Beginning of school, Greeks and more

Today started with a 30 mile bike ride around 6am. I met Jonathan and Roger, led the way to Elkhart, and then we took Route 66 headed for Lincoln. Roger got a flat tire, but Jonathan (I think he's always prepared) had the gear needed to fix the flat. Roger had called his wife to pick him up, so we waited about 25 minutes, then Jonathan and I kept riding and Roger passed us about ten minutes later in a truck with his wife. I guess she found him. :)

Freshmen moved into the dorms today, and I realize it's finally official--school has begun (at least it will next Tuesday). There's a morbid game on campus to see what kind of serial killer professors would be if they were in fact serial killers, and I was told that I would probably write things in my journal. Not true, but Bethany likes telling this story (Colonol Mustard, in the Conservatory, with a revolver. For me, it's a journal because I teach writing and English. Not a game I hope to continue.)

So the last year I've been reading and lecturing on the Greeks for one of my classes, and have gone to knowing very little about the Greeks to developing a growing interest and fascination with anything I can find out about them, especially when it comes to the mythology, Greek religion, and their literature, art, and architecture. I'm especially interested to know more about the Minoans (lived in modern day Crete) and the Mycenaeans. Since this is mostly what I lecture on, the interest follows necessity. I even got to go to Greece this summer and visit Corinth, Mycenae, Epidaurus, Delphi, and Athens (and we passed Thebes, but there was no sphinx, and no incestual relationships that I know of.)

Before I go further talking about the Greeks, I want to give some work background. I hate spending too much time alone, so when I'm reading in my office and have sat too long without seeing another person, I head down the hall to visit Brian. Brian's the history prof, and we lecture in two classes together, and he's been my mentor the last year. I tell him something I just found out about the Greeks, or ask him a question about whether their could have been giants, or why snakes are depicted so much in Greek art, or if there could be a connection between the Nephilim referred to in Genesis and the Greek gods. Brian generally likes more alone time than I do, but he puts up with my questions and general rambling patiently (most of the time), then approaches the question from a historical perspective, which means a more skeptical one.*

*(In Corinth we looked at sculptures of the Amazons (tribes of female warriors) together and he said they couldn't have possibly existed. I actually got angry and walked away for a while, feeling like he was always shooting down the possibilities and questions. Later I addressed him and he said, "the Amazons were known for cutting off a breast so they could shoot arrows better. In the ancient world, without sterilization and our knowledge of medicine, they would have gotten an infection and died." My mind jumped to wondering about the possibility of cauterization with a hot poker or fire, but my hurt ego was soothed by the fact that he had explained his theory, rather than just saying I was wrong.)

So here's the big difference between Brian's perspective and mine. Brian is a well trained historian, so he looks for facts, checks accounts, looks at holes. I grew up reading fantasy literature and became an English major. When I look at a situation, I ask "what if?" I like to think of possibilities and a story, which sometimes takes me far away from reality. Brian often helps ground me, and me, maybe I expand his possibilities in small ways, or just force him to develop greater capacities of patience with people who ask dumb questions.

For example, what if the Red Sea crossing actually happened, or, say, there actually WERE giants at one time? How would that change the way we look at our history, and by extension, our own lives? A number of people look at the Red Sea and say, I've never seen it happen, it couldn't have happened. But there are grooves on the west and east sides of the Red Sea where a million people could have passed and left their imprint in the desert, there are stone boundary markers around a mountain in modern day Saudi Arabia that fit more accurately the Sinai site than the one people go visit today, and there are images of bulls on those boundary stones.

It's still hard to imagine how the Greeks living in the 8th century BC or even 5th century BC would have seen their world or envisioned it, especially coming from a 21st century perspective. In the 8th century, the Greeks were coming out of a 400 year Dark Age, where writing had ceased and there had been a gap in what they knew about their history. They saw the walls of Mycenae (the stone above the Lion's Gate alone weighs 120 tons and sits over ten feet from the ground) and believed that only giants could have built these "Cyclopean walls." How exactly they did get this massive stone (lintel) up to rest on equally massive posts is still unknown (there is no evidence of gears, pulleys, or tackle) but one possibility is they used a long earth ramp built up level to the top of the posts, used animals and human labor to drag it (much like the building projects in Egypt), and then dug away the dirt ramp.

The question is, how do we reconstruct the past, especially when all we have are the stories, fragments and shards that cover only small slices of life? Could there have been giants constructing the walls? Maybe, though the gold death masks reveal faces that are just as human as you and I, if not a little stylized.

I'd like to write more about concepts of heroes (Greek and present), and may wrestle with other lecture questions online. It actually may save Brian from my frequent visits, so he will probably be grateful if I keep the conversation here.