I hate templates! but drug busts can be entertaining

Argggh!!! Trying to find a template I like (and Daniel doesn't reject out of hand) is SO HARD. Good thing its the Sabbath and I don't have to worry about it. I can just go to bed.

...

But I'd rather post something since I haven't in absolutely forever.

I have a couple different jobs, both money-making and otherwise. I paint house interiors with my Dad, I write things for a Biblical Museum just starting up in the area, and I teach my brothers history.

The writing is basically paid education- I just don't get to pick my major. Right I am researching and composing overviews of the various archaeological periods. Sound dry and boring? Well it is!!!! :-) Words like Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Palaeolithic hardly penetrate to my retina, let alone travel to my brain, they are so boring.

But now I get to know all about them and I'm really happy about it. Interesting things really did happen way back then.

For example, there is this really cool cave in the Judean desert, about 12 km from Ein Gedi. It is part of a series of caves along a wadi. Recently it was explored and found to have been inhabited like 3,500 years before Christ. It wasn't somebody's permanent home but more likely the temporary hole-up for shepherds. Skeletons found inside weren't even native- they were from people all the way up in Mesopotamia (think Tigris and Euphrates, the Garden of Eden, and what in the world did find so attractive in the Judean Desert?).

Anyway, weirdos from Eden aside, they explored further in the cave and discovered a reed mat (nice dry air to keep it preserved) stuffed in a crack at the back of the cave. Inside were over 400 things made out of copper or bronze! There were things that looked like crowns and things that looked like mace heads and things that looked like poles that you would hang flags on.

But here is the cool thing- nobody really knows what they are! I think "they" just put their scholarly heads together and mutter things about religious rites, and symbolism, and blah, blah, blah.

Probably if they don't know what it is, they just say it must have been part of some ancient agricultural religious ceremony, or that the figurine in question must really be a representation of the goddess of war. Maybe it was just some kid making a clay doll of what their mom looked like when she yelled at them. :-)

Off topic. Back to dusty reed mat in stinky Judean cave.

Who wraps 400 bronze objects up in their bathroom rug and stuffs them in the back of a cave and leaves them there for 5,000 years? Just think- that cave hasn't been entered by any human for thousands of years!

Imagine a security camera pointed at that cave for all those years and we get to watch the videos fast-fowarded.....

First we see bats fly in and out. The wadi fills and empties, the grass is green for a split second and the rest of the time dead. Some Mesopotamian dude comes by with his nasty goats. He wanders in and out for 10 years. Then just bats for a few decades.... then wait! Pause the video... what is that?

Some dude running down the wadi? His sandals are loose and he is staggering with heat exhaustion (NEVER run about the Judean Wilderness without your water bottle!). The pack on his back clanks and rattles and must really weigh a ton. He keeps glancing behind him with a fearful eye. Suddenly he spots the caves! He climbs into the first one, hastily removes his pack, pulls out a reed mat wrapped around something (or 400 somethings), stuffs it into a crack, and runs back out. A few seconds later five evil-looking characters with iron weapons (hey, 3,500 is the beginning of the Iron Age) jog by the cave entrance.

But we don't see what happens to him because our video is aimed at the cave. Maybe they caught and killed him and the lions ate him.

Video is boring for the next 5,000 years because all we see are generations of smelly bats flying in and out with bugs.

Then the funny white guys with pith helmets show up... but we already knew that.

I mean, why would YOU hide 400 bronze objects in a cave? Especially if you didn't know what they were.

Okay, okay, I'm sure he did know. And my story is influenced by the fact that 12 km down the wadi is Ein Gedi, the site of a temple from that same period. It was destroyed and never used again. Maybe the guy was a priest running away with religious objects to protect them from the barbarians? Or maybe he was stealing them!!! and left them in a cave and lost the memo the identified the correct wadi and cave.
Maybe, umm, the Mesopotamians carried them around as bartering items and left them by accident?

Maybe we don't know what they are because it was just somebody practicing their molding techniques!

Maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about?


Okay, as you can see, I am having fun.

And no, there is nothing about drug busts in this post. That was my other job and I'll tell you tomorrow, DV.