by Cinnamon Stillwell*

It isn’t often that characters based on the field of Middle East studies show up in current fiction, but the novels of author Daniel Silva are an exception. The last three novels of his series featuring Israeli secret agent/art restorer Gabriel Allon explore the intersection of Middle East studies and international intrigue.

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More evidence has been found corroborating Biblical texts:

A wall mentioned in the Bible’s Book of Nehemiah and long sought by archaeologists apparently has been found, an Israeli archaeologist says. …

The findings suggest that the structure was actually part of the same city wall the Bible says Nehemiah rebuilt, Mazar said. The Book of Nehemiah gives a detailed description of construction of the walls, destroyed earlier by the Babylonians. …

See also: Jeremiah: Biblical and Historical Convergence

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

Those who forget the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them… Did the great Maya — masters of astronomy, architecture, poetry, hydrology, engineering, mathematics, art, written language, agriculture, road building, politics, pageantry, propaganda, weaponry — see the end coming? Were they so different from us? Millions now sit back indulging in perversions masquerading as “entertainment,” like Saw, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Beginning, Xtreme Fighting, Grand Theft Auto, and Top (Dead) Model’s beautiful corpses. Are we so different from them? Look at this Classic Age fresco, from National Geographic, most assuredly a piece of mainstream Mayan propaganda and/or art (below).

Are we at the edge now? Not yet. Is the precipice in sight? I would say that prime time porn and violence is a bad sign. Don’t remember the Mayan ball game? How about the Colosseum or Circus Maximus? It hasn’t been that long since Andy Griffith was considered mainstream. Look where we are now. Why repeat the mistakes of the past when they are enumerated in text books?

In a terrifying expression of royal power, a stucco mural at Toniná shows a turtle-footed skeleton grabbing the hair of a severed head—with portrait-like features, perhaps of a real person—and a mythical rodent holding another head in a ritual bundle. These characters were the wayob, the affliction-spewing alter egos of kings that were used to curse enemies. They work here amid a scaffold bearing the heads of human sacrifices.

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

The violent history of the Maya has been sanitized as nonviolent, proving that having a “Ph.D.” after your name doesn’t really prove anything. Case in point: Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American studies at California State University, Northridge, Thursday night accused Mel Gibson “of misrepresenting the Mayan culture in the movie” Apocalypto. Estrada, in a superior display of historic ignorance, argued “that representations in the movie that the Mayans engaged in sacrificial ceremonies and had bloodthirsty tendencies were both wrong and racist.”

Quite to the contrary, archeological evidence of Maya “sacrificial ceremonies” and “bloodthirsty tendencies” is ubiquitous. It all started with the discovery of murals at Bonampak in 1946:

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By Andrew L. Jaffee

I don’t know how many of you are fans of archeology, let alone that of Meso-America, but there are certainly those of you interested in the politically-correct whitewashing of terrorism. How are the two subjects related? Let me explain. The justification of current-day terrorism is advocated by the same ilk, those who would rewrite the modern-day cause of terrorist atrocities (e.g., “Palestinians are driven by desperation”), as well as those who would edit, for example, the pre-Columbian history of Mexico. Recent archeological evidence shows that the Aztecs were indeed as despicable as reported by Spanish Conquistadors, defying politically-correct rationalizations for the tribe’s thirst for human sacrifice.

I recently watched a History Channel “documentary” which either 1) rationalized the Aztec tribe’s insatiable appetite for human sacrifice on the grounds that they were “deeply religious” people, afraid that, if not enough ritual blood was spilled, the sun wouldn’t rise the next day; or 2) the Spanish Conquistadors, led by Hernando Cortez, made up their accounts of mass Aztec human sacrifice rituals as a form of propaganda.

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