No, unfortunately this ancient Greek relief doesn’t show a woman chilling out on her laptop. However, the Internet has once again thrown up a crazy theory about this innocent marble sculpture.
YouTuber StillSpeakingOut released a video over a year ago that has recently come back to the Internet’s attention, saying that the relief could potentially show a laptop-like device – complete with two USB ports – which allowed the ancients to communicate with higher beings.
In the video, below, StillSpeakingOut says, “I am not saying that this is depicting an ancient laptop computer.
“...but I can't help but think that Erich Von Daniken has been right all this time and most of these myths about magical artifacts given by the gods by a very restricted group of individuals in ancient civilizations were high tech devices similar to what we have available today.”
The video goes onto suggest that there is a link between the ancient civilisation and modern computer technology, citing the tech company “Oracle” and the programming language “Delphi," both of which have Greek-inspired names.
However, it’s obviously very doubtful the ancient Greek woman would have been able to retweet Zeus from this thing.
The marble relief, called “Grave Naiskos of an Enthroned Woman with an Attendant,” is currently on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California. Their curators describe the scene as “a woman reaches out to touch the lid of a shallow chest held by a servant girl.” They also note that the woman depicted is preparing for a funeral (no time to be procrastinating on the Internet), so it’s most likely this is jewelry box.
As for those odd little “USB port holes,” Forbes explained that there are a few explanations. It wasn’t uncommon for ancient Greek reliefs to have holes like this to hold extensions of a different material. Alternatively, it could show that there’s been some reworking on the piece
Although the exact origin and date is unknown – as is often the way with ancient history – the museum believe it’s from Delos and dates from around 100 BCE, making it over 2100 years old.
