August 2017 – Book and Sword

Cross-Post: Dis Manibus Muhammed Dandamayev

Muhammad Dandamayev, the distinguished Russian Assyriologist and Achaemenid scholar, has died at the age of 88. He was startlingly multilingual (as he was born in Dagestan, even Russian was a second language for him) and untiring (the author of several books which required pouring through transcriptions of thousands of cuneiform tablets), and during the Soviet... Continue reading: Cross-Post: Dis Manibus Muhammed Dandamayev

The Innsbrucker Labyrinth

The Innsbrucker Marktplatz in July 2017. Where do you turn, and turn again? How do delivery vans, bicyclists, and pedestrians share the space with the construction site, the underground garage [right next to a major river, natch], and the farmer’s market? Last summer I regaled my gentle readers with the story... Continue reading: The Innsbrucker Labyrinth

A Lombard Silver Bowl

A plate wrought with a horseman in a shirt of mail riding down a man on foot with a two-handed thrust of a lance. Another infantryman has already fallen atop his large round shield. — Detail from a wrought silver plate in the Castelvecchio, Verona. Said to come from northern Italy and date to the sixth century CE. Photo by Sean Manning.

One of the treasures housed in the Castelvecchio of Verona is an extraordinary silver plate. It dates a bit later than the Sasanid silverwork which I have blogged about before, to the age which gave us Maurice’s Strategikon when East Romans, Goths, and Lombards were struggling for control in Italy and destroying what was left of the wealth and learning built up in the centuries when Rome ruled the world.

Cross-Post: Bronze Sword Workshop, Scotland, 7-8 August

Photo care of Neil Burridge of Bronze Age Swords Neil Burridge had to give up his annual bronze sword workshops when he noticed his competitors taking them, but he is making an exception this year. This one is not in Cornwall: Bronze Sword Workshop 7th & 8th AUG Crannog Center there... Continue reading: Cross-Post: Bronze Sword Workshop, Scotland, 7-8 August

Month: August 2017