This is the final part of my roundup of 2013 blog posts – I’ve managed to get it all done before January is over, which feels like a victory of sorts 🙂 There are a few categories on the sidebar that aren’t covered here. Admin is mostly indexes for each month, rather dull and somewhat recursive to index the indexes, so I haven’t. The others had no posts last year, some of which are rather surprising, some of which are not. I’ve played a lot of computer games over the last year, but apparently not written about anything – I should change that this year. We’ve not done any proper long walks with geocaching for ages, so that category is also empty. I also haven’t read any papers, nor have I done anything that fits in the Sport category (which exists to hold the photos of the Tour of Britain that I took in 2012 (post). And Whimsy is a new category this year for a piece of creative writing for the Shakespeare course I’m doing on Future Learn.
Films
As you can tell, I don’t really see many films.
Radio
Most Sunday mornings we listen to a radio programme while we eat breakfast, most of these are from the In Our Time series. This covers a wide range of topics, and each episode has 3 experts in the field that’s being discussed sharing lay-person level explanations of the current state of knowledge in the field. They’re pretty much always fascinating. We’ve also listened to a couple of series about current affairs in the Middle East, which provide a historical perspective for the situation.
I’m not sure I can pick a favourite – I’ve just spent a while looking at the list of titles and for pretty much all of them I’ve thought “oh, that one was really good”. An interesting note is that my write up of the one about Japan’s Sakoku period got picked up by a site called OMG Facts so I think it’s been the most read post on my blog.
- Absolute Zero. In Our Time episode about absolute zero, both what it is and the history of the scientists trying to achieve it in the laboratory.
- The Amazons. In Our Time episode about the Amazons of Greek myth.
- Bertrand Russell. In Our Time episode about the life & work of Bertrand Russell.
- The Borgias. In Our Time episode about the Borgia family in Renaissance Italy.
- The Book of Common Prayer. In Our Time episode about the history & contents of the Book of Common Prayer.
- Comets. In Our Time episode about comets.
- The Corn Laws. In Our Time episode about the Corn Laws of the early 19th Century.
- Crystallography. In Our Time episode about x-ray crystallography.
- The Cult of Mithras. In Our Time episode about the Roman cult of Mithras.
- Epicureanism. In Our Time episode about the philosophy of Epicurus.
- Exoplanets. In Our Time episode about planets in other solar systems to our own.
- Galen. In Our Time episode about Galen, the 2nd Century AD Greek physician.
- Gnosticism. In Our Time episode about Gnosticism.
- Ice Ages. In Our Time episode about ice ages.
- Icelandic Sagas. In Our Time episode about Icelandic Sagas.
- Japan’s Sakoku Period. In Our Time episode about the period of Japan’s history where it pursued a policy of isolation from the rest of the world.
- The Mamluks. In Our Time episode about the Mamluks, who were a slave army who ruled Egypt between the 13th & 16th Centuries AD.
- The Making of the Modern Arab World. Four part Radio 4 series about the modern history of the Middle East.
- Le Morte d’Arthur. In Our Time episode about Malory’s version of the Arthurian legend.
- Pascal. In Our Time episode about the life & work of Blaise Pascal.
- Pitt-Rivers. In Our Time episode about Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers, the man whose collection forms the basis of the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford.
- The Putney Debates. In Our Time episode about the context of & discussions in the Putney Debates (held in 1647 after the end of the first part of the Civil Wars).
- Queen Zenobia. In Our Time episode about the Palmyran Queen who rebelled against Rome & founded a short-lived empire in the Middle East around 270AD.
- Relativity. In Our Time episode about Einstein’s theories of relativity.
- Romulus and Remus. In Our Time episode about Rome’s founding myth.
- Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. In Our Time episode about the epic Persian poem the Shahnameh.
- South Sea Bubble. In Our Time episode about the South Sea Bubble.
- Turkey: The New Ottomans. A three part series putting modern Turkey in a historical context, and looking at its relationships with the Arab World & the West.
- The Upanishads. In Our Time episode about one of the groups of sacred texts of the Hindu religion.
- The War of 1812. In Our Time episode about the war between Britain & the US which started in 1812.
- Water. In Our Time episode about the chemical nature of water.
Reflections
Reflections is the category where I put articles that aren’t just about one thing, but are instead me reflecting on a group of posts or things. In 2013 that only includes the two posts I wrote about the books I read while I was reading those filed on my bookshelf under A.
- Filed Under A – stats & a retrospective on the books I’ve read so far as part of Read All the Fiction.
- Other Things I Read While Reading the As – stats & a retrospective on the fiction I read during the same time period as the books filed under A on my bookshelf.
Talks
Most of the talks we go to are at the Essex Egyptology Group meetings, so there is a strong Egyptian flavour to this section. There are also a couple of trips organised by the EEG, and one talk from a British Museum Members’ Open Evening (which is the sole non-Egyptian one here). I think my absolute favourite was Diane Johnson’s talk about meteoric iron in Ancient Egypt because it was a subject I knew nothing about before and the electron microscopy of the iron beads was particularly interesting. But they were all interesting talks.
- “The Arts of War: Assyrian Narrative Art” Nigel Tallis. Talk at the British Museum Members’ Open Evening in November 2013.
- August EEG Meeting. The format this month was different – 4 short talks from members (including me).
- EEG Trip to the EES. A group of us from the EEG visited the London office of the EES to see their archives.
- EEG Visit to the Petrie Museum. A trip to the Petrie Museum by members of the EEG where we were given a tour & a talk by Wolfram Grajetzki about Lahun.
- “Egypt’s So-Called First Intermediate Period and the Tomb of Ankhtifi” Glenn Godenho. Talk given at the EEG meeting in March, about the tomb of Ankhtifi & what it tells us about the First Intermediate Period.
- “Farming & Agriculture in the Nile Valley” Victor Blunden. Talk at the EEG meeting in April, about the farming methods of the ancient Egyptians.
- “Freemasonry and Ancient Egypt” Cathie Bryan. Talk at the EEG meeting in October, about the influences of (perceived) Egyptian culture on Freemasonry.
- “The Lion in Ancient Egypt: An Elite Phenomenon?” Lyn Stagg. Talk at the December EEG meeting, about lion symbolism & iconography in pre-dynastic and early dynastic Egypt.
- “Man in a Cretan Cloak: JDS Pendlebury at Amarna” Rosalind Janssen. Talk given at the EEG meeting in February, about the life & death of the archaeologist J. D. S. Pendlebury.
- “Marriage in Ancient Egypt” Lucia Gahlin. Talk at the EEG meeting in July, about marriage in Ancient Egypt.
- “Meteorites in Ancient Egypt” Diane Johnson. Talk given by Diane Johnson at the EEG meeting in September about her work on meteoric iron in Ancient Egyptian objects.
- “Monuments to Amun-Ra ‘King of the Gods’: The Temples of Thebes” George Hart. Talk given by George Hart at the June meeting of the EEG, about Amun-Ra and the various temples in the Theban region.
- “Mummies, Asps and Far Too Much Eye Make-up: Ancient Egypt in the Cinema” John J. Johnston. Talk given at the EEG meeting in May, about films featuring Ancient Egypt.
- “Ritual and Religion in Egyptian Mines and Quarries” Hannah Pethen. Talk given at the EEG meeting in November, about the rituals and mythology that the Ancient Egyptians had surrounding mining.