Epilogue VII: The Gold and Silver
2020
I found these gold and silver objects in a private collection in Amman (Jordan) and photographed them to document a strange situation. As is evident, each object is surrounded by a single type of arthropod. One has flies, and only flies. Another has spiders, and only spiders, and so on. It seems to me that the objects attract one kind of arthropod and repel all others, as if each object were emitting a very specific chemical or electrical signature.
This baffling situation continues to baffle me and the dozens of scientists, humanists, and magicians who have examined the objects time and again
Moreover, the gold and silver cups had custom-built foam crates whose padding was odd: the negative spaces cut into the foam implied that the objects required twice the room they would ordinarily need when packed
