meroïtica

i love when i stump harvard library services. sometimes i strike texas tea at the checkout, and today was one of those days.

so i get up to the counter, they swipe my ID, yadda yadda. first they scan the books into the computer, then the stamp each and demagnetise them.

only this familiar routine was broken today, as it is when i get lucky: they spent like half an hour trying to figure out if several of the books can circulate. it was a long struggle, too.

i fucking love stumping the librarians. it means that i am taking out books no one has ever tried to take out; it means i am taking out books on a subject so obscure i prolly am joining an elite group of people who know about this incredibly un-crucial subject just by reading these books.

i had a few of these today, which made me feel good. i hate the idea of unloved books, lost knowledge, subjects considered too unimportant.

incidentally, all of these books had to do with meroïtica, which is the study of the area beyond upper egypt (i.e. in the far south) inhabited by the kushites/nubians/kingdom of meroë, whose culture was a kind of local offspring of egyptian times melded with local traditions but whose language(s) hail from an unrelated language family. unlike ancient egyptian proper, whose descendent, coptic, died out, there are modern nubian languages plus an archaic form from the coptic period (written with the same modified greek script as coptic).

anyway, i'm off to read gerald m. browne's introduction to old nubian.