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May 2010_june_july_2009.qxd 31/05/2010 6:15 PM Page 29 The Skull of Doom 29 The Skull of Doom it was from Mexico, as the British Museum’s may here be relying on some information he’s skull was thought to be, or Burney himself gathered from The Crystal Skull, a popular Continued from Page 28 supposed it did, since his skull was so similar to adventure story written by Jack McLaren in the museum’s. 1936. It features Lyndon Cromer, an ethnologist a slight twisting, indicating the movement of the Burney owned the skull from 1933 until who supports his research with thievery, and a hand pushing a sharpened stone. Modern 1943, all the while attempting to find a buyer. crystal skull that he steals. A local person in diamond-coated, high-speed rotary cutting tools His bringing it to the British Museum for study New Guinea sees it and exclaims, “It is the skull show lines that are perfectly straight. Parallel was not, I would speculate, entirely an academic of air. The skull of air!” He then tells Cromer lines within the incisions are evidence of exercise on his part. However, the museum did that, “He who holds the skull of air so that it permanently embedded abrasive. The sharpness not choose to acquire another crystal skull and it looks at another man knows that other man’s of the cut and the exactness of the abrasive lines was ultimately sold at Sotheby’s in London on life. He knows all about that other man. That is indicate the use of a hard metal tool with a very October 15, 1943, to Frederick A. Mitchell- the power that the skull of air gives to him who hard abrasive, i.e. diamond. Hedges, Anna Mitchell-Hedges’s adoptive holds it.” On his part, Cromer envisions the Micrographs of silicone molds from the father, for £400. (London was relatively quiet, “tremendous interest that the arrival of this Mitchell-Hedges skull reveal marks of high- with most of the fighting then in North Africa crystal skull in London would cause—of the speed carving tools and deeply cut parallel and on the eastern front.) excitement of the British Museum experts, of ridges left by permanently embedded diamond The 1943 Sotheby's catalogue gave this the meticulous comparings between this newly- abrasive throughout the skull’s carved description of the skull, a photograph of which found skull of crystal and the one already components. Some of the marks indicate the use was used as the frontispiece: "A superb life-size there.” of cutting tools less than a millimeter thick, crystal Carving of a Human Skull, the lower jaw Five years after making these amazing which means they would have to be made of separate, the details are correctly rendered and claims, Mitchell-Hedges more or less repeated iron or steel, and the impressions of wheeled the carver has given the orbits, zygomatic them in his fanciful memoir, Danger My Ally, tools visible in the carved elements of one of the arches and mastoid processes the similitude of although minus the part about his having found teeth are less than a millimeter in diameter. their natural forms." it in Central America. He writes (1954: p. 240), Under higher magnification, polished areas Frederick Mitchell-Hedges announced It is at least 3,600 years old and show parallel lines with a skipping pattern, this purchase to his brother in a letter written in according to legend was used by the High Priest indicating the use of a high-speed tool. December 1943, which includes perhaps the of the Maya when performing esoteric rights. It seems reasonable to conclude from the first mention of a date for the skull’s When the High Priest willed death, with the SEM images that the Mitchell-Hedges skull was manufacture (the Mitchell-Hedges Official help of the skull, death inevitably followed. It carved in modern times with high-speed, Website, accessed 11/08): has been described as the embodiment of evil. I diamond-coated rotary burring and cutting tools The “Collection” grows and grows and do not wish to try and explain this phenomenon. of minute dimension. The teeth alone show the grows. You possibly saw in the papers that I Had he forgotten about Sotheby’s? use of a rotary cutting tool less than 2 acquired that amazing Crystal Skull that was When Mitchell-Hedges died in 1959, the millimeters in diameter. I believe that the formerly in the “Sydney Burney Collection.” It crystal skull became the property of his adopted technology under discussion is decidedly 20th is fashioned from a single block of transparent daughter, Anna. This was despite the fact that he century. Considering the skull’s initial rock crystal, exactly life size; scientists put the may have had two sons, according to various appearance in the 1930s, I believe it was created date at pre-1800 B.C., and they estimate it took sources. One was named John (aka Bumble) at about that time. The British Museum skull, five generations passing from Father to son, to who is described in 1921 as a “crack shot” with from which I believe this is copied, was on complete. It is anthropologically perfect in pistol and rifle at age six (Times & Directory, exhibit fairly continuously from 1898. every detail, a superb piece of craftsmanship. April 23, 1921). The other was James, who was There is only one other in the world known like living with Mitchell-Hedges in Cape Hatteras in Acquisition History it, which is in the British Museum and it is 1936, according to a newspaper account that The Mitchell-Hedges skull was first acknowledged to be not so fine as this. described him as fighting off an attacking shark publicly known in 1936, when it was published The crystal skull remained with at the age of 13 (New York Times, August in the journal Man after London art dealer Frederick Mitchell-Hedges until his death in 26,1936). Sydney Burney brought it to the British 1959, and with his adopted daughter until her Anna Mitchell-Hedges, née Anne Marie Museum for study. The Burney skull, as it was death in April 2007. Le Guillon, claimed to have personally then called, was photographed, measured, and discovered the crystal skull, while compared with the British Museum “Aztec” Fictionalized History"The Skull of Doom" accompanying her father on an expedition to crystal skull. The British Museum had Frederick Mitchell-Hedges’s letter to his Lubaantun. But the story of when and how she purchased their crystal skull in 1898 from brother about his new acquisition indicates from found the skull varies with the telling, and range Tiffany & Co. in New York City. Tiffany’s had the outset that he was not above embellishing a from discovering it beneath the stones of a purchased the skull more than a decade earlier story, even an already good story. It is collapsed altar atop a pyramid to being lowered from the French antiquarian Eugène Boban, impossible to know where Mitchell-Hedges got down into a cave, beneath or inside a pyramid, who auctioned off his Mexican artifact the “pre-1800 B.C.” date, or his tale of five to retrieve it. These events are detailed in collection in October 1886. George Kunz, vice generations of polishers, but six years later, he various sources as having taken place in 1924, president of Tiffany’s, acted as an intermediary was claiming to have discovered the crystal 1926, 1927, and 1928, in contrast to her father’s between Boban and George Sisson, who skull himself, and not in a London salesroom. version of discovering it somewhere in Central apparently owned the skull for some period On May 31, 1949, Echo, a local Bournemouth America sometime in the 1930s. between 1888 and 1898. In 1898, Mr. Kunz paper, reported the existence of a “Skull with an I recently found a file of letters Anna once again acted as the middleman between evil eye” in his collection: Mitchell-Hedges wrote to Frederick Sisson, Tiffany’s, and the British Museum The remarkable thing about the skull, Dockstader, then director of the Museum of the (Walsh 1997; Sax, Walsh, et al. 2008). confided Mr. Mitchell-Hedges, is that scientists American Indian in New York City, between Burney obtained his crystal skull in are of the opinion that it dates back to 1600 BC 1964 and 1973. This correspondence is housed early 1933, as attested in a letter he wrote on and it was made by at least five generations in the Cultural Resource Center of the Burney Gallery stationary to the director of the working from father to son to shape it out of a Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American Museum of Natural History in block of rock crystal by rubbing it down with the American Indian. Dockstader initially February of that year (AMNH 2/17/1933): sand! Mr. Mitchell-Hedges found it when he led contacted Anna on March 4, 1964, writing, I have just acquired a life-size rock a British expedition to uncover traces of the lost crystal skull with separate jaw, from Mexico, Maya civilization in Central America in the (Continued on Page 31) and I shall be glad to know if it is of interest to 1930s. It had been taken by the High Priest into you or your museum. the depths of the Temple where he concentrated It isn’t known from whom Burney on it and willed Death.” acquired the skull, but either the seller claimed In spinning his yarn, Mitchell-Hedges Dare To Believe, Dare To Be Heard www.xzoneradiotv.com