Not Just at The End of Rainbows: 15th Century Pot of Gold Found in a Drain Pipe in the Netherlands

Ancient Origins

It wasn’t just an ordinary day at work for employees of a water company in the Netherlands, who earlier this month stumbled upon an earthenware cooking pot containing around 500 gold and silver coins dating to the 15 th century while laying pipes at a building site.

Dutch News reports that the treasure was discovered during building work for a new town being developed between Vianen and Hagestein in the province of Utrecht, and may shed new light on what occurred in the medieval town of Hagestein after it was destroyed in 1405.

Dr Boer explained that during the time the coins were in circulation, the Netherlands was ruled by a French noble family, the ‘Dukes of Burgundy’, who had deep ties to France's royal family. However, there remain many gaps in the knowledge of this time period, particularly in the aftermath of the violent destruction of Hagestein, near where the coins were discovered.

“‘We now have a pot full of stories,” archaeologist Peter De Boer told NOS. "Every gentleman gave out his 'business card' by way of a coin, and therefore there is a lot to discover. Stories over power relations, religion and a lot of symbolism."

Hoe fen Haag, a new town being developed in Utrecht ( CC by SA 4.0 / Jan Diijkstra )

Pot of Gold
An analysis of the coins revealed that twelve of them were solid gold, while the rest are silver. The true value has not yet been determined, but the owners of the water company Oasen, the project developer, and the land owner where the treasure was found, are likely to do quite well.

“Some textiles were also found in the pot, indicating that the coins were packed in fabric bags or cloths,” reports NL Times . “Most of the coins seem to date from the 1470's and 1480's. Some of the coins show King Henri VI of England, Bishop of Utrecht David of Burgundy, and Pope Paul II.”

The joint owners of the coins have temporarily let go of the coins so they can be studied, and they will then decide what they wish to do with them.

It’s not the first time a pot of treasure has been discovered by some lucky finder. In 1993, two amateur treasure hunters found a collection of over 4,000 Roman coins in a pot in Lincolnshire, England, and in 2015, two clay pots were found by forestry workers in Poland , containing a hoard of more than 6,000 coins. There may not be golden treasures at the end of every rainbow, but pots of gold are still to be found!

Top image: 15th century gold and silver coins found in the Netherlands. Credit: Oasen

By April Holloway

15th-century manuscript with 'alien' characters finally decoded

Fox news

By James Rogers

The Voynich manuscript's unintelligible writings and strange illustrations have defied every attempt at understanding their meaning. (BEINECKE RARE BOOK AND MANUSCRIPT LIBRARY/YALE UNIVERSITY)

 Scientists have harnessed the power of artificial intelligence to unlock the secrets of an ancient manuscript that has baffled experts.

Discovered in the 19th century, the Voynich manuscript uses “alien” characters that have long puzzled cryptographers and historians. Now, however, computing scientists at the University of Alberta say they are decoding the mysterious 15th-century text.

 Computing science Professor Greg Kondrak and graduate student Bradley Hauer applied artificial intelligence to find ambiguities in the text’s human language.

RESEARCHERS OFFER YET ANOTHER EXPLANATION TO MYSTERIOUS VOYNICH MANUSCRIPT
The first stage of the research was working out the manuscript’s language. The experts used 400 different language translations from the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” to identify the language used in the text. Initially, it seemed like the text was written in Arabic, but the researcher's algorithms revealed that the manuscript is written in Hebrew.

“That was surprising,” said Kondrak, in a statement. “And just saying ‘this is Hebrew’ is the first step. The next step is how do we decipher it.”

Kondrak and Hauer worked out that Voynich manuscript was created using ‘alphagrams’ that use one phrase to define another so built an algorithm to unscramble the text. “It turned out that over 80 per cent of the words were in a Hebrew dictionary, but we didn’t know if they made sense together,” said Kondrak.

MYSTERIOUS MANUSCRIPT'S CODE HAS BEEN CRACKED, 'PROPHET OF GOD' CLAIMS The initial part of the text was then run through Google Translate. “It came up with a sentence that is grammatical, and you can interpret it,” Kondrak explained.

 The sentence was: “She made recommendations to the priest, man of the house and me and people.”

The full meaning of the text will need the involvement of historians of ancient Hebrew. The vellum, or animal skin, on which the codex is written has been dated to the early 15th century.

The research study is published in Volume 4 ofTransactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

There have been multiple attempts to decode the Voynich manuscript. In 2014, for example, researchers argued that the illustrations of plants in the manuscript could help decode the text’s strange characters. In 2011, a self-proclaimed “prophet of God” claimed that he had decoded the book.

‘Real Game of Thrones’ Story Is Told In This Interactive 15th Century Scroll

Ancient Origins

The Game of Thrones continues to attract an audience and many people interested in it also have a passion for history and the true stories that inspired the series. Now you can gain some new insight into the who’s who of the Wars of the Roses and their legendary ancestors by exploring a digital version of English royal family genealogy as depicted on the Canterbury Roll.

 The Canterbury Roll provides a handwritten 15th-century story of the beginnings of England. It starts with suggesting English royals have descended from the biblical Noah, to the legendary Brutus of Troy, and then it traces their heritage until King Edward IV. As you can see by examining the digital edition of the Canterbury Roll, fiction has mixed with history in this document.

A section of the Canterbury Roll, a medieval scroll depicting the genealogy of the English royal family. (The University of Canterbury)

Live Science reports that the online version of the medieval scroll has been made available thanks to the work of a team of researchers and students at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. They joined up with some experts from the United Kingdom to translate and interpret the scroll. The scholars from the UK are especially interested in exploring how the document was altered during the Wars of the Roses, when the document changed hands between the warring houses and one house may have altered the story of the other.

Chris Jones, a medieval historian and a researcher on the project from the University of Canterbury, discussed the importance of the Canterbury Roll in a statement:

"It's visually striking. The Wars of the Roses are what 'Games of Thrones' is based on, and this is the Wars of the Roses laid out across a 5-meter [16 feet], visually spectacular document. It is not the only manuscript roll from this period to exist in the world, but, uniquely, it features contributions from both [of] the key players in the Wars of the Roses — it was originally drawn up by the Lancastrian side in the conflict but it fell into Yorkist hands, and they rewrote part of it."

As Thomas de Fauconbergh beseiges London (setting fire), he is attacked by Edward IV and his troops. (Public Domain)

As Bryan Hill explained in an Ancient Origins article discussing the Wars of the Roses and the Game of Thrones:

“The two houses in conflict with one another in the Wars of the Roses were the House of York and the House of Lancaster. In Game of Thrones, the House of Lancaster is thought to be the Lannisters while the House of York, the Starks. The war between the Starks and the Lannisters is similar to the Wars of the Roses between the English houses of Lancaster and York that took place between 1455 and 1487. Like the Starks, the Yorks were northerners, while the Lancasters, like the Lannisters, were from the south. Not only do the Lancasters and Lannisters share almost the same name, they also share an almost identical symbol: a Lion(s) on a red background. The name of the wars comes from the symbols associated with the two families; the white rose belonging to the Yorks and the red rose to the Lancasters.”

Wars of the Roses – key players in the Houses of Lancaster and York. (AGZYM)

The digital version of the Canterbury Roll is still a work in progress, but it already provides an interactive depiction of the scroll. Viewers have the option to click, zoom, and read passages on the scroll in English and Latin, as well as explore notes and expert interpretations of the document. It is expected that the full 5-meter document, along with its translations, will be available online by the end of 2018.

 Top Image: Detail of ‘Plucking the Red and White Roses in the Old Temple Gardens’ (c.1908) by Henry Arthur Payne. (Public Domain) Insert: Detail of part of the Canterbury Roll, a medieval scroll detailing the genealogy of the two houses in the Wars of the Roses. (The University of Canterbury)

 By Alicia McDermott