Sumeria: Part III
by Leah Enkidu

When the dynasty of Akkad had ceased to be, some six centuries later, the patesis, or high priests, of Shirpurla were still men of renown. A long inscription on the back of a statue tells us of the vast building achievements of Ur-Bau about the year 3200; and the name of his son and successor, Nammaghani. About two centuries later we find Gudea, one of the most famous rulers the city every possessed. Excavations at Tello have laid bare the colossal walls of his great palace and have shown us how, both by land and sea, he brought his materials from vast distances, while his architecture and sculpture show perfect art and refinement, and we incidentally learn that he conquered the district of Anshan in Elam.

After Gudea, we are acquainted with the names of four more rulers of Shirpurla, but in these subsequent reigns the city seems to have quickly sunk into political insignificance. Another Sumerian dynasty was that of Erech, or Gishban. About 4000 B.C. a certain Lugal Zaggisi, son of the Patesi of Gishban, who became King of Erech, proudly styled himself King of the World, as Enshagkushanna and Alusharshid had done, claimed to rule from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, and praises the supreme god Enlil, or Bel, of Nippur, who "granted him the dominion of all from the rising of the sun to the setting thereof and caused the countries to dwell in peace".

Yet to us it seems but a rushlight of glory; for after his son Lugal-Kisalsi the Kingdom of Erech disappears in the night of the past. The same may be said of the dynasty of Agade. Ittibel's son, Sargon I, suddenly stands before us as a giant figure in history about 3800 B.C. He was a monarch proud of his race and language, for his inscriptions were in his Semitic mother tongue, not in the Sumerian, like those of previous kings. He is rightly called the first founder of a Semitic empire.

Under him flourished Semitic language, literature, and art, especially architecture. He established his dominion in Susa, the capital of Elam, subdued Syria and Palestine in three campaigns, set up an image of himself on the Syrian coast, as a monument of his triumphs, and welded his conquests into one empire. Naram-Sin, his son, even extended his father's conquests, invading the Sinai Peninsula and, apparently, Cyprus, where a seal cylinder was found on which he receives homage as a god. On inscriptions of that date first occurs mention of the city of God's Gate, or Babylon (Bâb-ilu sometimes Bâb-ilani, whence the Greek Babulon, then written ideographically Kâ-Dungir.

After Bingani, Naram-Sin's son, Semitic successes were temporarily eclipsed; Egypt occupied Sinai, Elam became again independent, and in Babylonia itself the Sumerian element reasserted itself. We find a dynasty of Ur already in prominence. This city seems at two different periods to have exercised the hegemony over the Euphrates Valley or part of it.

First under Urgur and Dungi I, about 3400 B.C. This Urgur assumed the title of King of Sumer and Akkad, thus making the first attempt to unite North and South Babylonia into a political unit, and inaugurating a royal style which was borne perhaps longer than the title of any other dignity since the world was made.

Ur predominates, for the second time, about 2800 B.C., under Dungi II, Gungunu, Bur-Sin, Gimil-Sin and Ine Sin, whose buildings and fortifications are found in many cities of Babylonia. The history of Ur is as yet so obscure that some scholars (Thureau-Dangin, Hilprecht, Bezold) accept but two dynasties, other (Rogers) three, others (Hugo, Radau) four. The supremacy of Ur is followed, about 2500 B.C., by that of (N) Isin, apparently an unimportant city, as its rulers style themselves Shepherds, or Gracious Lords, of Isin, and place this title after that of King of Ur, Eridu, Erech, and Nippur. Six rulers of Isin are known: Ishbigarra, Libit-Ishtar, Bur-Sin II, Ur-Ninib, Ishme-Dagan, and Enannatum.

The last of the city-kingdoms was that of Larsa, about 2300 B.C., with its sovereigns Siniddinam Nur-Adad, Chedornanchundi, Chedorlaomer, Chedormabug, and Eri-Aku. The composition of these royal names with Chedor, the Elamite Kudor, sufficiently shows that they did not belong to a native dynasty, whether Sumerian or Semitic.

One of the earliest Elamite invaders of Babylonia was Rim-Amun, who obtained such a foothold on Babylonian soil that the year of his reign was used to date contract tablets, a sure sign that he was at least king de facto. Chedornanchundi invaded Babylonia about the year 2285, reached Erech, plundered its temples, and captured the city-goddess; but whether he established a permanent rule, remains doubtful. Somewhat later Chedorlaomer (Kudur-Laghamar, "Servant of Laghamar", an Elamite deity), known to us from the Bible, seems to have been more successful. Not only does he appear as overlord of Babylonia, but he carried his conquest as far west as Palestine.

Chedormabug was originally Prince of Emutbal, or western Elam, but obtained dominion over Babylonia and rebuilt the temple at Ur. His son, Rim-Sin, or Eri-Aku, considered himself so well established on Babylonian territory that he affected the ancient titles, Exalter of Ur, King of Larsa, King of Sumer and Akkad. Yet he was the least of the city-kings, and a new order of things began with the rise of Babylon.

Bilingual Inscriptions in Etruria
by Tanaquil Sergius

Bilingual inscriptions, Etruscan texts with some kind of a translation in Latin, are the easiest way to get deeper into an almost unknown language like Etruscan. Unfortunately, within the range of the Etruscan inscriptions, there are very few bilingual inscriptions, that have made it through the ages. In fact, only one serious bilingual inscription exists, which has been found only quite recently, when de study of the Etruscan language had come a long way already. Besides, the inscription didn't yield much information after all. Furthermore, there are about thirty inscriptions that could be called more or less bilingual, but which do not learn us very much about the structure of the Etruscan language, because they merely consist of an Etruscan name, which has been translated into Latin. Most bilingual inscriptions obviously date from the late Etruscan period, i.e. from the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C., because of the strong influence from Rome. Nevertheless, they are quite interesting. We will have a look at some of them.

An exact registration comes from a burial tile from the Clusium region:

TLE 514:

l . cae . caulias'

lart cae caulias

The second line is in Latin lettering. From this inscription we only learn that the Etruscan abbreviation l . stands for the name lart (that is to say: the Etruscan spelling of this name almost always ends up with Larth). The above standing example is called a "pure translitteration": the Etruscan inscription has been translitterated letter by letter.

Also in the following inscription, we see an exact description in Latin lettering what the Etruscan words say:

TLE 540; from Clusium:

l . purni . l . f

l . purni . l . f

Lucius Purnius, son of Lucius

This is even more uninteresting for the study of the Etruscan language, but nevertheless interesting after all: the inscription is a Latin formula (with the Etruscan family name Purni), which has been rendered into Etruscan writing integrally, for the letter f , which stands for the word "filius" is Latin! Sometimes the Latin version contains elements that do not occur in the Etruscan version, because they do not seem to exist in Etruscan. We see this on a stele in Clusium,

TLE 462:

c . treboni . q: f. gellia natus

cae trepu

C(aius) Treboni(us), son of Q(uintus), son of Gellia,

Cae Trepu

Here, only the last line is in Etruscan writing. We can, however, see one or two things in this inscription. Cae corresponds to C(aius): -e is an Etruscan name-ending which occurs a lot. Transcribing Treboni(us) into Trepu or vice versa, we can see that p becomes b and u becomes o, or vice versa. This is what we have see before in the study of the Etruscan Language, compared to other ancient languages of Italy. Another text shows the correspondent of the phrase which deals with the mother-child relationship (using the word "natus"):

TLE 521; urn from Clusium:

arth canzna varnalisla

C. Caesius C. f. Varia nat

Ar(n)th Canzna, the (son) of Varna

C(aius) Caesius the son of C(aius) and the son of (i.e. born from) Varia

Varia will, therefore, be the name of the mother. That name has to correspond with the Etruscan name Varna. The word varnalisla has to mean something like "the/that (son) of Varna". The Etruscan text contains, by the way, if we are not mistaken here, a mistake: the word should have been spelled as varnalisa, not varnalisla. The form -isla is a genitive, which does not fit in here.

Two different cultures are depicted on an urn from Clusium:

TLE 925:

senti vilinal :

Sentia. Sex. f.

Senti (daughter) of Vilina

Sentia daughter of Sex(tus)

In Etruscan, the name of the mother is given (in the genitive, this would be vilinal), whereas the Latin text gives the name of the father.

From other inscriptions we get a few Etrsucan words and find out what they mean. An inscription from an Arretine urn shows:

TLE 661:

C. Cassius C. f. Saturninus

vel . canzi . c. clan

C(aius) Cassius, son of C(aius) Saturninus

Vel Canzi, son of C(ae)

We find out here, that the Etruscan word clan means "son", but that has been made clear through other studies of the Etrsucan language, so we know that already; still, it is an example of what we might find out in the future what we don't know yet. Furthermore, a remarkable thing in this inscription is, that the Etruscan name vel has been replaced by Caius in the Latin version. Obviously Vel was not a Roman first name and so the author, or maybe the person who had the urn inscribed, decided to choose another first name in the Latin version of the inscription. Another example of this phenomenon gives the following inscription on an urn from Clusium:

TLE 472:

.vl . zicu

One might think that Scribonius ('writer"/"Writerman") is a translation of the Etruscan zicu, for a verb zichu("to write") is known to us. Interesting is the following inscription:

TLE 608, from Perugia:

Vel Tins' , son of Vel (and) Vetia

And elsewhere, in the same grave as where the preceding inscription was found, the following (a so called "pseudo-bilingual inscription"):

The family name Tins' is depicetd here as Iuventius<*Iov-ent-ius. Now Tin(s') is the name of the most important Etruscan god, equal to Iuppiter< *Iov-pater, gen. Iov-is.

* The words noted with a starlet are non-existing words, but, mostly, combinations of Indo-european stems, of which the existing ancient Greek, Latin or, sometimes even Etruscan words are, accorinding to linguists, believed to have been developed of.

Another familial term, i.e. lautni, occurring regularly in inscriptions, is translated on a Perugian urn:

TLE 606:

L. Scarpus Scarpiae l. Popa

larnth . scarpe . lautni

L(ucius) Scarpus, f(reedman; l(ibertus)) of (the) Scarpia (family), Popa

Larnth Scarpe, freedman

In Rome, a freedman took on the name of the family he formerly belonged to as a slave, in this case: Scarpus. The Latin word Poap, here used as a cognomen, means: a priest's assistant.

A word which is otherwise unknown to us from inscriptions is the following on a funeral tile in Clusium:

TLE 541:

ath: trepi: thanasa

Ar. Trebi. Histro

A(rn)th Trepi (the) Actor/actor

The Latin word "histrio" means "actor" (in a theatre). Thanasa therefore could mean "actor". Strangely enough, the Latin word for that profession, "histr(i)o", is of Etruscan origin as well. So maybe the word thanasa doesn't mean "actor" at all, maybe it is some sort of a cognomen. We cannot be sure about it from this inscription, which is the only one with the actual word on it...

The bilingual inscription of Pesaro

On the front of a limestone funeral case from Pesaro (ancient Pisarum on the border of the Adriatic Sea) is a bilingual inscription of some importance:

TLE 697:

[L. Ca]fatius. L. f. Ste. haruspe[x] fulguriator

cafates.lr.lr.nets'vis.trutnut.frontac

The inscription is generally dated in the 1st century B.C. The first two lines are given in Latin:

L(ucius)[Ca]fatius, son of L(ucius), born in the Tribus Ste(llatina), haruspe[x](= seeer of entrails), fulguriator (=seeer of lightning). The third line gives the Etruscan:

L(a)r(is) Cafates, son of L(a)r(is), nets'vis(=haruspex), trutnut, frontac(=fulguriator).

It is assumed that Lucius Cafatius and Laris Cafates are one and the same person, born in the environment of either Tarquinia, or Cortona or Pesaro, for these three towns are believed to belong to the Tribus Stellatina, mentioned in the inscription. According to the shape of the lettering in the stone and the finding place, Pesaro seems to be the place most likely for our man Laris Cafates to have originated from. What is interesting is, that the Latin text only gives two offices our man executed, while the Etruscan text provides three: nets'vis, trutnut, frontac. This discrepancy has stirred a lot inside the world of Etruscology. Let's have a closer look at these three words:

Nets'vis:

There is hardly any doubt about the meaning of this word. the stem of the word, nets', resembles the Greek word nedus (=belly). An Italic scarab shows an haruspex with the inscription natis. Maybe the word-ending -vis can be compared to the Latin word-ending -spex, so -vis = -spex, which means "viewing/viewer/seeer". Cf. -vis to the Indo-european *Fid-, like for example Lat. vid-e-re, and Greek (aor.) eidon.

Frontac:

Opinions are divided about this word. The letter -o- seems to be genuine, although quite unique within the Etruscan language. Therefore, it is believed that this word is a loan-word from another language. It has been compared to the Greek word brontè (=thunder), but also to the Indo-european stem *b(h)rento- (horn). The thought behind this might be that the Greek word keraunos (akin to *b(h)rento-???) can mean both "lightning" and "horn". This being true, however, the whole explanation of the word remains weak to me. Furthermore, it has been supposed that the ending -ac in the word frontac is the signification of the acting person, the one who does the thing mentioned in the first part of the word, like in the also appearing Latin word fulguriator. The ending -tor/-trix(f) in Latin denotes the acting person: someone who does .....by means of profession, maniacally or is the definite doer of some special action (like: "auctor" = founder). So if -ac = -tor and if frontac = fulguriator, the word frontac means: "being able to/being in the position to interpret the lightning/lights in the sky".

Trutnut:

Last, but not least, there is the much discussed word trutnut. It is mentioned only once more as the description of some sort of office. This word, too, has been interpreted as a loan-word, which would be akin to the Latin word trutina and the Greek trutinè, which in both cases means: "weighing balance/machine".Trutnut, therefore, could mean something like "weigher/seeer/priest who sees divine decisions". Apparently, the Latin language could not provide an appropriate synonime for this word, so it is not mentioned in the Latin version of the inscription. A solution for this problem can be found in Cicero's divination book De divinatione. According to him, the .Ars Haruspicina (the art of divination) was divided into three sections:

the extispicium: the viewing of entrails, like liver, lungs, heart and stomach

the divination of fulmina: the studying of sightings of fires and lightning in the sky

the divination of prodigia, ostenta: the studying of omens and sightings that deal with the will of the gods.

This means, that the function of an haruspex is threefolded. In our case here, one could conclude that trutnut is some kind of priest who interprets omens like miscarriages, rains of stones, earthquakes and the like. Sometimes, Cicero speaks about these functions separately, like in 2,109: "et haruspices et fulguratores et interpretes onstentorum" ("both the liverseeers, the seeers of lightning and the interpreters of omens").

Probably the author of the Pesaro-inscription thought that the last description (of the word trutnut) would be too elaborate and held the opinion that haruspex can also mean both nets'vis and trutnut. We furthermore know the word trutvecie from an Etruscan dedicatory inscription on a bronze statue:

tite : alpnas : turce : aiseras : thuflthicla : trutvecie

Tite Alpnas gave (this) to Aisera Thuflthicla because of an omen (?).

The old interpretation ("based on a dream sighting" as translation for trutvecie) does not have to be untrue because of our interpretation...

Literature:

Beekes R.S.P. & Meer, L.B. van der, 1991, De Etrusken Spreken, Muiderberg, pag. 27-32.

Pallottino, M., 1968, Testimonia Linguae Etruscae (TLE), Firenze, passim.

Pfiffig, A.J., 1975, .Religio Etrusca, Graz, passim.

COPPER AND TIN, MINING AND SMELTING
PART I: COPPER
by, Apiladey ApilSin

The Ores- It used to be so much easier when we referred to the Copper Age as the time man first started using copper. In those days of my youth, the Copper Age came with a starting date and an ending date, which were firmly attached and immutable. Unfortunately, the real world seldom comes with such hard and fast labels. A frog is a frog and a toad is a toad only in England where the names arose. Everywhere else there are so many species that fall in between the two, that the terms have little use. The name Chalcolithic Age came into use, meaning "Copper/Rock Age", and brought with it all the concrete immutability of a wisp of smoke. People didn't switch from using everything made out of stone to everything made out of copper, they used a mixture of many materials. The date isn't fixed for all the world, but now varies from land to land, and even depends on whether the date is claimed by a native of that land or not. Whether ancient Turkey entered the Chalcolithic in 5000 BC or 5500 BC (or even 6000 BC) depends on whether the author is a native Turk or not. In Israel, the period lasted from 4500 till 3500, in Akkadia from 4000 to 3500, in central India (Balathal) from 2500 to 1500, and in Cyprus, the greatest of all Classical copper suppliers, it had to wait till coppersmiths from Asia Minor migrated there in about 3500 BC.

Copper ores are beautiful stones. In fact, it is hypothesized that it was the beauty of these stones, which led to the discovery of smelting metallic copper from copper ores. The ores malachite (green) and azurite (blue) had smelting temperatures low enough (1981 degrees F, 1083 degrees C) that, when potting technology in the hills of Mesopotamia had advanced far enough, some potter had an unusual surprise when retrieving his pots from the kiln. The beautiful blue and green stones, which had been pressed into the pot as ornaments, were gone... and oddly, there was metallic copper in the bottom of the kiln. You can read a few alternate hypotheses in the next paragraph. These two ores are carbonates of copper, which is a form of oxidation of copper sulphide. For this reason, they are always found near the surface of the ground where the air could act them upon (no more than 7 meters deep). Also beautiful, chalcopyrite (yellow) and chrysocolla (a blue or bluish-green copper silicate) were added to the list of copper ores a bit later, because they required higher temperatures to smelt. Chrysocolla and malachite were also used for eye-paint (malachite's use for eye paint goes clear back to the Badarian in Egypt). Malachite was also an important pigment for coloring glaze and glass, as well as its occasional use for beads, amulets, and other small objects. Another copper ore, but one which has never been practical for smelting was turquoise, which is so often found along with the other ores that it makes it hard to tell whether the mines were operated to get gemstones or metal. Making it even harder in Egypt is the fact that, apparently, Egyptians didn't use native copper (naturally occurring metal) until they had learned about smelting. And they started smelting the ore at about the same time they began using the gemstones. About the only way to tell the purpose of the mine is by finding proof in the form of ingots, furnaces, molds, slag, crucibles, or graffiti. In the absence of any of these, it could have been mined for either gemstones or metal. The earliest finds of this smelting hardware was in the Old Kingdom. In the 18th and 19th Dynasties, Egypt received several presents of copper from neighboring copper-bearing countries, which usually amounted to amounts between 5 talents and 200 talents.

The hypothesis that the smelting of copper from ore was invented through the pottery industry in Mesopotamia is the one which has the most backing (for instance, R. J. Forbes in Metallurgy In Antiquity and H. H. Coghlan). They feel that the first place man would have been likely to have reached the temperatures required for smelting would be in a pottery kiln, and pottery works have been decorated with copper ores. Another hypothesis is that it was discovered by a collector of native copper, perhaps in the Zagros Mtns in Iran or Asia Minor. Most native copper in these areas is in the mountains among steep canyon areas. Along with the naturally occurring copper metal, there were probably some blue and green rocks, which the man may have collected, knowing of their marketability in the powdered form for eye-makeup. At the end of the day, he makes camp. Being in a mountainous area, the encroaching night brings encroaching cold, and he prepares a fire. He already has several malachite and azurite stones at his camp of a suitable size to use for a fire ring, so he uses them. The cold already having chilled his body, he adds a bit more wood to the fire pit than usual. As is usual in these areas, the cold mountain air drains down the canyons to the valleys below, becoming a cold wind in the man's camp - perhaps a bit more wood on the fire. The wind whips the fire to an increasingly hot state, eventually dying back into a mass of hot, hot coals. Either before his bewildered eyes, or after he has fallen asleep, the rocks begin to seep a sparkly fluid into the fire-pit. After he awakens, he searches the cooled fire-pit to look for the sparkly materiel he saw in the fire, or, if he hadn't seen it, he collects his marketable stones from the fire ring only to find them attached to the now hardened copper metal. Poss, in Stones of Destiny mentions Wm. Gowland as a supporter of this hypothesis in Early Metallurgy of Silver and Lead - Archeologia, 1903 as well as T. A. Rickard in Man and Metals, New York, 1932 (most likely among the works cited by this author). This would require that the campfire reached a temperature of 800 degrees F. but they cite as support that beads of copper have been produced from copper ore in wood fires by natives of the Belgian Congo, central Africa and the Malay Peninsula. Another idea places the discovery of smelting copper from ore at the end of a succession of inventions. In Catal Huyuk, they had been melting lead by 6500 BC and were casting lead figurines in the late 3rd and early 2nd Millennia. That might have imparted an idea that other metals like copper could also be melted and all that remained was to find out how hot it had to be. About 5000 BC, somebody discovered that when heated in a fire, copper could be hammered and shaped easier, as well as producing a harder tool. This wasn't very far from the next stage, heating it till it melted. The only thing left to discover then would be learning to melt the ore instead of native metal. T. T. Reed in The American Journal of Archeology (1934), suggests that this last stage was discovered more through the melting of native copper with ore still attached, and the subsequent realization that there was more metal afterwards than there was in the beginning. Lucas and Harris suggest that, although it isn't likely, Egyptians may have discovered the smelting of copper ores in their faience ovens. I believe I have listed all these hypotheses in order of their acceptance by the scientific community, but I could be wrong. If the "invention through pottery" idea is correct, Susa (in the communities of Arak and Hamadan) or Sialk, all in Iran, could have been the actual sites of invention as they had easily available copper ores and a very advanced pottery industry, with beautiful colors and delicate geometric designs.

Mining - In the earliest times of ore usage, the surface deposits were all that was needed, and flint tools were the only tools needed to dig it. When the shafts went below the surface in later times, copper chisels were required, which existed from the Late Predynastic period on in Egypt. The mined ore was then crushed and hand-picked for the best pieces.

The Sources - Along with the copper mines in Arak, Hamadan, and Sialk, Mesopotamia's other sources for copper were at Tabriz, Diyurbakir, Kulteppe and Erzincan. If you can't find these cities, some of the mountain ranges involved are the Ak Dag Mountains to the north of Babylon and the Zagros foothills in Armenia.

Egypt's copper deposits are in either of two places - the Sinai peninsula, or the eastern desert (between the Nile and the Red Sea). Oddly, Poss says Egypt got most of its copper from the Sinai and a much lesser amount from the eastern desert. Lucas and Harris state just the opposite.... that the large majority was from the eastern desert, while it can't even be said with assuredness that it was the Egyptians who did the mining in Sinai. Personally, I believe Poss, because the Egyptians made such a fuss about Hathor's help in the discovery of the mines, and the shipping routes in the Red Sea so often included ports in Sinai. Because Lucas and Harris give many more details, however, I'll present the following info from their book.

In the Sinai, the mines were either in the mountains of the southwest part, or in the southeast part of the peninsula. In the southeast, it was mined near the plain of Senned, in the hills west of the Nebk-Sherm, and near Wadi (Canyon) Ramthi. There were also places here where the ore was collected without mining: Wadi Nasb (where an estimated total production of 5,500 tons of metal was produced) and Gebel (Mount) Safariat. In the southwest part, it seems to have been mined at Magharah (where a Middle Kingdom mold for weapons has been recovered) and, though some dispute this, at Serabit el Kadim. In the vicinity of Serabit el Kadim, mines have been found at Gebel um Rinna, Wadi Malha, and Wadi Kharit (also called Wadi Halliq). The Sinai is too hot for these mines to have been operated during the summer months, and the native Bedawi (Bedouin) were always hostile, so military escorts were necessary. Three tests of the ore from these southwest Sinai mines yielded percentages of from 3percent to 18percent copper. Clear back in the First Dynasty, Semerket sent expeditions to the Sinai for copper. It was worked most heavily in the Old and Middle Kingdoms for copper but continued through the times of Ramesses III (though it may have been worked for turquoise as late as the 20th Dynasty). From Ramesses III's time forward, Egypt got most of its copper from Cyprus, whether it was under Egypt's control or not. The famous Timna copper mines are just past the Sinai in the Wadi Araba (the valley which runs from the Dead Sea south to the Gulf of Aqaba), about 15 miles north of Eilat in Palestine. Here, one man could bring out enough ore in a single day to smelt 8 Lbs of copper. I assume that figure was higher than average because another estimate says that the mine employed about 200 people and produced about 500 Lbs per day.

Page I

Bandits in the Roman Empire
by Drakus Domitius

Cleopatra and the Pearl
by Lucius Aelius

The Etruscans: An Introduction
by Tanaquil Sergius

Page II

Sumeria: Part III
by Leah Enkidu

Bilingual Inscriptions in Etruria
by Tanaquil Sergius

Copper and Tin, Mining and Smelting: Part I
by Apiladey Apilsin

Page III

The Exhibition of the Benaki Museum in Athens
by Axiothea Cleomenes

Phylakopi Project 2003.
by Axiothea Cleomenes

Aifa's Archaeology Notes
by Aifa Niafer

On 8 Cuauhtli, 14 Teotleco, the Phoenix will be arriving again to the ports of Machu Picchu. This means there will be lots of tourists around, looking for souvenirs, things to eat, things to wear - an ideal oppourtunity for all citizens of Machu Piccu to make a modest profit by tendering their wares! Reserve your place on time, limited trading space available. The first 8 applicants will receive a premier location in the middle of the square. Reservations to be sent to: Dinnsear Ayaatl Tupac (Market Master) within 14 days of publication, please, to ensure preferential treatment