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Marina Amaral

@marinamaral2

24 Nov

Thread: This is a complaint written in c. 1750 (ancient Babylonian Yelp) to a merchant named Ea-nasir from someone named Nanni:

"I have sent messengers ... to collect the bag with my money but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back empty-handed."

Next tweets:

"Tell Ea-nа̄ṣir, Nanni sends the following message:

When you came, you said to me as follows: "I will give Gimil-Sin (when he comes) fine quality copper ingots."

You left then but you did not do what you promised me.

You put ingots which were not good before my messenger (Ṣīt-Sin) and said: "If you want to take them, take them, if you do not want to take them, go away!"

What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt?

Read 8 tweets

Marina Amaral

@marinamaral2

24 Nov

This letter was written by Pliny the Younger to the Roman historian Tacitu, describing the A.D. 79 eruption at Mt. Vesuvius:

"The cloud sank down soon afterwards and covered the sea, hiding Capri and Capo Misenum from sight. My mother begged me to leave her and escape...

... as best I could, but I took her hand and made her hurry along with me. Ash was already falling by now, but not very thickly. Then I turned around and saw a thick black cloud advancing over the land behind us like a flood.

... "Let us leave the road while we can still see", I said, "or we will be knocked down and trampled by the crowd".

We had hardly sat down to rest when the darkness spread over us. But it was not the darkness of a moonless or cloudy night...

Read 28 tweets

Marina Amaral

@marinamaral2

23 Nov

This is what you get when you don’t show up for Pliny’s dinner party in Rome (circa 97 AD):

“My Dear Septicius Clarus,

Look here, you accepted my invitation to dinner and then did not show up. You will be assessed for the costs, to the last penny, and they are not small.

+

You will have to foot the bill for all these preparations:

lettuce, one head per head; snails, three apiece; eggs, two each; pasta [to wit: spelt grits]; all the above served with mulsum and snow–yes, you will pay the tab for the snow too, in fact especially for the snow...

... because it died on the dish as a result of your negligence; then olives, boiled beets, gourds, onions, and one thousand other items no less elegantly prepared.

You would have heard comic skits, or a reader, or a musician, or–considering my generosity–all three.

Read 11 tweets

Marina Amaral

@marinamaral2

21 Nov

And this is how the dinosaurs were killed

Here she is with all her assassin friends

One day she got pissed with them all and this is what happened:

Read 4 tweets

Marina Amaral

@marinamaral2

21 Nov

I think I'll have a slice of this 3,200-year-old cheese found in an Egyptian tomb, and combine it with the world's oldest wine (1,680 years+).

Who wants some

It can't be worse than cold coffee right

Fine, you can have the cheese on a slice of this carbonized loaf of bread from Pompeii

Read 4 tweets

Marina Amaral

@marinamaral2

21 Nov

This (in the middle) is Horace de Vere Cole.

In 1910, Cole and five friends (including a young Virginia Woolf) disguised themselves as the Emperor of Abyssinia and his posse (see the photo below), and were given a full VIP tour of the British warship, the H.M.S. Dreadnought.

In the 1800s, he bought tickets for strategically selected seats at a theatrical performance and distributed them to bald men. When the lights went up their shiny heads spelled out a swearword.

Cole would occasionally impersonate prime minister and Labor party leader Ramsay MacDonald, giving speeches that contradicted MacDonald’s actual political views.

Read 5 tweets

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