Minutiae
This is one of the reasons academia makes me smile. A little clay tablet inscribed with cuneiform (which really just looks like a sparrow has walked all over the wet clay with its pointy feet*) has been hailed as "the most important find in Biblical archaeology for 100 years" [same article as above, but from the Telegraph rather than Times]. The tablet mentions the name of Nabu-sharrusu-ukin, a minor character in the Old Testament (spelled Nebo-Sarsekim, which looks like a different name to me, but what do I know?). Because he was an historical actuality, then, more weight is lent to the entire book of Jeremiah (Chapter 39, if you're interested - though in my King James the name is so differently spelled that it could be quite another person, but I'll take their words for it).
But what makes me smile is that this discovery - this variously-spelt little man on a little piece of clay - is probably going to be the highest point of someone's academic life. Whilst to most of us it just looks like a bit of dried mud with bird-prints. Little things, great minds. Occasional madnesses...
*NB: Image in this link is not of the tablet in the article.
3 comments:
It might actually be a bit of dried mud with bird prints and a tragic coincidence. ;P
It could, in that case, be birds through the ages practising the same dance-steps - leading to a curiously but deceptively regular pattern...oh no! ;)
The routines passed down to generations of baby birds... "this one'll keep them guessing." ;P
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