Introduction from Professor Martin Bommas

Human beings are curious by nature. Our craving to know and understand drives our development as individuals and guarantees our success as a species. Not wanting to learn or the refusal to make adjustments where necessary often leads to drastic and opposite effects. Curiosity is also the key ingredient to decipher past cultures and languages: it took historians almost 2000 years to successfully decipher the forgotten language and scripts of ancient Egypt (in 1822), and in the case of Linear B, the early writing of ancient Greek, this process took even longer. Why the ancient world, and the origins of history (wherever and whenever they are pinned down) fascinate human beings since ancient times is the main focus of the temporary exhibition Mysteries Revisited! From ancient codes to comic culture, on show in the Macquarie University History Museum between September 2022 and March 2023. This student-written blog series takes this concept to the next level.  

Before the advent of archaeological reports, the number of pyramids at the Giza Plateau was largely exaggerated, fuelling the idea of abundant mysterious places in Egypt.  

Image: Etching entitled 'The Egyptian Pyramids with a View of part of the Nile', one of a series of illustrations (17) on 11 plates to the Revd Thomas Bankes for 'A New, Royal Authentic and Complete System of Universal Geography', ca. 1792, Victoria & Albert Museum, London. 

Not everyone who is impressed by the wonders and achievements of the ancient world also seeks to take his or her learning journey to the highest level and sign up for study programs at universities. Providing the only credible way to become experts and sometimes even scholars themselves, not only do students have expectations that universities want to meet. Their engagement with disciplines, too, is a key factor for a discipline to prosper on the whole, especially when student fees contribute to the highest levels of cutting-edge research. The museum therefore decided to listen to the voice of students who joined study programs to quench their thirst for robust information and new skills but soon emerge as independent thinkers, capable of contributing in their own individual and exciting ways. 

Celebrating the brilliant minds of undergraduate students of the ancient and modern history study programs at Macquarie University between 2021 and 2022, the museum worked with two cohorts of students to deliver not only the physical temporary exhibition, but also the knowledge and information you will discover in this website: blogs that take the form of journalistic enquiry, personal narratives, interviews with experts, and a research project which emerged from the University’s PACE program. The following pages are as well-informed and their perspectives as diverse as Macquarie’s thriving student community itself. But most of all they produce evidence that fascination, if paired with curiosity and the preparedness to conduct research in an academic environment is key to master complex research questions, even a 2000-year quest to understand dead languages. These blogs not only revisit mysteries of the ancient world but also assess mankind’s ongoing journey to find answers to who we are, who our neighbours are, where we come from and where we go. This, in essence, are the questions history seeks to answer.  

Join us in this exciting journey and see our students and academic discover ancient mysteries, released across the course of the exhibition’s duration. 

Thank you – and congratulations – to all the student volunteers who contributed rigorous research to the exhibition and inspired writing to this online project: 

Alia Alidenes, Amelia Berthold, Emeline Clarkson, Anna Cowles, Laura DeRooy, Brooke Gallucci, Lily Gosbell, Dominic Lane, Cody Luthra, Heba Mattar, Kerri-Ann Meakins, Kristina Mustac, Percy Pike and Max Walker. Thank you also to Museum Manager Josephine Touma and Collections Coordinator Abbie Hartman for providing student support and guidance. 

- Martin Bommas 

Professor and Director of the Macquarie University History Museum