between the rock and the cold, cold sea

I was going to leave the internets and go to sleep, but my wonky shoulder has chosen this moment to seize up and object to me moving, so in the meanwhile, I write a blog post.

(And how annoying is it that I have a wonky shoulder? Foolish muscles. Foolish strain.)

It has been twelve weeks since the start of term, and a little longer since I started working on my thesis. Between then and this, I have learned:

- French excavation reports and scholarship are much, much easier to read than a graph with the labels in German;

- Isis became popular during the Hellenistic period, but due to lacunae in the archaeological record, it's very hard to trace the processes by which she became popular;

- Sarapis started out as more popular than Isis and ended up, in the Roman period, held in much less wide regard;

- Apuleius' The Golden Ass is on crack;

- the imagery thought to be related to Isis in grave stelae of Athens [E.J. Walters, 1988] may have started out as imagery associated with the royal women of Egypt, not Isis, and only quite late became co-opted into the goddess's iconographic repertoire [S. Ashton, 1999];

- water was associated with Isiac (and Sarapic) ritual, and the river Inopos on Delos may have had some relation, either mythic or ideological, to the Nile;

- we don't actually know much about Isiac cult at Delos or at Athens - we don't even know if there was a cult to Isis in Athens proper before the Roman period: the extant archaeological remains for the sanctuary are Hadrianic in date - or anywhere outside Egypt before the Roman period, because of said lacunae in the historical record;

- due to the Athenian hegemony in Delos after the mid second century BCE, Athens and Delos had very strong connections, and it is only from this point that we have evidence for growth in the cult of Isis and the identification of Isis with Tyche and Nemesis, among others, on Delos;

- reading inscription catalogues in French is hard;

- wow, the aretalogies are on crack and really make much of Isis instituting proper relations between men and women, inventing writing both hieroglyphic and demotic, making laws, having dominion over sea and storm, making things to grow, and instituting cities;

- and if the aretalogies are on crack, the hymns to Isis at the temple of Philae (think Aswan, and go south a bit) are even stranger in their own way

- Roman Isis is a whole different animal to Egyptian Isis, and Hellenistic Isis? Well, if there were a few less lacunae in the archaeological record, it'd be a hell of a lot easier to explain the process of evolution

- post-colonial theory uses many, many long words, and all I want to know about is hybridity and "colonising" religion by co-opting and exporting it, and whether "-isation" is a useful term to use.

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There. And my shoulder complains less, so I go fall over now.

So. "Hug a rock and shake a tree: shamanic bodies in Minoan culture?" was the most fascinating lecture I've attended in a while. I'll put my rambly enthusiasm behind a cut, but, well, damn.

( Read more... )

Also learned this week: what scrofula actually is (ick); and how experimental archaeologists/reenactors make chain mail.

I have come to the conclusion that you could probably dump any ancient historian from youth to middle age back in their period of speciality, and if they didn't die of disease or random violence, they'd probably make out quite okay.

Some of them have the oddest skills.

I've been accepted to the training dig at Silchester for four weeks, starting from June 28. I now have conceived a mad urge to see if I can spend some time afterwards tramping through scenic bits of Britain.

I can't afford that kind of thing. But it's tempting to give it a try.

Done.

Done done done done done done done DONE.

For the term, at least. Now I can take a long weekend to call my ISP and tell them I am changing providers if they don't rectify my home internets situation, enjoy a couple of people-free days, and actually put measures in place to change providers.

(And tell you about this most wonderful last society lecture, which I have just left, involving Bronze Age Aegean weaponry, a research fellow who does experimental archaeology, replica bronze swords, and footage of dead pig dismemberment. It was cool.)

Then I get to essay forth again. But not until Monday evening, at least.

Three things:

1. Remembrance Day.

2. Possible tomb of Sesheshet.

3. And of less global significance, but vitally important to me: it appears my essay-engine isn't entirely broken, since I made a decent quarter of my diasporas essay today*. It's apparently only AWOL when I try to write coherently about the Roman emperor as a military autocrat in the 1st century CE.

Oh, well. They're both due on the same day, so at least this isn't procrastination.

*It's amazing what you can say about the Pentateuch. No, really. Promise and deferment, landlessness and land as inheritance - I'm running with those themes all the way, which is... pretty decent, actually.

( Tuesday. Herakleion. Archaeology Museum. Venetian Fort 'Rocca al Mare'. Town centre. Knossos. )

( Wednesday. Day off with diving. )

( Thursday: the second trip to Kritsa, and the polis of Lato. )

Friday was full of travelling, and the rest you know.

Pictures will follow in a separate post.

Glendalough in the wet spring was... amazing. As always.

Alas, it rained too much to do the serious hiking thing and spend a whole day heading over into the next valley. But I still covered a little bit of ground, so.

I have pictures, some of which may even be pleasant to look upon. The camera ran out of battery juice too soon, though.

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It's definite: I've got my confirmation. I'm going to Crete for definite for six weeks this summer. And probably then thereafter ten days on Santorini.

I'm thrilled. Thrilled!

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But now, I get two hours of goofing off before commencing to essay. Two hours. Perhaps I'll take a nap...