By Roxani Margariti. In a class on Indian Ocean commodities, economy, and materiality, every year my students and I come across this scribe’s desk at the British Museum. It is one of several other similarly inlaid Ottoman-period objects that we study. We note that the desk’s inlays are made of ivory, mother-of-pearl, and tortoiseshell, which…… Continue reading From Tortoiseshell and the Turtle Eaters to the Beastly Turtle Island: Transformations of a Lovable Marine Reptilian
Category: Maritime mythology
Dangers of the Deep: marine “man-eaters” and the humans who fear them
By Dimitra Mylona and Roxani Margariti. A comic character in Alexis’s play Hellenis (Greek Woman) at the turn of the 4th c. BCE says it clearly: “Alive or dead, the fish are at war with us, for anyone who falls overboard will be eaten, and, even when dead, they (the fish) eat up our wealth,…… Continue reading Dangers of the Deep: marine “man-eaters” and the humans who fear them
Dogs, Boats, Shells, and Goats: Musings on the Decorations of the Musandam battil
By Roxani Margariti. Many years ago, as an archaeology student in the early 1990s, I had the amazing luck and privilege of participating in a project entitled Traditional Boats of Oman Project and headed by Indian Ocean boatbuilding specialist Tom Vosmer. Of the many remarkable things I witnessed during the two seasons of working for…… Continue reading Dogs, Boats, Shells, and Goats: Musings on the Decorations of the Musandam battil
Mermaids, mermen and other strange creatures on the blurred limits between terrestrial and marine life
By Dimitra Mylona and Roxani Margariti. “I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living” Anais Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart, 1950. They are not fish, they are not humans either… they are not of the land, but neither are they unequivocally creatures of the sea. They…… Continue reading Mermaids, mermen and other strange creatures on the blurred limits between terrestrial and marine life