My name is Daniel and I am studying Ancient Cultures at my local community college. I'm hoping by next year I'll have enough money saved to go to University to study to become an archaeologist. Ancient civilizations, and the mystery that enshrouds them, have always been a point of interest for me. In recent years it's become my passion. How is this relevant you may ask? Let me elaborate.
One day I was at my school's library going through some textbooks (my laptop had broke and I hadn't the money for another one just yet - the one I'm using to post this now is my new one. Back on topic..) I had been going through some textbooks when I noticed something rather intriguing. An archaeologist by the name of Heinrich Kaufmann II. I had never heard of him before. I read the article in the textbook, which was quite dated (perhaps from the 1970s or 60s, I didn't check the publication date at the time). The article was a brief biography of his life - no more than a page in a section on archaeology during the early 1900s. From what I remember, he was a German born archaeologist who moved to England in his teens. He worked for a British university, I'm not entirely sure which one. He was a controversial professor at that university because of his unorthodox views of human history. He reminded me of one of those guys on that Ancient Aliens show on the history channel. He believed that most of history was being interpreted wrong and that the ancients were vastly more advanced than we gave them credit for - he even believed they could time travel and teleport. His ideas sound whacky today, and were even moreso back in his day. However, due to his impressive education and friends in high places, he was able to retain his job.
Not only that, he managed to get funding for an expedition to Egypt. He was searching for an ancient tablet that was rumored to have the secrets to the ancient's wisdom in the tomb of an unnamed Pharaoh. This was just a legend however. But, like the many archaeologists who set out in search of Atlantis, the man was undaunted and went to find this artifact.
However, that's all the information the book gave. Nothing about the outcome of this journey at all. Me, being rather curious in nature, would like to find out what happened to this man. That is why I have set up this blog.
The first thing I did was go to the library to find out more about him. However the book I read the information from before was gone, and I couldn't find a single other book with information about him in it.
I then did a search online to find out any information about him. The only information I could bring up about a "Heinrich Kaufmann" was a German wikipedia page, which I translated. My translator isn't exactly the best and so it's hard to make out what it's about. What I got from it was that a man named Heinrich Kaufmann was born in Germany in 1864 and died in 1928. He was well-educated and a teacher as well as an industrialist and ideologist. Since the Heinrich Kaufmann II (or Jr.) I am looking for made his expedition when he was in his 20s in 1906, this lead me to believe this man was his father. Any information about Heinrich Kaufmann Jr. I am looking for still eludes me. But this is a challenge and a mystery I am willing to face head-on. I think it should be pretty fun. It's like a missing person case! Or maybe I've just been watching too much Law and Order.
The image above is the image that came with the article for Heinrich Kaufmann. The caption read: "Total Board of ZdK 1903 vl, Karl Schmidtchen , Konrad Barth , Max Radestock (Chairman), Heinrich Kaufmann (Secretary)
Anyway, that's all for now. I'll update this blog when I find any new information.
- Daniel
No comments:
Post a Comment