Blogosphere ~ Philebus 42b2-6
↧
↧
Blogosphere ~ REVIEW: Rodolfo Funari ed., Corpus dei papiri storici greci e latini. Parte B: storici latini. 1. Autori noti. Vol. 1: Titus Livius.
↧
Blogosphere ~ REVIEW: Ian Storey, Fragments of Old Comedy, Volumes i-iii Loeb
↧
Blogosphere ~ Classics on television: Bullets, Boots and Bandages 1
↧
Blogosphere ~ Botched Latin
↧
↧
Blogosphere ~ The Fall of the Ancient Olympics: The Theodosian Code
↧
Blogosphere ~ Using Votives to Visualize Reproductive Anatomy in Antiquity
Bone Girl: Using Votives to Visualize Reproductive Anatomy in Antiquity.
[further discussion of that Wellcome 'uterus']
↧
Blogosphere ~ Spartacus Vengeance: The Greater Good
↧
Blogosphere ~ What Do Dido and Aeneas Have in Common?
↧
↧
Blogosphere ~ Golden Sponge-Stick Winners ’11
↧
Blogosphere ~ What Do You Know About the Trojan War?
↧
Blogosphere ~ The Origin and Failure of Roman Sumptuary Laws
↧
Blogosphere ~ Roman Empire — The Golden Age
↧
↧
Also Seen: Classics Ryan Gosling
Angeline Chiu started this project to engage her students:
If you’re not familiar with the long-running ‘Hey Girl’ Ryan Gosling meme, check it out here (potentially offensive/NSFL blog title)
↧
ICS Postgraduate Work-in-Progress
Something I’ve long been meaning to include in our updates are notices of new online papers from the Institute of Classical Studies Postgraduate Work-in-Progress Seminar and now that I’m semi-caught up with things, here’s a sampling of the most recent:
Bobby Xinyue (UCL) – Stars and arrows: Vergil’s Aeneid and the divinity of the gens Iulia
Matthew Lloyd (Oxford) – “The warfare in which those spear-famed lords of Euboea are skilled…” The Archaeology of Warriors and Warfare in the Aegean Early Iron Age (ca.1050-700 BCE)
Mick Stringer (Reading) – “The Numbers Game, Ancient and Modern”
Constructing rationes from the writings of the Roman agronomists
Jane McCarthy (KCL) – Speaking “plain Latin”: insult and licence among the elite in early Imperial Rome
Giulia Brunetta (RHUL) – Laus vera et humili saepe contingit viro, non nisi potenti falsa: reflections on praise and flattery in the imperial age
… I’ll try to stay on top of these things rather more regularly in the future …
↧
Marks Upon The Flesh
In an abnormally interesting paper, Eckart Frahm, with proper caution, directs our attention to three passages from the Hebrew Bible that he suggests we consider in the light of several Akkadian texts. The Biblical passages are as follows:
Leviticus 19:28:
וְשֶֹרֶט לָנֶפֶשׁ לֹא תִתְּנוּ בִּבְשַֹרְכֶם וּכְתֹבֶת קַעֲקַע לֹא תִתְּנוּ בָּכֶם אֲנִי יְהוָֹה
You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor make any marks upon you; I am the Lord.
Isaiah 44:5:
זֶה יֹאמַר לַיהֹוָה אָנִי וְזֶה יִקְרָא בְשֵׁם-יַעֲקֹב וְזֶה יִכְתֹּב יָדוֹ לַיהֹוָה וּבְשֵׁם יִשְֹרָאֵל יְכַנֶּה
One shall say, “I am the Lord’s;” and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall write on his hand “The Lord’s,” and surname himself by the name of Israel.
Ezekiel 9:4:
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהֹוָה אֵלָו [אֵלָיו] עֲבֹר בְּתוֹךְ הָעִיר בְּתוֹךְ יְרוּשָׁלָם וְהִתְוִיתָ תָּו עַל-מִצְחוֹת הָאֲנָשִׁים הַנֶּאֱנָחִים וְהַנֶּאֱנָקִים עַל כָּל-הַתּוֹעֵבוֹת הַנַּעֲשֹוֹת בְּתוֹכָהּ
And the Lord said to him, “Go through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a Taw upon the foreheads of the men who sigh and who cry for all the abominations that are done in its midst.”
The relevant part of an Old Babylonian text (Ana ittīšu II iv 13’-14’) reads,
ḫalaq ṣabat ina pānīšu iqqur
Frahm translates this, “’He is a runaway, seize him,’ he engraved (tattooed?) on his (the slave’s) face.” The text is from the first half of the second millennium BCE. Citing the work of Stolper (135, n. 7), Frahm notes, “In the first millennium, such signs were apparently more often tattooed on the hands and wrists of slaves, but their faces could still be inscribed as well.” He notes a letter (Parpola 1993: #160) that mentions that a fugitive scholar and exorcist (now a slave?), “was inscribed on his face and hand” and a “bill of sale” from Borsippa indicated that the sold slave was one, “who is inscribed with the name of his owner . . . on the right and left (hand?) and on the check (lētu) of his left and right side.”
The exact intertextual relationship between the Babylonian texts and the passages from the Hebrew Bible is not completely clear. In fact, the exact intertextual relationship among these three Hebrew passages is not so clear. However, it is hard to deny that they all reflect some aspect of a common culture concerning bound individuals.
Frahm notes the Greek κάτεχέ με• φεύγω, “Seize me – I am a runaway,” written on the forehead of a slave mentioned in a scholiaon to Aeschines (Scholia ad Orationem de Falsa Legatione, 170a cited by Reiner). This is nearly identical to the Old Babylonian ḫalaq ṣabat. He also notes the Latin fugi, tene me on slave’s neckband.
In addition, Frahm, 132, n 113, following Bodi, 49, suggests that we might think of the Tau in Ezekiel 9:4 in the context of the “amulet-shaped tablets inscribed with the Erra epic” or Mesopotamian amulets inscribed with a cross.
Anyone with abnormal interests in the Christian New Testament might want to try reading Philemon 1:15-16 in the light of these several references.
There is actually a rather large literature on all of this.
References:
Bodi, Daniel, The Book of Ezekiel and the Poem of Erra (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 104; Freiburg: Universitätsverlag; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991)
Frahm, Eckart, “Reading the Tablet, the Exta, and the Body: The Hermeneutics of Cuneiform Signs in Babylonian and Assyrian Text Commentaries and Divinatory Texts,” in: Amar Annus, ed., Divination and Interpretation of Signs in the Ancient World, The Sixth Annual University of Chicago Oriental Institute Seminar (Chicago 2010) 93-141.
Reiner, Erica, “Runaway - seize him” in J. G. Dercksen, ed., Assyria and Beyond: Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen (PIHANS 100; Leiden: 2004), 475-82.
Stolper, Mathew W., “Inscribed in Egyptian,” in Maria Brosius; Amélie Kuhrt; David M Lewis, eds., Studies in Persian History: Essays in Memory of David M. Lewis (Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten, 1998), 133-43
↧
Aramaic dictionary on sale
FOR YOU, SPECIAL DEAL: Three-day sale on Michael Sokoloff's A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods at Bar Ilan University Press.
(Via the Agade list.)![]()
![]()
(Via the Agade list.)
↧
↧
LIFE-SIZED WARRIORS OF STONE REASSEMBLED ON MEDITERRANEAN ISLAND OF SARDINIA
Archaeologists and conservation experts on the Italian island of Sardinia have succeeded in re-assembling literally thousands of fragments of smashed sculpture to recreate a small yet unique army of life-size stone warriors which were originally destroyed by enemy action in the middle of the first millennium BC.
It's the only group of sculpted life-sized warriors ever found in Europe. Though consisting of a much smaller number of figures than China's famous Terracotta Army, the Sardinia example is 500 years older and is made of
stone rather than pottery. After an eight year conservation and reconstruction program, 25 of the original 33 sculpted stone warriors - archers, shield-holding 'boxers' and probable swordsmen - have now been substantially re-assembled.
The warriors were originally sculpted and placed on guard over the graves of elite Iron Age Sardinians, buried in the 8 century BC. The stone guardians are thought to have represented the dead individuals or to have acted as their eternal body-guards and retainers.
However, within a few centuries, the Carthaginians (from what is now Tunisia) invaded Sardinia - and archaeologists suspect that it was they who smashed the stone warriors (and stone models of native fortress shrines) into five thousand fragments. It's likely that the small sculpted army - and the graves they were guarding - were seen by the invaders as important symbols of indigenous power and status.
The site was abandoned and forgotten. Carthaginian control of Sardinia gave way to Roman, then Vandal, then Byzantine, Pisan, Aragonese, Spanish, Austrian, Savoyard and finally Italian rule.
The thousands of fragments were rediscovered only in the 1970s - and were excavated in the early 1980s by Italian archaeologist Carlo Troncheti. Two of the statues were then re-assembled - but the vast majority of the material was put into a local museum store where it stayed until 2004 when re-assembly work on the fragments was re-started by conservators in Sassari, northern Sardinia.
Sardinia's newly recreated 'stone army' is set to focus attention on one of the world's least known yet most impressive ancient civilizations - the so-called Nuragic culture which dominated the island from the 16 century BC
to the late 6 century BC. Its Bronze Age heyday was in the mid second millennium BC - roughly from the 16 to the 13 century BC, when it constructed some of the most impressive architectural monuments ever produced in prehistory.
Even today, the remains of 7000 Nuragic fortresses (the oldest castles in Europe) still dominate the landscape of Sardinia. Several dozen have stood the test of time exceptionally well - and give an extraordinary impression
of what Sardinian Bronze Age military architecture looked like.
The re-assembled stone army is expected to go on display from this summer at southern Sardinia's Cagliari Museum, 70 miles south-east of the find site, Monte Prama in central Sardinia.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/prehistoric-cybermen-sardinias-lost-warriors-rise-from-the-dust-6988952.html![]()
It's the only group of sculpted life-sized warriors ever found in Europe. Though consisting of a much smaller number of figures than China's famous Terracotta Army, the Sardinia example is 500 years older and is made of
stone rather than pottery. After an eight year conservation and reconstruction program, 25 of the original 33 sculpted stone warriors - archers, shield-holding 'boxers' and probable swordsmen - have now been substantially re-assembled.
The warriors were originally sculpted and placed on guard over the graves of elite Iron Age Sardinians, buried in the 8 century BC. The stone guardians are thought to have represented the dead individuals or to have acted as their eternal body-guards and retainers.
However, within a few centuries, the Carthaginians (from what is now Tunisia) invaded Sardinia - and archaeologists suspect that it was they who smashed the stone warriors (and stone models of native fortress shrines) into five thousand fragments. It's likely that the small sculpted army - and the graves they were guarding - were seen by the invaders as important symbols of indigenous power and status.
The site was abandoned and forgotten. Carthaginian control of Sardinia gave way to Roman, then Vandal, then Byzantine, Pisan, Aragonese, Spanish, Austrian, Savoyard and finally Italian rule.
The thousands of fragments were rediscovered only in the 1970s - and were excavated in the early 1980s by Italian archaeologist Carlo Troncheti. Two of the statues were then re-assembled - but the vast majority of the material was put into a local museum store where it stayed until 2004 when re-assembly work on the fragments was re-started by conservators in Sassari, northern Sardinia.
Sardinia's newly recreated 'stone army' is set to focus attention on one of the world's least known yet most impressive ancient civilizations - the so-called Nuragic culture which dominated the island from the 16 century BC
to the late 6 century BC. Its Bronze Age heyday was in the mid second millennium BC - roughly from the 16 to the 13 century BC, when it constructed some of the most impressive architectural monuments ever produced in prehistory.
Even today, the remains of 7000 Nuragic fortresses (the oldest castles in Europe) still dominate the landscape of Sardinia. Several dozen have stood the test of time exceptionally well - and give an extraordinary impression
of what Sardinian Bronze Age military architecture looked like.
The re-assembled stone army is expected to go on display from this summer at southern Sardinia's Cagliari Museum, 70 miles south-east of the find site, Monte Prama in central Sardinia.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/prehistoric-cybermen-sardinias-lost-warriors-rise-from-the-dust-6988952.html
↧
BIG PRE-COLUMBIAN FIND DISCOVERED IN MEXICO CITY
A total of 23 pre-Columbian stone plaques dating back approximately 550 years, with carvings illustrating such Aztec myths as the birth of the god of war Huitzilopochtli, were discovered by archaeologists in front of the Great Temple of Tinochtitlan in downtown Mexico City, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said.
Bas-relief sculptures on slabs of tezontle (volcanic rock) relate the mythological origins of the ancient Mexica culture through representations of serpents, captives, ornaments, warriors and other figures, the INAH said
in a statement. The pre-Columbian remains are of great archaeological value because this is the first time such pieces have been found within the sacred grounds of Tenochtitlan and can be read "as an iconographic document narrating certain myths of that ancient civilization," archaeologist Raul Barrera said.
The Great Temple was the most important center of the Mexicas' religious life, built in what is today the great square of the Mexican capital known as the Zocalo.
The stone carvings focus on the myths of Huitzilopochtli's birth and the beginning of the Holy War. They were placed facing what was the center of Huitzilopochtli worship, which means that, like the flooring of pink andesite and slabs of basalt, they date back to the fourth stage of the Great Temple's construction (1440-1469), Barrera said.
According to the myth of Huitzilopochtli's birth, the goddess of the earth and fertility, Coatlicue, was impregnated by a feather that entered her womb as she was sweeping. But the pregnancy angered her children, so the 400 warriors from southern Mexico and the goddess Coyolxauhqui decided to go up Coatepec mountain where Coatlicue lived and kill her, Barrera said. The legend about the beginning of the Holy War among the Mexicas says that during the journey the southern warriors made from Aztlan to Texcoco Lake in the Valley of Mexico, where they founded the city, star warriors from the north, called Mimixcoas in Nahuatl, descended from the heavens. "Both myths include the concept of a star war, in which the god of war and the sun Huitzilopochtli defeats the 400 warriors from the south and
Coyolxauhqui, a clash that left in its wake the stars and the moon," Barrera said.
Archaeologist Lorena Vazquez Vallin, for her part, said that another of the images carved on the stone slabs is a dart with smoke along its sides, in front of which an obsidian arrowhead was found.Another shows a star warrior carrying his chimalli (shield) in one hand and in the other a weapon for shooting darts, the same that Huitzilopochtli used to conquer Coyolxauhqui.
One stone slab is sculpted with a figure of a captive on his knees and his hands tied behind his back. A tear falls from his eye and he might be speaking, Vazquez Vallin said. On another of the pre-Columbian pieces is the profile of a man wearing a feather headdress with an earflap. He has been decapitated.
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=470747&CategoryId=13003
![]()
Bas-relief sculptures on slabs of tezontle (volcanic rock) relate the mythological origins of the ancient Mexica culture through representations of serpents, captives, ornaments, warriors and other figures, the INAH said
in a statement. The pre-Columbian remains are of great archaeological value because this is the first time such pieces have been found within the sacred grounds of Tenochtitlan and can be read "as an iconographic document narrating certain myths of that ancient civilization," archaeologist Raul Barrera said.
The Great Temple was the most important center of the Mexicas' religious life, built in what is today the great square of the Mexican capital known as the Zocalo.
The stone carvings focus on the myths of Huitzilopochtli's birth and the beginning of the Holy War. They were placed facing what was the center of Huitzilopochtli worship, which means that, like the flooring of pink andesite and slabs of basalt, they date back to the fourth stage of the Great Temple's construction (1440-1469), Barrera said.
According to the myth of Huitzilopochtli's birth, the goddess of the earth and fertility, Coatlicue, was impregnated by a feather that entered her womb as she was sweeping. But the pregnancy angered her children, so the 400 warriors from southern Mexico and the goddess Coyolxauhqui decided to go up Coatepec mountain where Coatlicue lived and kill her, Barrera said. The legend about the beginning of the Holy War among the Mexicas says that during the journey the southern warriors made from Aztlan to Texcoco Lake in the Valley of Mexico, where they founded the city, star warriors from the north, called Mimixcoas in Nahuatl, descended from the heavens. "Both myths include the concept of a star war, in which the god of war and the sun Huitzilopochtli defeats the 400 warriors from the south and
Coyolxauhqui, a clash that left in its wake the stars and the moon," Barrera said.
Archaeologist Lorena Vazquez Vallin, for her part, said that another of the images carved on the stone slabs is a dart with smoke along its sides, in front of which an obsidian arrowhead was found.Another shows a star warrior carrying his chimalli (shield) in one hand and in the other a weapon for shooting darts, the same that Huitzilopochtli used to conquer Coyolxauhqui.
One stone slab is sculpted with a figure of a captive on his knees and his hands tied behind his back. A tear falls from his eye and he might be speaking, Vazquez Vallin said. On another of the pre-Columbian pieces is the profile of a man wearing a feather headdress with an earflap. He has been decapitated.
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=470747&CategoryId=13003
↧
David Carr on Using Twitter
Piggybacking off my previous post about social media and the scholar, David Carr, media critic at the NYT has some reflections on how to use Twitter without getting fired. No one wants to lose their job + scholars may want to use social media to help their careers = you should watch this.
↧
