ARTS David Kirkness, an enterprising woodworker on the remote Orkney Islands, made thousands of humble chairs that have become prized artifacts.
But in 1879 it was unearthed by diggers on an expedition to Iraq sponsored by the British Museum, and became one of the museum's most prized artifacts.
After a few minutes' discussion, he arranged to meet the foreigners today and show them a small sampling of his cuneiform tablets and other prized artifacts.
Five fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some of the Museum of the Bible's most prized artifacts, were exposed as fakes on Monday and pulled from displays.
The Mother of Modern Witchcraft's Prized Artifacts Go on Display.
But the prize artifact of the past is Mrs. Brennan herself, who has been principal of the school for 48 years, longer than most of her teachers have been alive — longer, experts believe, than any other principal in the country.
Near the end of the exhibition in Hoboken is its prize artifact: one of the narrow electric cars that used to carry police officers along the catwalk that borders the roadway in the Holland Tunnel.
For me, it slots neatly alongside such prized cultural artifacts as "Game of Thrones" and Dungeons & Dragons: at first, it requires some intellectual acrobatics to enjoy, but its pleasures are deep, weird, and pure.
In fact, the xkcd story previews the much more likely future of books in which they are prized as artifacts, not as mechanisms for delivering written material to readers.
Many of his prize artifacts turned out later to have been knapped by his quarrymen, who were only too happy to con their employer out of a few francs.
An exhibition of prized and quotidian artifacts from Dura-Europos, "Edge of Empires: Pagans, Jews, and Christians at Roman Dura-Europos," is on view through Jan . 8at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World.
