Horizon on the Nebra sky disc

[lethargic_man]

Though the wolves (or at least the government and certain tabloids) bay for its blood, I shall sing here the praises of the BBC, for putting so much of its information on the Web, enabling me to continue appreciating Horizon even in my current TV-less state.

An executive summary of Secrets of the star disc to seduce you into reading the whole programme transcript (it doesn't take as much as the fifty minutes the programme itself lasts!):

Deep inside this ancient mine is the key to one of Europe’s biggest archaeological mysteries. It’s a story that begins with a robbery from a burial site in the dark heart of Europe. Its hero is an archaeologist with a taste for adventure. There’s even an international police hunt, an undercover sting involving agents from two countries. At its heart is one small piece of bronze.

This disc, it seems, is a Bronze Age Bible, combining an advanced understanding of the stars with some of the most sophisticated religious imagery of the age. In intellectual achievement and also age, it surpasses anything yet found in Egypt or Greece.

Comments

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I saw the first 15-20 minutes of that Horizon and then switched it off out of sheer irritation. The reason that the transcript is much shorter to read than the full length of the program is that the latter is full of portentious incidental music and is read out v.e.r.y s.l.o.w.l.y. While the Nebra disk is evidently a key find, and the unusual story of its recovery of quite some contemporary interest, I don't think this was a good program about it, unfortunately.

I think comparing it to the Bible is ridiculous, too; the disk is a representation of a relatively small set of things that you can see, while the Bible is a codification of vast number of things revealed or remembered that simply cannot be deduced merely by a mortal individual's personal observation. They are important, whether to their users or to an interested but disinterested observer, in very different ways.

While complaints about "dumbing down" annoy me greatly - there is a tremendous amount of intellectually satisfying cultural material available in the West at the push of a button - programs like this as broadcast do provide an unfortunate insight into the source of those grumbles.

For the avoidance of doubt, I do think the BBC is a force for good in Britain and the world; I would hardly judge the organization on the basis of a single botched program. The BBC's senior staff have demonstrated a sense of responsibility simply not found in private newspapers (which routinely commit far less ambiguous errors without a single resulting resignation) and at best grudgingly present in the typical British government.

Re: Horizon on the Nebra disc

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

I think comparing it to the Bible is ridiculous, too; the disk is a representation of a relatively small set of things that you can see, while the Bible is a codification of vast number of things revealed or remembered that simply cannot be deduced merely by a mortal individual's personal observation. They are important, whether to their users or to an interested but disinterested observer, in very different ways.

Whilst this is true, I would not have taken the comparison to the Bible literally.

That said, from the point of view of Judaism, the Bible, or specifically the Tôrâh (Pentateuch, Five Books of Moses) constitutes, as well as a holy text in its own right, a reminder -- a set of hooks for chunks of memory if you like -- of a much larger body of oral law. Which is precisely what, on a smaller scale, the Nebra disc is.

Both parts of the Talmud, the Jewish Oral Law which is also counted as part of the Tôrâh, also function as mementi memoriae in this way -- the Mishnâ ("repetition") was written down when the Oral Law had become so complex people were no longer able to remember the whole of it without; and the Gemârâ ("completion") when people were no longer able to remember the details of interpretation of the Mishnâ that were not included in the Mishnaitic text.

So perhaps where I'm coming from gives me a different perspective on this from you.

While complaints about "dumbing down" annoy me greatly - there is a tremendous amount of intellectually satisfying cultural material available in the West at the push of a button - programs like this as broadcast do provide an unfortunate insight into the source of those grumbles.

<nods> And whilst there are sometimes fuller explanations on the BBC web site, or on the interactive version of the programme, not every viewer is going to go off to the website, and not every viewer has the capability for interactive TV (though as of the last month or few, more now do than not).