Seals

Thought you might like to see Ketet's Ptolemy the Travel Turtle. (Ketet is my geocaching name. It means "little one" in Egyptian.)

The past two days have been a bit dull. Tuesday I woke up early to go to the German institute's library (it closes at 1pm!!) There's only one book written about my topic and I have all of it on my computer. Except the 5 pages I need. Naturally. So my plan was to head to the library, take a few pictures of the missing pages, and finish up. Firstly, I fell back to sleep for a few hours. Secondly, when I got to the library I discovered that my book, the ONE book I need, has been misplaced. Gone. Not on the shelf, not on the tables, not being used by anyone else. Someone put it back in the wrong spot, so it's basically just gone until someone else stumbles upon it. Great.

So I went back home and was completely unmotivated. So I organized everything I owned, did laundry, etc. etc. whatever I could do to avoid working. Finally, around 4pm I got into a good groove and managed to get quite a bit done. Then I met Koos, Sandra, Brenda, Kaz and Quentin at Pottery for dinner.

The waiters there know us because a) we're there all the time and b) we always have fights with straws. They bring us extra straws. :-)

Today I again got up early. Koos was off to Saqqara and I had a workshop on Seals in the Ancient Near East. I had my cereal and sat down on the couch. And promptly fell asleep. Until 12:30. Oh well. The Egyptian session didn't start until 2pm, so I didn't miss a lot. (Ok, there was one lecture on the transition between Linear A and Linear B in seals that would have been pretty rockin.)

The lectures that I did catch were, well, as interesting as they could be. I'm not a big fan of seals or seal impressions, so there were admittedly a few moments of slight boredom. Quentin and I were the only ones to brave the post-coffee break lectures. We both really wanted to see the one about the recently found seals at Tell el-Dab'a since we were recently there and recently saw said seals. And it was a pretty cool presentation. Unfortunately, it meant we got sucked into the Coptic seals lecture.

Blah. Don't get me wrong, Coptic stuff is very beautiful, and interesting in its own right. However, since most of the Coptic stuff you find in Egypt dates to the 5th or 6th centuries CE (Common Era, think AD) at the earliest I don't consider it "ancient" anymore. The Copts were Christians, and really had nothing to do with Ancient Egypt other than language (which didn't show up until the 1st century CE and was heavily influenced by Greek anyway). Think of it this way: in my opinion, Rome is entirely modern and Rome FELL in the 5th century CE.

Heck, I get bored with Egyptian history after the New Kingdom which ended in 1070-ish BCE (BC.) A thousand years before Coptic language even came into being. Sigh.

Anyway, we survived the Coptic seals, and I grabbed a pizza at Thomas (best pizza in town) and Quentin furthered my musical education by introducing me to the Arctic Monkeys. Then I hung out with Brenda, who came bearing chocolate. And now I'm back home and everyone has gone to bed already. Apparently I'm the only one who slept until noon. :-)