Tonight I went to a lecture at the Penn Museum on the Roman Theater at Corinth. The lecturer, Charles Williams, was clearly incredibly knowledgeable and intelligent--he used to direct the excavations at Corinth and is leading another dig there this spring--and he seemed really nice and funny. Sadly, he wasn't the best public speaker in the world ( Read more... )

Yesterday K and I took a long lunch to go to a lecture at the Penn Museum! The lunchtime lectures are 12:30-1:30 this year, as opposed to 12-1 like it was last year. K and I planned ahead and left the office by 11:45 and arrived at the Museum around 12:20--unlike at the two events last spring, we were so not late, we were actually early! We got ( Read more... )

Last night K and I went to the Penn Museum to attend ( Read more... )

This is my absolute new favorite thing: a beautiful song, puppets, archaeology, and mummies, all together! You should all go watch it immediately!

Today K and I went to a lecture at the Penn Museum! The subject was "Recent Fieldwork: Troy, Gordion & the Granicus River Valley", and not much other info was offered on the website, but it was free and at lunchtime so we went. It turns out that C. Brian Rose (Deputy Director, Curator-in-Charge of the Mediterranean Section at the University of ( Read more... )

This is exciting!

Full title: The Portland Vase: The Extraordinary Odyssey of a Mysterious Roman Treasure. It's sort of a pop archaeology book; Brooks is described on the cover flap as "an actor and author"--he's not an expert in the field. It's well researched, though, with an extensive bibliography, and it's decently written. Brooks describes the (possibly ( Read more... )

I absolutely adore this poem. Fritz sent it to me, proving that he knows me very, very well. I especially love how peaceful the speaker is. It's beautiful.

-----

Mummy of a Lady Named Jemutesonekh XXI Dynastyby Thomas James ( Read more... )

Full title: The Keys of Egypt: The Obsession to Decipher Egyptian Hieroglyphs. Nonfiction; another great library find. Starting with Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, this book describes how the ancient Egyptian civilization was rediscovered and how hieroglyphs came to be deciphered. The Rosetta Stone had a lot less to do with it than we were all ( Read more... )

I liked his other book (The Rape of the Nile) better, but this one was okay. About how archaeologists use technology to find out things about the past, and all kinds of scientists are needed in order to gather information. There were some sections that I thought were really interesting, but other sections about the plant life and climate of ( Read more... )