Lapis Lazuli, often shortened to just lapis, is a beautifully blue mineral, prized since ancient times for its color. As early as between 7000 and 6000 BC, lapis lazuli was mined in regions of modern-day northeastern Afghanistan, and nowadays mines in northeast Afghanistan continue to be a major source of lapis lazuli, with Afghanistan still being the world’s largest exporter today.
Lapis lazuli beads and other artifacts have been found in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, Syria, and the rest of the Mediterranean, dating back, in some cases, as far as 5000 BC! It was also used, in much later times, to make the highly coveted blue dye known as ultramarine. This widespread use of lapis lazuli rocks, considering how far away Afghanistan is from these areas, speaks to a far more sophisticated system of trade networks than what one would suppose to be around in ancient times. Jewelry made of lapis lazuli has also been found at Mycenae, attesting to trade relations between the Mycenaean Greeks and these other civilizations.
The Roman writer Pliny the Elder described lapis thusly: “opaque and sprinkled with specks of gold”, and was often called sapphire (sapphirus in Latin, sappir in Hebrew). However, lapis and the gemstone more commonly known as sapphire were not linked. For example, the Old Testament makes many references to sapphires, like in Exodus: Exodus 24:10: "And they saw the God of Israel, and there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone..." (KJV). However, sapphire stones were unknown in ancient Israel until Roman occupation, so this description more closely resembles lapis. Indeed, in the vulgate Latin translation of this passage, the words used are "quasi opus lapidis sapphirini", referring more unambiguously to lapis.
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Anybody here have any tips on how to read theory and also remember it? I can do the former but I find myself slowly forgetting even the important parts of the books I've read and there's not much point in reading it if I can't remember at least the important points in a year or five or ten years down the line. I suppose I should take notes, but I was never very good at making notes that weren't just verbatim copies of the material I was studying and don't really know any other strategy, and I don't know if I should like, make flashcards for spaced repetition or something or if that's going overboard and I just need to write a summary of each chapter or something else.
Find a specific passage that summerizes an important point, tear it out of the book. Paste it to the wall next to your bed. Every night before you sleep sit up and recite the passage or read it silently, until its burned in like a mantra
I have horrible reading retention and an awful short term memory, so I feel you. I'm still slowly working through theory, but something that has helped me is totally immersing myself in theory. Having audiobooks on while I'm driving or doing stuff around the house, watching videos about a specific work, listening to podcasts breaking down the books and their key points, reading summaries/explanations, stuff like that. I don't intend on memorizing the passages like they're Bible verses, but my goal is to internalize the themes and important points of Marxism. Understand its critique of capitalism and the historical trends that support it.
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my memory is fucking terrible, so i do a refresh every year, just fast reading through a bunch of it to keep it in my brain
Honestly, memes. I forgot whole books that I read in undergrad, even after writing essays and passing exams. The stuff I remember is 100% because there was a funny joke about the material in class once. Shitpost your way through and turn it all into bits.