belteshazzar

Archive for March 6th, 2010

Okay, this is getting a little ridiculous! This is my first blog, my first use of wordpress, but not my first website. My background is programming, I have no design talent what so ever, infact, I don’t believe I possess any, even vague, form of artistic capability. I just can’t work out how this site should look, I’ve changed the theme a few times now. I must stress that I did actually setup the site offline on my own laptop to play around with setting up the theme … but since it has gone live I just haven’t liked certain aspect here and there … and I’ve tweaked the style sheets, tweaked the html, tweaked the images  … and then decided to throw out the entire theme and start from scratch. So what you see now is my latest attempt. I want something clean and elegant, yet with a little sexiness thrown in, I reckon that this theme is the one. I actually installed it a while ago but I didn’t like the floral/planty image that is in the background behind the header, it’s kind of grown on me, maybe i’ll remove it. The main thing that I’m thinking now is that the header looks like the Iraqi flag … that is bugging me, but it actually kind of fitting because of my interest in the ancient city of Babylon. Hmmm, sorry for the off topic post, but I just had to vent my frustration!!

BTW, if you ever find something that makes you think wow, or gets you interested in an aspect of ancient history, let me know so that maybe I can post something about it and we can all share that wow moment.

The Iraq flag (it must be the colours and/or contrast between them, maybe I could change the font that I use to Arabic!)

This is about the Vikings, so not entirely in the ancient period, but this article talks about a a virtual world that has been created to aid education. Its not about fancy 3d graphics, in fact, its done old school with text, “go east” style. Wow, its been a while since I’ve played a game like that, but it still looks very interesting.

Read the story at http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/virtual-worlds-and-the-most-powerful-graphics-engine-there-is/

David Gill, archaeologist, reflects on the recent return of antiquities from the U.S. to Iraq.

Read the story at http://lootingmatters.blogspot.com/2010/03/looting-matters-why-are-antiquities.html

“One loaf of bread and one jug of beer: that’s what Egypt’s Queen Behenu was offered during her funeral” … for all the riches of Egypt, all she gets in death is some bread and a beer? thats got to be a bit of kick in the guts, she obviously didn’t evoke the same feelings as Princess Diana! This article not about why Queen Behenu was seemingly not over adored, but about the new translation of hieroglyphs engraved in white stone found in her 4,000 year old burial chamber discovered earlier in the week. As a side note, did women in ancient times drink beer?

Read the story at http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/egyptian-queen-offered-bread-jug-of-beer-at-funeral.html