December 13

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My daughter works for a place that wants employees to know they are valued.

It's good to be appreciated. In light-hearted ways, as well as in more serious ways.

The big tree in front of my office building, on a day that vascillated between clouds and sunshine.

Going out for lunch.  Excellent window paintings in Nickels Arcade. I suspect this is the work of John Copley, but I do not know for sure.  You can see that the next two are the coffee shop.  Love the goggles and lab coats, as well as the swoop of antlers.

Here's the barbershop window.  Not only are the snow people all texting, they all have their mp3 players plugged into their ears.....

This is what the right-most person has texted.....

Our way back to work took us past the Kelsey Museum of archeology.  My friend suggested we go in, so we did.  What a good idea.  I hadn't been in there since they put on the new wing which allows them to show off a LOT more of their goodies.

Isn't this an excellent way to display stone seals?  The seal itself, top left, a piece of clay that shows what it look like, when you roll this seal as originally intended, and then a drawing, showing a larger and more contrasty version of what is on the seal.

Listening to the BBC's A History of the World in 100 Objects, we learned that discovering the flood story in cuneiform, on a piece of clay much older than the bible, led to rearrangement of human thinking about biblical stories. The cuneiform made it clear that at least some of the bible is a written version of much older stories.

I'm wondering if this is a Christmas story..... Snowflakes on the left, Joseph explaining to the goats why they can't have access to their manger just now, pregnant woman at right, sitting on what I thought at first was a gurney, but then realized was a manger......

The info with the seal says it is from the protoliterate period:  3800-2900 BC, but I didn't manage to capture the part that says where it is from.  Babylon, perhaps?



Ah.  Cuneiform.

If I had unlimited time, I might learn to read cuneiform.....  The info with this said it was a marriage contract.

I did a better job than I sometimes do, remembering to take pics of the identifying info as well as pics of the objects, but neglected to get the info for this jug.

Looking at it now, I am amazed by all the perfect circles.  It seems to me that they must have had a wheel, just to make all those perfect circles........  Wish I could see how they did the decorating!

The museum has drawers, with more objects, under the display cases.  We pulled them out, and enjoyed those objects as well as the ones up top.

Love this little jug.  It was about the size of a tennis ball.  Maybe a little smaller (the one above about 18" tall, as I remember.....

Love the red color on this one, too.  Wondering if a lot of these pots didn't set on sand in a tent, rather than on a flat surface in a constructed dwelling.  A lot of them had round bottoms.

Highly decorated pot.  Love the pig.  I wonder if the birds are ducks.......  And I wonder what the round things are......

Tiny pots.  These were probably 2.5" in diameter, if memory serves.  Isn't it interesting how different the decoration is, on two pots with the same shape?

Glass.  I am always stunned at the fact that so much glass has survived for so long.

This piece's decoration adds to the interest of looking at it -- you can see through to the decoration on the other side.....

Love the twisty ridges.

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