Category: Writing

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Running a Small Country

I like big globes and I cannot lie. Still can’t remember the capital of Uganda, though. Kajmeister photo of Kajmeister.

Somehow, I missed the memo on Nunavut, and my globe ended up broken. However, there is a silver lining. You get to learn some geography.

April is about to start, which means it’s time for the A- Z blog challenge. This was a blog post challenge created in 2010 by J. Lenni Dorner and friends. The requirement is to write 26 posts using letters of the alphabet. People interpret that different ways, but my way is to pick a single theme, then cover them all within the month of April. The hard part is always Q, J, Z, and X. I’m going to cheat on X; I’ll warn you in advance.

I wasn’t sure if I was up to the challenge for this, my seventh year in a row. I’ve loved doing it since 2020. I’ve learned a lot (hope you have too), and it kick-started a book-writing career for me. Olympics, Accounting, Silk Road, didn’t we have fun on Ancient Inventions last year? How could I not? You can even peruse prior years in the menu at the top, under “Books & A to Z.”

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L is for Library

“The Great Library of Alexandria” by O. Von Corven, 19th century
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Libraries might seem too modern a topic for an ancient history compilation that focuses elsewhere on the first bit of thread or shaped dish. Libraries do come much later in sequence. By definition, libraries are historic rather than prehistoric, since writing has to exist in order for someone to keep collections of it. Yet even if today’s examples are all after 3300 BCE, it’s true that most societies that developed writing also created a way of storing it.

One of the most famous ancient institutions–a wonder perhaps bigger than the other seven ancient wonders–was the Library of Alexandria. It was the most ambitious and likely biggest: the Internet of its day. But Alexandria was by no means the first or even only great library of the ancient era. Moreover, different cultures took different approaches to what they stored, and that difference says something about what cultures value.

As we explore libraries, we should consider:

  1. What constitutes a “library”?
  2. What cultures created libraries in ancient times?
  3. What did the creation of libraries suggest about humans, and what lessons can be learned from Alexandria?
Doe Library at UC Berkeley, Reading Room. Pho by Joe Parks
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Old Beginnings

Woman Reclining at Desk Next to Typewriter @1900, image from © CORBIS

It’s January. It’s time to take stock of ourselves. Make resolutions. Change habits. Sweep out the old. Set some goals.

This is a New Year, but also a repeat of another year. Our universe moves forward, but circles around at the same time. We follow cycles that are as old the understanding of time itself. There are patterns that repeat, which we can see and use to fuel our hope.

There is always possibility.

Ancient planisphere, i.e. map of the cycle of the heavens, with cuneiform, from africame.

Ancient Cycles

The celebration of a new year likely began as soon as people realized that there was such a thing as a year. One of the first big things people noticed must have been the sun and its movements, noticed that this giant flame that provided light did so in a slightly different way every day. There are 37,000 year old cave paintings that show the sun and the moon, using the cave walls a kind of “paleo-almanac.”

Last night, the moon set in the west, pouring light through my bathroom window when I got up. It does that every so often, doesn’t it?

The earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia–the Sumerians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians–all had ways of counting time and all celebrated the new year. The Egyptians celebrated the flooding of the Nile, which happened in the middle of our calendar year, so their New Year was near the summer solstice. They called it Wepet Renpet, the “Opening of the Year.” As part of the coming year, they held feasts, exchanged gifts, and honored their gods.

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