Are you here with the living? Are you back with the dead?

[sovay]

The dead who were buried in boats, among sex and sand:

As the Chinese archaeologists dug through the five layers of burials, Dr. Mair recounted, they came across almost 200 poles, each 13 feet tall. Many had flat blades, painted black and red, like the oars from some great galley that had foundered beneath the waves of sand.

"A Host of Mummies, a Forest of Secrets."

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Wow! What a story!

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Wondrous strange.

Nine

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Such a strange mixture of the alien and familiar. While I hesitate to say that there's nothing more tantalizing than a dessicated corpse, they seem to be the brink of telling their secrets in a way that mere bones never do.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"Buried in boats, among sex and sand". That's a great line....

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I stayed up late to read this story. Granted, instead of dreaming of them, I had dreams about going with an old man to pawn a bunch of painted ceramic cars depicting the rise and fall of fascism in an alternate America where the 30s were much more unsettled than they were. But then I also had a dream in which I did... something. Something very important that I hoped carried over into the waking world... Hm.

[schreibergasse.livejournal.com]

That's...weird. (Boat burials in the Tarim, that is, not the vaguely-European-looking maybe-Tokharians.)

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

Fascinating story, yes. I remember the Tarim Basin mummies from the last time they impinged on the public consciousness, roundabouts ten or fifteen years ago. (I remember once having the strangest feeling that some of them in the photographs looked familiar, whatever that might mean.)

The boat-shaped coffins and the sexual symbolism in this particular cemetery are an interesting wrinkle. I might have to see if I can finagle access to some of the current archaeological journals, to see what's being said about them.

[stinger78.livejournal.com]

I second the love for "The dead who were buried in boats, among sex and sand."

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Sigh. One of those frustrating ancient cultures that is both fascinating, and difficult to research online without falling into a morass of white-supremacist sites.