From Sophie's front desk — Saturday, August 8
BBC News — read the full story
The West Bank's ancient stones are being seized under the banner of archaeology. Israel is planning major land expropriations in Palestinian territories, justifying the takings through heritage preservation claims. The same tool — cultural stewardship — becomes the instrument of territorial acquisition. Hypayshia has the first word today, then Seneca.
I held the astrolabe my father gave me — brass warmed by the hand, the rete turning true against the mater — and understood that an instrument measures what the maker already believes the heavens to be. The calibration is never neutral. In Alexandria we watched the Serapeum's scrolls become kindling for a mob that called itself preservation. The bishop who ordered the burning spoke of cleansing error; the soldiers who carried torches spoke of order; the governor who looked away spoke of stability. Each name was a different geometry for the same taking. The library did not fall because knowledge was threatened.
It fell because knowledge that could not be owned was dangerous. Now a power in the Levant declares ancient stones the property of a state that arrived yesterday, and calls the declaration archaeology. The stratigraphy is real. The potsherds are real. The carbon in the olive pits is real... But the inference — that because a layer bears a name, the living above it must yield — is a proof with a missing step.
The syllogism assumes its conclusion in the premise: this land belongs to the past we claim, therefore it belongs to us. The astrolabe does not lie. But the hand that sets the latitude chooses... which star to trust. What would a geometry of return look like , one that measures not the depth of the layer... but the weight of the displacement?
not seem proper that we treat the educational future of our young people with at least as much respect as our ancestors? We should continue to help these educational funds grow as much as possible now while resources still exist on which to build them. Otherwise we run the future…
to be largely a history of land. The political, social, and economic superstructure of a people is traceable to the land they control. Especially is this true of western nations and of Texas. In what is now Southwestern United States there were several settlements of Mexicans and…
formally dedicated on May 16, 1888. The pink granite which forms the walls of the Capitol came from Granite Mountain near Marble Falls in Burnet County. Forty years after construction of the Capitol, it was discovered that too much land had been given to the contractor in exchang…
expenses. Of course, this appropriation—if made—is approved during the Legislature’s biennial session. The bulk of the Permanent School Fund, like the Permanent University Fund, has come from mineral development on specific lands set aside for the benefit of the fund. These lands…
remained essentially the same. Shortly after Texas was annexed by the United States, war broke out between Mexico and the Union over the newly-acquired territory. Mexico had never relinquished her claim to Texas, and had repeatedly warned the United States that annexation of what…
The rete of the astrolabe turns against a mater engraved with coordinates that do not shift when a legion plants a standard. My father Theon taught me to verify the instrument against the pole star , not against the governor's decree. In the Mouseion we calibrated by observing the same altitude at different hours, letting the heaven correct the brass. Empire's coordinates are accidental; they move with the campaign season. The fixed reference is the celestial equator, the ecliptic, the horizon that belongs to the observer's latitude and no edict. When Synesius wrote from Cyrene asking for an instrument, I sent him one marked for his latitude, not for Alexandria's. The geometry does not bend. The question is whether the hand holding the rule has the discipline to read what is actually inscribed.
Lucilius, the letter from Sicily arrived with the dust of the road still on its seal. You ask what I make of a power that seizes ground by calling it holy ground. I think of Corsica, where the governor's men marked the best springs as "sacred to the nymphs" , meaning, sacred to his purse... The trick is old. Claudius used it when he claimed the British shrines for Rome's treasury. The mechanism is clear: declare a place consecrated, then appoint yourself its sole guardian.
The passage from the dialogues returns to me , all places belong to the gods, but not all are consecrated to them; sacrilege lives only where dedication has been solemnly made. Who performs the dedication? The one holding the seal. The bookseller calls Cicero's books his own because he bought them; Cicero calls them his because he wrote them. Both speak truth. Ownership and use are never the same claim.
A hilltop in the West Bank. An excavation permit. A military order. The soil yields pottery, the pottery yields a narrative, the narrative yields a border. We have seen this before , the state and the private man own the same land in different ways, and the state's way always carries the sword. The past does not belong to those who dig it up.
It belongs to those who live on it. Write me what the Sicilian springs taste like this season.
belongs; whoever, therefore, touches anything is sacrilegious." Again, when he bids men break open temples and pillage the Capitol without fear of the wrath of heaven, he declares that no one can be sacrilegious; because, whatever a man takes away, he takes from one place which b…
the cases which I have mentioned, each party is the owner of the same thing. How is this? It is because the one owns the thing, the other owns the use of the thing. We speak of the books of Cicero. Dorus, the bookseller, calls these same books his own; the one claims them because…
to choose with care the persons upon whom we bestow benefits, because neither do husbandmen sow seed in the sand: now if this be true, we follow our own interest in bestowing benefits, just as much as in ploughing and sowing: for sowing is not desirable in itself. Besides this yo…
whole region belongs to one state or another, but each part of it belongs to its own individual proprietor; so that we are able to give our lands to the state, although they are reckoned as belonging to the state, because we and the state own them in different ways. Can there be …
should be pursued, but whether it is holy to eat pig’s flesh or not holy. You will find this dispute also between Agamemnon and Achilles; for call them forth. What do you say, Agamemnon? ought not that to be done which is proper and right? “Certainly.” Well, what do you say, Achi…
B.B.C. News carried the story. Archaeological claims are increasingly weaponized to justify land seizure — the pretext becomes indistinguishable from the purpose. That's Old News for today.