From The Times of London: "Museums at night can be spooky places. Did that statue of an Assyrian man-beast stir? Was that a creaking noise coming from the shrivelled mummy in the Egyptian sarcophagus? Hoping to exploit this unsettling atmosphere, Diverse Production has hooked up with the British Museum to produce Codex, an archaeological game show, combining arcane scripts, coded clues and riddles with ancient history-lite." "Like the show, we start in the Arched Room, a huge gallery that houses the museum’s collection of about 130,000 clay tablets of cuneiform writing from Ancient Mesopotamia. The curator, Irving Finkel, explains that most tablets have yet to be translated. They include histories, dictionaries, grammars, financial records and incredibly detailed and accurate astronomical observations that have allowed scholars to date historical events exactly. Irving belongs to a tiny community of international experts who can read cuneiform, though the wicked thought crosses my mind that few would know if he was making it all up. The script, with its tiny wedge-shaped markings, was used to write all-important Middle Eastern languages for thousands of years. Scholars don’t know how far back it stretches, as all the examples dug up so far are in a fully formed version [sic]. Apparently there are mounds of debris all over Iraq still waiting to be excavated, and being ruthlessly pillaged by thieves during the current occupation." "Other tablets reveal that teachers used to keep pupils amused during grammar classes by getting them to conjugate the verb 'to fart'. ... Then it’s on to the winged bulls and violent Assyrian friezes. To be honest, my tour of the museum with Irving seems more fun than the show, but don’t let me put you off. Mesopotamia is followed by episodes on Rome, China, the Anglo-Saxons and Egypt. You can play along at home ..."
I'm curious how this goes... The first, Mesopotamian episode airs tomorrow (Sunday) on the UK's Channel 4 at 6:40 p.m. Can someone from Britain let me know how they liked it?
Reference
• P. Hoggart, "It's all Babylonian to me. In the dim recesses of the British Museum Paul Hoggart journeys to Mesopotamia with Tony Robinson’s history quiz," in The Times (UK), November 11, 2006
November 11, 2006
Codex game show
November 10, 2006
Archaeos.org mirror is being updated again
The archaeos.org mirror site of this blog and the web site are being updated again along with the main univie.ac.at server files. The internal hard drive malfunction on my computer is more or less fixed--I hope.
Fwd: Iraqcrisis digest, Vol 1 #740 - 1 msg
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Date: Nov 8, 2006 12:01 PM
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Today's Topics:
1. Open Context: Iraq Heritage Program (cejo@uchicago.edu)
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Open Context, a free, open access resource for the electronic
publication of primary field
research from archaeology and related disciplines has a new project
entitled "Iraq Heritage
Program"
http://www.opencontext.org/database/project.php?item=GHF1PRJ0000000025
-Chuck Jones-
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November 09, 2006
Fwd: Iraqcrisis digest, Vol 1 #739 - 4 msgs
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Today's Topics:
1. reviw of: Polk & Schuster, eds. The Looting
of the Iraqi Museum... (cejo@uchicago.edu)
2. Northedge: Muslims need to be sensitised
to their own material past (cejo@uchicago.edu)
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Saving Iraq's heritage?
Three years after the US-led invasion, what is being done to secure
Iraq's cultural heritage and institutions, asks David Tresilian
__________________________________________________
[Review of:]
Milbry Polk & Angela Schuster, eds. The Looting of the Iraqi
Museum, Baghdad: The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia. New York:
Harry Abrams, 2005.
in Al Ahram weekly
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/print/2006/818/cu2.htm
-Chuck Jones-
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Editorial in The Art Newspaper
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=487
-Chuck Jones-
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