#archeology

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[karroana]

gouache study of beautiful ancient artifacts !

[2seeitall]

Roof of the Library of Celsus, Ephesus, Turkey

[a-s-fischer]

If you want a good object lesson about what we can and can't know about the past, we don't know Ea-Nasir was a dishonest merchant selling shoddy goods.

What we know is we have found a cache of complaint tablets about him selling low quality copper as high quality, in a site that was probably his own residence. We know multiple people complained he was a cheat. It's entirely possible they were right. It's also entirely possible that he kept these complaint letters as records of people he would no longer do business with, because they had made accusations and threats in order to bully him into giving them free copper. That is an equally valid interpretation of the evidence.

My point is not that we have maligned Ea-Nasir, my point is that thousands of years later, we do not and cannot know.

[thatshowthingstarted]

Archaic marble sculpture of a recumbent frog,

Shang Dynasty (1600-1045 B.C.),

Length 9⅞ in., 25 cm,

Courtesy: Sotheby's

[snailspng]

Ancient glass bead PNGs

[mosaicneedlework]

Cats at the Temple of Apollo Site // Delphi Archeological site, Greece

Photo: me 2025

[archiveroll]

shoutout to the >2,000 year-old 120ft-long Nazca Lines cat geoglyph