Happy Blogger Birthday, Dear Queen

Zenobia's blog is one-year-old today.

That's about the same length of time that she still had to live between the issue of this empress coin in the spring or summer of 271 AD and her final defeat by Aurelian in August 272.

Zenobia Augusta. Dreams, so short-lived.

Her blog was born with a burst of poetry on 3 January 2007. The very next post set out the blog's challenge, Why Did She Do It?

Have I helped answer this question with my 58 posts during 2007? Sometimes I think I've only tied myself up in more and more difficult knots. But I've learnt a lot. And wandered off into many unexpected Zenobian byways.

Archaeologists love tradition. Even if invented a year ago. So I kick off 2008, too, with a snippet from Rosita Copioli's The Blazing Lights of the Sun , which is to me the pure light of archaeology:

While we speak, silence turns in the night
and the setting sun doubles the growing shadows:
and yet it still burns and calls back
an unborn season, the season that neither
turns nor returns, the measureless step
of the yearless year ....

Many happy returns, dear Queen.