More Lines To The Ancient Gilgamesh Epic Have Been Discovered

Since the poem has existed in fragments since the 18th century BC, there has always been the possibility that more would turn up. And yet the version we’re familiar with — the one discovered in 1853 in Nineveh — hasn’t changed very much over recent decades. The text remained fairly fixed — that is, until the fall of Baghdad in 2003 and the intense looting that followed yielded something new.

Streaming And Classical Music – Even More Dangers Than For Pop?

“However, whilst metadata and audio quality have been the burning issues for classical journalists and listeners, it’s the economics of streaming that has been alarming certain independent specialist classical record companies. In fact, as far as they are concerned, streaming poses unique and far greater problems for the classical industry than it does for the pop world.”

Legendary Lebanese Museum Reopens After Makeover

During the Sursock Museum’s $15m (£9.8m) renovation, workers dug a cavernous exhibition hall four stories under the mansion, and built a 166-seat auditorium, workshops for painting restoration and a library housing books, archival photographs, and news clippings. Sursock’s original rooms have been restored with the help of an international group of artisans.

“Translate” Shakespeare? Egads!

The outcry that has greeted this announcement has been as ferocious as you might imagine, or more. Though artistic director Bill Rauch and literary manager Lue Douthit have taken pains to say these aren’t replacements but companion pieces, and have preemptively assured critics that these new “translations” will not be the versions of the Bard that will show up on OSF’s stages (for the time being, at least), their proposal has been treated as the worst kind of sacrilege and profanation, a sign of the cultural end times, a capitulation to dumbed-down mass culture, etc.