Between-rivers

Gu3-de2-a ensi2 Lagaški-ke4 Ma.du.ridki-da e-ne-am3

'Gudea ensi Lagashk Madrida eneam'

Gudea, prince* of Lagash, is in Madrid

At least a bust of his is. This afternoon we (my S.O and I) were on the National Archaological Museum, in Madrid. I have already been there before, but I enjoyed this visit a lot more, there was considerably less people, and we could enjoy all of the rooms a great deal... I took some pictures, low quality ones with my phone camera, and many more I'm going to take next time, with the good camera, which I didn't take with me because I thought it wasn't allowed to take pics on the museum (doh! I was ready to "steal" some with my cell phone, hehe... :-)

The place is incredible, and some of the thousands of remarkable things we saw were the Lady of Elche bust (which was, probably, the inspiration for Princess Leia look on Star Wars), a complete craneum of a paleo-elephant (which is, without the huge tusks, almost as big as myself, with the tusks is about 4-5 meters long!), a fantastic collection of celtic, gold torques (several of them from my own land! :-), lots of Egyptian mummies, and steles, in coptic, greek, and hieroglyphs (even a stele from the Saite Dinasty!); a cuneiform inscription barely readable (not that it would be any easier, anyway, but I could write you the cuneiform of the Sumeria sentence above, and this one I'm talking about, however...), and weapons, a Corinthian-style helmet, swords and daggers, Ibearian soliferra, arrowheads, etc... There's a fantastic collection of Greek amphorae and crateres with black and red images exposing lots of interesting hoplological information, pretty incredible...

Lots of other jewels on the Museum, though, from Atapuerca (Homo Antecessor) to Medieval times, going through most important segments in Spain History: several rooms for pre-Historic times (pleistocene, oligocene, paleolithis, mesolithic, neolithic (including really incredible Balear Islands info and tombs), early bronze, late bronze, iron, Iberians, Celts, Phoenicians, Greeks, then Rome, Visigoths, Muslims, and finally the first Christian states; plus some Near East info (like our now famous Ensi* of Lagash and the cuneiform text, among others), the big Egyptian room (basically New Empire, Nubian dinasties and some Saite, plus Ptolemaic dinasties material scattered through time) and some info from Sahara (which was once Spanish) pre-History. Very stimulating, indeed...

Not much going on The Libyan at the moment, still slowly writing the Spartan section, while preparing the Battle of Memphis...

In the meantime, I am documenting myself for the Mesopotamian novel (yeah, I have to accept it: I'm going to do it). So, among the host of books I have bought (including the two I got on the Museum store :), I have started to learn Sumerian. The sentence that opens this entry is, I hope, correct Sumerian, and corectly translated as well ("Ma.du.rid" is the approximate name of Madrid into Sumearin, but I am not sure of that, actually).

Yeah, a fascinating language. Not a dead language, mind you, but a resurrected language, even if nobody really speaks it... Cool, indeed. Cuneiform is as hard as I was told, damn it, LOL! Fascinating, though, to be the first known script of Humankind... Why Sumerian? Well, I love languages, it's interesting enough to try, and pretty well known to be the first known language of the planet, plus I have gotten lots of Sumerian texts transliterated (and translated, OK :-) so I can work on them by myself... That will give me the flavor of the civilization, indeed.. Akkadian may come later, who knows? After all, the Epic was written in Assyrian, which was an Akkadian dialect, and I want to learn a semitic language... So if I start Arab, I can add Akkadian and do some comparative learning... :-)

Nod... Sumerian culture is resulting really fascinating... If I can fixate half of the ideas I am having into a coherent story I may get an Early Bronze Age Historical Fiction novel really cool to read... We'll see when the time comes... :-)

You are invited to, in the meantime, stay tuned and contribute to The Libyan... :-)

laters... Kallisti!

* Note: ensi2 is the transcription of translittered Sumerian PA.TE.SI, whose meaning is not yet known, but it's often equated to "prince" (because "king" is lugal, and Gudea is also called "lugal Lagashke", i.e., King of Lagash)... en, however, means "lord", and by context, it is know that it was an important city title, lesser than king...

PS- for those who wonder, if anyone does, my next languages to learn will be: Turkish, Russian, Arab and Finnish, plus going deeper in Esperanto and, maybe, finally get into Japanese. This way I will have: several Romance languages, plus a bit of Latin, a Germanic language, a Celtic language (someday) (which I know right now), plus an Slavic language, a Semitic language, a Fino-Ugrid language and Turkish (which may be Altaic)... I'll be able to, basically (and with care), move around and talk to folks of most Western Eurasia, from Portugal and Spain to Iraq and maybe Iran on the South, and up to Mongolia in the north... Arabian, Russian and Turkish can take you really far away once to move Eastwards from Greece, and they must be delicious! Classical Greek to read AEschillus would be just cool as well! ;-)

Writing (written) musings for a new year

We are in the first of the two months added to make a 12 months year in Roman times that eventually happened to be the firsts when New Year was moved from Spring to Winter. Pretty interesting stuff (and explains why September (the seventh month in latin) is actually the ninth month), search for it, you'll learn a good handful...

Time measurement is on the essence for a Historical Fiction writer, specially if you keep moving back in time, as I seem to be doing more and more (XIII BCE Century (half novel), to III BCE Century (Half short novel), XVI Century (plotbunny) --hey, pretty near to the present!--, to V Century (big plotbunny) --oops!-- to V BCE Century (current novel) --hey!-- to XXVII BCE Century ---WAAAAIT THERE! What'll be next??? Neolithic???).

Accurate measuring of time is very important, and quite a recent feat in Human History... As an example, in my current novel, circa 460 BCE, Athens started the year in August (more or less, it wasn't called that way, of course) and Sparta, with a different name, in September (and IIRC, one by the new Moon and the others by the full Moon, but I may be confusing civilizations, kinda an information soup in my head now, back from holidays and all that)... Funny, isn't it? Even counting years by Olimpic Games was pretty bad, we gotta be thankful to Thukidides who tried to be sistematic with dates...

So, January, time of reflection, of good will, resolutions, and all that...

January also brought me a new writing devicve. Writing devices are a Good Thing, or you would have a hard time to, well, actually write something. This device is a wonderful, as-new, shiny Psion Series 5mx, in Spanish, with Spanish keyboard and all that! Joy, joy! :-)

This is an incredible, now extinct (I mean, you use eBay) machine, and a fascinating writing device. Almost all of my Nano in 2005 was done on my Psion Series 5 (the model before this one), I can vouch for it's promptness and readiness if you, like me, write on the go.

Now, ready to re-take The Libyan, I'm back to Sparta, to finish that part, and then we'll take Memphis, then Prosopitis, and later on, the World, Bhwah-hah-hah! Oops, too much Giffen-De Matteis's Justice League, I'm afraid...

Be gentle to your time, and be gentle to your writing device --and be gentle with your head, and hands, and your whole self in general, yeah--, and 2006 (a.k.a. 2K6, a.k.a. MMVI) will be a great writing year, indeed...

Kallisti!