We don’t often think of other aspects of archaeologists’ lives—when they’re not in the field or the lab or writing an excavation report, preliminary or final. Oh, of course, they have families, love their parents, argue with their spouses, yell at their children and get sick sometimes. But they also have interests not strictly archaeological. Such is the case with my friend Ronny Reich, excavator of the City of David.
Ronny loves poetry—particularly German and Hebrew poetry. He especially enjoys translating it. He recently sent me a little piece that he titled “Lyrical Antiquities,” a kind of introduction to his translation of a Hebrew poem by the Israeli poet Nathan Alterman. I am pleased to devote this issue’s First Person to it. It gives us a different way of approaching archaeology—not as a scholar, a historian or a scientist, but as a poet.—H.S.
Lyrical Antiquities
Ancient sites and ancient objects find their way, occasionally, into poetry. They may transmit a most concrete sense of the passing of time.
Several poets wrote poems inspired by ancient statues, particularly of the classical world, for example, the German poet Reiner Maria Rilke (1875–1826), in his “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” A statue of this Greek god also appears in the poem “In Front of the Statue of Apollo,” by the Jewish poet Saul Tschernichovski (1875–1943), or as in his poem “The Statue.” The English poet A.E. Housman (1859–1936) converses with a statue in the Grecian Gallery (probably in the British Museum) in poem 51 of his “A Shropshire Lad.”
The renowned Israeli poet Nathan Alterman (1910–1970) found inspiration for several poems in archaeological discoveries made in Israel. The first excavation conducted in the young state of Israel was carried out in 1948 by Professor Benjamin Mazar at Tell Qasile in Tel Aviv, Alterman’s hometown. Alterman’s poem “The New City” describes some of Mazar’s discoveries and how they allude to modern Tel Aviv. When the Bar-Kokhba letters were discovered by Yigael Yadin, Alterman wrote “The Pottery Jars,” in which these jars allow us to “correspond” with our forefathers.
Another archaeological poem by Alterman is titled “The Potter.” It describes the making of a pot in ancient times and the significance of the fact that eventually its sherds will be found scattered on an ancient mound. Here is my English translation of the Hebrew poem:
We don’t often think of other aspects of archaeologists’ lives—when they’re not in the field or the lab or writing an excavation report, preliminary or final. Oh, of course, they have families, love their parents, argue with their spouses, yell at their children and get sick sometimes. But they also have interests not strictly archaeological. Such is the case with my friend Ronny Reich, excavator of the City of David. Ronny loves poetry—particularly German and Hebrew poetry. He especially enjoys translating it. He recently sent me a little piece that he titled “Lyrical Antiquities,” a kind of introduction to […]
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