Archaeology Best Sellers, In Three Parts

Okay, all right! (Yes, okay should be spelled out, not abbreviated o.k. and all right is two words.)

Once again, you know more about me than I wish you did. Although, along those lines, I have to say that the best writing is, at its heart, honest.

I cannot depend on myself to complete the tasks I've set for myself (to say nothing of the tasks other people might like to set for me). I wrote a post on Connelly's Parthenon Enigma and planned to write two more posts on current archaeology books, Brier's Secret of the Great Pyramid and Cline's 1177 B. C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed.

And, just so we're square, the thesis of Brier's book is a theory developed by French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin, in turn based on his father's insight (his father is also an architect) that the Great Pyramid at Giza was built by means first of an exterior ramp and then an interior ramp.

The thesis of Cline's book is that the migration or invasion of the Sea Peoples, so-called, who probably came from Western Europe, may have brought about the catastrophic collapse of the Late Bronze Age. I read carefully, but did not come away with more information than that.

Why is it, I often wonder, that I am not good at assigning myself posts. And the best, and most flattering, answer is that these posts "come" to me. I have an idea for a post and, at first, the idea is a gift. Then it becomes a possibility--"Oh," I think, "that might work"--and let my thoughts play with the idea. And finally it becomes a demand: "I'm not going to be able to put this idea to rest, or get any rest myself, for that matter, until I write the damn thing."

So now you know.