Curiosities of Archaeology

[Swatopluk]

I know that Byzantine studies are not everyone's favorite subject (including Turtledove fans  ), so this may have beent he reason for this not having made much of a splash. As far as I can tell it only became a (limited) topic in the papers due to the (typical) quarrel between Turkey and Greece. "Greeks and Turks quarrel about rights to antique shipwreck" is not page 1 material.
But I think it is interesting enough to open a thread here.

A Turkish team of archaeologists seeking for the wrecks of the Battle of Sinop (1853) found a few Byzantine dromons instead. There were some interesting artefacts recovered that should change our views about technical capabilities at the time a bit (cf. the Antikythera mechanism for an earlier era).

[Bluenose]

Wow, amazing!  Yet again we learn that our ancestors were not so inferior to us as we so often suppose.  Thanks Swato for bringing this item to our attention.

[ivor]

Cool! 

[Pachyderm]

Outstanding. Confusion reigns in the office, as the others are amazed that James and I can now talk about Byzantine cipher machines, and sound knowledgable.

(We won a pub quiz organised by the Royal Town Planning Institute last week, and were told it was unfair, as he is Walking Google, and I am The Human Wikipedia. Sour grapes, but they taste sweet to us...)

[Swatopluk]

Can I interest any of you in that nice bridge in NYC that I could sell you at a bargain price 
More info to follow. Just one thing: a look at the calendar would (have) be(en) wise.
http://tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:u8UG-AQcWiXiBM:http://www.bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester/content/images/2006/03/29/april_fool_420_420x420.jpg

[ivor]

You got me Swato!  I totally forgot it was April Fool's Day. 

[anthrobabe]

   gottcha

[The Meromorph]

For a gag like that to work, people have to want it to be true.


It so-o-o-o worked.   

[Bluenose]

Yagotme!

Hmm, very funny, in retrospect.

[Swatopluk]

Comments on the Byzantine April Hoax

I think this is the most elaborate hoax I ever attempted and given a bit more time it would have included even more details and sketches. Maybe I will present those in an appendix.
What do you think about the idea of sending a more polished version to an actual scientific paper for use in the April edition 2010)?

GARN means yarn (as in 'spinning a good yarn')
The original Journal is fake (and an April edition), Carnad is also a bit like Canard
The second Journal is also fake and 11.11 is the start of the Carnival season.
Abdera was (in antiquity) the proverbial town of fools.
Even if there is a university in the Troy area, it has no department of archaeLOLogy.
Wahid (Arabic) and Bir (Turkish) mean '1', Nisan is their equivalent of April.
The Turkish Wikipedia page for the tradition of sending people up on April 1 is titled '1 Nisan Saka Günü'.
Although there was a Battle of Sinop in 1853, it took place inside the harbour not out in the bay.
Nunio and Irene are the Catholic saints for April 1.
Nugator is the comic relief character in the comedy "3 Coins" by Plautus
LOLlius, self-explaining
Yes, there was a similar crisis in Trebizond at the time but the details I gave are fake.
A red and white striped chest unsafe to handle is the central 'character' in a story by Conan Doyle (although that connection came to me only afterwards).
Samples of rubber-like substances and lacquer could have been obtained via trade from Africa and Asia resp. but there is no evidence that Byzantine craftsmen did dabble in advanced polymer science. No 'Karolos Kaloetos' tried the sulphur trick so to speak ;-) . Given the correct recipes they probably could have done it, although Kickxia rubber is more difficult to master than Hevea rubber (today's standard). The ingredients for Bakelite could have been produced from wood tar and naphtha, the Byzantines had a good deal of practical knowledge about distillation. I think that the box would not have been impossible to produce but very difficult and expensive. It's alleged sturdy built might even have kept the contents dry at a pressure of 3 bar.
The machine would, I think, be like the box, i.e. possible in principle but requiring far too much effort and expenses (esp. for multiple casts of parts until a selection would fit sufficiently. Friction and slip would pose the greatest problems in use and possibly make it impractical. Also for the design with standing (instead of hanging) drums there would indeed occur a problem with falling balls missing the openings in the drum below. Whether catcher funnels would solve that problem, I can't say. To get the inner tubing of the drums right without risking balls to get stuck would be quite a feat.
If used per the instruction the machine would produce a very strong cipher with a good chance to defy even modern codebreakers using computers.
The inscription is another hint. 'Hidden writings' is 'cryptographia' in Greek and 'riddle' is 'ENIGMA' like the German cipher machine that used a similar principle. 'Mnemotryppa' means 'memory hole', an allusion to George Orwell. Basilios of Alania (=the Alan) and Marianus of Thuringia allude to Alan Turing and Marian Rejewski, the two persons most responsible for cracking the Enigma code. S'cherebaios of Arthora (there is no such place in the area) is Arthur Scherbius, the inventor of of the Enigma. Kouzina(s) means 'kitchen' (cf.cuisine). Hugo Koch (German for 'cook') was an employee of Scherbius and invented the 'reflector' that allpwed decoding using the same sequence as encoding. Scherbius died in a carriage accident, although he was the driver and not run over). Mparis Angelinos is Boris Hagelin, another inventor of cipher machines.
The design #7 took some cues from the mechanical computers of Charles Babbage, esp. the idea of attaching a typesetting device. I did not include the idea of punchcards (as in the Jacquard loom) because I had not enough time to elaborate to get it ready for April 1 but the pin roller is also taken from real devices and could do the job 'playing the keyboard' of the Malwiya. The malwiya was indeed inspired  by the two buildings mentioned. The Malwiya of Samarra is older than my fictitious device and it would not have been unthinkable for a Byzantine scholar to adopt the name for it (there are examples for this practice).
Finally, the name of the fake publisher, Albern Schertz, is (slightly misspelled) German for 'silly joke'. In Kyritz one can find the 'Museum of Lies'.

PS: One important part in the designs is the lack of any springs. Although leaf springs were invented (or at least described) by Ktesibios in the 3rd century BC, I thought they would be too 'modern' for the European Middle Ages (and coil springs definitely would have been).

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Just out of curiosity, how long did you work on this?

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BTW, good one. 

[Swatopluk]

A week or so (although I pondered the idea a bit longer than that). A good deal of stuff I came up with during the actual writing.

[Swatopluk]

OK, here are some extra figures not included in the original paper

[Griffin NoName]

Brilliant Swato. Maybe you could get it "published" for next year?

[Swatopluk]

Working on the next design that could be done with mere carpentry.