Two articles in this issue resonate with me very personally. The first is “When People Lived at Petra.” When I last visited Petra, people were indeed still living there—the Bedoul tribe of Bedouin. They lived in often beautifully fitted caves that were once tombs—away from the main tourist sites. My wife and I stayed overnight in one of their caves. The lovely young Bedouin couple, Mifla and Nawil, whose home it was, slept on the ledge outside the cave, graciously giving up their usual sleeping quarters for the night. On a tiny propane stove, Mifla cooked us a delicious dinner called magluba, a paella-like dish served on a large platter. Each of us ate from a different section of the platter. As we ate, little Bedouin boys no more than seven or eight ran up and down the steep slopes in the dark with goat-like sureness. One misstep and they would have fallen to their deaths. In the light of our fire, they smiled. We slept peacefully on mats. We awoke with the sun to a glorious morning.
Whenever one returns after a long absence to a beloved place, there is, in addition to the emotional rush that one experiences at returning, the feeling that it isn’t quite what it used to be. It is more crowded, dirtier or less friendly—or whatever. For me, that is true of Paris and even, sometimes, Jerusalem. Would it be true of Petra? The Bedouin are no longer living there. You don’t ride through the Siq on donkeys. It costs $40 to get in. As many as 4,000 tourists a day visit the site. Yet this is progress. The Bedouin have been compensated for the loss of their homes. More people are enriched by a visit to this extraordinary site. Careful conservation steps have been taken. Yes, it is progress, but something is also inevitably lost.
The other article that affected me was “Gilgamesh: Hero, King, God and Striving Man.” Editing this article brought me closer to the epic than I had ever been. I was struck by its power, especially by the impact on Gilgamesh of the death of his dear friend and companion, Enkidu. Gilgamesh was devastated by the loss of his friend, but something else hit him even more forcefully—he would someday die.
We all know that someday we will die. When we are young, death lies only in an infinitely distant future. As we grow older, our mortality becomes more real. While editing the article on Gilgamesh, I turned 70, the biblical “days of our years.” A good round number, 70, even for a healthy vigorous person, brings one’s own mortality into sharper focus. Gilgamesh’s realization comforted me. And I understood him better because of my own years.
Of course different readers will resonate to different aspects of our articles. My initial reaction to the Gilgamesh article was in fact quite self-centered: I opined that it would be foolish to try to teach Gilgamesh to college students; they are too young to appreciate the hero’s realization of his mortality. But then I thought, with the burden of so many years, that I had failed fully to appreciate the excitement of the two great friends—Gilgamesh and Enkidu—as they performed one great feat after another, even killing the monster that guarded the Cedar Forest. Let college students imbibe on this! There is something here, as there almost always is in great literature, for everyone.
So I leave it to each reader to find his or her way through this engaging issue of Archaeology Odyssey.
Two articles in this issue resonate with me very personally. The first is “When People Lived at Petra.” When I last visited Petra, people were indeed still living there—the Bedoul tribe of Bedouin. They lived in often beautifully fitted caves that were once tombs—away from the main tourist sites. My wife and I stayed overnight in one of their caves. The lovely young Bedouin couple, Mifla and Nawil, whose home it was, slept on the ledge outside the cave, graciously giving up their usual sleeping quarters for the night. On a tiny propane stove, Mifla cooked us a delicious […]
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