From My Fantasy Writing Desk
Happy Thanksgiving. I hope you’re enjoying good food, family, and friends. Around here, we’ve cooked the usual copious abundance of delicious food and are still enjoying the leftovers.
I’m taking a short break from writing while hanging out with my visiting family. I am looking forward to digging back in afterwards. My critique group examined my opening chapters and gave me good feedback. I think I’ve got a reasonable sense of how this new novel will shape up in the first section.
Archaeology I Enjoyed:
Mummies and Statuettes
The Egyptian Council of Antiquities revealed a host of finds from excavations in the Saqqara necropolis. The objects come from 7th C BCE according to the article. They include a range of animal mummies, particularly cats and lions, wood and ceramic sculptures of cats and other animals.
This article also mentions a collection of ancient Egyptian deities “including 73 bronze statuettes depicting god Osiris; six wooden statues of god Ptah-Sokar; 11 wooden and faience statues of the lioness god Sekhmet as well as a beautifully carved statues of goddess Neith wearing the crown of Lower Egypt.” They led with the cat mummies since that’s the item they’ve assumed will interest the general public. Drawing tourism back to Egypt is a huge part of the responsibility of the Antiquities officials, so the choreography of these announcements is always an intriguing window into what appears to “sell” well in archaeological discovery.
I find the statuettes of the deities more appealing than mummies of animals killed for such burials, much as I understand that such offerings were significant to the ritual practitioners and dead. Click here for Archaeology News Network “Animal mummies and other discoveries from Saqqara necropolis unveiled”
A Bigger Ur
Pictures taken by a cold war spy plane and satellites show that the Mesopotamian city of Ur sprawled over a much bigger area than scientists had realized. Previous estimates placed the city’s size at 60 hectares—smaller than other Mesopotamian cities despite its central importance as a city-state and the seat of an embryonic empire. Close examination of spy footage combined with survey of the sites indicated by the photos has grown that measurement to 500 hectares, one of the largest of the period.
Interestingly, the site of Troy went through a similar expansion of its estimated size. Korfmann’s work at Troy through satellite images and geophysical prospection identified Troy’s lower city and its wall. Up until that recognition, excavators believed the citadel and upper city were the whole site. Now Troy’s known size matches similar Anatolian cities of its time period. Click here for Nature “A spy plane’s declassified snapshots reveal an ancient city’s size”