From My Fantasy Writing Desk
In my current manuscript in progress, I’ve been playing with the conflicting influences on Tesha’s character. On the one hand, she is growing her power from magic. On the other, the plot is driving her growing awareness of the destruction inherent in that power and the control of others it gives her. Tesha has always enjoyed control. She wants a perfectly ordered world, which, of course, she never gets. But her instinct is to reach for control and implement it. She may find a bump in that road.
With this overall character process foremost in my mind, I enjoyed this passage. It’s from from the Afterward of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Tehanu:
“What cannot be mended must be transcended.”
Maybe the change coming into Earthsea has something to do with no longer identifying freedom with power, with separating being free from being in control. There is a kind of refusal to serve power that isn’t a revolt or a rebellion, but a revolution in the sense of reversing meanings, of changing how things are understood. Anyone who has been able to break from the grip of a controlling, crippling belief or bigotry or enforced ignorance knows the sense of coming out into the light and air, of release, being set free to fly, to transcend.
Archaeology I Enjoyed
Can You See It?
If visualizing the ancient city of Rome in all its glory sounds like fun, you will enjoy the Plastico di Roma Imperiale, a 55’ by 55’ scale model. Italo Gismondi fashioned it gradually from 1935 to 1971. He based it on a 1901 map that he expanded on.
The photos in this post give you a grand overview of the city in the 4th century CE (Constantine era). Mussolini commissioned it, so motives for its creation are suspect, but the end result is impressive. The movie Gladiator used it, apparently.
The model resides in the Museum of Roman Civilization, which houses no original artwork. It displays only casts and reproductions created for a 1911 exhibition, if I’m understanding the website correctly. With so many original works to admire while in Rome, you might never get around to this model on a visit. An armchair visit via photos might be just perfect. You can choose your mode of imaginary transport as you go through the streets, on foot or perhaps in a chariot drawn by some impressive horses. Click here for CanYouActually “Archeologist Spends Over 35 Years Building Massive Scale Model of Ancient Rome”
Iron Age King in a Ditch
A chance tip from a local farmer brought two U of Chicago archaeologists working in the Konya region of Turkey to an irrigation canal with a large inscribed stone sticking out of it. They retrieved it from its watery home. Once translated from its Luwian hieroglyphs, it mentions the nearby kingdom as that of King Harpatu.
Luwian is one of the oldest branches of Indo-European. Researchers identify it as one of various related languages found in the Hittite empire. The photo at the top shows an 8th century BCE inscription in Luwian hieroglyphs from the Oriental Institute Museum in Chicago (photo by Daderot Wiki). Luwian hieroglyphs start in the earliest Bronze Age. The recently found inscription also dates to the 8th century BCE.
“The pronouncement boasted of defeating Phrygia, the kingdom ruled by King Midas, legendary ancient ruler said to have a golden touch.” Harpatu’s name appears about 10 km away on a rock carving on a volcano. Unfortunately, no one knew what he was king of. Now they know this intriguingly concrete info about the Iron Age stage of this kingdom.
The mound also has Bronze Age layers. It covers 300 acres, so this is likely to be only one of many additions to our knowledge of this region from the period of the Hittites on through the Iron Age kingdoms. The causes of transition from one habitation level to another will be intriguing at the end of the Bronze Age. We are still sorting out what happened in the Hittite empire at the time of its collapse. Click here for the UChicago News “Tip from local farmer helps uncover ancient Bronze and Iron Age city”