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Paul Cooper Profile picture
@PaulMMCooper
Oct 19, 2017 • 22 tweets • 7 min read • Read on X
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A thread on Ishtar's Descent Into the Underworld, one of the most famous and beautiful Mesopotamian legends. #folklorethursday
Ishtar was the Mesopotamian god of love, beauty, sex, fertility, war & political power from ~3500 BCE. She was associated with planet Venus.

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More from @PaulMMCooper

Paul Cooper Profile picture
Oct 8, 2018
Some of the most remarkable lost artefacts from the ancient world were the titanic wrecks of the Nemi ships.

In their 1st century heyday they held gardens, palaces & baths in a floating wonderland. But barely a decade after their recovery, they were lost forever.
For centuries, the fishermen who sailed in the placid waters of Lake Nemi, 30km south of Rome, knew a secret.

It was said that the rotting timbers of a gigantic ancient wreck lurked below the water's quiet surface.

(📷 Kleuske; Google)
But the lake was tiny, with an area only 1.6km².

And with no other body of water connected to it, what would a vessel of that size be doing there?

(🖌️Lake Nemi, George Inness, 1872)
Read 27 tweets
Paul Cooper Profile picture
Sep 30, 2018
A thread-of-threads on the ruined places I've visited and the folklore that surrounds them.
My visit to the abandoned East Somerton Church on the Anglian coast, where the strange story of a witch and her wooden leg still haunts this ivy-covered ruin.
I take some friends to the little-known remains of the Southwood Church in Norfolk, one of the most wild and overgrown ruins I have ever come across.
Read 4 tweets
Paul Cooper Profile picture
Sep 28, 2018
Heading out into the Norfolk countryside today to find the ruin of a church that was supposedly struck by lightning, and looking into the myth of the demon dog of the broads.
The All Saints Church in Billockby was a fine flint-built church first built in the middle ages, but with most of the surviving stone dating back to the 15th century.
The town was built on the watery fens of the Norfolk broads, on the River Bure.

It's mentioned in the Domesday Book as a place of lush meadows, and a community of 20 households.
Read 21 tweets
Paul Cooper Profile picture
Sep 11, 2018
One of the world's most haunting ruined places is the ghost town of Kolmanskop, in the desert of Southern Namibia.

Once a thriving mining town, it now sits in an enormous "restricted zone" where people are still forbidden to enter, and is slowly being reclaimed by the sands.
One evening in 1908, a humble railway worker named Zacherias Lewala was working on the rails in the Southern Namib desert, shovelling them clear of the sand dunes that constantly roll over the land.

While working, he saw some strange-looking stones shining in the evening light.
Lewala picked up the stones & took them to his employer, who identified them for what they were: rough diamonds.

The find caused a sensation. Soon hordes of prospectors descended on the area, & this unassuming site became a new frontier in the diamond rush.

(📷Werner Bayer)
Read 27 tweets
Paul Cooper Profile picture
Aug 26, 2018
Many thanks to @LibraryArabLit for sending me this beautiful copy of "War Songs", a new collection of poetry by the 6th-century poet Antarah ibn Shaddad.
ʿAntar was a knight and adventurer, and wrote poetry about his battles and loves, as well as meditations on a world falling into ruin.
It's an incredible example of the atlal or ruins trope that originated in Pre-Islamic Arab poetry, showing man trying to find meaning in a ruined landscape.

This, from "Did Poetry Die?"...
Read 7 tweets
Paul Cooper Profile picture
Aug 10, 2018
Throughout history, people have tried to imagine the past by looking at ruins.

One of the most failed attempts to do so was the 1854 Assyrian Court exhibition at London’s Crystal Palace. Widely mocked & reviled by the public, it was finally destroyed in the most fitting manner.
The Crystal Palace was a revolutionary building. It used the new technologies of sheet glass & cast iron to create a 92,000 m² greenhouse, an enormous exhibition space in London's Hyde Park.

When the exhibition closed, it was rebuilt in 1854 in South London’s Sydenham Hill.
The Crystal Palace held exhibits on technology & science, but a large number of the halls were also set out to display examples of ancient archaeology & architecture from around the world.

There were halls for dozens of ancient cultures, from Greece & Egypt to Ceylon & Persia.
Read 25 tweets

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