Day 20 - Notre Dame 1

As the title aludes to, I'm headed for Notre Dame today. But not the one in Paris. There's a place called Chartres to the north where the greatest Notre Dame, nay the greatest of all cathedrals is supposed to be. It's about an hour away and is open until 7:30PM, so I should have some time, despite my late start today.

Part of the reason for said late start was because I mailed back a couple books about the Lourve and D'Orsay. Crap. I forgot to mail my memory card. Oh well. One more trip. The post office in France on Saturday is just as fast as the post office in the states on a Saturday. Heh. Oh well.

So let's see, when I rushed back to the Louvre yesterday, I spent a little more time with the antiquities, trying to see if I could actually remember the cultures connected to the pictures I took. I couldn't, so I bought the antiquities book and sent it home. :) Here are a few more things I do remember.

• Stella of Mesha of Moab. Stellas are like headstones and commemorate the deeds of an individual. In Mesha's case it was his victory over the Israelites and kingly reign. The mention of the Israelites on his stella was the first mention of them ever. Predating the bible, which sort of glosses over Mesha's victory.
• Stella for an even earlier king. He united four kingdoms, which at that time constituted the entire civilized world (we're talking fertile crescent time around 4000 years ago). He was deified. I suppose he was the model for every Alexander, Caeser, and Napoleon since.
  
• Roman statues. I hope they kept all the good stuff in Rome, because most of the roman stuff I've seen so far is really dull, like the romans were too bound by some kind of rule system to do anything creative. I saw a statue of Hadrian and his wife that was just awful. They made Hadrian as Mars and his wife as Venus, but they stole the models from different periods in greek art, clothed the wife but not the husband for some bizarre notion of modesty, and just generally contributed nothing to art. Oh yeah, and Hadrian had a tiny package. :D
• Art of Islam. I have no doubt that the artisans of some of these pieces went blind. The detail, on the metalwork especially, is just dazzling. And I got a good snap of the earliest celestial globe (showing the position of the constellations) known to exist.

Anyway, I better mail my memory card, fill up on some lunch, and head out to Chartres. Adieu.