From My Fantasy Writing Desk:
New Beginnings
Last night I went to the book launch of a member of my critique group, Bob Ryan. It’s always fun to welcome a friend’s new book into the world, this one a collection of short fiction called Signs Along the Road. We celebrated at Changing Hands Bookstore in their big room that’s also a bar.
Bob is particularly good at dramatic reading and he’s a musician, so it was an entertaining evening. His excellent book is alternately funny and revelatory, philosophic and engaging.
At our most recent critique meeting, the group looked at the very rough first four chapters of the current book I’m working on. I received helpful ideas of how to change things around, but one really insightful suggestion was Bob Ryan’s.
He told me to go re-watch the opening wedding scene in The Godfather. I’m opening this new work of mine with a funeral. Bob was right. I thoroughly enjoyed watching how that extended scene came together. There’s the interplay between tense side conversations and exterior threats that insert themselves into the ceremony. Then there are the actions within the ceremony itself of the major characters and how those actions resonate with the movie’s overall arc. I certainly have no mafia members in my Bronze Age court, but the patterns of that first 40 minutes or so of the film was quite instructive and inspiring. Many thanks to that spur of the moment idea of Bob’s. New beginnings for both of us.
Archaeology I Enjoyed:
Rare Bones
Hittite royal tombs, complete with royal bones, from the empire period are rare—well, non-existent. There are some burial grounds with both inhumation and cremation remains, but not, as near as we know, anybody royal. So it’s unusually interesting that a 3,500-year-old skull and femur was found during an archaeological excavation in Turkey’s Black Sea province of Çorum at the site of Sapinuwa.
For a stretch of years during the early empire, Sapinuwa was a royal city, so the assumption implied in this article is that these will be royal bones. That may be leaping a bit. I do wish they mentioned the context of this bone find. But, yes, this is potentially very interesting.
We’ve learned all sorts of things by analysis of various Egyptian royal bones, so the concept is entirely on track, as long as they can convincingly connect the dots from said bones to the royal family of the period. Sapinuwa went out of use as a city earlier than “my” king and queen ruled, so dear readers, this isn’t Tesha’s grave.
Sapinuwa is a grand old archaeological site well worth visiting. It’s quite impressive in every way. Now they get to add bones to the list of attractions! (Can you tell I’m a bit nutty for archaeology?) Click here for Archaeology News Network “3,500-year-old skull found in Hittite city of Sapinuwa”
Pompeii Reveals More
Roman surveyors worked with incredible precision and used a tool apparently quite similar to the modern one. Past Pompeiian excavations produced the only extant example of the primary tool used, a groma from which these surveyors took their name, gromatics. Other information came from Medieval sources that recorded how a groma worked, but way after the tool ceased to be used and thus may not have represented an accurate understanding. Now, the renewed Pompeii dig has revealed mosaics that seem to demonstrate the groma and clarify this most Roman of achievements. Roman engineering is an intriguing subject.
Here’s what they say the mosaic depicts and its possible significance:
“The circle is cut by two perpendicular lines, one of which coincides with the longitudinal axis of the atrium of the house and appears as a sort of rose of the winds that identifies a regular division of the circle in eight equally spaced sectors.
The image is strikingly similar to one used in the medieval codex’s to illustrate the way in which the Gromatics divided the space. Another, complex image shows a circle with an orthogonal cross inscribed in it, connected by five dots disposed as a sort of small circle to a straight line with a base. The whole appears as the depiction of a Groma.
Was the house used for meetings and/or the owner himself belonged to the gromatic’s guild? We do not know it for sure. In any case however, and once again, Pompeii reveals itself as an invaluable source in understanding key aspects of the Roman life and civilization.”