Category Archives: Blog

You have seized the fortress of my heart,
your love arrows can split even a mountain,
how can my poor heart ever escape them?

— Rumi

An upcoming symposium at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard, where I did my post-doc, seeks to re-evaluate and re-contextualize the study, representation, and nomenclature of the Middle East–in the academy and museums.

Finally, the naming of university departments throughout the world tells a story of its own: How religious does the Middle East have to be in order to be studied as the “science of Islam” (Islamwissenschaft)? How universal to be simply “oriental”? How ancient does the Near East have to be in order to be “Near”? How ancient Western Asia in order to be “Western”? How modern the Middle East, in order to be in the “Middle”? How much in the middle does the East have to be in order to be “modern”? The symposium seeks to bring historians of the modern Middle East, scholars of the ancient Near East, Egypt and Western Asia, archaeologists, anthropologists, historians of science and of archaeology, as well as historians of Islamic and Western art in dialogue with one another to assess the current states of affair.

For more information on this symposium, please click here.

When I met up with some friends today after volunteering at St. Jude, we took a brisk Sunday stroll–and stopped to admire the color of the sea from a few streets above…

To learn how ancient bone fragments from Africa are shedding light on the diet and health of the “Saharan ancestors,” please click here.

After I got back to Beirut yesterday from an excursion in the mountains, a car bomb detonated at a Lebanese Armed Forces checkpoint on the outskirts of Arsal, killing three soldiers and wounding four others. Like many other recent bombs in Lebanon, the car that was used for the attack was black Kia. While a group called the “Free Sunnis of Baalbek” claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter, others denounced the attack and promised it wouldn’t hinder the new security plan. At another checkpoint in Arsal, a Syrian woman and child were killed when the driver refused to comply with the orders of the soldiers at the checkpoint.

Today I hit the road with some young Syrian refugees for an adventure in the mountains…

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm,
but to add color to my sunset sky…

— Rabindranath Tagore

Every semester in my class on ancient Egypt and Sudan, my students are surprised to learn that Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt. From showing my students slides from my archaeological dig in Sudan to taking them to visit Sudan House in Beirut, I’m always excited to share what I know about Sudanese history and antiquities. Archaeology in Sudan got a big boost this week when Qatar donated $135 million to the government of Sudan for archaeological development. With so much cash being poured into Sudan for archaeology, many are wondering if tourists will start pouring in too.

This morning in Beirut, when I was doing an arts project with young Syrian refugees, the kids couldn’t stop taking pictures of the sky. Watching them shoot the blue with their necks craned back, I realized how much I take the beauty and color of the sky for granted. They seemed to have more fun photographing the sky than anything else in the neighborhood…

Since I start off my mornings in Beirut in Chinese class, I like to read a few passages from Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm before my work day begins…

A guest (Taoist) asked, “For what reason did the Real Lord create heaven, earth, and the ten thousand things?”

Answer: “For human beings.”

Question: “Why were human beings created?”

Answer: “When the Lord wanted to manifest His own utmost honor, He created human beings specifically. This is the general meaning.”

Question: “The Lord is the most honored and the utmost great. Why should it be necessary for Him to manifest Himself?”

Answer: “If there were no heaven and earth, humans, and spirits, how could the Lord be the Lord of the ten thousand things? According to your statement, it is not necessary for the greatly honored to manifest himself. This would mean that it is possible for him to be a king without ministers and multitudes. Were there none of these people, who would make him a king?”

— Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm