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| Nabonidus: Moon, Sun and Venus. |
It would be the inner pattern of The Sanctuary...so I don't want to be accused of plagiarism if I copy and paste my own words from my own blog and someone checks the Internet and says, "You copied those words from a blog!"
Another word problem: I'm going to have to start using words such as materiality and virtuality.
Those words really do make my heart sink.
I see no need what so ever to add ity to a word.
Even actuality gets on my nerves now.
Meanwhile the costiality of a GCE is horrendous!
This morning I was on the vergiality of asking for my course fees back.
It isn't the course I find too expensive.
It is the exam fees.
£150 per exam = £600.
So why come in from the cold, why submit myself to a world in which Nabonidus is described as 'The first archaeologist'?
Simply digging something up does not make an archaeologist?
But he recorded digging it up!
OK, but there is a crucial difference between Nabonidus and modern archaelogists: Nabonidus acted in accord with the tradition of the people whose structure he was disassembling!
The original intentions, the offerings and prayers and possibly curses too- would have been disregarded by Nabonides if he had been an archaeologist.
Sounds harsh but archaeologists don't always take what we tend to dismiss as the mythology of a culture, especially the mythology associated with a site, seriously enough. Hard to do in Britain, but not so hard in Egypt...or Mesopotamia.
Basically Nabonidus was told in a dream that he should restore three temples. In doing so he got his work team to dig out the foundations. When they reached the foundation stone Nabonidus treated it with respect; anointing it with oil and wine, jewels and gold...and then adding his own foundation cylinder...that's what you did in those days!
If he had been the first archaeologist he would have put the foundation stone in a glass cabinet, with other foundation stones (arranged in chronological order of course). Got someone to write details of where the stone was found and briefly what the inscription says...and there it would remain.
Safe and pretty and basically dead.
Students would come to see it
Visitors would pass by....
He could write a paper or two.
Bet it would have been preferable to being ousted by Cyrus the Great though...
But me, why am I doing this?
I'm not sure.
Something about being able to speak the language?
Which means that I'm going to have to get over my ity problem pretty soon.
