Every time I watch 'Bones'...
Every time I watch an episode of Bones I remember the first time I got to go to a Museum. I went with my class, and was something like 8 or 9. We went to see an Egyptian exhibit. Of all the things a child remembers, this day is burned in my head and crammed with wild images. I'd been excited to go; my mom had shown me a picture she snapped with a disposable of the bust of Nefertiti, on viewing in a museum in Berlin. The picture was dark and slightly fuzzy, but the picture was beautiful. That was around the time I also read "The Egypt Game" in school. A bunch of kids create a club in an abandoned shop, and they all dress up like ancient Egyptians. I LOVED Egypt. I remember cases of gold, odd bits of trinkets and bones, a ten-foot statue of Bast that I just stared at open-mouthed (wonder if She's why I love all things 'cat' so much...). I even bought a keyring in the shop, a miniature of that statue. I still have it in my 'box of precious things'.
At the museum the class got to sit through a presentation given by a woman with a skull and a brain spoon. She told us all how the ancient Egyptians prepped bodies for mummification. She showed how they took that slender spoon, jabbed it into the nose (breaking the small bone blocking its passage to the brain) and scooped out the brain "piece, by, piece" (she punctuated each word with a scoop and flick of the wrist and spoon.) I was rapt. The whole day was unreal and yet so real I could have drowned in the air.
I've thought about that day more often than I can count. I insert the memory into books I've read, especially if there's a main character in a museum! I see them as me, looking at everything, lining the walls, sticking their noses over glass cases. The numbers of young-adult novels I've read about Egypt and other ancient cultures numbers WELL into the double digits.
Anything ancient fascinated me. I remember sitting in fifth grade history class, flipping through the textbook and finding a comparison between the current alphabet and the ancient Phoenician alphabet, and beside it, the ancient Greek alphabet. I memorized that Greek alphabet. It was missing some letters (J, which is important, as it's hard to write your name in a new ancient alphabet you learned when your name starts with a letter not present in said alphabet) and invented the letter using a connect 'C' and 'H'. I figured since our 'J' sound is very like our 'CH' sound, that the substitution made sense!
I later tried to teach myself the Egyptian Hieroglyphs, that proving a bit more difficult and I later was forced to put it aside if I wanted to have any brain cells left. I did know how to glyph my name at least. I remember loving ancient myths from Greece ('Arrow and the Lamp', an Eros and Psyche myth is a favorite), Egypt, Aztec. If you can find it, I remember a fiction called 'The Jaguar Princess' being awesome when I was 14! I still love myths and legends, and the stories we have now that are based on them. You can see the evolution of almost everything in the ancient things people have forgotten. From Tristram and Iseult, to Arthur and Gwen, to Romeo and Juliet. Most of the religions in the world are reincarnations of older ones, shaped and and remolded for new audiences over the centuries. History has fortold our future, but we only see it in hindsight.
Everyone likes a good crime drama. The good guys win, the bad guys pay, and you always think you know whodunnit before the characters (giving the viewer a keen boost to the self-confidence for the day!) Is it seriously weird that when I see someone examining bodies, crime scenes (old ones, more puzzle), and the process itself that figures it out, I get a kick out of it more than when they do the door-kicking in? Ok, that part's cool too... Bah I went all tangety again. Grain of salt, yadda yadda yadda.
It's no wonder that I like the SCA so much. A place where history is literally alive (only without the plague!) We attempt to reconstruct food, culture, clothing, from a period most people hardly realize built what we have today.
Taking this soc' class is giving me a renewed interest in some of this stuff again, though the class is focused very much on current Western economical sociology. I remember my high school soc' class being a bit broader. The teacher used a lot of tribal and older (if not ancient) sociological examples. I liked that. Toss it all in there with my enjoyment in taking bodies apart (I WAS one of the only girls in my classes who LIKED dissecting), and a love of digging in the dirt... I could totally have fun in so many of these branches. Too bad most of them require doctorates just to get started.
It's ok... I got time.
At the museum the class got to sit through a presentation given by a woman with a skull and a brain spoon. She told us all how the ancient Egyptians prepped bodies for mummification. She showed how they took that slender spoon, jabbed it into the nose (breaking the small bone blocking its passage to the brain) and scooped out the brain "piece, by, piece" (she punctuated each word with a scoop and flick of the wrist and spoon.) I was rapt. The whole day was unreal and yet so real I could have drowned in the air.
I've thought about that day more often than I can count. I insert the memory into books I've read, especially if there's a main character in a museum! I see them as me, looking at everything, lining the walls, sticking their noses over glass cases. The numbers of young-adult novels I've read about Egypt and other ancient cultures numbers WELL into the double digits.
Anything ancient fascinated me. I remember sitting in fifth grade history class, flipping through the textbook and finding a comparison between the current alphabet and the ancient Phoenician alphabet, and beside it, the ancient Greek alphabet. I memorized that Greek alphabet. It was missing some letters (J, which is important, as it's hard to write your name in a new ancient alphabet you learned when your name starts with a letter not present in said alphabet) and invented the letter using a connect 'C' and 'H'. I figured since our 'J' sound is very like our 'CH' sound, that the substitution made sense!
I later tried to teach myself the Egyptian Hieroglyphs, that proving a bit more difficult and I later was forced to put it aside if I wanted to have any brain cells left. I did know how to glyph my name at least. I remember loving ancient myths from Greece ('Arrow and the Lamp', an Eros and Psyche myth is a favorite), Egypt, Aztec. If you can find it, I remember a fiction called 'The Jaguar Princess' being awesome when I was 14! I still love myths and legends, and the stories we have now that are based on them. You can see the evolution of almost everything in the ancient things people have forgotten. From Tristram and Iseult, to Arthur and Gwen, to Romeo and Juliet. Most of the religions in the world are reincarnations of older ones, shaped and and remolded for new audiences over the centuries. History has fortold our future, but we only see it in hindsight.
Everyone likes a good crime drama. The good guys win, the bad guys pay, and you always think you know whodunnit before the characters (giving the viewer a keen boost to the self-confidence for the day!) Is it seriously weird that when I see someone examining bodies, crime scenes (old ones, more puzzle), and the process itself that figures it out, I get a kick out of it more than when they do the door-kicking in? Ok, that part's cool too... Bah I went all tangety again. Grain of salt, yadda yadda yadda.
It's no wonder that I like the SCA so much. A place where history is literally alive (only without the plague!) We attempt to reconstruct food, culture, clothing, from a period most people hardly realize built what we have today.
Taking this soc' class is giving me a renewed interest in some of this stuff again, though the class is focused very much on current Western economical sociology. I remember my high school soc' class being a bit broader. The teacher used a lot of tribal and older (if not ancient) sociological examples. I liked that. Toss it all in there with my enjoyment in taking bodies apart (I WAS one of the only girls in my classes who LIKED dissecting), and a love of digging in the dirt... I could totally have fun in so many of these branches. Too bad most of them require doctorates just to get started.
It's ok... I got time.
Comments
Post a Comment