You Can’t Outrun the Clock: A Look at Pink Floyd’s “Time”

Music

Music can say more than words.1 And regularly, the words that are used in songs are able to communicate so much that a piece of narrative literature of equivalent length simply cannot convey. During the week-end I read a short story where this characteristic of music was used to great effect. In the wholesome tale “Let All the Children Boogie” by Sam J. Miller, references to the music and lyrics of David Bowie and Iggy Pop were employed with great effect to communicate dreams, emotions, and hope.2 The change of perspective on the world and life that this brief adventure of two young outcasts in the early nineties can engender in the reader was, according to my opinion, in large part due to the use of those musical references. And such a change of perspective – including some of the same themes! – can also occur when listening to our topic of this week’s blog, the song “Time” by the British rock band Pink Floyd from their acclaimed as well as wildly successful 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon.3

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Firearms as Accessories in Renaissance Italy

European Renaissance

Sometimes I read something so fascinating, that I immediately want to write a blog about it and share my new interest with the digital world. But me being myself, I often run into practical considerations that are likely to delay such a project. For instance, I have to look into the broader scholarly literature to be certain that I present you with a proper overview of the learned consensus on a topic. And with new interests, this is hindered by the fact that even I cannot be an expert in all humanities – however hard I may try. So this week, in the middle of summer, we are going to talk about a subject that first grabbed me last Christmas: firearms as accessories in Renaissance Italy.

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Forgotten Gods #2: Where Did Marduk Go?

Ancient Mesopotamia, Antiquity

You know what is a sobering fact which keeps me with both my feet firmly on the ground? That there was once a time – unbelievable but true – in which people did not venerate the great and ancient Mesopotamian god Marduk. And you know what’s even more indicative of the mere relative importance of everything? The fact that at one point people stopped venerating Marduk! Today we are going to look at the rise and fall of this imposing Mesopotamian god, of whom no-one in the second millennium BCE would have believed that their prominence could ever diminish.1 But nothing lasts forever and, as one age follows another, even the gods may become a mere historical footnote.Welcome to the second part of my always uplifting series on forgotten gods!

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Circumventing Silences in the Archives of Renaissance Florence

European Renaissance, Methodology

We all know that one scene from many adventure movies. The charismatic explorer, wizened wizard, or inquisitive secret agent – often, but not always, accompanied by a variety of plucky sidekicks and love interests – visits an archive to further their quest. And almost without exception, though seldom without great effort, they do find the log of a person from the (distant) past – preferably a family member or ancestor of one of the available main characters – which tells them exactly what they needed to know.1 Such plot devices may be necessary to help a film move along and they regularly serve relevant themes of ancestry, cooperation, and responsibility. But if we want to understand the past through actual archives, we often learn as much from what the documents and objects therein do not tell us as from what do tell. And the same, rather uncinematically approach will help us today to get to know more about the Italian city of Florence during the European Renaissance.

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On Broken Links and Lost Knowledge

Methodology

Scholarly and scientific research today is in large part dependent on our access to previous research, primary sources, and databases.1 As many of these resources are to a significant extent – if not primarily – consulted through computers, it is no wonder why many learned references are to a web address linking the reader with a location in cyberspace.2 This is not without its drawbacks of course. Books and journals smell infinitely better, for instance, than a toiling hard drive. And have you ever tried penning down notes on a computer screen? You run out of space almost instantly! But those are not the problems we are discussing today – however compelling they might be. Because we are going to talk about the potential loss of knowledge when a link changes after a reference has already been published or, even worse, when the information referenced is no longer available online.

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How One Word Enriched Our Understanding of the Gilgamesh Epic

Ancient Mesopotamia, Antiquity, Methodology

Much of our current knowledge is merely provisional. Specifically in the humanities, we can always encounter new evidence, construct unique theoretical frameworks that support novel interpretations, or make use of the progress in other scientific disciplines.1 And such fresh insights in the humanities can subsequently help us to find even more new evidence, to construct further unique theoretical frameworks, and to aid other scientific disciplines in turn.2 These developments do not always entail that scholars had been wrong before, though – quite the contrary! Our understanding may also be merely expanded or enriched. And this can happen for the most pedestrian of reasons. Even one word can suffice! So today we will discuss how one newly discovered word of the Epic of Gilgamesh ushered in a better understanding of this famous tale from ancient West-Asia.

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In Praise of Secondary Literature

Methodology

Nobody can learn everything. Not only because of the limited storage capacity and processing capabilities of the internal hardware that most call the human brain, but also because it is impossible for most of us to find enough time and (affordable) teachers for any and all subject.1 If one aims to bravely defy such seemingly immovable limitations – something that I am a big fan of, as you can imagine – and go on a never-ending quest for knowledge, it is important to find an entry point into new subjects that fall outside the scope of your earlier education or readings in your spare time. And that is where the specific genres of secondary literature that we will discuss today become useful.

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Forgotten Gods #1: Did NinSimug Exist?

Ancient Mesopotamia, Antiquity

The bulk of my readers, I assume, have made their peace with eventually being forgotten after their death. Because most of us will seldom be remembered after all that knew us have perished in turn. But one would expect that this could not be the fate of gods! After all, they have regularly amassed lots and lots of followers and their worship was often institutionalized. But even gods tend to be forgotten, be it after a shorter or a longer while. And nowadays many of them only figure in later reconstructions of past religions.1 In this new series, I want to introduce a few of these forgotten gods and through them illustrate some interesting aspects of ancient religious history, practices, and beliefs. This week, we survey the life and times of a deity from ancient west-Asia: NinSimug.

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Dragon Myths and Dinosaur Bones

Ancient Greece, Antiquity, Archeology

Dragons and dinosaurs. Not only does a substantial amount of children make one of these their entire personality for a while, but many adults are still highly interested in anything related to these respectively magical and prehistoric organisms.1 It is therefore only natural that both obsessions are regularly combined. And this has, amongst other things, led to the question we try to answer in this week’s blog: was it encounters with dinosaur bones that formed the basis for myths about dragons?

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Searching for Forests in Ugaritic

Ancient Levant, Antiquity, Translation Studies

Translation is seldom a straightforward exercise.1 One may be reminded of all those hypothetical but nonetheless disappointed British tourists who happily tried to visit a football match in the United States of America and left very confused. And such contemporary matters, like when the sport that the British call ‘football’ is known as ‘soccer’ in certain other parts of the world, are complicated enough.2 Imagine if a chasm of more than three millennia separates us from the language we aim to understand! And it is bridging such a chasm that we are attempting in today’s blog. As I shall show you the difficulty with understanding the lexicon of the ancient Levantine language that is today known as Ugaritic.

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