Lord of the memes

translations of bronze and iron age holy texts

Wait, what do you mean by that? I know Tolkien borrowed a lot from old texts like the Norse and Icelandic sagas, but I have read only the four popular Middle Earth books, and have dipped up to my ankles in Icelandic sagas, so that's as much as I can say for certain.

There's also Beowulf - of which I have read a version, a translation - and the myth of Arthur and Camelot, what I know is what I've seen in Excalibur, which is one of my all-time favorite movies, in my personal Top Twenty to be sure.

But Bronze Age and Iron Age? To put the history of Middle Earth in these terms is blowing my mind a little bit over here, as I have only recently understood the differences between these two surprisingly different eras.

Ancient was ancient and it was all one blurry smudge of names and land and years counted in negative numbers. Then I started to delve a little bit, particularly on YouTube, and it's like the past popped into 3D and in color, in my mind, to suddenly understand the difference between Sumerian and Akkadian, or between the Medic and the Punic wars.

And frankly, I find the Bronze Age to be much more fascinating and compelling, the first great spurt of civilization, suddenly finding itself with time for organized contemplation for the first time, as well as that most astonishing of inventions - writing, allowing the arts, engineering, infrastructure, sciences, etc. to flourish.

The old Greeks themselves codified this concept into their mythologies:
Kronos (Time) + Mnemosyne (Memory) = The Muses (the inspirations of man).
When that memory got transferred to clay tablets or papyrus scrolls, the curve of knowledge started going exponential, more knowledge in ever shorter cycles.

To now realize that there is a similar level of depth perspective in the Silmarillion, is making Middle Earth pop a bit in 3D and in color in my head.