Strange readings…
In the last couple of weeks [in May 2022], my partner Giovanni and I experienced a string of coincidences connected to various reading matter around our home. I was helping Giovanni to clean his Burmese python’s vivarium using a bundle of newspapers we save for messy jobs, when he burst out laughing. The headline on the paper he was about to use read (about Terry Jones of Monty Python): “Python’s family enter legal snake pit,” which was not only a fairly unusual headline in itself but a good description of what we were about to do!
Around this time, I was reading Sabatino Moscati’s textbook on the Phoenicians, one of my great interests. I had reached the chapter on religious practices, in particular the different Baals who appeared as the pantheon evolved. Later in the day I was reading June’s FT when I was startled and delighted to find Paul Devereux’s account of the “Cosmic Pool” at the Phoenician archæological site at Motya, Sicily [FT419:12], complete with a statue of Baal at the centre of the newly discovered pool, which incidentally must have been absolutely spectacular in its day.
I showed the article to Giovanni, also
