By Caroline Roberts, Conservator
I stumbled across this month’s Ugly Object while surveying the Kelsey collection, and while it may look like something that fell out of my box of granola this morning, it also has an unexpected connection to ancient history. This is a specimen of tufa, a type of limestone that forms as a chemical precipitate in water. Tufa often ends up with a spongy texture as a result of its formation process; I think this one looks more like a puff pastry, although perhaps not quite as appetizing. Some of the layers are dotted with blue-green splotches (maybe from a copper mineral?) resembling something one might find growing on a block of Roquefort. Can you tell I’m writing this while hungry?
Anyway, back to the ancient history.
According to our records, Francis Kelsey acquired this specimen in 1901 at the Greek city of Thermopylae, the site of a famous battle between an alliance of Greek city-states and the Persian Empire in 480 BCE. Xerxes’s army significantly outnumbered and defeated the Greeks at Thermopylae and went on to capture Athens, but eventually gave up the invasion after losing the Battle of Plataea. Thermopylae (“Hot Gates”) gets its name from the hot sulfur springs that occur there—both an ideal environment for the formation of tufa and the perfect setting for a mythological gateway to Hades.
Keep tuning in to the Kelsey Blog for more fascinating chunks of history from our collection!
