Nice piece over at Religion Dispatches on Iconoclasm in the history of Christianity, and what this tells us about the destruction of art(efacts) in Syria and Iraq today.

hard to look at

http://eca.state.gov/cultural-heritage-center/syria-cultural-heritage-initiative/imagery-archaeological-site-looting

Even Strabo visited! I wonder if they played this song for the pilgrims as the sacrificial bulls suffocated under the putrid, noxious fumes of HELL ( Read more... )

the programme for archaeology in Iraq.

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/11/ancient-iraq-revealed/

A friend here who is a Semiticist jokes that when the Romans had plumbing and the Egyptians had pyramids, the Danes had mounds of mud and rocks. Apparently they also offed their own soldiers, lol ( Read more... )

he acknowledges that after the Baghdad looting in 2003, and watching the protests in Tunisia last week, there was no contingency plan in place. The Supreme Council for Antiquities really was unprepared. Hawass' account (w/a brief analysis by UChi lit. prof. Larry Rothfield ( Read more... )

funniest Onion piece I've seen in ages

http://www.theonion.com/articles/archaeologists-unearth-lousiest-civilization-ever,18049/

( Food. Sleep. Art. Plato. )

wa salaam, Egypt
( finishing work at the site. Bye to Anaphora. Last 2 days in Cairo. Jokes. )

spent the morning at the PYRAMIDS today which was pretty fantastic. whole entry on that later.

got a backlog of pics...

Me and the oven I've been excavating on site May 31. I took 12 gallons of medieval ash off this guy and so am a bit of a pigpen. :)

( Read more... )