Hello!

[Nuke]

I really like Norse mythology. I still have most of the runes memorized. Egyptian I'm not familiar with but what I've read is certainly interesting. I also want to get to reading more Native American and Hawaiian myths, and Hindu ones as well.

I've got books on Native American and Oceanic myths that I haven't gotten a chance to read yet, I can't wait to crack them open . I was lucky enough to have a Hindu friend who would have conversations about the religion with me. It was very interesting getting their perspective on it. It's such a fascinating and rich religion with great stories.

I've been trying to talk myself into going through the Ramayana and Mahabharata some day. India has some of the most interesting history. Their mythology is great and their inventive weaponry and martial arts and such are even more interesting. In fact, my current comic is kind of vaguely touching on that stuff right now >>

[raerae]

Amusingly enough a comic got me interested in Hindu mythology. Granted, I fully expect it's only loosely based on it, but it's a lovely series all the same(it's a manga called RG Veda).

[3XLT]

I don't know if you have ever read Sting's Autobiography "Broken Music" but it has a great story in there about Stewart Copeland's father (Miles Copeland who was a CIA agent for over thirty years; actually Stewart Copelands mother was an archeologist so that kinda makes the story even better) and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

It's pretty funny and the book as a whole is a great read... although not much related to the subject at hand with this one exception.  

Never read it. Sounds cool.

Just a quick question...

Does anyone know of any really good archaeology news sites? The best I've found is http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/.

[Rob]

As I recall from "Broken Music" the story was a good deal more colorful, with Miles Copeland speculating on the vast secrets of God, the Bible and history that could have been lost due to this calamity of poor historical object handling but this is the essence of the tale:

The American CIA representative to Damascus, Miles Copeland, was approached by an Egyptian merchant with an ancient looking and disintegrating scroll. Copeland agreed to photograph it and see if he could find someone to identify it. The scroll was unrolled on the roof of the American legation and photographed in a wind that peeled off large chucks of the scroll which were lost forever. Thirty frames were taken, which was not enough to cover the entire scroll. One unidentified American Embassy official in Beirut who saw the photographs is said to have identified it as part of the Old Testament book of Daniel. Part was in Aramaic and part in Hebrew. The merchant never returned to claim his scroll, the photographs have been lost along with the scroll. Fragments of the Daniel scroll were eventually found at Qumran five years after the reported incident.

From this website:

http://home.flash.net/~hoselton/deadsea/timelinm.htm

[3XLT]

Rob: It breaks my heart to read that kind of stuff. So much ancient literature has been lost...