found a bent blade, he realized it was likely archaeological and called in the county Cultural Department. Archaeologists from the University Museum of Bergen soon followed and an excavation of the find site ensued.
The find turned out to be far greater than originally realized, and the ancient blacksmith tools were impressive enough already. Archaeologists unearthed a large collection of forging tools and weapons, including three hammers of different sizes, two anvils, blacksmith tongs, coal tongs, a rake to remove coals, a tray used to add coals, a chisel, a scythe, a sickle, a drill, pieces of grindstone, nails, a single-edged sword, an axe, two arrows and a knife. Underneath the tools and products of the blacksmith trade archaeologists found more personal items: a razor, beard trimming scissors, tweezers, a frying pan and a poker.
The deepest layer of excavation contained ashes, charcoal and small bone fragments. The pieces of bone haven't been identified yet, but archaeologists believe they are human remains, likely the blacksmith owner of the marvelous tools above. Between the ashes and bones fragments, researchers found the objects that the deceased was probably wearing when his body was cremated: beads and a bone comb.
In total the excavation yielded about 60 artifacts and 150 assorted fragments. Forging tools have been found in graves before, but this is an exceptionally rich collection for a blacksmith burial. Indeed, it's the richest burial, blacksmith or not, found in the area in years.
"We think that the blacksmiths' contemporaries wished to show how skilful he was in his work by including such an extensive amount of objects. He might have forged many of these tools himself."
"The grave gives the impression that this was a local blacksmith and he enjoyed a high status in his society beyond being his trade," says [co-leader the excavation Asle Bruen] Olsen.
The design of the axe and some of the other metal objects dated them to the 8th or 9th century A.D. Subsequent radiocarbon dating confirmed the date of the burial to be around 800 A.D.
The artifacts are currently being conserved by experts at the University Museum of Bergen. Once they're stabilized they will go on display, possibly in a dedicated exhibition. Incidentally, the University Museum of Bergen has a neat Instagram account, incidentally. As always, I wish the pictures were bigger, but the highlights from the museum's collection are fascinating.
Posted in Medieval, Museums | 18 Comments »
Liquid mercury found under Teotihuacan temple
The excavations under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent in Teotihuacan have unearthed another exceptional find: large quantities of liquid mercury. Archaeologist Sergio Gómez and his team have been excavating the tunnel underneath the pre-Aztec pyramid, discovered by accident in 2003 when a sinkhole opened up in front of the temple, since 2009, using a robot to reveal three chambers at the end of the tunnel and last year discovering an enormous cache of 50,000 artifacts (sculptures, jade, rubber balls, obsidian blades, pyrite mirrors) and organic remains (animal bones, fur, plants, seeds, skin). It has taken so long to excavate it because the tunnel was filled to the brim with soil and rocks and sealed 1,800 years ago by the people of Teotihuacan about whom we know very little.
The mercury was found in one of the chambers discovered by the robot at the end of the tunnel.
"It's something that completely surprised us," Gomez said at the entrance to the tunnel below Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent, about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Mexico City.
Some archeologists believe the toxic element could herald what would be the first ruler's tomb ever found in Teotihuacan, a contemporary of several ancient Maya cities, but so shrouded in mystery that its inhabitants still have no name.
Unsure why the mercury was put there, Gomez says the metal may have been used to symbolize an underworld river or lake.
Mercuric sulfide is the most commonly found source of mercury ore and ancient Mesoamericans were intimately familiar with it both as a red pigment and for its mercury content. They knew how to extract mercury from crushed cinnabar — heating the ore separates the mercury from sulfur and the evaporated mercury can then be collected in a condensing column — and employed it as a gilding medium and possibly for ritual purposes. It was very difficult and dangerous to produce. Before now, traces of mercury have only been found at a two Maya sites and one Olmec site in Central America. This is the first time it has been discovered in Teotihuacan, and I suspect this is the first time it has been discovered in large amounts anywhere in ancient Mexico. (The exact quantities discovered under the Temple of the Feathered Serpent and at the other sites haven't been reported.)
Reflective materials held a great deal of religious significance in Mesoamerican cultures. Mirrors were seen as conduits to the supernatural. A river of mercury would make one hugely expensive and ritually important conveyance to the underworld. Added to the exceptional finds already made in the tunnel, the presence of so much mercury indicates that if anybody was buried in these chambers, it would have to be someone of enormous importance in Teotihuacan society. It could be a king, but we don't know what kind of governing system they had in Teotihuacan, so it could be a lord, several oligarchs or religious leaders. The hope is that this excavation and its unprecedented finds will answer many of the long-outstanding questions about the city of Teotihuacan.
I'm excited about this discovery because I've been fascinated by the notion of underground rivers of mercury since I first read about the ones reportedly created for the tomb of the first Emperor of China Qin Shi Huang. Better known today for the terracotta army found in pits around the emperor's burial mound, the mausoleum itself was apparently a thing of shimmering splendour. Grand Historian to the Han emperor Sima Qian, writing a century after the Qin emperor's death, described Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum in Volume Six of the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), China's first official dynastic history.
They dug down deep to underground springs, pouring copper to place the outer casing of the coffin. Palaces and viewing towers housing a hundred officials were built and filled with treasures and rare artifacts. Workmen were instructed to make automatic crossbows primed to shoot at intruders. Mercury was used to simulate the hundred rivers, the Yangtze and Yellow River, and the great sea, and set to flow mechanically. Above, the heaven is depicted, below, the geographical features of the land.
As the emperor's burial mound has not been excavated (just the environs), we don't know if the rivers of flowing mercury really existed, but high levels of mercury have been found in soil samples taken from the tumulus so significant amounts of the heavy metal were certainly used for some purpose. I think it would be the coolest thing if the people of Teotihuacan created their own shimmering splendor of an underworld too.
Possible remains of Napoleonic king of Naples to be DNA tested
In his short life Joachim Murat rose from modest beginnings as an innkeeper's son in the small southwestern French town of Labastide-Fortunière to the King of Naples at 41 years of age. In between he became one of Napoleon's best generals and, after his marriage to Caroline Bonaparte, Prince and Grand Admiral of France and the Grand Duke of Berg. Famous for his daring cavalry charges and for his flamboyant dress sense involving as many buttons, gold tassels, medals and feathers as can be crammed onto a uniform, Murat fought in approximately 200 battles and looked great doing it.
In her memoirs, Caroline Murat, daughter of Joachim's second son Prince Napoleon Lucien Charles Murat, described her grandfather's dashing style of dress and fearlessness in combat.
His form was tall, his tread like that of a king, his face strikingly noble, while his piercing glance few men could bear. He had heavy black whiskers and long black locks, which contrasted singularly with his fiery blue eyes. He usually wore a three-cornered hat, with a magnificent white plume of ostrich feathers. […]
My grandfather's dazzling exterior made him a mark for the enemy's bullets. The wonder is that, being so conspicuous, he was never shot down and was rarely wounded. At one battle a bullet grazed his cheek. Like lightning his sword punished the offender by carrying away two of his fingers. I have read that at the battle of Aboukir he charged with his cavalry straight through the Turkish ranks, driving column after column into the sea.
Murat's ascent was too inextricably tied to Napoleon's to survive his mentor's fall. In the attempt to preserve his throne, he went so far as to enter into an alliance with Austria after France's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in October of 1813, but his Austrian allies turned out to be fair-weather friends at best, and when he realized they planned to remove him from the throne during the Hundred Days, he declared himself in favor of Italian independence and fought the Austrians in northern Italy. He was defeated and fled, first attempting to get his old job back but Napoleon wouldn't even see him, a choice the emperor would come to regret bitterly. (On St. Helena he said: "at Waterloo Murat might have given us the victory. For what did we need? To break three or four English squares. Murat was just the man for the job.") After Napoleon's rejection, Murat went to Corsica and mustered up 250 or so men with whom he planned to reconquer the throne of Naples from the restored Bourbon king Ferdinand IV.
This was not a well conceived plan, needless to say. His three ships were scattered in a storm. The one carrying him and 26 men was blown off course and landed in the southern Italian town of Pizzo, Calabria, near the toe of the boot, where he was promptly captured by Bourbon forces. Napoleon noted dryly that "Murat has tried to reconquer with 200 men the territory he was unable to hold when he had 80,000 of them." Ferdinand ordered a show trial — the judges were appointed on the same day the order for his execution was sent by telegraph — and on October 13th, 1815, Joachim Murat was convicted of insurrection and sentenced to death by firing squad.
He died how he lived — well dressed, vain and fearless. His last request was for a perfumed bath and the opportunity to write to his wife and children. He refused the offer of a stool to sit on and a blindfold and stood unblinking before the fusiliers, dressed to the nines and smelling terrific. The phrasing has come down in several versions, but his last words to his executioners were so epic people are still quoting them without realizing that they're quoting anyone: "Soldiers, do your duty. Aim for my heart, but spare my face. Fire!"
His old friend and administrator of his duchy Jean-Michel Agar, the Count of Mosburg, eulogized him poetically: "He knew how to win. He knew how to rule. He knew how to die." Napoleon's final assessment was a tad harsher: "In battle he was perhaps the bravest man in the world; left to himself, he was an imbecile without judgment."
Murat's remains are thought to have been interred in a mass grave underneath Pizzo's Church of St. George, but there were rumors that they had been spirited away to France. There's a memorial grave for Joachim Murat and his family in Paris' Père Lachaise Cemetery. In 1899, his granddaughter Countess Letizia Rasponi Murat tried to find his remains in the St. George crypt so they could rebury them with dignity in the Certosa di Bologna cemetery. They were not successful. In 1976, the crypt was exposed during repairs to the church floor. Photographs were taken through a foot-wide hole in the trap door but all they captured was the basement full of bones and humus. Determining which parts belonged to Murat would seem a fool's errand.
In April of 2007, Professor Pino Pagnotta, president of the Joachim Murat Association, got a hold of the pictures from the 70s and studied them closely. He had them enlarged and enhanced and was able to see more than 1976 photographic technology had allowed. He spied a broken casket made of a plain wood with a cord entwined in the boards. This matches contemporary eye-witness accounts like the one of Antonino Condoleo, a youth of 15 in 1815, who assisted in the burial of Joachim Murat. Condoleo describes a mishap on the way to the church when the plain fir casket containing Murat's body was dropped and broken. They hastily tied the casket back together with a long cord and got it to St. George's church where it was dumped unceremoniously in the crypt.
The discovery made news at the time and the Joachim Murat Association advocated strenuously that the remains in and/or around the broken coffin be DNA tested. Eight years later, they've finally gotten all the various authorities clerical and secular to sign on to the project. (I suspect Richard III was not far from their minds. Pizzo's main tourist draw is the 15th century castle built by Frederick I of Aragon in which Murat was tried and executed. The castle was renamed after him and now receives thousands of visitors a year.)
In May, the heavy marble slab sealing the basement will be moved and biologist Sergio Romano will be lowered into the crypt where he will take pictures and samples from the broken casket. If DNA can be extracted from the samples — a very big if — it can be tested against Murat's many descendants, among then his three times great-grandson actor René Auberjonois, aka the shapeshifter Odo in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, whose late mother was Princess Laure Louise Napoléone Eugénie Caroline Murat.
Roman owl fibula found on Danish island
Thursday, April 23rd, 2015
Last summer, archaeologists excavating an Iron Age settlement on the Baltic island of Bornholm, Denmark, unearthed a rare enameled brooch in the shape of an owl. The excavation of the Lavegaard settlement on the outskirts of the town of Nexø was carried out in advance of construction of a daycare center. The archaeological team from Bornholms Museum has found large quantities of pottery, the remains of workshop ovens, hearths, clay and daub construction, traces of iron smelting and ceramics firing and more than 1,300 postholes. The owl pin was found by metal detectorists working with the archaeologists a few meters from an ancient home in the Roman Iron Age layer. Its design and composition date it to the middle of the 1st century through the end of the 3rd century A.D.
The owl's most prominent features are its huge round eyes with bright orange irises around a black pupil. Its body has a wing decoration filled with green enamel inset with five circles, each containing concentric rings of red, yellow and black. The bird's tail feathers are marked with semi-circular indentations and its neck is encircled by a rope design. All the colors are made of enamel.
The artifact is a plate or disk fibula, a pin used to fasten garments made from a flat disk that could be shaped into a variety of designs, including zoomorphic ones. It was made of bronze and decorated with multi-colored enamel accents. The enamel in the piece was created by applying various colors of powdered glass onto the glass rods you see in millefiori designs (that's how those concentric circles in the eyes and on the body were made) and then firing the brooch until the powder fused into enamel. The technique used to make the owl so colorful is known as pit enamel because the surface of the enamel becomes uneven upon subsequent firings done to harden the enamel.
Roman enamel came in a variety of colors — orange, red, azure, dark blue, green, yellow, white, black — but it rarely survives in brilliant condition. Many enameled fibulae found today have seen their colors fade or change into a yellowish brown. The owl's colors are still diverse and bright because it was preserved by archaeological layers topped by a thick clay sealing layer. Also, the area was not ploughed anytime in the recent past which saved the little owl from being churned up and potentially damaged by heavy equipment.
While enameled fibulae do not appear to have been very popular north of the Germanic border — Scandinavia had excellent artisans of its own, particularly metalworkers, and the fashion was to leave metal jewelry as is rather than putting lots of color on it — more of them have been found on the island of Bornholm than anywhere else in Scandinavia, about a dozen of them so far. This is the only owl fibula known to have been found in Scandinavia. They're rare anyway, and the few that have been found were unearthed in German frontier forts or closer to the heart of the empire in what are today Belgium, France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland.
Somebody must have loved this colorful owl, perhaps appreciating its rare design or symbolic significance, enough to take it home. Archaeologists believe it was likely to have been brought to Bornholm by a mercenary returning from a stint in the Roman army rather than openly traded.
Owls have a keen sense of night vision, enabling these highly skilled silent hunters to catch their prey unawares. This notion of owls as intelligent and wise animals is one that has endured throughout the ages as famous companions to both Athena, the Greek Goddess of war, and later to Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom, art, trade, and war.
In fact, Minerva was often depicted with an owl on her shoulder as a symbol of wisdom, making it a highly desirable animal for a Roman soldier.
We do not know if the Germanic perception of the owl was the same as the Romans, but many of them would have been mercenaries in the Roman territories and developed a deep insight into the Roman mentality and culture. It is likely that they also adopted Roman traditions of symbolic jewellery.
The brooch must have been something quite special at the time, both because of its unusual shape and bright colours. It must have given the wearer a great level of prestige.
In Danish the word for owl fibula is uglefiblen which is, I think we can all agree, extremely adorable. The uglefiblen is now on display at the National Museum of Denmark along with other treasures discovered in 2014.
Posted in Ancient, Museums, Treasures | 15 Comments »
Sabre is oldest crucible steel weapon in Eastern Europe
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2015
Researches doing a routine examination of a sabre in the collection of the Yaroslavl Museum in the Russian city of Yaroslavl 160 miles northeast of Moscow have discovered that the blade is the oldest crucible steel weapon ever found in Eastern Europe. The bent and broken sabre was unearthed in 2007 in the shadow of the Dormition Cathedral in the historic center of Yaroslavl. Originally built in 1215, the cathedral suffered a great deal of damage during the Russian Revolution and was demolished by the Soviets in 1937. It was reconstructed starting in 2004 and completed in time to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the founding of the city in 2010.
Dr. Asya Engovatova from the RAS Institute of Archaeology led an archaeological excavation of the area which in 2007 found a mass grave of defenders and civilians killed when Mongol invaders under Batu Khan sacked and burned Yaroslavl in 1238. The grave held the skeletal remains of men, women, children, common household goods and jewelry. The sabre, missing its hilt and fittings, was one of several weapons found in the mass grave. Swords from the 12th and 13th centuries are very rare finds in Russia, and most of the ones that have been unearthed were discovered in warrior graves in southern Russia. Finding one in the archaeological layers of a city is even greater a rarity.
In March of this year, the Yaroslavl Sabre underwent metallographic analysis at the RAS Institute of Archaeology to find out more about its composition and internal structure. The blade was examined under a scanning electron microscope and using X-ray microphotography.
The metallographic methods used in the analysis revealed that the sword was made from crucible steel. The technology used to produce steel of this kind was first perfected in India, in the 1[st century] A.D. Artifacts crafted from such steel later begin to turn up in Central Asia. European sword makers appear to have known nothing of this technology. The techniques for making crucible steel were later lost and European steel makers reinvented it only at the end of the 18th century.
In the Middle Ages and thereafter, crucible steel was very expensive. It produces bladed weapons more exactly than any other material, conferring a combination of great strength and the ability to maintain sharpness throughout the length of the blade.
The only native metal available for swords in early medieval Europe was bloomery iron which was made by heating iron ore and charcoal in a furnace. This created an end-product replete with slag inclusions and only occasionally absorbed enough carbon to form steel. Crucible steel was made by placing pieces of iron and charcoal in a crucible and heating it until they combined to form a steel ingot. The ingots were then forged into hard, sharp blades at low temperatures.
According to ancient weapons expert Alan Williams, the only European swords forged at least in part from crucible steel known from this period were made in Germany between the 8th and 9th centuries and inscribed "ULFBERHT" (or variants thereof) on the blade. About 100 ULFBERHT swords have been found, mainly in Scandinavia and along the Baltic coast. Only a handful of them have the high-steel content indicating Central Asian crucible steel may have been used in their forging, but the ULFBERHT smiths didn't have the know-how to forge this material to its ideal strength.
The Yaroslavl Sabre, on the other hand, is made entirely of crucible steel by highly skilled smiths. It was likely made in one of the Central Asian steel production centers that had been conquered by the Mongols before they invaded Russia. It was almost certainly a Mongol weapon, and must have belonged to a very wealthy, high-ranking Mongol warrior. That might explain its ignominious fate. Analysis of the blade revealed micro-cracks with metal in them cause by long exposure to burning. It seems the blade was deliberately heated to a high temperature so it could be bent and then was thrown into the mass grave.
Bending the enemy's expensive and lethal sword may have had a ritual purpose to it, although any hope that it might curse away the Mongol conquest would prove futile. Batu Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan and the ruler of the Golden Horde, the northwest section of the Mongol Empire, and his 35,000 mounted cavalry cut a deadly swath through the splintered Kievan Rus in the last month of 1237 and early months of 1238, razing almost every major city including Moscow, Vladimir, Rostov and Kiev. Only Novgorod and Pskov would be spared destruction.
The last organized resistance to the invasion was at the Battle of the Siti River on March 4th, 1238. The Russian forces were led by Grand Prince Yuri II of Vladimir, who had survived the levelling of his capital to raise an army. Fighting by his side were three of his nephews, one of whom was Prince Vsyevolod Konstantinovich, the first independent ruler of the Principality of Yaroslavl. The Russians were annhilated. Yuri and two of his nephews were killed on the battlefield. The third, Vasilko, Prince of Rostov, was taken prisoner and only lived long enough to call Mongol general Subutai "a dark kingdom of vileness" before Subutai had his throat slit. After that, all Russian states submitted to Mongol rule ushering in two centuries of Mongol domination of modern-day-Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
Conserving a boat made of cloves
Tuesday, April 21st, 2015
British Museum organics conservator Verena Kotonski was tasked with a unique assignment last November: conserving a model boat made of cloves. The museum doesn't know much about the boat's history. They think it was made in Indonesia anywhere from 18th to the early 20th century, probably in the middle of that range. It entered the collection in 1972 but there are no records nothing how it made its way to the museum, who made it where and when, whether it was donated, purchased, etc. It's such a rare and intriguing piece that despite the many questions attending its history the clove boat is the cover model for the British Museum's Connecting continents: Indian Ocean trade and exchange exhibition which is on now and runs through May 31st.
The boat is slim and long with a central canopy and a raised openwork prow and stern. Rowers with long paddles stand on both sides, back and front, and the canopy is topped with a pennant. A drawing of the boat made when it first arrived at the British Museum indicate there was a second pennant at one point as well. The boat is made of dried cloves strung together on threads or threaded together with thin wooden pins. The hull is formed of layered strands of cloves tied together. Charmingly, even after at least a century and probably two it still smells like cloves. The conservator said as soon as she opened the crate she was overwhelmed by the scent of cloves.
The artifact has never been on display before because of its condition issues. Already in the 1970s there were detached pieces kept in a box with it, and by the time Kotonski received it there were 14 detached elements, plus evidence on the boat that there were more pieces missing. It was also veritably caked in dust which she had to clean painstakingly with a brush, a vacuum to suction off the dust and conservation-grade rubber to extract the more deeply embedded particles.
Once the boat was clean, the damaged areas needed to be fixed and detached pieces reattached. The thorniest issue was puzzling out where everything should go. Out of the 14 detached pieces — five torsos, one standing figure, two pairs of arms and paddles (these were made as one piece and then attached to torsos), one long paddle (possibly a rudder), one pennant without its pole, three round objects of indeterminate nature — the standing figure, two of the torsos and their matching arms and paddles could be immediately identified as fitting vacant spots on the boat.
Having reinstated the standing figure and two rowers, I was still left with three torsos and two drum shaped elements as well as the pennant. Although the Museum's records, which include a rather vague historic drawing, hinted at the possibility that some figures could have been on top of the cabin including a second pennant, the exact location of figures and pennant remained difficult to establish.
A similar boat in the Kew Gardens Economic Botany Collection helped fill in some of the blanks. It has three figures on the roof of the canopy with round objects, most likely drums, in front of them. Kotonski examined the round objects under a microscope and was able to match the break edges of one of them to one of the torsos. It still wasn't clear where the drummers and their drums were placed atop of the canopy. There are multiple holes allowing for any number of arrangements. The conservation team debated whether they should even reinstall the drummers without being certain about the original placement.
We decided in favour of installing the figures on the roof. We felt that the figures (drummers) are a key part of the object and therefore vital for the interpretation of this artefact. Furthermore, it is possible to install the figures securely without using any adhesive which means they can easily be removed and repositioned if further evidence on their original position should emerge. Knowing that the figures on the roof were meant to depict drummers certainly helped to find a sensible arrangement of the figures on the roof.
They made the opposite decision when it came to the long paddle, the pennant and one drum with an attached pole. In order to reattach these pieces to the model, they would have had to reconstruct significant missing parts. Since they couldn't know their original positions nor what the lost parts looked like, the reconstruction and reattachment would have entailed more guesswork than they were comfortable with. The pieces were returned to the boat's storage box.
They did reconstruct one piece: a teeny tiny little retaining collar that was important for the boat's stability. These collars fit on top of posts on each corner of the canopy, keeping the roof from gradually inching upwards and coming off its poles. The replacement collar was made of Japanese tissue paper, one of the modern conservator's best friends, to distinguish it from its clove-wrought brethren.
Because conservators are magical (and because the model is small), the entire process took just 34 hours. The boat is now on display, but conservation isn't over yet. Verena Kotonski would like anyone with any information that might help them suss out the original positions of the detached pieces to email the team at conservation@britishmuseum.org.
Posted in Modern(ish), Museums | 11 Comments »


the Old Crimean woods, very beautiful and rich on fruits and mushrooms, landscapes of mountain Crimea come to an end. On the north the steppes of a flat part of peninsula opened now, and on the east - Kerchensky holmogore with its thousand-year thirst and brown paints of heat last. Not places especially well-known among tourists, however affinity of Feodosiya allows to involve them in an orbit of excursions, and also extreme tourism.
The Small town Old Crimea (between Belogorsky and Feodosiya) - thanks to the position on border of steppe and mountain woods once was capital Crimean a yurta of the Gold horde. Now it enters into the Kirov area, without having kept anything from the terrible past. Only small house museum of writer-romanticist Alexander Green, yes ruins of several mosques.
One of them the sultan of Egypt has erected Bejbars, more precisely, he in 1277 has welcomed to a city of the birth of 2 000 dinars. It came from half-sheep (kipchak), 9 summer boy it have sold on one of nevolnichih the peninsula markets. In Egypt it became the soldier-mamljukom, the faithful servant of Islam, and once comrades in arms have enthroned him. Zahir safes-hells-dynes the expert-salih and Bejbars of rules with 1260 for 1277, has become history that has put a great defeat to Mongols, having stopped their advancement to the Near East.
In 4 kilometres in the heart of wood on the southwest from Old Crimea there is an Armenian monastery of Surb-hach (the Sacred cross). Its oldest construction – a temple of the sacred Innocent person is erected in 1338. Asceticism and restraint of the Armenian architecture is combined with amazing stone-cutting art. Are very pleasant and some ancient springs at monastic walls. They are dressed by a stone, and approaches to them are paved in the Middle Ages.
The Monastery represents the whole complex in which were both defensive, and economic constructions, and also library and an educational institution for boys. Here prepared priests for all Armenian diaspora on the West from Crimea – for Lithuania, Poland, Moldova, Bulgaria and countries of Western Europe. In total in vicinities of Old Crimea there were 4 Armenian monasteries. Mountain tracks it is possible to pass and to ruins of other constructions. Wonderful springs, the falls rich with fruits of wood and top with tremendous kinds still are a little known among tourists.
The road from Old Crimea to Koktebel Is known to fans of the literature of the Silver age (but it is not especially passed now) so-called zemskaja. On it visited to each other Alexander Green and Maksimilian Voloshin. Now the road to many places is destroyed by landslips and washed away, so is of interest unless for ekstremalov.
Old Crimea – a recognised resort for sick of a tuberculosis. Actually, it also involved in it many known people. Among them poetess Julia Drunina. In the big sanatorium "Р=рЁюъЁ№ьёъшщ" long time the known doctor and the public figure academician Nikolay Amoss worked.
the Kirov area concern in the natural relation to Prisivashju, with its flat relief and a semidesertic climate, here there are delights for tourism, and to stay for a while with local relatives in the summer thousand visitors gather. Rather nearby and cheaply to go by electric trains on beaches of the Azov coast and Feodosiya, in zalivchikah Sivash excellent hunting for feathery game. On reservoirs of the North Crimean channel many both fish, and bathe. The biggest stream of beach public circulates from station Vladislavovka to station Ajvazovsky is really favourable way to spend summer holiday as in Kirovsk area very much reasonable prices on a food and remarkable steppe vegetables are supplemented with Foothills fruit.
The Settlement Kirov consists of two independent parts – an administrative centre of agricultural area and garrison small town of military pilots. Both that, and another parts interesting to tourism do not represent anything. But in local airdrome large international festivals are held. It is remarkable (to be exact local pilots) that here for the first time in Crimea commercial tourist flights on legendary Soviet supersonic fighters began to spend the INSTANT. There are they not cheaply – 10-15 thousand dollars, however at the western pilots earnings and pensions high, and prestigiousness of such tourism still above.
The Village the Gold field is based 200 years ago by natives of Switzerland, Tsjurihtal originally was called. In a Soviet period became the centre prospering vinodelcheskogo economy. Now in literal sense lies in ruins. But on ruins of a collective-farm recreation centre the local club of a mountain bicycle has made a line for a trial. Village vicinities – spurs of a file Ak – are very beautiful rocky breakages and lesochkami on beams. Here good conditions both for rock-climbing, and for a mountain bicycle. For the people searching not of an extreme, and health, - medicinal grasses and thickets of wild fruit plants.


text:
Q: Laravel 8 and TailwindCSS Undefined variable: header I am new to Laravel 8 and TailwindCSS so I need your help with the following problem.
I just created a new folder inside resources and one blade file that extends the layouts.app. When I access this file through the browser I am getting the following error:  Undefined variable: header (View: C:\xampp\htdocs\library\resources\views\layouts\app.blade.php) (View: C:\xampp\htdocs\library\resources\views\layouts\app.blade.php).
On the other hand, if I comment out the variable $header (and $slot) then I don't get the code that I wrote in that blade file.
My code for routes:
`Route::get('/', function () {
    return view('welcome');
});
Route::post('books', [BooksController::class, 'store']);
Route::patch('books/{book}', [BooksController::class, 'update']);
Route::delete('books/{book}', [BooksController::class, 'destroy']);
Route::get('/authors/create', [AuthorsController::class, 'create']);
Route::post('authors', [AuthorsController::class, 'store']);
Route::post('/checkout/{book}', [CheckoutBookController::class, 'store']);
Route::post('/checkin/{book}', [CheckinBookController::class, 'store']);
Route::middleware(['auth:sanctum', 'verified'])->get('/dashboard', function () {
    return view('dashboard');
})->name('dashboard');`

The code for app.blade:
<!DOCTYPE html>
getLocale()) }}">

        <meta charset="utf-8">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
        <meta name="csrf-token" content="{{ csrf_token() }}">

        <title>{{ config('app.name', 'Laravel') }}</title>

        <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Nunito:wght@400;600;700&display=swap">

        <link rel="stylesheet" href="{{ asset('css/app.css') }}">

        @livewireStyles

            @livewire('navigation-dropdown')

                    {{ $header }}

                {{ $slot }}

        @stack('modals')

        @livewireScripts

And finally, the code for the new blade file called create:
@extends('layouts.app')

@section('content')

ada

@endsection

Thank you in advance,

A: It seems you're using livewire in your code. Therefore, you need to create a livewire component. You can find a guide on how to do that here: https://laravel-livewire.com/docs/2.x/making-components.
If you go through the guide above, you'll end up with two new files: a livewire component file and a blade view file that renders the component. You can then add the following to the blade file:
<x-slot name="header">

        {{ __('Page Header') }}

</x-slot>

ada

The first part occupies the header's slot while the other takes the main slot. I hope this helps to clarify things a bit.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
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Home > Who We Are > Corporate Governance > Form of Corporate Governance > Dialogue with stakeholders | Outside Director's Interview
Dialogue with stakeholders | Outside Director's Interview
Outside Director, Chairman of the Audit Committee
Advisor of the IFRS Foundation Asia-Oceania Office
Former Executive Vice President of Sumitomo Corporation
In May 2018, at a presentation held at our head office in Otemachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo for analysts and institutional investors,Mr. Noriaki Shimazaki, Outside Director and Chairman of the Audit Committee, made his first appearance explaining the effectiveness of our corporate governance and current status of the Audit Committee's activities. This was followed by a question and answer session.
Sell-side analyst「What is your evaluation of Nomura Group's arrangements and the provisions concerning lawsuits and cases of legal disputes with authorities?」
The Audit Committee receives regular reports on the status of the lawsuits from the executive officer in charge of legal affairs. The Committee also receives reports from the CFO on the amount of estimated maximum loss for each lawsuit and each case of legal dispute at the time of each quarterly financial results and confirms that an appropriate allowance is reflected in the financial statements. The Committee fully confirms the appropriateness of the accounting of the provision for allowance concerning lawsuits, etc. and descriptions in the notes to financial statements.
Overseas institutional investor「There is a trend in the U.S. toward imposing board term limits. As an Independent Director, what do you think about the idea of term limits for board members?」
In Japan, the term of office for directors and a mandatory retirement age system for executive officers are generally established by companies,often varying by the individual company. The term of office for Outside Directors is also determined at Nomura. The renewal of these terms or retirement from office for board members is proposed at a general meeting of shareholders every year. I believe that these standards and measures are appropriate.
Sell-side analyst「Monitoring the effectiveness of strategies is indicated as the objective of the Audit Committee.
If, for example, there is a situation in which key performance indicators (KPIs) set by management cannot be achieved, would the Audit Committee present some proposals to the Directors?」
We have various KPIs and goals to achieve by 2020.The Audit Committee tracks progress at least every quarter and monitors not only the figures indicated in the financial results but the degree to which our goals have been achieved, including the enhancement of the earnings structure. In addition, we take care not to show individual numbers out of context. Looking back at Nomura's scandals in the past, the people working on site focused too heavily on numbers above all else,which led to improper transactions in some cases. It is important to achieve numerical goals but that should not be the only goal. The primary objective of our management vision for 2020 (Vision C&C) is to create a robust operating platform capable of delivering consistent growth for the Nomura Group. To achieve our vision, we are working to address two overarching issues: transforming our business model in Japan and improving the profitability of our international operations. When our vision is achieved, we will attain an EPS of ¥100. At the recent meeting of the Board of Directors, I strongly reiterated this message to the execution side as the chairman of the Audit Committee.
NOMURA | Presentations
(Wealth Management Asia ex-Japan)
Conflicts of Interest Management Policy
COPYRIGHT© NOMURA HOLDINGS, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
/**
 * HELPER for converting requirejs shims into AMD modules:
 *
 * reads the MMIR framework's requirejs config and tries to convert all shim-entries
 * to a AMD modules and stores them at buildUrl (/build/lib/mmir-build/mod/), appending
 * the suffix "_amd" to file name.
 *
 *
 */

var path = require('path'),
	fs = require('fs');

var esprima = require('./../../nodejs-esprima');

//HELPER for retrieving the requirejs config object
//(extracts the corresponding variable within the JavaScript config-file)
var getConfig = require('./../nodejs/GetRequirejsConfig.js');

//HELPER for retrieving module-HACKS: either to prepend or append to the module code
//-> use the module-id from the requirejs config
//-> the HACKS are located in the templates directory:
//  * for prepending stored in file: <module name>-prefix.template
//  * for appending stored in file: <module name>-suffix.template
var getModuleHacks = require('./../nodejs/GetModuleHacks.js');

//to project's root (which contains /www, /build etc)
var rootPath = path.join(__dirname, '..', '..', '..', '..');//<- 4 steps up, since this file is located at <root>/bin/lib/mmir-build/nodejs

//path to the mmir framework (from project's root)
var baseUrl = rootPath + '/www/mmirf/';
var configFileName = 'mainConfig.js';
//path where the "converted shims", i.e. AMD modularized versions of the libraries should be stored
var buildUrl = rootPath + '/build/lib/mmir-build/mod/';

//newline char/String that will be used when creating the AMD modules
var nl = '\n';

///////////////////////////////// start conversion code: //////////////////////////////////

var config = getConfig(baseUrl + configFileName);

//console.log(config.shim);

var getInitArgsList = function(parsedFunc){

	//NOTE the parsed function was prefixed with "var init = "
	// -> the function will be available at parsedFunc.body.declarations...
	var params = parsedFunc.body[0].declarations[0].init.params;

	var list = [];
	for(var i=0,size=params.length; i < size; ++i){
		list.push(params[i].name);
	}

	return list;
};

var getInitCode = function(parsedFunc, funcStr){

	//NOTE the parsed function was prefixed with "var init = "
	// -> the function will be available at parsedFunc.body.declarations...
	var funcBody = parsedFunc.body[0].declarations[0].init.body.body;
	var size = funcBody.length;

	if(size > 0){

		var start = funcBody[0].range[0];
		var end = funcBody[size-1].range[1];

		return funcStr.substring(start, end);
	}

	return '';
};

var hasInitExports = function(parsedFunc){

	//NOTE the parsed function was prefixed with "var init = "
	// -> the function will be available at parsedFunc.body.declarations...
	var funcBody = parsedFunc.body[0].declarations[0].init.body.body;

	for(var i=0,size=funcBody.length; i < size; ++i){
		if(funcBody[i].type = 'ReturnStatement'){

			//TODO verify/check, if this is the last (non-comment) entry?
			return true;
		}
	}
};

var wrapAsModule = function(name, deps, code, exports, depArgNames, initCode){

	//console.log('wrappping module ', name, ' with dependencies ', deps, ', exports ', exports, ', depNames '+ depArgNames, ', initCode ' + initCode);

	var depArray = '';
	var depArgs = '';

	var preModuleCode = '';

	if(deps){
			depArray = '[\'' +  deps.join('\', \'') + '\'], ';
			depArgs = depArgNames? depArgNames.join(', ') : deps.join(', ');
	}

	if(exports){
		exports = nl+'return '+exports+';'+nl;
	} else {
		exports = '';
	}

	var moduleHacks = getModuleHacks(name);
	if(moduleHacks){

		if(moduleHacks.prefix){
			preModuleCode = nl + moduleHacks.prefix + nl;
		}

		if(moduleHacks.suffix){
			exports = nl + moduleHacks.suffix + nl + exports;
		}
	}

	if(initCode){
		exports = nl+ initCode + nl + (exports? exports + ';' + nl : '');
	}

	return nl +'define('+depArray+'function('+depArgs+'){' + nl + preModuleCode + nl + code + nl + exports + nl + '});' + nl;
};

var getAsModule = function(name, shim, code){

	//EXAMPLE shim-object:
//	{
//		ES3Lexer: { deps: [ 'antlr3' ], exports: 'ES3Lexer' },
//		jqm: [ 'jquery' ],
//	    ...
//	}

	if(Array.isArray(shim)){
		shim = {deps: shim};
	}

	var argNames;
	if(shim.init){

		var funcStr = 'var init = ' + shim.init.toString();
		var parsedInit = esprima.parse(funcStr, {range: true});
//		console.log(JSON.stringify(parsedInit, null, 4));

		argNames = getInitArgsList(parsedInit);

		if(shim.exports && hasInitExports(parsedInit, funcStr)){
			shim.exports = '';
		}

		shim.init = getInitCode(parsedInit, funcStr);
	}

	return wrapAsModule(name, shim.deps, code, shim.exports, argNames, shim.init);
};

for(var name in config.shim){

	var shim = config.shim[name];
	var uri = config.paths[name];

	var fileName = path.basename(uri);

	var filePath = baseUrl + uri + '.js';
	var outPath = buildUrl + fileName + '_amd.js';

	var code = fs.readFileSync(filePath, 'utf-8');

	code = getAsModule(name, shim, code);

	console.log('writing converted AMD module to '+outPath);
	fs.writeFileSync(outPath, code, 'utf-8');

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Hi there. I'm exploring use of Mongoose OS, writing C on an ESP32 WROOM 32 board, flashing the binary image locally with mos. I have managed to write the simple test program I intended to write (UDP echo to a server of my own) but Mongoose OS resets the board after running for 5 minutes because of the provisioning commit timer. How do I switch this timer off, or otherwise make the system happy that the binary I've just downloaded to it is a good binary so that it leaves me alone?
I've tried Googling for "commit" and "provisioning"; all I've found is calling mgos_upd_commit() but I can't find the header that's contained in. Also tried specifying --commit_timeout 0 when building but that had no effect.
I'm basically bumbling around. Help please!
If you don't use the provision library, just remove it from your mos.yml.
Ah, OK, I'm still using demo-bundle, guess I need to remove that, see what fails to compile and iterate until done.
Hehe, yeah, just got to a very similar list myself (minus ca-bundle). The problem with the process is, of course, that the blob always compiles, it only fails at run-time when some RPC API or other isn't present, which makes it quite difficult to know whether you've really got your configuration correct or not. Anyway, thanks very much for your help, I am now up and running for more than 5 minutes :-).
Understood, just doing simple UDP uplink stuff at the moment for a quick trial.


text:
Home / Digital Products / The Guerrilla Guide to Small Claims Court
The Guerrilla Guide to Small Claims Court
The Guerrilla Guide to Small Claims Court quantity
Categories: Digital Products, Guerrilla Guides Tags: Guerrilla Guide, Small Claims Court
The Guerrilla Guide to Small Claims Court is the one book that covers small claims court as it should be covered, information you need and without a bunch of padding just to make you pay more for the book!
Small Claims Court is still court, and many of the same rules apply, but knowing how to find those rules, how to make them work in your favor, and which ones aren't the same can be the difference between winning and losing a case.
In this book, Lawyer X walks a potential litigant through the process beginning with ways to resolve cases suitable for small claims court without actually having to go to court, preparing and filing the case, then methods of collecting (or preventing collection) after the case is over.
This book is the result of countless hours spent in courtrooms across the country and helping people with legal issues that concern them.
As is always the case with a Guerrilla Guide to the Law, this book is filled with information necessary to a party to a lawsuit whether they be the Plaintiff or Defendant.
All topics of a small claims case are covered in a way that can be quickly and easily digested, then serve as a reference source from that point on.
This book is not just a rehash of the court websites, as so many of these books are, instead it is offers practical lessons on all aspects of a case, as shown by the table of contents:
Overview of the Small Claims Court System
Before You File the Lawsuit
Jurisdictional Limits
Can you Sue?
Cause of Action
Judge or Jury?
Get A Lawyer or Do it Yourself (Pro Se)
What Is Your Case Worth and For How Much Can or Should You Sue?
Types of Damages
How To Settle the Dispute Without a Trial
Jurisdiction and Venue
What Rules Apply
Rules of Civil Procedure
Rules of Evidence
Local Rules of Court
How A Lawsuit Starts
Petition/Complaint
The Default Judgment
Discovery in Small Claims Court
Requests For Production
Responding To or Answering Discovery
Where Can I Get a Form for That?
Getting Ready for Small Claims Court
Preparing Your Evidence
How to Admit Evidence
Examination of Witnesses
Parties Resting
The Defense's Case
Rebuttal
Rest and Close
Jury Charge Conference
Closing Statements
The Judgment
The Basics of Appealing a Small Claims Judgment
The Basics of Collecting on a Judgment
Finding Assets
Informal Collection
A Big List of Do Nots
Formal Methods of Collection
Completing the Case
Satisfaction and Release of Judgment
Tax Deduction for an Unpaid Judgment
Being thoroughly familiar with the system is the key to winning, and The Guerrilla Guide to Small Claims Court will teach you how to win any small claims case whether it be for a car wreck, a property dispute, or any other small claim.
The book also provides links to sections of the website where access to the small claims courts of all 50 states is available and updated.
As with all Guerrilla Guides to the Law, any updates made in the future are free.
Be the first to review "The Guerrilla Guide to Small Claims Court" Cancel reply
Guerrilla Guide to Legal Research: Finding the Law for Non-Lawyers


Sarasota, FL: Mayor Liz Alpert and the City of Sarasota are joining mayors and communities across the country in asking residents to make a long-term commitment to manage water resources more wisely by taking part in the annual Wyland National Mayor's Challenge for Water Conservation.
In return, residents can win $3,000 toward their home utility payments, water saving fixtures and hundreds of other prizes. Plus, one lucky charity from a winning city will receive a 2019 Toyota Highlander Hybrid to serve the community.
The annual challenge, April 1-30, is a non-profit national community service campaign that encourages leaders to inspire their residents to make a series of simple pledges at mywaterpledge.com to use water more efficiently, reduce pollution and save energy.
Last year, residents from over 3,800 cities in all 50 states pledged to reduce their annual consumption of freshwater by 3 billion gallons, reduce waste sent to landfills by 79.9 million pounds and prevent more than 177,000 pounds of hazardous waste from entering our watersheds.
To participate, residents can go to mywaterpledge.com and click on the green "Take the Pledge!" button to make a series of online pledges to conserve water on behalf of the City of Sarasota. Participants in cities with the highest percentage of residents who take the challenge in their population category will have a chance to win $3,000 toward their home utility bills, Toro Irrigation Smart Controllers, ECOS home cleaning products, home water fixture retrofits from EcoSystems Inc. and other eco-friendly prizes. In addition, residents can nominate a deserving charity from their city to receive a 2019 Toyota Highlander Hybrid. Students and teachers are encouraged to take part, as well.
For more information, visit mywaterpledge.com or call the Sustainability office at 941-941-926-6686, ext. 4202.


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If you get a login prompt, just click the cancel button until the document opens or downloads. We are working on this issue.


Discussion in 'Music Quiz' started by ChrisTru, Aug 3, 2017.
A tool used for "Spalling"?
Don't know what that means P_Trembath????
google image search, I have no link to put into it!
So did I, until you mentioned an "effective cure", unless you're thinking of curing Zombies.
1. a chip or splinter, as of stone or ore.
2. to break into smaller pieces, as ore; split or chip.
3. to break or split off in chips or bits.
That`s just it, your pictures don`t save at all!
that other pictures on PP won`t save either--even my own!!!


text:
Beetle Elytra: Nature's Ornament
The hard outer casings of the Jewel beetle, naturally mimic gem-like precious treasures in terms of utter brilliance and beauty, through their hardy, metallic, emerald iridescence – used for centuries as decoration or embellishment.
But in many cultures, they were also considered highly symbolic, playing a magical protective role against evil spirits as well as denoting kinship or social standing.
Why? Because the elytra encapsulated life-force and vitality conveyed by their spectacular non-fading colour.
Jane Nicholas in her book 'The Stumpwork, Goldwork, and Surface Embroidery Collection, Published by Sally Milner Publishing in 2004, describes these magnificent elytra as 'the emeralds of the insect world'. The coloured casings range from greens to blues, to purples and even pinks.
And it's pleasing to note, with such ancient associations, that beetle-wing embroidery continues to fascinate, due to not only its colour but its durability and ability to be carefully cut and pierced – perfect for embellishment for embroidery.
In fact, in older embroideries, the ageing cloth surrounding the beetle wing embroidery has decomposed, yet the beetle elytra retain their iridescent sheen and sparkle.
Used by the Mogul elite, they were also used in other Asian cultures such as Thailand, Myanmar, China, Japan, and among Amazonian tribes and people from the Papuan New Guinea highlands in paintings, jewellery, headdresses, ornaments and textiles.
Young women from Thailand and Burma made 'singing shawls' for funeral ceremonies, made of woven blankets embellished with white beads and a fringe of beetle wings and bells that tinkled as they walked – helping to send the deceased safely to the afterworld.
As a commodity, beetle wings were harvested in the millions in the hardwood forests of Burma and northern Thailand, then exported to Calcutta for distribution.
So are the beetle wings ethically harvested? The beetles used for beetle wing embroidery have a very short lifespan of 3-4 weeks in their adult stage, so to avoid killing the beetles, only those that die naturally are collected.
Considered exotic and fanciful in England this form of embroidery became highly popular from the 1820s, worn by the privileged for court gowns, although Englishwomen in India had been donning beetle wing embroidered gowns from at least the 1780's – the Indian's much longer.
Their popularity continued up till the 1920s when the evening dresses simply couldn't bear the weight of the heavy metal thread embroidery that often accompanied beetle wing embroidery.
They were, however, picked up by costume designers for balls, stage and theatrical work.
American actress Adora Andrews, 1872-1956, wore a gown for stage work reported to have 5,000 elytra sewn onto it, causing a newspaper sensation across the US and Canada.
Costumer Alice Comyns-Carr designed a Lady Macbeth costume for Dame Ellen Terry in 1888 incorporating beetle wings, perhaps inspiring designer Colleen Atwood to also use beetle wings in her costume for the movie Snow White and the Huntsman in 2012 worn by Charlize Theron for her character, Queen Ravenna.
In 2007 Alexandra Byrne used beetle elytra on a historically-inspired green damask gown for the movie, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, worn by Cate Blanchett.
In 2013 the design team of Aura Tout Vu presented theatrical elytra studded garments down the runway.
Not to be outdone, Belgian designer, Dries van Noten took this a step further creating faux elytra (another Victorian tradition) for his Fall/Winter 2015-16 collection.
One of the most famous beetle wing gowns ever made, was that designed by Jean-Phillippe Worth in 1902, for Lady Curzon to wear to the Delhi Coronation ball. It was meant to be a compliment to the Indian people, yet hold its own beside the sumptuous clothes and jewels worn by the Indian princes.
The magnificent gown, embroidered all over in a pattern of peacock feathers in gold thread, with a beetle wing forming the eye of each feather has now become highly controversial – if it wasn't already.
The use of the Peacock motif was deemed inappropriate – the famous golden Peacock Throne was made for Shah Jahan in the early 17th century and the motif is of importance in the Hindu religion, with the style of embroidery traditionally only worn by Mogul rulers and the wealthy elite.
Even of its time, the use of the peacock motif was considered subtly political and seen as a statement of dominance, with the dress itself seen to be a representation of the exploitation of India's resources and artisans.
The dress is preserved in a climate-controlled display case at Kedleston Hall, the seat of the Curzon family in Derbyshire.
The Peacock Dress also caused a sensation recently when costume designer Cathy Hay wanted to recreate the gown, documenting her work on her blog and YouTube channel.
The CosTuber community were outraged, resulting in Cathy posting further videos talking about the decimation of the Indian cotton industry by the British. She has one video diary asking the question 'what does the Peacock Dress mean?
If you have the time, this offers a fascinating insight into modern-day perceptions.
There's something about following in the footsteps of history when it comes to embroidery that's utterly stimulating and uplifting.
It simply means looking back to move forward.
Image Credit: By Xufanc – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7313204


text:
package net.kuujo.vertigo.network.builder;

import net.kuujo.vertigo.network.validators.ValidationException;

/**
 * Base type for configuration builders.
 *
 * @author Jordan Halterman
 */
public interface Builder<T> {

  /**
   * Builds the configuration.
   *
   * @return The built configuration.
   * @throws ValidationException
   */
  T build();

}