Polymath or jack of all trades? Too many talents can be a mixed blessing, as Thomas Young, one of the most intelligent Englishmen who ever lived, found out. His work was overlooked or misunderstood in a vast number of fields from physics and engineering to Egyptology, in all of which he has since been shown to have made a huge contribution. He was the first person to prove that light is a wave. He discovered how the eye focuses and he coined the phrase “Indo-European”. His lectures to the Royal Institution were reprinted as recently as 2002. Yet he is scarcely a household name.

Young’s abilities showed themselves early. Born in 1773 into a strict Quaker family, he learnt to read at the age of two. By five he had got through Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver’s Travels and decided he didn’t care for English fiction. Although he trained as a doctor, the rest of his life was chiefly devoted to science, or “natural philosophy”, as it was then known. He was born at an auspicious time; a child of the enlightenment growing up in the age of the Romanticism, he lived in a world where the boundaries between disciplines had yet to harden, and where Humphrey Davy, his fellow lecturer at the Royal Institution, could publish in the same magazine as Keats. Whole new areas of knowledge were opening up, and with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798 and the discovery of the Rosetta stone came the possibility of deciphering the language of the pharaohs. Young was keen to have a go and his efforts made him the first person to read demotic script since the fall of the Roman Empire...

, Andrew Robinson, Oneworld Publications, 2006, pp. 304.

Too clever by half, Rosemary Hill, The Sunday Times, UK, December 10, 2006.

Following news that archaeologists in Rome have discovered a sarcophagus containing what they believe to be the mortal remains of St. Paul the Apostle, we offer a few tips on how to get in on the world of excavation.

• Forget the bull whip
• Study hard, get the qualifications
• Volunteer as "trowel fodder"
• Resign yourself to a lifetime of poorly-paid obscurity
• Find Nefertiti

Shortcuts: How to make it as an archaeologist, Paul Sussman, CNN, USA, December 11, 2006.

The J. Paul Getty Museum announced Monday that it would return to Greece an ancient gold wreath and a marble bust that Greece claims were illegally spirited out of the country.

At a news conference with the Greek culture minister, museum director Michael Brand said they had "reached an agreement in principle on the return of two objects."

A statement added that "a formal agreement, which will be signed soon, will include details about the return of the objects to Greece."

Greece claims the works — a gold wreath dating from about 400 B.C. and a sixth century B.C. marble statue of a young woman — were illegally excavated and spirited out of the country.

It was unclear if the return would stop a Greek criminal investigation over the alleged theft of the wreath...

Getty Museum to Return 2 Greek Treasures, Nicholas Paphitis, AP via The Los Angeles Times, California, USA, December 11, 2006.

TravelVideo's regular antiquity news roundup.

• Ceremony marking resettling of Qurna families to explore for pharaonic tombs in Luxor
• Pharaonic cemetery discovered in Luxor
• Tutankhamen exhibition in Europe & Japan after USA

Antiquity News December 2006, TravelVideo.TV, Ontario, Canada, December 07, 2006.