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Month: December 2016

Rare coin from King Antiochus’s rule discovered in Jerusalem

I’m currently studying The Dead Sea Scrolls as a part of my university degree and one of the areas of the Second Temple Period we cover is to do with King Antiochus and the Maccabean revolt. It was such a buzz that this was found this week as I read all about it! – Amy

 

An image of the coin

An image of the coin. (photo credit:TOWER OF DAVID MUSEUM)

Original Article found here on Jerusalem Post

Antiochus sparked the Maccabean revolt that led to the victory of the Maccabees and reclaiming of the Temple.

Nearly 30 years after the completion of excavations in the courtyard of Jerusalem’s Tower of David, outside the Old City’s walls, archeologists thought no stone was left unturned. However, during routine conservation work in the museum’s archeological garden, Orna Cohen, veteran archeologist and chief conservation officer at the Tower of David, spotted a metallic item among stones near a wall.

Upon closer inspection, Cohen determined the object was a bronze-leaf cent, once used in Jerusalem during the days of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a decidedly unwelcome guest in the history of the city.

Antiochus was a reviled king who made draconian decrees, sparking the Maccabean revolt that led to the victory of the Maccabees and the reclamation of the Temple.

The coin was found near the Hasmonean walls that cut through the center of the citadel’s courtyard, next to the tower base built during the day of Yonaton and Shimon, brothers of Judah the Maccabee.

During the original excavation of the Tower of David, ballista stones and iron arrowheads were found, evidence of the battles that took place in Jerusalem in the days when the city struggled for independence against the rulers of the Seleucids.

A portrait of Antiochus is engraved on one side of the coin, which was worth roughly 10 agorot back then. On the other side, a goddess is shown wrapped in a scarf.

While researchers are having difficulty dating the relic with precision, it is known that such coins were minted in Acre, a city on the northern shore of Israel that was once called Antiochia Ptolemais, after Ptolemy, and as such the coin is dated sometime between 172 and 168 BCE.

Eilat Lieber, director of the Tower of David, said the timing of the finding is auspicious.

“It is thrilling to hold in your hand a piece of history that brings the stories of Hanukka right up to present day,” he said.

 

December 20, 2016

akuivalainen

The underrated wonder that is Mahabalipuram — My Favourite Things

I first heard about Mahabalipuram in my Class 8 or 9 Hindi textbook. While I don’t remember who the author of that piece was, but I do remember that it was about the ruminations of a sculptor who wondered about the glorious temple ruins by the sea-shore and how they came to be. Though the […]

via The underrated wonder that is Mahabalipuram — My Favourite Things

December 20, 2016

akuivalainen

Free Fantasy Book Promos on Instafreebie

Hello Everyone

I just want to drop a quick line to let you know that I have two Instafreebie promotions running over Christmas. As a writer, I highly recommend Instafreebie for promotions, they are easy to use and a lovely company to work with. As a reader I’m up to my  eyeballs in amazing new books thanks to them.

Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000026_00050]

Cry of the Firebird

A firebird hatches in the far corners of Russia, where gods still walk and magic slumbers, sparking a supernatural war that will tear the worlds apart.

Inspired by Finnish and Russian Mythology, ‘Cry of the Firebird’ is a noir paranormal series that brings to life the bloody fairy tales of the North in a new modern setting.

Born on the crossroads between worlds, Anya’s magic is buried under grief until one fateful night it causes a firebird to hatch on her farm. Through a twist of dark magic it is sharing its body with Yvan, an ancient prince from legend.

With Yvan’s dark magician brother Vasilli and other powerful enemies closing in around them, Anya has no choice but to sober up, follow Yvan into Skazki, the land of monsters and magic.

Find it here: https://www.instafreebie.com/free/Q9gh6

amykuivalainen_theeglekey_ebook_final

The Eagle Key

In the spirit of “The Princess Bride,” “Stardust” and “Howl’s Moving Castle” comes a story of adventure, redemption, magic and the ever perilous True Love.

After a hasty wish on the Evening Star, pensioner Martha Brown finds a key with the power to open the heart of all that it touches. When the Eagle Key opens a door to Faerie Martha is spurred to action. Fuelled by her anger at growing old without any adventures at all, Martha packs her bags and heads into Faerie determined to find one.

Saved from a carnivorous rose bush by Greyfeather, a wanted criminal, blatant flirt and scoundrel, Martha agrees to give him the use of the Eagle Key in exchange for helping her navigate her way through the pitfalls of Faerie.

Find it here:
https://www.instafreebie.com/free/zT28x

Thanks

Amy xo

December 18, 2016December 19, 2016

akuivalainen

You Need to Check out this Blog – How To Create Art And Make Cool Stuff In A Time Of Trouble

Hey writers

Chuck Wendig put up a great blog post today on how to keep creating when the world is crazy and it’s getting to you. I highly recommend you have a read and keep the art love flowing:

‘Art is how you fight back. It’s how you take ALL THIS NOISE inside your heart and FORCE IT OUT. The tools of the creator are conduits for expression — and it’s totally okay to express your rage, your bewilderment, your grief, your overall teeth-gritting and pants-shitting distress. Funnel it all into the work. Don’t be afraid of that. Don’t be afraid to bleed on the page and yell at the screen and metaphorically punch the work into shape. This is your barbaric yawp. Your tools can be your weapons. Your art can be your battlefield. This can be how you resist.’

Find it here

Happy writing

Amy

December 14, 2016

akuivalainen1 Comment

Guide to the classics: the Arthurian legend

Original article by Amy Brown , Doctoral Assistant in Medieval English, University of Geneva on The Conversation

The early trailers for Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) were released last (northern) summer, which means my favourite season in life as a medievalist academic is coming: the season of The Truth About King Arthur. It doesn’t matter if the movie itself is good or bad: the question I will be getting is “but how accurate is it?” Does it represent the “real” legend of King Arthur?

Knowing Guy Ritchie’s films, the answer is going to be a glorious “no, and it’s not even trying”, but modern audiences often seem to be attracted to the idea of an adaptation that is more true than others.

The 2004 film King Arthur, a glorious romp featuring Kiera Knightley in an impractical outfit fighting hand-to-hand with an even more impractical short bow, billed itself as telling the “real” story of King Arthur as we’d never seen it before. Set, ostensibly, in the 5th century, it promised the story of a beleaguered Briton warlord rallying his people against the Saxons – but it also gave us a love triangle featuring Arthur, his wife Guinevere, and the knight Lancelot; a tale which first appeared in the 12th century, in France.

Can you tell a King Arthur story to a modern audience without including the royal love triangle? The Australian animated series Arthur! And His Square Knights of the Round Table (1966), aimed at young audiences who presumably weren’t supposed to comprehend a complicated narrative of love, betrayal and sin, is nevertheless peppered with in-jokes about the Queen’s devotion to the comically inept Lancelot.

The BBC’s Merlin (2008), a delightful festival of historical inaccuracies, made the triangle a key part of Guinevere’s character arc for several seasons, ending with poor Lancelot as the tool of necromancy and plots against the throne.

Interestingly, Guy Ritchie’s Legend of the Sword seems to have cast no Lancelot; it remains to be seen if modern audiences will accept a Lancelot-less Camelot as “real” Arthuriana. But whether they do or do not, Ritchie’s work will be compared to an imagined true story of King Arthur, which never existed, even in the Middle Ages. The medieval sources dealing with King Arthur are numerous, inconsistent, and wildly ahistorical in and of themselves.

The historical sources

‘King Arthur’ by Charles Ernest Butler. Charles Ernest Butler [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The name Arthur first appears in the work of the 9th century Welsh historian Nennius, who lists twelve battles this Arthur fought against invading Saxons. Similarly, the Welsh Chronicles (written down in the 10th century) make some references to battles fought by Arthur. On this shaky foundation, along with a scattering of place-names and oblique references, is an entire legend based.

Ask any scholar of Arthurian literature if King Arthur really existed, and we’ll tell you: we don’t know, and we don’t really care. The good stuff, the King Arthur we all know and love, is entirely fictional.

The “Arthurian Legend” really kicked off in the early 12th century, with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (1138), which purported to describe the entire history of Britain from the day dot until about the 7th century.

He describes the founding of Britain by the (mythical) Trojan warrior Brutus; he covers a lot of the historical events described in Nennius’ earlier work; and his account is the first to really describe King Arthur’s reign, his wars against the Saxons, and the doings of the wizard Merlin. Some elements, like the part where Merlin helps Arthur’s father Uther deceive and sleep with another man’s wife, thus conceiving Arthur, remain key parts of the Arthurian legend today. Other elements modern audiences expect, like the Round Table, are still absent.

Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote in Latin, and his book was read and treated as a history book in the Middle Ages. But very quickly, the material was re-worked into French and English poetry. The Norman poet Wace, whose audience included people living in both France and England, based his Roman de Brut (1155) on Geoffrey’s History. He added many things to the story, including the Round Table itself.

Around the turn of the thirteenth century, an English poet named Layamon took both Geoffrey and Wace’s works, combined them, and added more in his long English poem Brut. Arthur is not the only subject covered in the Brut, but it’s the first treatment of King Arthur in English.

These versions, and some of the later English romances like Of Arthur and of Merlin, focus on battles and political tensions. Aside from Merlin they feature few supernatural elements, and do not usually devote much attention to love. In these versions, the traitor Mordred who defeats Arthur at the battle of Camlann is usually his nephew, not his illegitimate son; and Guinevere may willingly marry him after Arthur’s death.

The Romances

Arthurian romance is where things really start getting fun, from the 12th century onwards. The earliest romances did not focus on Arthur himself, but on various heroes and knights associated with his court.

The very first might be the Welsh Culhwch and Olwen, the events of which rarely make an appearance in later Arthurian works, but which share with them a common basic plot structure: a young man needs to prove himself to win the hand of a fair lady, goes to Arthur’s court, undergoes a series of supernatural adventures, and is eventually able to marry his lady and settle down.

‘Arthur’s Tomb’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Dante Gabriel Rossetti [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The earliest surviving French Arthurian romances are by an author named Chrétien de Troyes. He wrote five romances, of which the most fun, in my humble opinion, is The Knight of the Lion (1176). The most famous is The Knight of the Cart (1180), which introduces Lancelot and his love affair with Queen Guinevere.

Hot on its heels came The Story of the Grail (1181), which introduces Perceval and the Grail quest – although Chrétien himself never finished that work. At around about the same time, a separate tradition of romances about the knight Tristan and his affair with Queen Isolde of Cornwall was also circulating.

Over the 13th to 15th centuries countless romances were written in French and in various other European languages, telling tales of the adventures of individual knights associated with King Arthur.

For instance, in the 14th century English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1390), a young Gawain is challenged to cut off the head of the Green Knight, in return for which the Green Knight will cut off Gawain’s head a year later. Unfortunately for Gawain, the green knight has supernatural headless-survival powers which Gawain lacks, and so the adventure unfolds as Gawain seeks to keep his bargain and his head.

After Chrétien de Troyes’ day, the Grail quest story became extremely popular: there are several continuations of his unfinished poem, a complete reworking in German by a Wolfram von Eschenbach, and many translations. In these, Perceval is the hero who becomes keeper of the Grail. In the complex French prose version known as The Quest of the Holy Grail (1230), Lancelot’s illegitimate but extraordinarily holy son Galahad takes that honour.

How Sir Galahad, Sir Bors and Sir Percival Were Fed with the Sanct Grael; but Sir Percival’s Sister Died by the Way by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Dante Gabriel Rossetti [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

The death of Arthur

If you read no other piece of medieval Arthuriana, read the 13th century French prose romance The Death of King Arthur (1237). The Penguin translation by James Cable is eminently readable, and cheap too. This romance circulated in the middle ages as the last of a “series” of Arthurian works beginning with the Grail’s arrival in Britain and ending with the break-up of the Arthurian court and Arthur’s own death. We call this whole series the Vulgate Cycle, or the Lancelot-Grail Cycle.

This series, rather like many modern fantasy series, was written out of order: the long romance known as the Lancelot Proper and the Quest of the Holy Grail (the one with Galahad, mentioned above) were composed first, by different authors; very quickly afterwards the Death of King Arthur was added, and then the prequel material dealing with the origin of the Grail and the birth of Merlin was added.

In the Death of King Arthur, the Arthurian court is aging. Lancelot has lost his chance at the Grail, the court’s harmony is shattered as Guinevere’s adultery comes to light, Mordred betrays Arthur, and everything falls to pieces.

A detail of the painting The last sleep of Arthur by the Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, 1898. via Wikimedia Commons

Fast forward to the 15th century, and an English knight named Thomas Malory, serving time in prison in Calais for attempting to abduct a young heiress, gets hold of the Vulgate Cycle, the Tristan romances, and a range of other material, and produces the most famous piece of English-language (despite its French title) Arthuriana: Le Morte d’Arthur. Malory, whatever else he might have been, was a completist, and he tried very hard to make a single coherent story out of the many contradictory he sources he had.

Chances are, if someone in an English-speaking country says to you they’ve read the “original” story of King Arthur, it’s Malory they mean. Its great popularity is explained by the fact that William Caxton put out a printed edition in the late fifteenth century. You can find that for free online, but the best reading version is the Oxford World’s Classics translation by Helen Cooper.

The ‘real’ Arthur today

Very few people get their first idea of King Arthur from a medieval text, today. When I taught Arthurian classes at Sydney Uni I used to ask the group to describe their first encounter with the Arthurian legend – it got oddly confessional at times, liking asking people to describe their religious conversions or coming-out experiences.

A lot of people my age and younger met Arthur through the movie The Sword in the Stone (1963), although in my case it was the infinitely funnier and more terrible Quest for Camelot (1998).

I was reading Arthurian stories long before I learned that the way we’re supposed to judge an adaptation in the modern world is its “fidelity” to its source. I loved Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur (1903) and the 1998 miniseries Merlin and the ridiculous BBC children’s show Sir Gadabout (2002), and the last thing I worried about was whether or not they incorporated exactly the same plot elements.

There’s a distinct pleasure, though, in reading your favourite story told again in new ways: Sir Gadabout was so funny to me precisely because it plays fast and loose with elements that are treated as sacred in the solemn Victorian style of Howard Pyle, or the serious moralising of T.H. White’s Once and Future King (1958).

Ask a group of medievalists what the best Arthurian movie is, and 95% of us will answer Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail (1975). The reason for that is not, as anyone who has seen it can guess, because it is exceedingly faithful to Thomas Malory’s monumental work, or to any other particular text.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) EMI Films

What Monty Python did so brilliantly was take the cultural “idea” of Arthur (perhaps at that time best encapsulated in the musical Camelot (1967)), along with a broad knowledge of Arthurian traditions both medieval and modern, and have fun with it on various levels. You don’t need to have read the weird romances dealing with the Questing Beast to laugh at the Black Beast of Argh, for instance, but if you have, knowledge of the “original” can only improve your appreciation of the adaptation.

And so I contend that whether or not Guy Ritchie includes Lancelot is immaterial. As far as I’m concerned it’s not a real Arthurian movie unless it contains the Beast of Argh, and that’s the stance I’m sticking to.

Readers interested in the history and development of Arthuriana could consult the second edition of The Arthurian Handbook (Routledge, 1997), or explore the texts, images and mini-histories at The Camelot Project.

 

December 12, 2016December 8, 2016

akuivalainen3 Comments

Expression, Why it is Necessary — The Evolutionary Mind

When we express something it is generally the key into our mind. However expression is not the only way for us and others to find ourselves. We have to express our thoughts, feelings, and state of mind at any point in time; it is what has to happen. The thing is, in society, people are…

via Expression, Why it is Necessary — The Evolutionary Mind

December 11, 2016December 11, 2016

akuivalainen

Who were the Philistines?

phil

Original article found One for Israel

They had been digging for years and found nothing. Archaeological evidence giving information about the Philistines and their civilization has been found in the past, but no one had ever found any bodies. It was a mystery. Some assumed that they must have buried their dead at sea, but there had been indication that maybe – just maybe – there might be Philistine graves in the Israeli port city of Ashkelon.

A team of archaeologists went to Ashkelon to see what they could find, but after days of digging they ended up disappointed and frustrated. National Geographic described how, just when they had given up and people had started to leave, Adam Aja, assistant curator at Harvard’s Semitic Museum, was overwhelmed with determination to continue. He wanted to keep digging until they hit bedrock, and it wasn’t long before they came across a human tooth. He knew then that they had found what they were looking for.

Clues in the ancient graveyard of the Philistines

Since then, they have found the remains of 211 Philistines in Ashkelon from some 3000 years ago, buried in a manner distinctly different to the Canaanites or the Hebrews of the time[1], whose custom it was to lay the bodies out in stone tombs until only the bones remained, then to gather the bones and add them a collective hole which contained the bones of their ancestors (hence the Biblical accounts of the Patriarchs being “gathered” to their people). Later it became Hebrew tradition to put the dry bones in individual caskets the length of the femur. The Philistines, on the other hand, buried their dead in oval ditches the ground, some with a few precious items or a flask of perfume near their nose, and left them undisturbed in the ground.

According to the Bible, the Philistines were the enemies of Israel, who battled them many times, and even stole the Ark of the Covenant at one point (until the destruction it wreaked among them proved too much, and they meekly sent it back to the Israelites). But apart from taking the role of Israel’s enemies, the origins of the Philistines are a bit enigmatic. They are thought to have come from the Aegean, based on pottery and artifacts pointing to a Hellenistic connection, but the origins and movements of people groups around the time of the Bronze Age are not always straightforward to deduce.

“Finding the Philistine cemetery is fantastic because there are so many questions regarding their genetic origins and their interconnections with other cultures.” Assaf Yasur-Landau, Associate Professor of Mediterranean Archaeology at the University of Haifa.

The Bible connects the Philistines with the island of Crete (‘Caphtor’ in Jeremiah 47:4; Amos 9:7). As it has done many times in the past, archaeological evidence is now proving the Bible to be correct – that they had indeed come to Canaan’s shores from the Greek islands, although it is still unclear whether they were Cretan by origin, or had just been living there. Either way, it is clear to archaeologists that the Philistines were not native to Canaan but were from the Aegean area, as attested by ceramics, architecture, burial customs, and pottery remains with non-Semitic writing on them (including a shard of pottery with a Cypro-Minoan script, dating to around 1150-1000 BCE) [2].

There is great excitement in the world of archaeologists over this new discovery, and it’s worth taking note of the fact that they had despaired of ever finding what they were looking for. But there was just one man refused to give up, and he was well rewarded.

[1] National Geographic, Discovery of Philistine Cemetery May Solve Biblical Mystery, 10.07.2016
[2] HaAretz, Archaeologists find first-ever Philistine cemetery in Israel, 10.07.2016

December 8, 2016December 6, 2016

akuivalainen2 Comments

The Basics of Magic Systems: Part 1

A great breakdown of Magic in Fantasy

December 7, 2016

akuivalainen1 Comment

A Visit to the Underworld

Below are excerpts from three of my favorite Underworld journeys from mythology, which also informed my own Underground scene in To the House of the Sun:

  • Book Six of Virgil’s Aeneid, where Aeneas comes upon the shade of his father, who is amazed to see his son, still alive, visiting the land of the dead;
  • Tablet Seven of Gilgamesh, where Enkidu, near death, recounts the dream of the Underworld he just woke from;
  • A TachiOrpheus myth from central California; beyond the story itself, its placement within the named landscape of California seems close to the Dindsenchas stories of Celtic myth

from THE AENEID, BOOK 6

But in the deep of a green valley, father
Anchises, lost in thought, was studying
the souls of all his sons to come—though now
imprisoned, destined for the upper light.
And as it happened, he was telling over
the multitude…

View original post 2,218 more words

December 6, 2016

akuivalainen

Imitation game: how copies can solve our cultural heritage crises

davinci

Original article by Felicity Strong on The Conversation

Visitors to the Otsuka Museum in Japan are offered the chance to see through time. Two life-sized copies of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper are hung on opposing walls, one showing it before the major 1999 restoration, and one as it is today.

Visitors can pivot their view to observe changes in colour on the paintings in front of them. The true-to-scale copies are painted on ceramic tiles, which the Museum claims can maintain their colour and shape for over 2000 years.

The Museum offers visitors the ability to literally walk through the history of Western art’s greatest works. Other recreations include Vincent Van Gogh’s lost Six Sunflowers painting, which was destroyed in 1945 by US airstrikes on Tokyo. Art lovers can view paintings in a manner rendered impossible in real life.

As the world faces ongoing cultural heritage crises – from poverty, to war, to natural disaster – is the creation of copies the answer?

Increasingly sophisticated technology, including 3D printing, offers an alternative to traditional preservation techniques. However, while these new technologies may solve problems of accessibility to precious antiquities they also raise other problems of authenticity and trust.

The New Yorker recently profiled the work undertaken by the Factum Arte workshop in Madrid, which uses advanced 3D printing technology to recreate ancient artefacts that are being ravaged by time and modern life.

The head of the project, Adam Lowe, describes the new artefacts as “rematerialized” facsimiles. Notable projects include a full sized reproduction of King Tut’s burial chamber, built out of extraordinarily detailed scans. The original tomb is at risk of deterioration due to thousands of tourists breathing on ancient plaster, as well as possible excavations to uncover what could be Nefertiti’s tomb next door.

Despite these successes, there are objections to the practice of creating copies. Critical theorist Walter Benjamin famously argued that art loses its “aura” when it is reproduced: the impact an original artwork creates when it’s uniquely present in time and space vanishes as soon as copies are made.

A 5.5-metre recreation of the 1,800-year-old Arch of Triumph in Palmyra, Syria, is seen at Trafalgar Square in London in April, 2016. Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

Yet ultimately, the transferral of art into a new medium and context allows entire new audiences to have a brand new – and possibly deeper – connection to our greatest treasures.

Anyone who has battled the crowds in front of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch in the Rijksmuseum or the mass of selfie sticks in front of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, will appreciate how Otsuka Museum affords the visitor the opportunity to experience a painting’s colours, composition and artistic impression.

Of course the experience of these “rematerialized” paintings and artefacts will be different from that of the original pieces. Tutankhamen’s replica tomb, while set near the original in Luxor, is missing the authentic musty smell of the ancient rooms. It also features a digitally restored panel destroyed when the tomb was originally opened.

Where is the harm?

But as long as the audience clearly understands that these are replicas, from the perspective of preserving cultural heritage, where is the harm in appreciating these objects in a new medium?

Visitors to the Otsuka Museum and Factum Arte are under no illusion that what they are viewing are originals. These are not fakes, as the attention grabbing headlines claim, but replicas and copies, the distinctive feature being a lack of intent to deceive. Honesty with your audience is of paramount importance.

The issue of restoration and conservation is historically fraught, and intensified now by various economic and cultural tensions. As noted in the New Yorker article, visiting Egypt right now is an unusual experience due to that country’s recent political upheavals. Aside from the chance to visit one of the Seven Wonders of the World without battling hoards of tourists, the issues of preserving of the country’s cultural and archaeological assets are obvious.

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo has limited air-conditioning, with cracked showcases and storage units on display in the main exhibition spaces alongside many priceless relics. They are awaiting the new museum, which has been under construction for many years.

Ironically, the museum collection features a copy of one of the most important Ancient Egyptian artefacts, the Rosetta stone, with the original version found in the British Museum, over 2000 miles away.

In contrast, a different response to cultural heritage concerns can be seen in the vast temples at Abu Simbel. Originally carved into the side of a mountain over the Nile, the temples came under threat with the construction of the Aswan High dam in the 1960s. Under the supervision of UNESCO, the temples were cut out and moved 65m up and 210m northwest.

Tourists and visitors in 2014 queue outside the temple of Abu Simbel to see the dawn light up the temple’s inner sanctum to mark the anniversary of Pharaoh Ramses II’s coronation. The temple is angled so that the inner sanctum lights up twice a year: once on the anniversary of his rise to the throne and once on his birthday. Mohamed Abd El Ghany/Reuters

In this case what has been replicated is not the physical temples of Ramses II but the original location and authenticity of the experience as it was originally intended.

The move meant that the temple’s axis is no longer aligned as it was during Pharaonic Egypt. The structure was created so the sun lit up the statues inside the temple twice a year, on February 21 and October 21. The so-called “miracle of the sun” still occurs, just one day later.

Whilst there is no attempt to conceal the relocation, one cannot help ascribing perceived defects to the move. When did Ramses lose his beard? Was it dropped?

Jonathan Jones recently argued in The Guardian that we should leave the crumbling remnants of the Isis-ravaged Syrian town of Palmyra alone, and recognise that the destruction of this sacred site forms part of its history and newfound fame.

For Jones, the authenticity of Palmyra is its decay, not the “faked-up approximation” that a 3D printed version might offer visitors.

But we are constantly battling the push and pull of authenticity and heritage. While Jones may deride the inauthentic replication of Syrian archaeological sites, we must confront the issue of preserving our cultural heritage in manner that is accessible in the future.

When these remnants are no more than dust and rubble, would a future generation really rebuff a “rematerialized” 3D printed version? So long as the creation of a replica does no harm to authentic version, where is the problem in creating a coherent copy?

December 4, 2016

akuivalainen

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