Time to return to Tudor Parfitt‘s documentary The Quest For The Lost Ark, which I started to discuss last week. A brief recap: Prof. Parfitt has discovered, in a museum in Harare, a 14th-century southern African war drum whose descent can, arguably, be traced back to the Biblical Ark of the Covenant, as described in Raiders Of The Lost Ark Exodus:
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Keyword noise: Africa, Ancient Egypt, archaeology, ark, Ark Of The Covenant, The Bible, Biblical, Channel 4, Deuteronomy, documentary, drum, Egypt, Exodus, Harare, Israelites, Jerusalem, Judaism, Moses, Old Testament, relic, religion, reliquary, ritual, television, Torah, Tudor Parfitt, Zimbabwe.
In our attempt to make sure we didn’t do anything too romantic on Saturday, we stayed in and watched an archaeology documentary on the telly. Or, at least, it said it was an archaeology documentary. It quickly veered off towards pseudoarchaeology, and stayed there.
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Keyword noise: Africa, archaeology, ark, Ark Of The Covenant, The Bible, Biblical, Caitlin lectures you, Channel 4, documentary, drum, Egypt, Harare, Israel, Israelites, Jerusalem, Judaism, Lemba, Moses, Old Testament, relic, religion, reliquary, ritual, television, telly, Temple, Torah, Tudor Parfitt, tv, Zimbabwe.
In which sometimes things can be too successful
Published at 11:53 am on July 21st, 2007
Filed under: Linkery, Unbelievable.
In which we know where the bodies aren’t buried
Published at 11:17 pm on February 5th, 2007
Filed under: In With The Old, Unbelievable.
Archaeology news story of the week: British pagans have decided that archaeologist should hand prehistoric skeletons over to them for reburial. Which is, of course, a silly idea, and one that a lot of archaeologists have a problem with.
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Keyword noise: archaeology, artefacts, burial, conservation, curation, East Yorkshire, funerals, human remains, paganism, prehistory, preservation, reburial, religion, ritual, skeletons, Yorkshire.
In which we look at the concept of eternal rest
Published at 12:47 pm on June 2nd, 2006
Filed under: In With The Old, Political.
In the news recently: the government is making moves to reuse old burial plots, to deal with the problem of overcrowded graveyards. People are, naturally, a bit shocked at the idea of disturbing one’s eternal rest, especially given the synchronicity between this news and the reburial of Gladys Hammond.
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Keyword noise: burial, charnel house, cremation, death, Evelyn Waugh, funerals, Gladys Hammond, graveyards, history, invented tradition, Jessica Mitford, Kutná Hora, Sedlec, ossuary, ritual, The American Way Of Death, The Loved One, tradition.
I was a little doubtful when I saw, on the front page of Friday’s Guardian, the tagline “Steam trains – the great aphrodisiac”. I do like trains, but I wouldn’t say that about them.
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Keyword noise: culture, locomotive, railway, ritual, romantic, steam engine, steam train, The Guardian, Simon Jenkins, trains.