A small word about time and some museum goodies

It appears that there are many people out there under the impression that tomorrow is the end of time (or the world anyway), or at least a much more eventful day than normal. Who knows, I'm personally doubting it. I was having a quick look at the Mayan calendar to see what it's all about and, in a nut shell, it seems to amount to this -

20 K'in (those are days to you and me) equal a Winal.

18 Winals make a Tun (360 k'ins or about a year or so)

20 Tuns make a K'atun

20 K'atuns make a B'ak'tun (144000 k'ins or about 394 years)

Now it's a B'ak'tun that we're about to come to the end of and people are getting all excited about. It's the end of the 13th b'ak'tun and the start of the 14th b'ak'tun. It's a bit more than a century granted but less than a millennium and we've already got through one of those fairly painlessly. The calendar certainly doesn't end tomorrow because -

20 B'ak'tun make up a Piktun

and so it goes through Kalabtuns, K'inchiltuns to Alautun

Sticking with time for a moment, the Museum in Edinburgh have laid their hands on a very fancy clock. It is called the Chronophage or time eater, designed by Dr John C Taylor (who invented the switch that turns off your kettle when it boils). I saw one very similar (perhaps the same one but I don't think so) in Cambridge where Dr Taylor studied. The time can be told by the little blue lights that move round it ( the beasty on top moves rather creepily too) I read, though I certainly had no idea. Every hour a chain is dropped into an unseen coffin shaped box round the back making what I can only describe as a clunk.

This bowl was made in Arizona in around the 12th century AD.

Another piece of pottery from the Americas before Europeans stumbled upon them. This one is older than the last, around the 5 century, from Nasca Peru.

Also from Nasca, this one is 6th century.

A little East Mediterranean glass oil jar from the 6th to the 4th century BC

A Roman glass flask made between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD

A lovely little silver box with enamels painted on copper made by brook and sons between 1927 and 1928.

This enamel on copper of Christ was made by Alexander Fisher in 1897. It cost all of £25 pounds then.

A delightfully daft plate featuring a donkey playing a lute (and singing along too I'll wager) from Deruta in Italy, somewhere between 1520 and 1560.

In a completely different museum, this arrowhead has been mounted in silver can be found in Kirkcudbright. Now would you say it's an ancient thing for the arrowhead, or much newer for the silver frame it's built into.

I'll finish with this Rhinoceros - it's probably the oldest thing in the post (perhaps more so than the arrowhead), dating back to the 11 century BC. It is late Shang dynasty Chinese and belongs to Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. I haven't seen it in person, I have yet to find my way across the Atlantic. This was on a number of postcards I received in a letter - e mails are great, but there's still something special about having something drop through the letterbox that has actually come from the person sending it.