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Issue 2

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St John Simpson of the British Museum in his 2005 article Making their Mark:
Foreign Travellers at Persepolis recounts in detail the graffiti left by
travellers at the site and the various accounts of graffiti from 1707 to the
early 20th century. Interestingly, many travellers such as George Curzon
(1892) not only record the fact that the graffiti had been written in the
interior of the Palace of Darius, but also add their own.

Excluding the Persian, Hebrew and Armenian graffiti, Simpson accounts for
220 names of which 158 are on the Gate of All Nations.

The 17th Light Dragoons were serving as part of the body guard of the Sir
Harford Jones’s mission. This was his second journey through the area and
his travels are recounted in Morier’s book - A Second Journey Through
Persia, Armenia and Asia Minor to Constantinople Between the Years 1810 -
1816. Interestingly, Harford Jones’s independent mission as a diplomatic
envoy sent by London to the Qajar Court created tensions with the government
of India as this mission coincided with that of Sir John Malcolm’s
(Government of India’s envoy) who also visited Persepolis in 1810.

It seems to be no coincidence that the graffiti is mainly the work of men in
the service of the British Government in India. A captain Moritz von
Kotzebue recounts in 1819 the following description after meeting two
English officers.

“…English who wish to proceed overland to England from the East Indies,
come by sea into the Persian Gulf… …Proceed to Shiraz … and take
pleasure in visiting the ruins of Persepolis… Colonel Johnson sent to the
Ambassador a piece which had been broken off the wing of a sphinx.

The first owner of the Lewis Chessmen appears to have been Malcolm MacDonald of Penny Donald. The pieces were displayed publicly for the first time by a Stornoway merchant named Roderick Ririe at the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland on 11 April 1831. Mr. Ririe in turn sold the collection (or at least most of it) to an Edinburgh Antiques dealer named T.A. Forrest for 30 guineas. Mr. Forrest then presented the Lewis Chessmen for consideration of purchase to Frederic Madden, the Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts at the British Museum on the 17 October 1831. Sir Walter Scott was present and wrote in his journal that day: ‘The morning beautiful today, I go to look after the transcripts in the Museum and leave a card on a set of chess men thrown up by the sea on the coast of Scotland which were offered for £100.’ Ultimately the majority of the pieces went to British Museum for a sum of 80 guineas negotiated by the Keeper of Antiquities Edward Hawkins, whilst the remaining 10 were purchased discretely by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe (a lifelong friend of Sir Walter’s) for an undisclosed price. Mr. Sharpe later found another piece (a bishop directly from Lewis) to bring his collection to a total of 11. As all known pieces make up four or five incomplete sets, and with only two complete sets the possibility of eventually discovering more pieces is utterly realistic. The Sharpe collection was sold in 1851 to Lord Londesborough who died in 1860. Subsequently the remaining 11 pieces were sold in 1888 through the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland at Christie’s auction house for 100 guineas, again purchased by the British Museum this time under the direction of the Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities Sir Angustus Wollaston Franks.

full article:

http://www.thistleandbroom.com/scotland/lewis-chessmen.htm

Because, of course, ancient place names do not always, if even often, make it through the ages to our modern era, they frequently become problematic to our study of ancient times. Even within Egypt, we often have problems identifying from ancient texts various cities and sites. More difficult even than this is perhaps the places outside of Egypt to which the Egyptians refer to in their texts. The Land of Punt, for example, has never been positively identified, though various Egyptologists seem to have strong opinions about its location. Another region, featured in Egypt’s oldest narrative of foreign travel dating to the 23rd century BC, is that of Yam. Apparently, Yam was a transfer point for trade with the Sudan and other African regions and a source of tropical precious wood and ivory.

This account was recorded on the tomb facade of Harkhuf, the governor of Elephantine, who recorded his adventures during the 6th Dynasty. He travelled, not once, but four times to yam, leading an expedition apparently into Nubia south of Egypt. These visits were made for trade, using donkey caravans in which Egyptian goods were exported and traded for those of Yam. On one journey, we are told that some 300 asses brought back “incense, ebony…leopard skins, elephant tusks and boomerangs”.

Read all of this article

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/yam.htm