The new month redirects our attention to a subject that has occupied our Internet Space quite often in this year: the waterwheel. Let’s remember the entries that were dedicated to the Nubian saqias and related topics.
1. On the 1st of January the New Year was welcomed with Saqias, the Zodiac and the Roulette:
2. Already on the 5th of January we linked the saqias with the politics of destruction caused by the dams:
3. A month later we wrote about the term Saqia in Old Nubian and in old times Nubia:
4. On the 11th of February we mapped The Saqia Landscapes on Sai Island:
5.On February the 18th, the tones were rising with Waters of Uncertainty:
6. On the 13th of March, a brilliant idea for using the flow of the water to produce electricity was presented in support of the Nubians’ resistance against new dams:
7. And finally, on the 5th of May, saqia landscapes found us even in Greece:
So, why did we remember the saqias this time?
Because there starts today in Lons-le-Saunier, France, a colloquium about the archeology of mills powered by either water flow or animal force or the wind. The colloquium, that will last until the 5th of November, was inspired by recent discoveries of water mills in the frame of a salvage archaeological project of 2008, due to works on the high speed train line linking Dijon to Mulhouse. And it is accompanied by a related exhibition that will be hosted at the local Museum of Fine Arts until the 15th of January 2012.
We are certain that in such venues there will be space for discussing aspects of the special category of water wheels that are the saqias, and, although we cannot make it to France, we wish the organizers and participants all luck and success. We are looking forward to finding out about the results and the future plans. And as a token of contribution we post hereby a video shot by our friend and colleague Sebastian Speiser from Berlin, who had the chance to see a still functioning saqia on the island of Argo in Northern Sudan:
Medieval Sai Project 