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mousetrapplingBooks
Fiction: Still reading "Executive Orders", Tom Clancy. Less time to read this week so haven't made much progress.
Non-fiction: Started "1177BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed", Eric H. Cline. We bought this after seeing a video of a talk Cline gave on the subject & finding it interesting. In the book he's looking at the causes of the simultaneous decline of the major Bronze Age civilisations in the Mediterranean & Middle East around about 1177 BCE. So far I've read the Prologue (where he describes the events he's interested in) and Chapter 1 (where he goes back to the 15th Century BCE to start setting the scene).
Hidden Meanings: 7.3.9 - 7.14 - still reading about motifs for longevity, which include things like chrysanthemums and cranes.
Listening
Podcasts: ep 4.14-4.B of History of India - he's finished the narrative episodes associated with Harsha & is now examining other aspects of that period of Indian history. I've caught up to date with this one now.
ep 103-107 of History of English - looking at how Middle English continued to evolve in the 13th Century, including all the prefixes & suffixes that were beginning to take over from older English ones, and how book production & selling were changing in this period (and words entering the language from that).
Sunday podcast: ep 3-4 of Living With the Gods - water and light, respectively.
Music: While running I listened to Porcupine Tree's "Deadwing", Bon Jovi's "Cross Road", Guns'n'Roses "Appetite for Destruction", INXS "X", Scissor Sisters "Ta Dah", The Beach Boys "Greatest Hits", 10CC "10CC" and Various "Dreamboats & Petticoats CD1".
Talks
Glanville Lecture Study Day: Religion in the Ancient World, which had 6 talks:
"Egyptian Concepts of Cosmogony and the origin of philosophy" Jan Assmann - Egyptian notions of creation of the world involve continuance with the pre-existing situation, with no conflict or violence - that comes later with the creation of rulership.
"Gaming with Death" John Tait - an overview of the game of Senet.
"Antinous and Death in the Nile" Tim Whitmarsh - examining the text of a poem about Antinous and Hadrian going on a lion hunt, written shortly after Antinous has died & is deified.
"Communicating with the Gods: Liver Divination in Ancient Mesopotamia" Selena Wisnom - overview of what the liver omens are, how we know about them and how they were performed. I've been translating some as part of my Akkadian homework and it was very interesting to get an overview of what these texts were all about.
"Egyptian Afterlife Texts and Ancient Christian Apocrypha" Simon Gathercole - how ideas from the Egyptian Book of the Dead (and other texts) carried on into the Christian texts written in Egypt.
"Demons in Late Antiquity" Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe - an overview of texts relating to demons from roughly the 1st Millennium CE. Covering both Christian and not, and both practical and theoretical.
Glanville Lecture: "The Book of Exodus and the Invention of Religion" Jan Assmann - basic idea is that he sees a qualitative difference between the Abrahamic religions and the older religions and sees the Book of Exodus as pivotal in the change of emphasis. Before religions were religions of cult and weren't something that required belief, they just were. And Judaism (and subsequent) are religions of covenant and require belief, and are something to which you can convert (and set up a dichotomy between those who believe and are thus right/good and those who do not who are thus other/bad). Assmann manages to pack an awful lot of "idea" into a small space, I haven't yet gone through my notes properly to unpack it in my head.
Watching
ep 6 of The Vietnam War - the failed Viet Cong attacks of 1968, plus the assassinations of both Martin Luther King & Robert Kennedy.
ep 3 of Nigel Slater's Middle East - this week Nigel Slater enthused about Iran and its cuisine. Again he stuck to mostly the rural food. We enjoyed this series, lots of interesting looking food.
ep 2 of Art, Power & Passion - the influence on the Royal Collection of Charles II and of George III.
ep 2 of Hits, Hype & Hustle - live shows & how their importance has waxed & waned over the decades. Included some footage from before the U2 gig that we were actually at last year (tho no signs of us, would've been rather unexpected given how many people were there).
The First Brit: The 10,000 Year Old Man - rather disappointing programme about the recent reconstruction of the face of Cheddar Man, plus a genetic analysis of him. The material was interesting, but the decision to present it as an unfolding narrative was the wrong one I think. It resulted in a shallow programme trying to build up suspense and drama at the expense of actually showing us the results in any depth.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-01 20:30 (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-05 13:39 (UTC)