Dr. Robert Barry Mason

Obverse side of a bronze coloured tetradrachm coin with the bust of Roman Emperor Probus, facing to the right. He crowned with a laurel wreath. Dated to 278 CE.

Reverse side of a bronze coloured tetradrachm coin with a standing eagle facing to the right with wings arrayed.

I have been busy photographing #Roman coins minted in Alexandria, #Egypt in the collection @romtoronto.bsky.social This one of Probus is dated to 278 CE. I like the standing eagle on the reverse. Browse the whole series online here: collections.rom.on.ca/search/910.2...
#MuseumWork #Numismatics

I was recently sent some 17th century Iranian Safavid tile images that are of the type in a book published by Lisa Golombek and I last year. Most of them we had already seen, but one added the poop-deck to our ship!

Both of my daughters play Sims, so I thought I would give it a go. I made a Sims version of the monastery in Syria where I did fieldwork for some years, Deir Mar Musa.

The Unlikely Place Where Syrian Muslims And Christians Become Friends The climb to Mar Musa al-Habashi monastery is deliberate and demanding. Three hundred forty stone steps wind up a stark, treeless mountain ridge in the Qalamun region. But complete the journey, and yo...

An interview with my friend Fr. Jihad Youssef at Deir Mar Musa, in Syria.

religionunplugged.com/news/mar-mus...

Trying to pin down this North Elmham pottery at the ROM. This group is mostly Thetford Ware, 3 Ipswich Wares, & 3 St. Neot's ware. The latter has shell (you can see it in this photo). Ipswich ware is supposedly grittier than Thetford Ware. Time to break out the microscope.
#MedievalSky #Archaeology

It snowed. Yay.

Tricky working out the numbers on the North Elmham pottery sometimes. I think this is NEP 67 102. I assume 102 is what they call a feature in the publication, what we called a context number in my day (70's-80's). Unfortunately this number is not in the publication!
🏺 #MedievalSky #Archaeology

Working on the North Elmham medieval pottery from England at the ROM and found this guy. Seems a merry sort. 🏺
#MedievalSky #Archaeology

Reclaim our heritage? Is he talking about Windscale? The nuclear industry gives scientists a bad name.

This really is not natural. The trees know when the winter is coming, they drop their leaves before the first snows. Usually there is enough time to clear the leaves before the snows come. Things are messed up.

I think I'm fatigued and leaning about myself. This was right after a field season in Syria!

MEN! Have you thought about the Roman Empire today? 🏺

My pic of 2005.

I follow someone that posts historical photos and stories about my hometown, Southampton in England. Recently, he posted a story about a man that was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in 1939, just before WW2. In his defence he had said that Mr. Hitler had been "on his nerves" of late.

George V

Italy WWI Group of British Sailors at the Vatican

So many moustaches...I'm surprised that there aren't more beards. Apart from the influence of the King, surely some of these men were ex-Navy? But then I googled for sailors in 1914 and got no beards again!

I have just written a science-fiction story in which the main character has the ability to create circular kilometer-wide "cities". Today I discovered Nördlingen. However, this German city was built in a meteor crater, not by alien technology! 📚🪐 #BookSky

medium.com/the-kraken-l...

I thought I had better get a pic of these fuchsias before the frost hits tonight! 🌱 #FlowerReport

See the White House’s East Wing demolition from satellite images | CNN Satellite images show how dramatically President Donald Trump’s plans to build a new ballroom have affected the historic structure.

Nice use of satellite imagery to reveal the destruction of cultural heritage.

www.cnn.com/2025/10/23/u...

I think we can all sympathise with Douglas Walker, a 44-year-old fruit salesman of no fixed abode, who was charged with being drunk on Havelock Road on 26 August 1939. Two days later he pleaded guilty and said: “I think Mr Hitler had got on my nerves a bit during the day. I had certainly had a few.”

Looking up the precise location of the site producing the Anglo-Saxon pottery I have been asked to look at in the ROM. North Elmham was apparently the seat of a bishopric until 1071, and the excavations were to the southwest of the now ruined cathedral. 🏺 #MedievalSky

The Emissary Would you want to save the world?

I wrote this story for a prompt by The Kraken Lore on Medium. It is the kind of fantasy that helps me sleep at night.

In a good way!
medium.com/the-kraken-l...

They are probably starting to panic. The mid-terms may become a bloodbath for the Republicans.

Fingers crossed.

People that want to make everything grey need help.

If you saw this chap, and you knew he had a story, would you be interested in knowing what that story was?

I was traumatised there by the Welsh National Opera's "Madame Butterfly" in which the petite Japanese wife was played by an enormous woman, and the strapping American captain was played by a ginger-haired chap who looked about 4'6" tall. Took me over 30 years before I could try opera again.

44 years after I last excavated in Anglo-Saxon Southampton (fondly known as "Hamwee,"or actually Hamwih, to its excavators), I have been asked to catalogue some English early mediaeval pottery. A reward for a career studying the vibrantly colourful pottery of the medieval Middle East! #MedievalSky

The Hungry Queen A Failure in Royal Courtesy

I have a new short-story published by the Krakenlore on Medium today. It is a pleasant little read, I would say.

thekrakenlore.com/the-hungry-q...

Perhaps they have a better education system? Interestingly I did not see a single Scottish flag there in the published images.

Really, England is an immigrant concept, a thin veneer of a language over a population which is genetically mostly what has been on the island since the Bronze Age. If they were true nationalists they would be all speaking Brythonic or Gaelic.

The Union Jack is a combination of the crosses of St. George, a Palestinian; St. Andrew, who was an Apostle from Galilee; and St. Patrick, who was British, but is famous for work in Ireland where he was initially a hated immigrant. They would not approve.

For all the people out there waving the Cross of St. George, you should know that St. George of Lydda was a Palestinian, and is widely revered in the Middle East by all faiths.