{"id":176,"date":"2008-10-12T09:00:27","date_gmt":"2008-10-12T13:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/?p=176"},"modified":"2022-04-11T23:51:31","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T03:51:31","slug":"ancient-scribbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/2008\/10\/ancient-scribbles\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Scribbles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-177\" title=\"Istanbul Archaeological Museum\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dscn1177-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"Istanbul Archaeological Museum\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" \/>A very satisfying day at Istanbul&#8217;s Archaeological Museum. As is typical, I got so thoroghly engrossed by the relatively small collection of ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions that I hardly had energy for the vast halls of pottery and burial monuments from antique Anatolia. Even so, the splendor of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alexander_Sarcophagus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alexander Sarcophagous<\/a> from Sidon (as well as the one with the weeping women) wasn&#8217;t lost on me.<\/p>\n<p>I go just bananas for the Mesopotamian publishing techniques\u2014clay cylinders, stamps, inscribed reliefs, and tiny tablets. The efforts that made them simply cry out for the power of words.<\/p>\n<p>Before that, I wandered through the Topkapi Palace, which housed Ottoman sultans from Mehmet the <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-178\" title=\"Sacred Trusts\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dscn1174-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"Sacred Trusts\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" \/>Conqueror to Atat\u00fcrk. It didn&#8217;t blow me away like the archaeology\u2014ostentatious riches aren&#8217;t my cup of tea. But there was one really memorable part, in addition to the view of the Bosphorus: a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ee.bilkent.edu.tr\/~history\/religious.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reliquary<\/a> of holy objects. And you thought the Vatican&#8217;s collection of &#8220;true cross&#8221; fragments (about enough wood to populate a forest) was ambitious. Here we have Moses&#8217;s staff, King David&#8217;s sword, Joseph&#8217;s turban, Muhammad&#8217;s footprint, and even a vessel used by Abraham. The museum dutifully labeled each with dates appropriate to the respective character. In the gallery, Qur&#8217;anic chanting was carried by speakers. Turns out, at the end there&#8217;s a man chanting into a microphone, sitting at a geometrical black desk that looks like it came from the bridge of a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/search?q=romulan+warbird\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Romulan Warbird<\/a>. The sound was beautiful of course.<\/p>\n<p>One more thing: last night there was a cat playing in the lights at the Hagia Sophia.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-179 aligncenter\" title=\"Cat in Hagia Sophia\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dscn1157-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"Cat in Hagia Sophia\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-177\" title=\"Istanbul Archaeological Museum\" src=\"http:\/\/www.therowboat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/10\/dscn1177-300x224.jpg\" alt=\"Istanbul Archaeological Museum\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" \/>A very satisfying day at Istanbul&#8217;s Archaeological Museum. As is typical, I got so thoroghly engrossed by the relatively small collection of ancient Mesopotamian inscriptions that I hardly had energy for the vast halls of pottery and burial monuments from antique Anatolia. Even so, the splendor of the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Alexander_Sarcophagus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Alexander Sarcophagous<\/a> from Sidon (as well as the one with the weeping women) wasn&#8217;t lost on me.<\/p>\n<p>I go just bananas for the Mesopotamian publishing techniques\u2014clay cylinders, stamps, inscribed reliefs, and tiny tablets. The efforts that made them simply cry out for the power of words. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,28,22,60,75],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-language","tag-orientalism","tag-saints","tag-science-fiction","tag-tourism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5736,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/5736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanschneider.info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}