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Book and Sword

~ Pontifex minimus

Book and Sword

Tag Archives: Greek

Semitic Words in Greek

13 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

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Tags

ancient, cultural exchange, Greek, philology

The tube stop just outside the tower of London, June 2019. I don’t entirely understand the topography, but anything higher than the walls is out of bowshot of the moat (currently drained and replaced with a dry ditch, and the water gate is only accessible through a long tunnel).

Back in 2013, Jerker Blomqvist took the time to compare three books on Semitic words in ancient Greek texts. Scholars often disagree about which arguments are “certain,” “probable,” or to be “rejected.” Out of about 400 words which have been seen as loans, he found about 25 which are accepted by all three authorities:
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The Siege on the Amathus Bowl

09 Saturday May 2015

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

ancient, Carian, Cypriote, early Greek warfare, Greek, hoplite, Iron Age, Phoenician

See blog post for description

The Amathus bowl, British Museum catalogue number ANE 123053 © Trustees of the British Museum

In 1875, an old tomb on Cyprus was cleaned out in search of antiquities. One chamber contained a copper cauldron, and in that cauldron were shield fragments, an iron dagger, and about half of a corroded metal bowl 16 cm in diameter. The looters had cast it aside as they broke the sarcophagi open and ransacked the tomb for salable goods. This was a mistake, because the bowl was of wrought and engraved silver and contained a beautiful series of reliefs in concentric bands. Shortly after it was discovered, the bowl was sketched by a careful artist and published in a volume on the archaeology of Cyprus so that it would be available to scientists. Thanks to the generosity of the Gallica project in France, this volume is now available to the world.

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From Aleph Bet to Alphabet

28 Saturday Mar 2015

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

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ancient, Aramaic, Greek, Iron Age, Latin, writing systems

Table with the Hebrew Samaritan Syriac Phoenician Greek etc.  scripts side by side

An old chart of ancient abjads and alphabets, from a class handout

The Greek alphabet is adapted from the consonantal writing systems of the Levant, and I used to have a vague idea that Greek got its vowel signs by adapting signs for Semitic consonants not present in Greek. Greek has no aspirated “s”, for example, so Greeks using the Northwest Semitic abjad to write Greek found that they did not need the sign shin ש for transcribing Greek consonants and could use it for something else. As I learn a bit of Aramaic I realize that the process was much more straightforward.
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The Bronze Battle Scene from Pergamon

01 Sunday Jun 2014

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

ancient, artistic evidence, battle scene, Greek, Hellenistic, Pergamon, source

In 1913 Alexander Conze published some of the antiquities found at Pergamon. One of these was a remarkable relief from the second century BCE showing a battle on land. While Greek artists usually portrayed battle as a fight between scattered individuals, this relief shows different types of soldiers crowded together and even a Macedonian phalanx with its battle standard. The University of Heidelberg has generously digitized their copy of Conze’s book as part of the Heidelberger historische Bestände- Digitaler:

A line drawing of a bronze plate with reliefs of infantry fighting and cavalry dashing back and forth

1. Beschlagstück, mit Eisen gesüttert, darüber in Bronzeblech getriebenes Relief, 0,24 m lang. Im Haputfelde Kampf von Reitern und Fußgängern ganz links scheint ein Feldzeichen zu stehen. Das Dreiecksfeld der einen seitlichen Spitz mit einem Ägismuster und Medusenhaupte geföüllt. Abbilding beistehend. (Caption from Alexander Conze, “Altertümer von Pergamon,” Bd. 1 Text 2 p. 250


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A “Primitive” Battle in Afghanistan

03 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient, Modern

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Achaemenid army, ancient, battle, comparative evidence, early Greek warfare, Greek, Homeric battle, modern

The horrors of these domestic feuds [amongst the Eusofzyes, Kipling’s “Yusufzaies”] are sometimes aggravated by a war with another Oolooss [roughly a “tribe,” p. 211]. Many causes occasion these wars, but the commonest are the seduction of a woman of one Oolooss by a man of another, or a man’s eloping with a girl of his own Oolooss, and seeking protection from another. This protection is never refused, and it sometimes produces long and bloody wars. I shall show their nature, as usual, by the example of the Naikpeekhail.
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De Constructione Bellicarum Machinarum

14 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

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ancient, artillery, Biton, Greek, manuscript

Multicoloured drawing of a wheeled, boxy siege engine

British Library MS. Burney 69 f. 12v Photo c/o The British Library.


Not abstract art, but a technical drawing from an ancient treatise on siege machines by Biton. The catalogue says that this manuscript was copied in 1545, almost 1800 years after Biton wrote. Technical drawings have always been a problem in books on engineering, and they were even more so when the drawings had to be copied by hand by artists who had never seen what they were depicting. Some illustrations were copied from earlier ones, and others were reconstructions based on the text; I don’t know what category this picture falls into, but it is certainly striking. I suspect that it is supposed to depict a siege tower. You can find the catalogue and a drawing of a catapult from the same manuscript here.

Manti on Greek Helmets

07 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

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ancient, armour, Corinthian helmet, Greek, helmet, methodology, reconstruction

A new doctoral thesis by Dr. Panagiota Manti on the construction of Greek bronze helmets is now available online (here). Manti had an unusual theory, namely that some Greek helmets were cast in something close to their final form then reshaped by hammering. This idea goes against a lot of comparative evidence for armour being hammered from sheets and bars, and casting something as large, thin, and complex as a Corinthian helmet would be difficult. Rather than simply speculate, or try to cast a helmet, Manti took the trouble to find tests which were capable of distinguishing between her theory and the leading alternative, carried out these tests, and published the results. This approach is more difficult, but it can also provide much stronger evidence for a theory. Manti believes that she has found evidence that yes, many Corinthian helmets were cast roughly to shape then hammered for strength and delicate forming. She also believes that only one helmet in her sample was tinned, a style of decoration known from Roman and medieval copper-alloy objects.

While I do not have time to read Manti’s whole thesis, and lack the training in metallurgy to assess its argument, I hope that some of my readers will find it helpful.

Three Ancient Traditions of Tactical Writing

28 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Aelian, ancient, Arrian, Asclepiodotus, drill, Greek, Hittite, Hittite Instruction for the Royal Bodyguard, Hittite Instructions for the Commander of the Border Guards, Jewish, Josephus, Qumran War Scroll, tactics, Xenophon

A forthcoming conference has me thinking about writings on tactics in the ancient world. While the English word tactics indicate a clever way of fighting, the Greek adjective τάκτικη means “having been put into a formation for battle.” In other words, in the ancient world tactics were what we call organization and drill. Ancient and modern critics have complained that tactics in the Greek sense are insufficient education for a soldier, but experienced soldiers tended to recognize that they were necessary.
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The Stone Throwers of Onomarchus

04 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

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Tags

ancient, artillery, Greek, Macedonian, military, textual criticism

Classicists and Assyriologists spend a great deal of time and energy editing ancient texts, debating which version to use, and carefully noting which they have chosen. A debate about the use of catapults in fourth-century BCE Greece has reminded me why this matters.
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The obscurity of a learned language

23 Thursday Jan 2014

Posted by Sean Manning in Ancient

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Tags

ancient, Greek, translation

The book supposes a readership who knows ancient Greek (he translates μύλλω as ‘βινέω’, for example).

Recent review of an academic book

Note: While some ancient Greek words are untranslatable, βινέω and μύλλω are crudities of the sort with which every language is well-furnished. These days most translators chose to translate rude words with rude words, but cloaking the author’s meaning in the obscurity of a learned language has a long tradition too.

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