It's much easier to tell people apart with search engines and even library cataloguing systems. These names tend not to come during the lifetime of the person, but usually long after, and often from different places. "They had that king Karl, which Karl? The one that was a tyrant." "Ah, right" "Alexander did" "Which Alexander?" "Phillip's son" "that really doesn't narrow it down." "The great one" "oh, right"

The other side are names that come up because of propaganda, especially attempts to bolster an image or to diminish a reputation after the person has died. These are more popular within that country, and usually more close to said person's lifetime. Think "Dubya" in America for GWB. The name is unlikely to be understood by most 100 years from now, and even most children today might not understand the reference, but people of a certain age will mostly pick up what you mean relatively easily. But again, there's usually a short shelf life for these things because it's a biased term, and it's not going to show up in reference guides, encyclopedias, or official histories (at least not as one of the main important things to know about this person so it will eventually boil down to a neat bit of pub trivia or something the professional scholars of that invidual know, but won't be common outside of that small circle.

That comes in part with a rise in standards of professional academia and publishing. It was not uncommon to publish direct attacks against politicians, leaders, etc. with names of all sorts. King George "The Royal Brute" or other such "wicked tyrants". These types of publishings would be distributed as pamphlets and the like, and they could even gain popularity outside of the country it was intended for. So names might stick that way, but again, only so long as the people around to have read and remembered -- and cared passionately enough about the subject.

It would kinda be like if we named our current politicians off of names people on Facebook gave them -- but we don't, and for good reason.

Instead, these days, if you want to learn about events happening under one politician you're likely going to encounter peer-reviewed or tightly policed systems online in the forms of Wikipedia, news articles, published books, etc. More people are going to become instantly familiar with the individuals by their birth names, and instantly familiar with their role in whatever conflict. These may still need to nicknames being created (and if you search in the right places there are plenty for modern politicians), but they won't be enough to drown out all the other more polished publishings.

[removed]

He concealed them in something stored in his rectum.

[removed]

Can’t imagine how much shipping will cost…..!

Thank you so much for all these recommendations. I will make sure to check out The Last Boat Out of Shanghai as well. After your comment I read up on the author and she sounds very interesting as well.

I was giving some insight into how strange it is that we consider perhaps the least famous pharaoh the most famous, which I think is quite interesting. At the same time as I underline why we see him as famous.

You are the one responding trying to correct something that was already showing both sides, by arguing for a statement no one made. So who is trying to be pedantic here?

Sad that we opened it. RIP all of that mummies efforts.

It is the centennial of his discovery though. Sure the forgotten son of Akenaten was all but lost to history until his discovery. He is the most famous pharaoh in the last century's history.

We don't need to be unnecessarily pedantic. Anyone being generous in understanding, gets it.

Any time you go to a museum and learn something from the artifacts, you yourself are doing archeology.

I think we would all agree that the cool roman mosaics and other art buried under long forgotten farm houses need to be excavated.

Maybe Anna Funder's book, Stasiland? I haven't read it but it looked interesting and I thought I'd pick it up if I ever saw it on the remainder table.

Julia Lovell's eponymous book on the Opium War is a good one to approach the subject. It's reasonable length, covers the whole topic, and has a nice epilogue on the importance of the story in current Chinese politics. She also did a thing for Fivebooks.com about the five best books on the Opium Wars. https://fivebooks.com/best-books/opium-war-julia-lovell/

Stephen Platt's book on the Taiping Civil War, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, is interesting. It's mostly about the US and British response so it would fit in well with your interest in the colonial aspects.

I read a book a few months ago by Helen Zhi called The Last Boat Out of Shanghai about the diaspora community in Shanghai and it had info about the colonization of Shanghai by the western powers and the Japanese. It's a good book but only about half of it deals with the topic your interested in. James Carter has a book called Champion's Day about the Japanese occupation. And Paul French has a kind of a lurid but fun one called City of Devils about the underworld in Shanghai.

It used to be destructive in the early days, because it was essentially just a way of committing "totally not grave robbery"

Modern day archeology is extremely conscious about the potential to destroy uncovered pieces, and will handle them with care. The priority is to not destroy things in the process

Great reading this thread right after watching Ancient Apocalypse on Netflix. Think about all of the other stuff we still haven’t unearthed

> Most famous in our time, not his

No one said that though.

I'm also pointing out that in history, that is the written record of the past, he is very unknown.

Hi!

It seems like you are talking about the popular but ultimately flawed and false "winners write history" trope!

While the expression is sometimes true in one sense (we'll get to that in a bit), it is rarely if ever an absolute truth, and particularly not in the way that the concept has found itself commonly expressed in popular history discourse. When discussing history, and why some events have found their way into the history books when others have not, simply dismissing those events as the imposed narrative of 'victors' actually harms our ability to understand history.

You could say that is in fact a somewhat "lazy" way to introduce the concept of bias which this is ultimately about. Because whoever writes history is the one introducing their biases to history.

A somewhat better, but absolutely not perfect, approach that works better than 'winners writing history' is to say 'writers write history'.

This is more useful than it initially seems. Until fairly recently the literate were a minority, and those with enough literary training to actually write historical narratives formed an even smaller and more distinct class within that.

To give a few examples, Genghis Khan must surely go down as one of the great victors in all history, but he is generally viewed quite unfavorably in practically all sources, because his conquests tended to harm the literary classes.
Similarly the Norsemen historically have been portrayed as uncivilized barbarians as the people that wrote about them were the "losers" whose monasteries got burned down.

Of course, writers are a diverse set, and so this is far from a magical solution to solving the problems of bias. The painful truth is, each source simply needs to be evaluated on its own merits.
This evaluation is something that is done by historians and part of what makes history and why insights about historical events can shift over time.

This is possibly best exemplified by those examples where victors did unambiguously write the historical sources.

The Spanish absolutely wrote the history of the conquest of Central America from 1532, and the reports and diaries of various conquistadores and priests are still important primary documents for researchers of the period.

But 'victors write the history' presupposes that we still use those histories as they intended, which is simply not the case. It both overlooks the fundamental nature of modern historical methodology, and ignores the fact that, while victors have often proven to be predominant voices, they have rarely proven to be the only voices.

Archaeology, numismatics, works in translation, and other records all allow us at least some insight into the 'losers' viewpoint, as does careful analysis of the 'winner's' records.
We know far more about Rome than we do about Phoenician Carthage. There is still vital research into Carthage, as its being a daily topic of conversation on this subreddit testifies to.

So while it's true that the balance between the voices can be disparate that doesn't mean that the winners are the only voice or even the most interesting.
Which is why stating that history is 'written by the victors' and leaving it at that is harmful to the understanding of history and the process of studying history.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Please ignore this comment, I just need the automod reply to this for something.

​

History is written by the victor.

Why do they say it's 'near Tut's tomb' when it's outside Cairo, he is in the Valley of the Kings, hundreds of miles away in Luxor. What does he have to do with it, do they just drop his name to generate clicks?

Most famous in our time, not his.

Tut was initially so famous that his traveling exhibit gave birth to the "block buster" museum exhibit. His artifacts have to this day been seen more than any other by a looooong shot compared to other pharaohs.

Maybe the Wright Flyer in the Smithsonain Air and Space museum has seen more vistors in the same amount of time.

I would have sworn that when I visited King Tut's Tomb, I was near Luxor, but this article is talking about discoveries near Giza, which is hundreds of miles north. I don't get it.

Ego and pride it’s something in archaeology they try to teach to get over but a lot of people don’t, I’ve left projects before because my team wants to keep digging or is taking things archaeology has a major ethics problem

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]

Archeology is destructive. You usually only get one shot at it. I mean. Did you read on how they "found" the city of Troy?