The Epic of Gilgamesh, as it’s usually titled by scholars and translators, may in fact not be an epic at all. It’s not even a single poem, but “a confusion of stories”, a number of reassembled fragments and tablets in more than one ancient language plus an “edition” assembled and organised out of scattered bits by one Sin-leqi-unninni, who between 1300 and 1000 BCE made what we would now call a “standardized text” out of it, adding, as Schmidt tells us, “prefatory lines … and a reprise that echoes the opening but in a darker tone.”
Archaeology
That use of first-person plurals in the title of Early Indians: The Story Of Our Ancestors And Where We Came From should not put non-Indians off. Tony Joseph has, based on and catalyzed by the most recent genetic research, written a clear, readable and, for those unfamiliar with the subject, fascinating history of Indians as a people. It will also serve both as a primer to the way the ability to read the human genome is revolutionizing archaeology as well as a salutary alternative to the eurocentric perspective of many if not most treatments of early human history.
There were no Phoenicians, so we aren’t going to find them. Simply put, that is Josephine Quinn’s thesis in this pioneering study.
This special exhibition at the Hong Kong Museum of History makes considerable use of audiovisuals, especially video, which have the dual advantage of not requiring insurance and holding the interest better than, say, incomplete pots which, however interesting, can also be somewhat dry.
The so-called “Manila galleon”—more than a trade route but in its structure and organization what we would consider today a shipping line—connected Asia with the Americas for 250 years through the latter quarter of the 16th century to the first quarter of the 19th. By being the final bi-directional piece of the global trade puzzle, and by delivering the American silver needed for the China’s money supply, this “Silver Way” arguably ushered in globalization itself.
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