JGolomb
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Posts posted by JGolomb
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Don't like to say this, but I'm finding myself skimming over or skipping altogether paragraphs in Eagles Prey when the short swords come out. Guess you just have to be into that sort of thing. Anyway, so far the book is holding my interest. Maximius is not all he seems to be, me thinks. Also, in this book they briefly (so far) mention the Ninth Legion; what year did the disappearance of the Ninth occur? After reading Sutcliff's novels I should know this!
Crispina - 117AD is when the Ninth disappeared, and that legion was part of Claudius' invasions of Britain. For a nifty little review of Sutcliff's novel, I'd like to point you here: The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff
And I know what you mean about the battle scenes. I actually enjoy the action...you know, kind of just letting yourself go and enjoying for the sake of itself. But those scenes become a bit repetitive. I'm not sure how unique the descriptions can be when they occur so frequently...over and over and over again. I think that's one of the reasons the first two books were particularly strong (because the battles are "new"), and why "When the Eagle Hunts" was fun (because the battles were more unique than the typical roman set-piece battles).
The characters WITHIN the battles, and drama and intrigue BETWEEN the battles, is what makes the books enjoyable.
J
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I've lived in Venice for a while, and it is in fact quite alive. It takes some time to notice, and a lot more time to get accepted, but it is all there.
The tourists can be annoying but they quickly become background noise. As I understood the sinking was primarily caused by the heavy industry in Marghera drawing water from underneath the city. A rising sea level, of course, doesn't help.
Mal - Do you work in Venice itself or do you commute to the mainland? I'm curious about the patterns of one's existence in such a unique place.
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True, however the point is try to find out which historical event (assuming there was one) influenced Plato in his description of the destruction of Atlantis. We do not have evidence that there were in those days folktales about Tera's eruption; on the other side, there was plenty of knowledge about Tera's destruction. So, based on available evidence,I would say that it was Helike's destruction that influenced Plato's description.
Callaecus - this is interesting. I'd not heard of this prior to your post.
How big (in territory and population) was Helike?
J
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Lost Pictish Throne Brought to Life by National Museum of Scotland Team
Scottish history lovers can get a unique view of their country's heritage at the National Museum of Scotland (NMS) - a team of experts has rebuilt a Pictish throne. The wooden giant was created by master furniture maker Adrian McCurdy, who took his lines from ancient stone carvings. Picts ruled Scotland north of the Firth of Clyde from the 4th to 9th century AD. But they are best known for their mysterious rock art, which still baffles experts today.The throne was commissioned by the museum alongside distillers Glenmorangie. It will go on display next Tuesday (December 1st) at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre, before moving to the Glenmorangie Distillery in Tain, Ross-shire, next year. It will visit a number of locations across the country thereafter. A new book exploring Scotland's ancient past will be published in a book to be published in 2011.
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Happy BDay, K!
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Picked up "The Eagle's Prey" this morning at the library, number 5 in the series. Will begin reading it tonight!
Crispina - I finished "Wolves" right before the long weekend. Good story, but not great. Though I felt this book did a lot for the character development of Cato and Macro. I've got the next one on order. How do you like it so far?
I started reading Manfredi's "The Last Legion" which, so far, focuses on the last Western Emperor - Romulus Augustus. From reading the historical notes (the book is fiction), it appears the author's going to tie this into Arthurian legend in Britain.
So far, though, not as strong as Scarrow.
J
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Thanks for the image JG.
Who in the world would write a death certificate/note in that manner, letters in all possible directions?
Why would you think that's abnormal? Seems perfectly logical to write all scribble-scrabbly and multi-directional.
:-)
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Here's a picture and, um, translation of the words burned into the shroud:
Big Pic: Close-Up of Latest Shroud of Turin Claim
Nov. 24, 2009 -- The latest claim by Vatican researcher Barbara Frale that faint writing on the Shroud of Turin proves it was the burial cloth of Jesus has roots which date back 30 years.The first person who said to have seen faint letters on the controversial linen was the Italian Piero Ugolotti in 1979. Using digital image processing, he reported the existence of Greek and Latin letters written near the face.
Ugolotti's findings were further studied in 1997 by the late Andre Marion, director of the Institut d'Optique Theorique et Appliquee d'Orsay, France and his student Anne Laure Courage.
"My research begins where that of the French researchers ends," Frale, a researcher in the Vatican secret archives, told Discovery News. "Marion and Courage were not paleographists [experts in ancient scripts] and could not make much sense out of those words."
According to Frale, who has published her findings in the book La Sindone di Gesu Nazareno ("The Shroud of Jesus of Nazareth"), the letters scattered on the shroud are basically the burial certificate of a man named "Yeshua Nazarani."
"At the time of Christ in a Roman colony such as Palestine, Jewish burial practices established that a body buried after a death sentence could only be returned to the family after been purified for a year in a common grave," Frale said. A death certificate stuck to the cloth around the face was thus necessary for later retrieval of the corpse.
As with a puzzle, Frale reconstructed the death certificate by deciphering fragments of Greek, Hebrew and Latin writing. These could be explained with the polyglot nature of Greek-speaking Jews in a Roman colony, according to Frale.
Here is her interpretation of the letters appearing in Marion's image above:
1. (I)esou(s) "Jesus"
2. Nnazarennos "Nazarene"
3. (o)pse kia(tho) "taken down in the early evening"
4. in nece(m) "to death"
5. pez(o) "I execute"
There are apparently more letters on the linen, such as the word "iber," which Frale identified as referring to Emperor Tiberius, who reigned at the time of Jesus' crucifixion.
Piecing together the ancient multilingual puzzle, Frale came to this final reconstruction:
"In the year 16 of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, Jesus the Nazarene, taken down in the early evening after having been condemned to death by a Roman judge because he was found guilty by a Hebrew authority, is hereby sent for burial with the obligation of being consigned to his family only after one full year."
The certificate ends with a sort of signature: "I execute".
Shroud skeptics already dismissed Marion and Courage's claim when it was presented at a conference in 1997. They argued that the existence of the letters wasn't proven and even if real, those letters did not make enough grammatical sense.
Meanwhile, a harsh debate has opened up over Frale's theory.
"There is no evidence that those letters do exist. Many have seen faint writings on the cloth. Rather than a shroud it looks like an encyclopedia," Bruno Barberis, director of the International Center for Shroud Studies of Turin, told Avvenire, a daily Catholic newspaper.
Image: Courtesy of Barbara Frale, from her book "La Sindone di Gesu Nazareno," published by Il Mulino.
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Light Up! Light Up! Hadrian's Wall to get Spectacular Light Show
Any UNRVers planning to attend, should definitely bring a camera. Sounds like some pretty cool eye candy.
Hadrian -
JGolomb, have you had a chance to read "The Eagle and The Wolves" yet? I just finished it the other night and the one thing I'll take away after reading it is: "GO! Leave the heads and go!"
Let me know what you thought of it. I waiting on the fifth, "The Eagle's Prey", to come as an inter-library loan, as my library only has the first two books in the series.
Crispina - I think you're psychic. I just started "Wolves" two days ago. Just got past the first battle with the Atrebatan auxiliaries. And yes, the Boars and Wolves need to seriously get the whole head-thing under control. LOL
So far I like it. I think it's a pretty strong beginning.
How does it compare to the others?
Jason
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Why? For combating looting?
Fine to combat contemporary examples of looting, when both sides are agreed it was "looting".
Not fine when Egypt or some other place unilaterally stretches the definition, then intimidates museums to accept it's terms or else face a cutoff of cherished activities. For a counter example, there is a reason for the legal concept of statute of limitation time periods. Things happened before under different mutual assumptions and with legal entities that don't exist anymore and can't be reconstructed correctly by contemporaries.
Western guardians of museum collections may be too happy to give lots away anyway, for that halo of political correctness. What suffers are museum goers (and taxpayers who probably fund their museums and have contributed to recent 28 billion $ foreign aid to Egypt).
Caesar - I'm guessing you wouldn't want this for Christmas?
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Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor
All - I work at National Geographic in downtown Washington, DC. Our museum is the last stop on a tour of the Terra Cotta Warriors from Xian, China. I've not seen the exhibit yet (incredible security has locked the place down) but will be attending next weekend. If anyone from UNRV plans to attend the show, please let me know so we can meet up.
The link above is a review from the Washington Post. The official website is below. Word of mouth says it's an incredible display...the largest exhibit that National Geographic has hosted.
Buried for more than 2,000 years until their accidental discovery by Chinese farmers in 1974, the world-famous terra cotta warriors -- a life-size militia of about 7,000 clay figures created to protect China's first emperor in the afterlife -- have arrived in Washington. Well, 15 of the 1,000 or so that have been unearthed, along with more than 100 related artifacts from the grave site of Qin Shihuangdi (259-210 B.C.) in Shaanxi province.On view through March 31 at the National Geographic Museum, the last stop on a four-city U.S. tour, "Terra Cotta Warriors: Guardians of China's First Emperor" is the first time this many of the figures have traveled to the States. What's more, according to museum director Susan Norton, museum-goers here will be able to get within a few feet of the warriors, far closer than even at the original archeological site, where visitors look down on the burial pits from a distance.
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I'm already making plans to see this exhibit when it comes to New York City's Discovery Times Square Exposition in April.
btw, I thought the recent "Lucy's Legacy" exhibit at DTSX was a bit of a disappointment. It was, like, nine-tenths propaganda for Ethiopia's tourism (?) industry, or whatever, before you even got to the actual exhibit on Lucy and her evolutionary relatives. Honestly, I had little to zero interest in learning about King Haile Selassie's connection to the Rastafarians.
The Titanic exhibit (which ran concurrently with the Lucy exhibit at DTSX) received far more visitors -- even after DTSX halved the price of the tickets for the Lucy exhibit. I think a number of people were put off by the Ethiopian government's annoying pushing of "What a Wonderful Nation We Have in Ethiopia!"
I sure hope the Tut exhibit doesn't turn out to be the same thing with Egypt.
-- Nephele
Neph - if it's the same set up as I saw in Philly, don't worry. Aside from the giant gift shop with...wait for it - Zahi Hawass-branded clothing, including his signature Fadora...it was top notch.
J
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Elaborate measures keep Tut collection safe
Interesting feature on some of the security measures surrounding the 5-year North American tour of artifacts of King Tut. If you have the chance to see it, I highly recommend a visit. I hit the show in Philadelphia about two years ago and it's breathtaking.
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Virtual Roman Leicester: A Digital Recreation of 'Ratae Corieltauvorum' 210AD
Pretty cool technological advances make for niiiiice eye candy. Link above includes a video of the digital recreation.
Using a skill known as architectural forensics, and working with archaeologists from the University of Leicester, Dr Douglas Cawthorne and Researcher Assistant George Watson have brought to 3D life, buildings known to have existed in the city, the first tage of the 'Virtual Roman Leicester' project.Dr Cawthorne said: "This project seeks to digitally recreate Roman Leicester (Ratae Corieltauvorum). The first stage, currently underway, is creating highly accurate digital models of the known buildings and artefacts."
He adds: "This will lead on to populating the town with virtual 'Romans'. These characters will be programmed with all the social, cultural and environmental factors that would have influenced the lives of the actual people of the period (roughly 1st to 4th centuries AD). A game-like element will give users the opportunity to enter virtual Roman Leicester to observe, trade and interact."
Virtual Roman Leicester is not only a user interactive exploratory environment but also demonstrates the recreation of long vanished buildings from very minimal archaeological evidence using a technique Dr Cawthorne has described as 'Architectural Forensics'. The technique has suggested new interpretations of the means of construction, the history and use of the Roman buildings and has also indicated potential areas for further investigation.
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This is an excellent review, though I'll skip the book itself since it's not my area of interest.
I agree with the central premise that the Italian conquests were the critical first juncture, though I was not aware that was ever in dispute. Maybe it's just for the general public who perhaps cannot name any other Roman campaigns aside from Caesar's ...?
Ursus - Yes, you've hit the nail on the head. The statement above is introductory rather than addressing a point of dispute.
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Here is a nice Map on the expected effect on Venice of the sea level rise from the ongoing global warming.
Hm. Doesn't bode well for the little city, eh?
I think that global warming would have a far more disastrous effect than wealthy tourists...
J
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Hawass should be boycotted by all archeologists, and all escavation funding frozen. What may have started as revenge for a Unesco appointment has turned into an escalating shakedown of western museums because they have been so spinelessly aquiescent. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/science/17tier.html?_r=1
Here's a pretty good editorial on Dr. Hawass and his latest drama. Some clips and thoughts below.
Is Repatriation Good for Archaeology? Zahi Hawass' Quest for Egypt's Antiquities
"We own that stone, the motherland should own this," Dr Hawass told an Al-Jazeera audience two years ago, referring of course to the Rosetta Stone that now takes pride of place in the British Museum. Dr Hawass lists a top five "objects that Egypt, the homeland of the pharaohs, does not have": The Rosetta Stone and Nefertiti's bust; the Dendera Zodiac in the Louvre; the Statue of Hemiunu (the architect of the Great Pyramid) in Hildesheim Museum and the Bust of Ankhhaf (architect of Khafre's Pyramid) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Dr Hawass can rant and rave about his 'famous five' 'til the cows come home. But what power does he really wield?museums are beginning to fear the 'Zahi Effect'. Two years ago Dr Hawass started an offensive against the St Louis Art Museum for their purchase of the mask of Ka-Nefer-Nefer. When the museum refused to back down, Dr Hawass lauched a media war, and even distributed leaflets to the city's schools telling them not to visit the artefact. This July saw the SCA suspend the Louvre's research at Saqqara over its alleged theft of tomb fragments from Thebes. The fragments were hastily handed back and work duly resumed. New York's Metropolitan Museum went one step further last October, buying an ancient shrine fragment solely to send it back to Egypt. Dr Hawass' position is clear: "If any museum will not co-operate with us, if any museum will not be fair with us, what we should do is stop any scientific operation (with) this museum. -
Reaching meltdown? Venice is absolutely terrible already and I'm actually surprised that it has't already sunk under the weight of all the tourists.
I was in Venice in late June of this year and didn't find the crowds out of control at all. I think we may have beaten the serious tourist rush by a few weeks and it's possible that the down economy kept tourism down overall in Europe.
I also felt like I saw a solid number of folks who appeared to be full time residents - parents with kids carrying their bikes over canal bridges, kids knocking around a soccer ball, etc. The city felt very genuine to me, not all that different than any large US city with tons of tourists and tourist trappings.
J
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Wales online report the discovery of arcaheological evidence for a Roman villa in mid-Wales an area long believed to have primarily been a military area rather than civilian. I would like ot have seen the magnetometry result but from the description it does sound like a form of building which is often described as a 'villa' even if in some instances the actual function is not always as clearly defined as agricultureal or even civilian.
Here's another story and a video...but the video is only available to folks in the UK.
J
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Roman military sites investigated
A team from Historic Scotland is seeking to identify significant remains which do not have scheduled monument status.It will also update information on scheduled sites following new research.
Romans launched campaigns in Scotland during the late 1st, mid-2nd and early 3rd centuries.
Historic Scotland said Roman literature also had accounts of a campaign deep into Scotland in the 4th Century to crush Caledonian tribes but it has not been possible to identify archaeological remains from that operation.
The public body said while Scotland was never permanently occupied the country has more camps than any other part of Britain or Europe. Forts were also built.
Key sites include Kintore near Aberdeen and Pathhead and Inveresk in Lothian.
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Tourism in Venice is Reaching Meltdown
Here's a terrific video of John Julius Norwich, famed historian, discussing how Venice is rapidly becoming a rich man's Disneyland. He touches on some other things as well, and the video includes some nice Venetian photography.
Is Venice doomed to become nothing more than a shell of glories past? Lord Norwich is skeptical: "In another 20 or 30 years it will actually be the thinking man's Disneyland, a millionaire's playground," he says. "There won't be any people there: it will just be a museum city." Rising tides may yet claim Venice, but unless she gets help soon the city as we know her will have long since disappeared. -
"Shangri-La" Caves Yield Treasures, Skeletons
This research has been going on for a few years now...looks like the press announcements time nicely with the National Geographic-produced special. :-)
A treasure trove of Tibetan art and manuscripts uncovered in "sky high" Himalayan caves could be linked to the storybook paradise of Shangri-La, says the team that made the discovery.The 15th-century religious texts and wall paintings were found in caves carved into sheer cliffs in the ancient kingdom of Mustang
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Western Wall Heritage Center a threat to Jerusalem's Roman History?
One of Israel's leading archaeologists has publicly condemned the Israel Antiquities Authority's failure to object to a plan to construct a part of the Western Wall Heritage Center over a site where a well-preserved ancient Roman road was recently excavated. The construction area has been designated for religious purposes since Israel took control of the Western Wall in 1967. The building would include a 4,800-square meter, three-story museum and educational institute that would display the Roman road on the ground floor, but Yoram Tsafir told Haaretz.com even the most amazing architect will not be able to avoid damaging the find and visitors need to be able to see the entire road - not just a fragment - to appreciate it.The street known as the Eastern Cardo or the Valley Cardo appears on the Madaba Map - dated to 565Ad one of the oldest detailed cartographic documents in the world - and began at the Damascus Gate in the north and led south, running the lenght of the channel in the Tyropoeon Valley. Excavated in 2007, the colonnaded street was paved with large flagstones that were set in place diagonally, in the customary method of the Roman world, which was probably meant to prevent wagons from slipping. A drainage system was installed below the flagstones.
Simon Scarrow
in Libri
Posted
Artimi - Good point! I think the translator was Manfredi's wife (or maybe sister...or mother...same last names at any rate). I wondered about the very same thing through the first 25 pages or so...the dialogue was rather melodramatic. However,the dialogue is becoming more comfortable as the book progresses.
There's virtually little hope for a movie to be equal to its book. There's such depth and detail that a book can provide that's near impossible for a movie to match due to obvious limitations in time and often scope. An obvious exception is the Lord of the Rings film trilogy which I really enjoyed. That being said, I've not read the books...but I'd heard from fans that the movies were strong partners to the books.
I watched Angels and Demons over the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed the movie. It didn't hurt that it was based in Rome, mind you. I read the book a few years ago, so couldn't recall every detail, however I thought Ron Howard and the writers did a nice job choosing which parts of the plot to remove or modify in order to work in the film version.
J