I do not know about you, but my lectures are always filled with all these ...drippings of the wealth of information that is in the heads of my professors.

Not things I have to learn, but things I want to.

Today, for instance, I learnt this:

Moses. A name nobody would have had. Neither hebrew nor Egyptian. I means son of. You can find it in great variety in names like Ramses, Thutmoses etc. So the theory goes like this: His name was something of the kind. [insert Egyptian god]mose(s) (I am not sure whether the s is just because of the greek translation or whether it is there in the hebrew texts as well). Now, he -or the israelites who told the story on- removed the pagan god from his name, and was stuck with Moses. Proof that he really did exist, that is considered.


Also:

I do not know if you have read Genesis, the story of how Jakob goes back home to Mesopotamia where his family lives in order to find a wife, and how he has to work 7 years for Laban in order to get to marry Rakel, and how he is tricked into marrying her sister, and then has to work another 7 years before getting the woman he wants?
Well, there is an odditiy to that story. Just when thet leave in the dark of the night, Rakel steals the house-gods of Laban, her father. There is no reason for it. Laban gets quite upset and goes after them, searching the whole camp. Rakel sits on them on top of her camel, claiming that she cannot get up to greet her father because she has her period -an excuse no man has been able to counter till this day- and so Laban gives up, and they get to keep the housegods. Now, who cares? The house-gods never show up again in the story, and the people who passed this story on probably had not better idea about this than I did. I mean, the Bible is worse than RJ when it comes to leaving plotlines unsolved.
Anyway. In a place called Nuzi in Meopotamia, they have found some documents on family law dating to the 1500B.C. They state that if a man dies and has no sons, his property can pass on to his daughter's husband. The sign that he has decided to do this it that he give the housegod to this man.
I find this utterly fascinating.

Do you?


Magnus Alexander corpore parvus erat
Dissenting voice of wotmania
Frightfully stubborn pacifist

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent