[at-l] The insult to Clay

[quoleldil at yahoo.com (Quoleldil)]

IMHO, "naming" people, places, and things is an awfully weak way achieve immortality. Clay works
quite well, firing it reduces the insults of time to it, and we were blessed in Mesopotamia to
have conquerers who burned down whole libraries of clay tablets, thereby preserving, among other
treasures, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first celebrated hiker. Stone works better than fired clay
to achieve immortality, as proven by the Persians and the Egyptians, because fire isn't need to
reduce the insults to clay time and accident inevitably imposes. Darius, for example, climbed high
into the mountains in modern Iran and inscribed his achievements in stone in three languages,
thereby preserving for all time the key to unlocking cuneform. So I guess I'd agree that insults
to clay is a problem modern day would be immortals must overcome, and I'd also suggest that
neither paper, nor plastic cd disks, are better than insulted clay, and stone is better.

;-)



> ### I think it needs reiterating that, regardless of the
> politics or popularity of memorializing a person through naming
> a geographical feature for them, it is a *grotesque* insult to
> RE-name that geography later on, by a different generation.

=====
David Addleton
vocate atque non vocate deus aderit
http://dfaddleton.home.att.net/

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