Being behind in schoolwork, always, I just picked up Vincent Scully’s article entitled The Sacred Mountain in Mesopotamia to read on Saturday. I sat down, coffee in hand and feet up, and plowed in. There are comparisons of skyscrapers, pyramids, ziggurats to mountains, I am confused but maybe he has a point. Gilgamesh? Naram-Sin? Concept of ma’at? Perhaps I am just tired so I stop and put the article down. I drink a little more coffee, wash my face and walk around a little before settling down again with the paper. Scully now talks about the Mesopotamian plan being urban, having a “center-city” and I understand a little. Then I come to a grinding halt when the word comes up, “Tetrahedronal” ….I am so tired, what does this mean? I stop again, look up the word and can’t find it as is so I go to (what I think is) the root tetrahedron. It’s a geometry term and if my high school geometry class wasn’t over 23 years ago I may have know this, but it just made me feel extremely ignorant. So I put this article down and after about half an hour of sitting around feeling sorry for myself I read Malek’s article Egyptian Art, and found myself whipping through it really quickly. My ego is restored so I pick up Scully’s article and try again. I manage to get through the rest of The Sacred Mountain in Mesopotamia with a modicum of understanding even though he ends with some kind of bizarre story of a Pueblo bull dancer to a throne room at Phaistos that I don’t really understand. Still I push forward. I got through thinking that how bad could his article The Greek Temple be? He starts again with Giglamesh but I now know what this is because I had to look up and read about this king of Uruk of Babylonia for Scully’s last article but I am soon really, really lost and give up. I start thinking, who is this author and why does he have to be so confusing? Granted I am not a typical student and have to struggle through at half time while working full but I don’t think I am a total illiterate idiot but reading this article I feel like just that.
Vincent Scully; Enrolled at Yale at 16, foremost architectural historian, longtime Yale professor who gives standing room only lectures. Well with credentials like that the articles must be brilliant, completely factual, a noble piece of writing. Am I as I feared, just an illiterate idiot? Or maybe just an overworked, sleep-deprived human being struggling to do the best she can. At 10:30pm on a Sunday evening I just can’t decide which. I read a little bit more about Vincent Scully and less of his writing and quickly find this more educational and personally inspirational as his ideas and theory’s make much more sense to me when explained by others. I think I will just try and take comfort in that for the moment.
