Can be found at: http://www.virtualsecrets.com/

Rationale: There are multiple reasons why I chose to review this website: a google search will never tell you the quality of a website that comes up, and this site is likely to come up in a google search. What initially brought it to my attention was that a couple of the translation tools were linked to by the Explorator newsletter.

Examination: The visual design of this website is fine, and the designer avoided 90s-esque clashing colours. However, one of the most important things for a website is at first completely absent- any visible explanation of what the site is for. It turns out this information is contained in the About page, and for anyone looking at the page as they’re reading this is found in the bottom right hand corner attached to a really small button. The fact that the website information is so hard to find is discouraging, especially for someone looking for context like a historian. The stated goal of the website, according to the designer, is as follows: “This site was put together to make available those things that I discover, complete with learning tools where possible.” Essentially, the goal of the website is to contain knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and to educate readers if possible. I think this is a good and noble idea, but the thing with educating people is that you really need to be at least somewhat familiar with the area that you’re posting about, and this is the central problem of the website.

The relevant historical sections are found in the Languages tab on the main page, which contains 4 articles; Sumerian, Babylonian/Assyrian, Egyptian and Ogham are discussed variously. Each article begins with a series of links to external resources, and a translation tool, after which follows contextual information about each culture. The external links for the Sumerian and Babylonian/Assyrian articles are identical, and only one of the four links is actually properly relevant. Given that I can immediately find many easily accessible online resources for these cultures, this smacks of laziness.

For anyone who is familiar with Ancient Ireland, or the Sumerians, or the Ancient Near East, or Egyptology, you will find not only a catalogue of mistakes but a lot of complete nonsense. I am very familiar with the Assyrians and Babylonians, and can point out dozens of problems with that particular article. But doing so would take up an entire review, and instead what I will do is look at the problems with the methodology of the four articles in general, so any specific mistake I bring up will be to illustrate a particular problem the articles have.

One of the primary ways of telling the quality of historical analysis is to look at the sources used by the analyst, and in this case the choice of sources is extremely poor. Given that the site has been written at least in the 2000s, and possibly the 2010s the use of sources from 1930 is bizarre and from the 1880s jaw dropping. The Sumerian and Assyrian/Babylonian articles barely list sources younger than 60 years old. The Egyptian article wins the prize for the oldest source I’ve seen used in a very long time; a book from 1849; Elementary Notices of the Antiquity of the Egyptians by T.H.Rigbye. The source is so obscure that the 4th highest hit on google for the title actually comes from this website. The Ogham article is less affected by this than the others, but instead he only uses four total sources, and two almost exclusively.

For those unfamiliar with how history tends to be practised, there are two bands of evidence that we tend to use; primary material, which is archaeological evidence, ancient literature, and other evidence taken from the period in question; the other category is secondary analysis, which is the work of modern scholars about the period in question. In the case of primary material, you want it to date to the time in question if possible, but you want secondary analysis to be as recent as possible. The reason why is because despite its image, history moves very quickly. History written before 1950, and in many cases afterwards, is simply outdated and can no longer properly educate people in the way they were intended. New evidence is uncovered frequently, but just as importantly how history thinks of itself has changed, often drastically. The further back you go, the more issues arise- whilst biases are eternal, the self awareness of bias goes a long way to mitigating the issue, and the really old works in particular have no awareness of their own prejudices.

In addition to the poor source material, the analysis of the sources in the actual text is poor. The layout of each page is completely haphazard, with no attempt to go through the cultures chronologically or by topic. The author has simply taken notes from each book and put them on the page one book after another. The best way of using multiple sources is to layer them together, to help create a coherent picture and to contrast them against one another. Instead, these articles contradict each other constantly- in the Assyrian/Babylonian article, the author says “Babylonia is believed to be the oldest civilized country in Asia and was the center from which civilization spread into Assyria, to Asia Minor and Phoenicia and from those to Greece, Rome and what we know of as modern Europe”, whereas in the Sumerian article he says that “Menes (Manj of Egyptian legend) (Manis of Mesopotamia) (Min or Minos of Greek legend) erected Egypt into an independant kingdom and preserved its independence within the Mesopotamian empire when he succeeded to the throne after his father's death; Menes was the prince of Sumeria and governor of the Sumerian Indus Valley. Menes annexed and civilized Crete and extended his rule to the Pillars of Hercules and Britain.” The author never distinguishes been mythological sources and actual historical information that we know. Likewise, he also never challenges the sources or questions them. He also states many of the opinions of the scholars as being fact- given how quickly opinions can be outdated, historical authors are prudent indeed if they are cautious and no such prudence is being displayed here. This catalogue of errors is the reason why these articles are so poor.

There is one quote in particular that is a demonstration of everything that is wrong with these articles, reproduced here. “While it is believed that the Sumerians settled what we know of as Ancient Mesopotamia after coming from the hilly country of the East, the study of their skeletal remains shows that they were not Oriental (as one would surmise) but rather caucasian Indo-European.” Oh boy. First of all, there's a weasel phrase ‘It is believed’, believed by whom? Who would surmise? Next, this information is coming out of a book from 1929- at this stage, scientific archaeology was still in its teething stages, and still not the discipline we would recognise today. Surely there are far more recent books on Ur given its importance in Mesopotamian history? What do the the terms ‘oriental’ and ‘caucasian Indo-European’ mean in this context? In addition to not explaining these terms, it’s clear that he is just parroting the text with no knowledge of historical terminology- in linguistics and anthropology, ‘Indo-European’ means something different to what it meant in 1929, and mostly refers to a linguistic grouping rather than anything genetic. Oriental is such a loaded term that in history it is used very rarely, and mostly when translated from French where the term ‘Orient’ retains a more impartial tone referring to anything eastern. And it’s time to let the biggest cat out of the bag; by modern standards this analysis is racist and inherently flawed. There’s far more useful information to get out of a skeleton than whether it has a skeletal structure resembling a white European.

The author clearly has a lot of qualifications in technology, and for the sake of this review let’s assume that these claims are honest. He does not however claim to have any knowledge of history, or archaeology, on any formal level. This is clear from the complete lack of understanding of how historical analysis is conducted. Now, since he isn’t claiming to be an academic, aren’t I being unfair at shredding these four pages on a personal website? I don’t think so, because the purpose of the website is clearly stated as being to educate readers, and if information displayed on it is highly flawed and inaccurate then it is actually doing the opposite. I said earlier that I applaud the thinking behind the website, and I still do, but at the risk of sounding patronising attempting to educate people about a discipline that you don’t understand at all is never going to work.

Summation: Well intentioned but extremely poor in quality and accuracy, avoid.