Josephus=Cool

Josephus was a Roman/Jewish historian who historied (I know that isn't a real verb) in the first century AD. He's a household name in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and all of my ANES friends joke about their geeky relationship with him. You hear about him often enough, and he becomes...well, a friend.

Yesterday, 8 of us went to visit some caves west of Amman. They were pretty cool. We saw some bats, some ancient Hebrew inscriptions, some goat droppings, and even sang a bit of Mozart in one of the more resonant caves.

Just down the hill from these caves, there's a 2nd-century BC palace that's lying mostly in ruins. It had lots of scurrying reptiles and plenty of photo-ops, so we managed to keep ourselves busy for a while. One wall was even graced with a relief of a baboon. In ancient Egypt, the baboon symbolized eternal life. I have no idea what it meant in 2nd-century BC Transjordan.

But the best part of the day came last night while I was reading up on the castle, and found out that Josephus mentioned it in one of his histories. I concluded that if Josephus knew about this castle and thought it worth mentioning it, it had definitely been worth going to.

Some people might think that Josephus isn't the final authority to turn to on things regarding coolness. But they're wrong.