2024 Author: Adelina Croftoon | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 02:08
On the outskirts of the Iraqi city of Mosul, 44 kilometers north of Baghdad, lie the ruins of Nineveh, the last capital of the Assyrian Empire. The ruins of this great city of antiquity were discovered in the fall of 1849 by the famous English archaeologist Henry Layard (1817-1894).
The excavations of Nineveh continued over the years. The most significant find of archaeologists is the world-famous library of King Ashurbanapal. Another famous find in the ruins of Nineveh was the archive of the kings of Assyria.
Lens of Nimrud (aka Lens from Nineveh)
It is difficult to say to what extent the small - one and a half inches in diameter - round disc of polished rock crystal is connected with these huge repositories of ancient writing. It was found during excavations of the royal palace in Nineveh, in layers dated from about 600 BC, and was identified by the very first researchers as a biconvex lens, which may have been used as a magnifying glass for reading cuneiform texts.
This was reported in 1853 by the famous Scottish physicist David Brewster (1781-1868), who devoted many years of his life to the study of optical phenomena and the design of optical devices. According to Brewster, the lens could also be used to concentrate the sun's rays.
Since then, controversy has not abated around the mysterious find. The version that this is a lens has not yet been accepted by a part of the scientific community. There are also alternative hypotheses - for example, this crystal disk could serve as a piece of jewelry or a ritual object.
The cut quality of the crystal leaves much to be desired, and the effectiveness of this lens as a magnifying glass is rather limited. And yet it could be used as a magnifying glass, for example, for a master who made seals with a complex pattern and tiny cuneiform signs on them, or for a weak-eyed person who tried to read texts on clay tablets stored in the royal library.
Obviously, no optical instruments existed in the ancient world, however, lenses made of rock crystal or other transparent minerals could theoretically exist. The Roman authors Pliny and Seneca mention in their writings a lens used by a certain master engraver in Pompeii.
Seneca himself, who, according to his confession, “read all the books in Rome,” had vision problems and read with the help of a glass ball filled with water, which served him as a magnifying glass. Emperor Nero is said to have watched the fight of the gladiators holding a polished emerald to his eyes. It is not a fact, however, that this emerald served him as glasses; perhaps he was simply protecting the emperor's eyes from the sun.
It is reliably known about the discovery of a rock crystal lens, dating back to the 5th century BC. e, in a sacred cave on Mount Ida on the island of Crete. This lens is of much better quality than the one found in the ruins of Nineveh, and much stronger. Thus, the ancients' knowledge of lenses seems to exceed our understanding of this area of ancient science. But does it follow from this that the peoples of antiquity used more complex optical devices than lenses?
It is known that mathematics and astronomy were well developed among the Assyrians. They, in particular, knew something about the rings of Saturn - the Assyrian scientists described this planet as a deity surrounded by a ring of snakes. But the rings of Saturn are not visible to the naked eye. Perhaps the Assyrians succeeded in constructing a telescope?
This hypothesis, based on the discovery of a lens from Nineveh, was expressed by professor at the University of Rome Giovanni Pettinato. However, Assyriologists did not find support for this assumption. There is a huge chasm between the lens and the telescope, they say, and bridging it requires a technological leap.
None of the Assyrian text mentions telescopes or similar devices, no images of them, no remains of them have been found. As for the "ring of snakes" around Saturn, it is, rather, a mythological image - the Assyrians saw snakes everywhere.
And the main question has not been resolved: is it a lens? By and large, no one can say for sure. The interpretation of an oval crystal with a biconvex cross section as an optical lens does not necessarily correspond to its actual original function.
Today, a mysterious crystal disc is kept in one of the halls of the British Museum. Perhaps it really is a lens, and then it is the oldest optical lens in the world. But maybe this is just some kind of amulet, which does not exclude its use as a magnifying glass. In any case, optical science appears to be much older than previously thought.
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