A weekend in Berlin

[lethargic_man]

I've just come back from a weekend in Berlin with aviva_m. On motzei Shabbos we went to see Two Against One, a Tom Waits tribute group, which was fun, even if we couldn't see the musicians from where we were sitting (they were in the front room of the café, and we were in the back).

Then on aviva_m took me on Sunday to the Tell Ḥalaf exhibition at the Pergamon Museum. This showcased the work of Max von Oppenheim excavating this early first millennium BCE Aramaean city (called Guzana at the time, and referred to as Gozān in the Bible) during the early part of the twentieth century. Unfortunately, the private museum the finds were displayed in was hit by an incendiary bomb during the War. The smaller finds had been removed for safekeeping, but the larger statues were too big to move. As a result of the heat stress not just from the bomb but also the firefighting, the limestone finds were reduced to powder, and the basalt statues shattered into more than 27,000 stone fragments.

Astonishingly, though, they've now managed to put them all together again (or the vast majority at any rate). It's an incredible piece of restoration, and I recommend the exhibition to anyone who's in Berlin in the next while.

The exhibition featured all kinds of strange mythological beasties—griffins and so forth—and large statues of gods (including one lent from a museum in Aleppo). There was one statue depicting a weather god; I wondered whether that might be an idol of the Aramaean storm god Hadad mentioned in the Bible.

On the way in, aviva_m mentioned there would be cuneiform. "Do you know lots of cuneiform now?" she asked. " " ("Not much"), I replied. "Oh, do you know Assyrian?" said the person queueing in front. "No, just enough to give the impression I do," said I. (Actually, I was taking Hebrew words and attempting to Assyrianise them, and playing somewhat fast and loose with the grammar.) "Well I do know Assyrian," he said.

I probably should have talked to him more on the way in, but I was embarrassed by the fact I was claiming a little knowledge in a field I knew very little about, and which he no doubt knew inside out, so I did not.

And then I managed to wreck the end of a good weekend by leaving my bag in Schönefeld Airport, possibly even in the same toilet I lost my passport in six years ago (or possibly I failed to pick it up after I'd passed through security). It took me five minutes to realise, and then I went haring back, but already it had gone, and, with my departure gate closing in five minutes I decided catching my flight was more important. There was nothing of any real value in it apart from my camera, but it's still a bloody nuisance; and several of the things in it had sentimental value.

*sigh* I'm really not fit to be let out of the country, am I?

Comments

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

The Assyrians spoke and still speak Aramaic. You could have recited Kadish. That is Aramaic.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Firstly, Guzana turned out to be under native (Aramaean), not Assyrian control at the time. Secondly, at the time in question, both the Aramaeans (or at least these ones, to judge by their inscriptions) and the Assyrians spoke Assyrian (a late form of Akkadian). The time of the ascendancy of Aramaic was later.

[curious-reader.livejournal.com]

Ah, Ok. Well, you know about their history. You always say you know nothing but actually you know a lot about everything.

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

No, the whole point of this anecdote is that I know a little about everything. A little about everything is enough to give the impression to those who don't know about a subject that I am a master of it, but a true expert will see through that in no time.