Dr Rob

Folks with any reach on Bluesky, please consider reposting so I can find friends old and new:

I'm Rob; I like fantasy books, maths and physics, ancient stuff and mythology, linguistics and music, British wildlife, and a whole bunch of other stuff. And I might occasionally mention Doctor Who

A circular embroidery in a wooden hoop of the White Horse using various stitches including hundreds of French knots for the main grass, long and short for the folds of the hill below the horse, and turkey tail for a field and scattered trees.

Apparently it’s World Embroidery Day so maybe you’ll enjoy this aerial landscape I made of my beloved childhood haunt - the White Horse of Uffington. An @nationaltrust.org.uk site from the later Bronze Age or Early Iron Age. Find out more here www.oxfordarchaeology.com/uffington-wh...

This work is not a work of honour. No esteemed creativity is presented here. Nothing valued is here.

What is here is inartistic and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about inartisticality.

This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.

We need a version of this to accompany generative AI 'art' and writing

Hadrian's Wall Path National Trail at Milecastle 39, (Castle Nick).

Challenging terrain means walkers have to keep up with their intake of calories. #Hunger #dailypicturetheme

(a) have ridiculously little understanding of what the other fields entail, (b) are operating under a heap of logical fallacies, and (c) are at the pretty dull end of the spectrum in terms of both character and intellect.

Whenever I see someone drawing sweeping contrasts between the humanities and the sciences, or claiming that their field is the one true wellspring of Intelligence™ or Critical Thinking™, it's usually abundantly clear that they

M. C. Escher (1898-1972), “Puddle” (1952), woodcut in colours, on Japan paper, 32.3 x 24 cm (image).

Actually incredibly fitting that AI imagery is, of all colours, piss-yellow. It is to art what urine is to water: not some thirst-quenching draught from an original spring, but merely the excretion of a system that has taken in such water and processed it into something unpotable

Oooh, I wish I were closer!

A lovely little bronze #Roman mouse figurine, shown holding a morsel of food in his little front paws (a nut or seed maybe?), perhaps about to take a little nibble from it. It is about 1900-2000 years old 🐭

(📷 Christie's) 🏺 AncientBlueSky #Archaeology #RomanArchaeology

Just heard a female tawny owl! Haven't been hearing owls here recently

Exquisite! The little blemmye!!

The Serpent and The Brave Deer Knight #joncarling #art #drawing

Happy and healthy

A weathered, round wooden canteen with a flat base, central spout, and two carved side handles. The surface shows deep cracks and a rough texture, indicating age and use. The canteen has a barrel-like shape, photographed against a black background.

This well-preserved early medieval wooden flask once contained a beer that had been strengthened with honey. It was found in Trossingen. Due to the water-logged condition of the area, many wooden objects have survived. Dating 580 AD

📷 @almbawue.bsky.social

🏺 #archaeology

Seeing everything drenched by hours of heavy summer rain and contentedly saying "we needed this"

My photo shows an ancient Egyptian statuette of a standing blue hippopotamus on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. It is made of Egyptian faience, a ceramic material coated with a bright blue glossy glaze. The hippo is viewed from the side profile with head on the right. It is decorated in black pigment with outlines of lotus plants which grow in the hippos Nile habitat. A little bird is perched on the stem of one lotus flower. Dimensions: Height 11.5 cm, length 21.5 cm. Excavated by Auguste Mariette in 1860 at the necropolis of Dra’ Abu el-Naga’, western Thebes. Dated Middle Kingdom, 11th Dynasty, c. 2134-1991 BC. Egyptian faience is a ceramic material made of quartz. Blue hippos are decorated with black pigment outlining depictions of Nile river plants, in particular lotus flowers. In ancient Egypt lotus flowers had religious symbolism; the flowers close at night and reopen with the rising of the sun in the morning, which was associated with regeneration and rebirth. Blue faience hippos have been found in Middle Kingdom and Second Intermediate period tombs. It’s thought they were placed there to help the rebirth of the deceased. Associated with the life-giving Nile, regeneration, and Tawaret, the ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility and childbirth. Hippos were also seen as dangerous to humans so the legs of faience hippos have often been broken off the statuettes found in tombs, perhaps to make sure the hippo could not harm the deceased in the afterlife.

Happy weekend! 🦛💙

Here’s a wonderful c. 4,000 year-old ancient Egyptian glossy blue hippo decorated with a little bird perched on the stem of a lotus flower.

Egyptian Museum Cairo 📷 by me

#Archaeology

Perfect vacation idea: we go to Abydos and visit the burial place of Egypt's fourth pharaoh. Nothing beats a Djet tomb holiday

Tall stone statue of a stylized human figure with a cylindrical body, abstract facial features, and two upward-curving elements above the head.

The impressive Holzgerlingen stela is the largest known pre-Roman Iron Age stone statue in central Europe, standing 230 cm tall. This double-faced, anthropomorphic figure - dating to the 4th century BC - features a horn-like headdress interpreted a leaf crown, and...🧵 1/2

🏺 #Archaeology

When it's a grey squirrel, yes 😅

Just watched a grey squirrel steal an underripe apple from the tree

It's really sad that, in terms of aesthetics and design, the new Odyssey film is almost certainly going to be generic Romeslop. Would've been really awesome to see styles inspired by actual Mycenaean / Bronze Age art, architecture, and material culture

A quote tweet of the last tweet, also by Meg, displaying a photo of broken glasses and the following text: I would really appreciate if you could help boost my shop link so I can buy some new prescription glasses 🫶 thank you!

Reviving the post above in the hope of helping to boost Meg's shop

Painting by Cor Blok. Frodo’s Vision.

Painting by Cor Blok. The Mûmak of Harad.

Painting by Cor Blok. The Game of Riddles.

Painting by Cor Blok. The Battle of The Hornburg.

Some of Cor Blok’s Tolkien gouache paintings.

Thrice I've visited Carrawburgh Mithraeum: once as a boy and twice in the last few years. Such a lovely and atmospheric site for #RomanSiteSaturday

📸 from my visit in July 2022, almost exactly three years ago

My painting PATCHWORK FIELDS

Topical, as usual, but especially apt here in East Anglia (and I can confirm that we're having a swullocking Saturday here too)

#FrescoFriday - Fourth Style fresco depicting the Sacrifice of Iphigenia. From the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii.

Naples National Archaeological Museum.

(nice to make a post that lives up to Bluesky's logo 🦋)