Artifact from Atlantis?

Originally posted by skeptic1
Ok, with Indonesian added to the mix, I forwarded my earlier e-mail to yet another specialist in Southeast Asian art.

Hopefully, I will hear back from some, if not all, of the folks I am bombarding with e-mails tomorrow.

I've sent it to people specializing in Ming Dynasty bronzes and metalwork, Chinese art, Middle Eastern art, and Asian art. Hopefully, they don't take Fridays off.....

I'm not expecting it to be Chinese, since the dragons are wrong for that period of Chinese art. If you can find someone familar with Thai art, I think you'll get a "hit" although the best they can say is that yes it's in that style.

It's not Middle Eastern, and it's not Ming (Chinese) since that's not how they did their dragons back then. It's not Japanese -- their dragons are distinctive as well.

Originally posted by seagrass
Bryd your link to the rental vase mentioned the Shang Dynasty underneath it.

Yup. But I was only pointing out the keystone elements as being common to that area of the world (actually to almost all the world). How-some-ever it's one of those topics that when I get warmed to, I sort of assume everyone's on the same page as I am.

(grin)

I'll avoid trotting out all the stuff about mazes and maze designs and keystone line drawings and we'll all be much happier.

Originally posted by punkinworks
Indonesian would make sense style wise.

That would explain the psuedo chinese style elements.

And the spanish traded quite a bit with the people of southeast asia through the philipines, more so than with the chinese directly.
It for sure came off of a spanish wreck.

If the date's right, I was speculating it was either a piece intended for a governor's palace or wealthy man's estate -- or it was part of pirate loot.

Not sure if anyone asked or if its been mentioned (thread go too big for me to go back through every comment) any other artifacts that may have been found at the same time, in conjunction with this piece.

I am not sure how most museums operate when dealing with antiquities, if they are just given to them or if they go in search of pieces and what-not.

It would seem that whoever found this piece originally, would have most likely found other items of interest at the same time and place.

If it was from a shipwreck, other items would have been found or at least sought out. I know I would look for more

Its too bad there weren't any 'related' items to this piece, that would help in its identification.

reply to post by Grailkeeper


If there were any related items known Im sure we would have heard about it by now.

reply to post by Skyfloating


I find it unlikely , as this was recovered from a dive that this was the only piece. there should be a record, from where it was stored, with other items labelled Bimini.

Bimini, has long been considered to be where atlantis resided, up until recent years. And there has been a few dives to find artifacts. They also found an underwater pyramid.



[edit on 26-9-2008 by monkeybus]

Originally posted by monkeybus
reply to post by Skyfloating

 

I find it unlikely , as this was recovered from a dive that this was the only piece. there should be a record, from where it was stored, with other items labelled Bimini.

Bimini, has long been considered to be where atlantis resided, up until recent years. And there has been a few dives to find artifacts. They also found an underwater pyramid.



[edit on 26-9-2008 by monkeybus]

OK. Im sure the person who I have the pictures from would inform us if there is a related piece. But the originator no longer being alive, its hard to tell.

If they found several such pieces I dont know how likely it is that they would widely publish it either - because of its value.

Wow

Haven't read all of the thread yet (just the first page ), but those pictures are amazing! And yeah I can see the candle on the side, and the square maze things and it looks so wow lol. This thing just looks so cool.
It looks like it could be of Asian origin to me, some of it even looks like it could be of Middle Eastern origin, but that's just my opinion lol. It's fascinating!

Flagged and Starred

[edit on 26/9/2008 by Sparkly_Eyed777]

Originally posted by Grailkeeper
Not sure if anyone asked or if its been mentioned (thread go too big for me to go back through every comment) any other artifacts that may have been found at the same time, in conjunction with this piece.

I am not sure how most museums operate when dealing with antiquities, if they are just given to them or if they go in search of pieces and what-not..

It depends on when they got it and how they got it. For instance, the Dallas museums' modern practices are to not put anything on display unless it's authenticated.

Small museums rely on donated objects and are often less picky in their authentication. If the person says "it came from Australia and my grandmother bought it in 1800 from an Aborigine" then it's probable that nobody will actually check aboriginal art to attempt to authenticate it. This was particularly true of museums before 1940.

When the storage rooms get crowded, they will sell stuff that either is unauthenticated or was donated but has questionable "provenace"... according to what I see going on around the museum where I volunteer. For instance, they have a zillion trilobite fossils and only a few of the very best are kept. The others are occasionally sold, particularly if they're common species or they came from a collector and were poorly documented.

Hard to say without knowing the museum. There'd be records at the museum, though.

Well, for what it's worth ($9.95), here's what a $9.95 online appraisal has garnered so far:

"Museum? Kansas City MO? I do not know of any museum that closed. It's Chinese and looks like decorations are combinations of archaic motifs with several styles from various periods and last 1/2 20th century I have to find a comparable to get the values for you. "

She also thinks the object is displayed upside-down.

reply to post by IAttackPeople


And, one of my experts said it wasn't Chinese, but maybe Middle Eastern/Persian.

I've sent the photos off to several experts in different areas of art at Sothebys, so maybe they'll get back to us later today or early next week.

The mystery continues......

Words from the owner:

Its not upside down

Inside the burner area there is a soot buildup a little thicker than a wheat thin cracker, so its purpose and orientation are correct.

It is not bronze it is clearly a brass-like very hard metal, and it is clad with a thin layer of gold. It must have been very beautiful in its day.

So far the next steps would be:

1. Chromaspectragraph of the burned material inside. There is also an oil residue on one half of the inside of the chamber which would tend to enforce that it was in water. If it was dry for an extended duration of centuries on its side the oil would have tended to stay covering the entire surface by its own properties and contact.

2. A metalurgic essay as to the material composition of the metal.

Can't think of any more except perhaps flakes of the patina.

I just wanted to say how much I've enjoyed this thread. Read through most of it last night and caught the rest of it this morning. Never have I seen a thread this long stay so civil and informative. Much less a thread with Atlantis in the title. Can't even begin to count how many posts I've starred, or new things I've learned. I think I could qualify for a job with Antiques Roadshow now.


Obviously the 'Atlantis angle' is a stretch, and all but assuredly not the case, but you were honest about your reasons (synchronicity) for bringing it up and never once harped on it or forced that into the discussion unnecessarily. Well done... everyone. Great read!


Now I'm off to read about Underwater Atlantian cities found off the coast of Cuba. And I never go for that stuff... now I can't help myself.


I used to have a life ya know. Thanks.

reply to post by Rren


Thanks for the kind words. Ive been enjoying all the intelligent input as well.

in 1944 a ten year old boy,Newton anderson dropped a lump of coal in his basement and found a manmade bell with a demond like figure on the handle,the bitumous coal that was mined near his house upshur county west virginia is supposed to be 300million years old,from the carboniferous peroid,the bell was submitted to the lab at the university of oklahom,where a nuclear activation analysis revealed that the bell contains an unusal mix of metals different from any known modern alloy production.including copper,zinc,tin,arsenic,iodin and selenium.what strikes me about this aretefact is the similarity in the colour of the metallic surface,despite some discolouration of the surface,well it has been lying at the bottom of the ocean for donkeys years,i wonder what the chemical composition of the artefact would be if it were tested in a similar way,i currently trying to find a way to take a snapshot of the bell on the video to show you what i mean and perhaps some thing might click in to place as it were.

reply to post by kundalini125


www.genesispark.org...

There's some neat pics of the above mentioned bell.
Don't believe the story, personally.
There's no damage at all to the bell. Nothing that would indicate it went through the process' that form coal. The boy didn't provide the pieces of coal, which would have shown the bell's shape.
Also, couldn't find any information on the stdy that was supposed to have been processed on the bell.

reply to post by RuneSpider


Howdy Rune

Not much time at the moment but may I suggest you look into Corliss. He did a study of the 18-19th century "found in coal" hoax fad. I believe on his website and books he may have covered this item.

This is in reference to the spirals in the back ground, that is the key to
the identification of this piece.


The uppermost ideogram is an Egyptian hieroglyph representing a reed shelter in the fields. If used together with the hieroglyph for house, and other hieroglyphs, it could stand for room, i.e. a walled enclosure within a house.
Signs like are common decorative elements in Greece in the antiquity. They are found, for instance, on a plate with a pictorial representation of the deeds of Jason. The plate can be dated back to around 500 B.C.
Jason was the famous seafaring mythological hero, who among other things set out on the quest to find the golden fleece of the ram, Aries. This myth, as the rows of ram sculptures in the Egypt temple in Karnak, Egypt, show, is probably a reference to the cult of the Ram marking the beginning of the Aries era around 2350 B.C. See the section "The symbolism of the astrological ages" in the Appendices for data about these eras.
Since Jason was an explorer of the overseas the structure possibly originated as a combination of the graphic structures and , i.e. as . That sign would in such a case mean sea voyages with safe returns or overseas explorations. The sign was an ideogram for a homecoming or return in the oldest Chinese ideographic writing system.
The form is also common in pre-Columbian America. It has been found in what is now Colorado, all over Central America, and even in South America. is often joined to "the stairs", , to become or or .
In most cases the ideograms of the type have a clockwise rotation design, i.e. if one follows the line from the center outward the movement is clockwise. It does, however, sometimes have a counterclockwise rotation. Both rotational designs were common as decorative elements in ancient Greece.
Since the Mayas and some other Indian cultures in the Americas had temples with steep and long stairs to the top where the ritual human sacrifices were made, one possible interpretation of is regularly recurring journeys to the temple sites for worshipping.

The main figure seems to represent the Mayan deity Huracan (the Heart of Heaven) mentioned in the Popol Vuh and associated to the mighty hurricanes throughout the region. The spiraling rectangles are a widespread symbol of Indoamerican art. An analysis of the craft employed to make the artifact is necessary for more accurate data.

Sarodgz
San Juan, Puerto Rico

Only place i can recall seeing lots of spirals although the ones on the vessel are more squarelike. The images below are from 5000 year old burial tombs/ light chambers in Ireland. I also have a thread on theses structures.


www.knowth.com...

www.knowth.com...

www.knowth.com...

these tombs were built before the celts arrived in Ireland so they are not celtic symbols. The structures as previously mentioned are light chambers
and allign with the winter solstace.

www.abovetopsecret.com...


[edit on 27-9-2008 by MCoG1980]