El Melon

I see they found a 2,100 year old slice of melon with some rind still on it in the city of Moriyama, Japan. Now, there’s a piece of news that ought to set the internet alight. But what turns this from a story about a prehistoric Japanese slob who doesn’t finish his lunch into a perspective on history is that this small chunk of Jomon-age garbage is now by far the oldest piece of melon ever found, outdistancing the previous old age melon champ from China by almost 1,600 years, proving once again the importance of provenance. It’s how you define the difference between garbage and art.
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Ms. Sariva Allan, a 47 year old teaching assistant at the Durand Primary School in a South London, is claiming religious discrimination because she was fired for lecturing a 7 year old girl on the evils of Harry Potter. When Ms. Allan, a born again idiot, refused to listen to the child read from the book she told the little girl, “I explained that I had a problem with Harry Potter as JK Rowling had proclaimed that she is herself a witch and that the spells mentioned in the books are actually real spells.” She told the child, “I don’t do witchcraft in any form.” Nor, evidently does Ms. Allen do intelligence, in any form.
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When her boss asked if she thought the girl reading from the book would be casting spells on her, the mentally disturbed moron admitted, “…I did think so.” But when she added, “I am aware that in the position of many like-minded Christians …the book is…considered undesirable,” she clearly meant to say her position was shared with many like minded idiots. Anyway, the Employment Tribunal in Croydon, which heard the case, ruled against Ms. Allan’s claim that her boss had, “rubbished Christianity”, and decided to pay her nothing. Poor Ms. Allan; If only J.K. had cloaked her adventure tales of people processed by spirits, tempted by talking snakes and cured by the repetition of powerful words in the veneer of Christian mythology, instead of one of her own imagination, Ms. Allan might have kept her job and her sanity. But for her, the provenance of Harry was unacceptable.
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The town of La Tizona, in Spain, is facing a similar “crises of faith” over the provenance of a sword that supposedly once belonged to Ruy Diaz de Vivar, better known by his nickname, El Cid Campeador, “The Lord Champion,” or just “el Cid”. He’s been dead since 1099, but legend has it that he was such a bad ass in battle that he was lifted from his death bed, tied to a horse and sent charging into an army besieging Valencia, which fled at the very sight of him.
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So when “el Cid”’s favorite sword, “La Tizona”, was offered for sale by Jose Ramon Suarez de Otero, the Marquis of Falces, the authorities of Castile happily coughed up $2 million. They want to display La Tizone next to “el Cid”’s tomb in Burgos Cathedral this September, on the 800th anniversary of Vivar’s birth. The problem is, once the sword was sold, the provenance changed.
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Vivar started out fighting for the King of Castile, Sancho II, against another Christian claimant, Ferdinand Alfonso. But when Sancho was assassinated Alfonso was named King, and Vivar was out of a job. So he hired himself out as a warrior to both Muslims and Catholic princes in Spain, eventually building his own army of mercenaries. It was with merely the nominal approval of (but no support from) the Catholic Alfonso, that helped Vivar capture the city of Valencia from a Muslim prince in 1094. This was Vivar’s tiny kingdom for only five years. And ten years after he died, when Valencia fell again to Muslim forces, his kingdom disappeared and his with it, his bloodline (he had produced only daughters). It was upon this thin foundation that the legend of Spain’s national hero, the Christian knight ‘el Cid”, and his famous sword, La Tizona, was built.
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Vivar had supposedly captured La Tizona after slaughtering its owner, King Bujar, and it has always been described as the Spanish version of King Arthur’s “Excalibur”. But The Spanish National Heritage, Madrid’s Archaeological Museum and the Royal Academy of History, all stung by accusations they let themselves be out bid for the historic sword, have released scientific studies that say the blade was not forged until 200 to 400 years after Vivar died. Besides, the swords that Vivar carried had no hand guards, as Tizona clearly does. And without the provenance of “el Cid” the sword is worth no more than $500,000.
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Needless to say the authorities of Castile are pissed, claiming the national authorities are just jealous they didn’t win the sword. And the Marquis, richer by $2 million but with his reputation sullied, has protested, “"La Tizona has been in my family since the 1400s, and it pains me that political interests are denigrating this sword, symbol of our history."
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Except…if the sword was never owned by el Cid, then it isn’t actually a symbol of Spanish history but rather a symbol of Spanish salesmanship. And that is a provenance the real El Cid would probably have appreciated.