Ancient and Modern Civilizations

Yesterday Gordon, Jeanne and I went to Erebuni, the fortress and museum of Urartu, the civilization that was here in 782 BC; Erebuni evolved into the name Yerevan. The museum contains cuneiform tablets, old wine, beer and grain storage containers, old jewelry, tools, weapons and the like. The fortress/palace was built on a hill in the southern part of town, with views of Ararat, Aragats (the highest mountain in the Republic of Armenia), and all of Yerevan – looking very different now with huge stone abandoned Soviet factories and lots of buildings and roads vs. mud huts and one of the first civilizations with agriculture and animal husbandry. We had the place to ourselves and wandered among the ruins. It amazes me that people have always wanted to proclaim that they were here – from the cuneiform, which when translated talked about the ruler at the time, to the graffiti that modern non-rulers have added to the ancient frescoes.

We read about the gods that the Urartu worshipped, and it is pretty remarkable that so many cultures worshipped the same gods (sky, war and sun were the Big Three here) and have so many of the same shapes (swirls and zigzags, animals, fertility symbols). It struck me that monotheism was really quite a break from these ancient beliefs – really, a quantum leap in thinking. And it was an interesting day for it to have struck me – I had spent most of Saturday and then Sunday morning in the Peace Corps office on the internet, reading about the Japan earthquake/nuclear power plant and about North Africa and feeling sad at all of the troubles in the world, but affected even more by emails from friends struggling with health, job and other major life issues. I was thinking about the collective unconscious and how I could send positive energy out; how powerless I felt from so far away, and how I too will struggle when I get back – I hope to stay as healthy as I can as long as I can, and I hope to find my way (calling, love, location) without spending too much time in the doldrums that seemed to be in many of those emails.

Again, it’s good to focus on the positive. The day was cold but clear, and it was great to be on the top of that hill and to learn something new and experience something old. I spent a good chunk of time on Saturday working on Everywhere Exercise, and it felt good to make some progress there and to work on something cutting-edge. I also spent time on Saturday with Brian, with first lunch and then tea and then a little bit of the British Film Festival (we abandoned it about fifteen minutes in when there was a lot of yelling in another language and no sign of English subtitles) and webcasts of The Office (more fun than a movie about a son and a grandmother anyway) and then dinner. After Erebuni, I went to Gordon and Jeanne’s homestay – they live in a much less central neighborhood – that is, a real neighborhood – and had dinner with them and their host mother, who is an astrophysicist. More, I am happy to have heard from friends and to know that they’re out there and that, far away though I may be, I am here for them.

Today I met with the Cafesjian Museum Store buyer, bringing with me the best products in the Homeland Handicrafts stable. She didn’t like most of them but gave me good feedback as to why, and she agreed to take a couple of products forward to her director. I was hoping she would be interested in more – the craft fairs are good for the little impulse buys, and we need to find markets for the more expensive items; export is an obvious answer, but it would be helpful to find some outlets here. I hope to spend most of the rest of the week going through the many emails Tim has sent us in the past month and a half – given everything else going on, I just moved them into an email folder without addressing most of them – and organizing things on my computer, now that I have it back. On Sunday I leave for this year’s See The World trip, back April 1. But now that I have the computer back, I can post the entries that were on my hard drive when my computer broke!