Margaret Williams of the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins recently conducted an epigraphy workshop which consisted of a couple of half-day seminars which provide a really useful overview of what is currently known in regards to Jewish epigraphy in Hellenistic/Roman times. Even better, all the materials (handouts, audio, powerpoints) have been made available online. This seems to be a useful model that other talks/seminar/paper sessions might want to emulate. In any event, details and links available here.
Tag: Epigraphy
Attic Inscriptions Online
This one is filling my email box and my various twitter feeds … a bit of the intro:
Inscriptions on stone are the most important documentary source for the history of the ancient city of Athens and its surrounding region, Attica. Dating from the 7th century BC through to the end of antiquity, Greek texts are available to scholars in Inscriptiones Graecae (IG) I (up to 403/2 BC) and II (after 403/2 BC) (website), updated annually by the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (SEG) (website), and in the Packard Humanities Institute (PHI) Greek Inscriptions website. However, until now, very few of the inscriptions have been available in English translation, whether in print, or online. This site is intended to rectify this situation, beginning in 2012 with the inscribed laws and decrees of Athens, 352/1-322/1 BC, of which new texts have recently been published as IG II3 1, 292-572.
Has This Inscription Been Published?
Does anyone know if this inscription has been published (I’m trying to figure out if this is a new find that hasn’t been reported or is something that has long been known):
Phrygian and Lydian Inscriptions from Northwest Turkey
Tip o’ the pileus to A.K. Eyma for passing along this item from Leiden University:
Linguists Alwin Kloekhorst and Alexander Lubotsky from Leiden University made a great discovery this summer. They deciphered a few dozen inscriptions on pot shards found in Daskyleion (North-West Turkey) as Phrygian and Lydian, and thus proved the presence of the Phrygians and Lydians in that area.
Sensational
Kloekhorst and Lubotsky’s find can be termed sensational. Previous excavations had already led to the supposition that Greeks and Phrygians lived in and around Daskyleion between the 6th and 3rd century BC, but now there is also proof of the presence of the Lydians. The kingdom of the Phrygians in the mid-west of the Anatolian Plateau had a rich mythology in which kings such as Gordias (of the Gordian Knot) figured. The Lydians are known as a rich people that in all probability invented coins. This means it has been proven for the first time that Daskyleion was a multi-ethnic town in that period. This is important, because we do not yet know for sure which languages were spoken in North-West Turkey before the Greeks began to settle there in about 800 BC.
Grin and bear it
When the Turkish archaeologists Kaan Iren (Mugla University) and Handan Yildizhan (Nevsehir University) found pot shards with inscriptions that they could not decipher their search soon led them to Leiden. Kloekhorst, who received a VENI grant in 2008 for his research into Hittite (a language related to Lydian), is known to be expert in the field of Anatolian languages (a sub-group of the Indo-European language family). For his part, Lubotsky is an authority in the field of the Phrygian language. At the request of the Turkish archaeologists they spent a week in Daskyleion in July deciphering the inscriptions. Kloekhorst says, ‘It was 35 degrees and there was no air-conditioning. It was certainly a case of grin and bear it.’
To Zeus
The best discovery, says Kloekhorst, is a small shard with ‘To Zeus’ scraped on it. ‘Most of the shards are very small,’ he explains. ‘The words are often broken into pieces, and you do find a whole word it is usually a name. The advantage is that Phrygian and Lydian each had their own alphabets. That is often our only guide: it’s how we know that it can’t be a Greek text.’ The discovery amounts to some thirty inscriptions. That may not seem much but for two extinct languages it is huge. Kloekhorst says, ‘In total we only have 150 Lydian fragments. That means that any new piece of text is welcome. They are the small pieces of evidence that we work with.’
New shards
The excavation house in the village of Ergili, where Alwin Kloekhorst and Alexander Lubotsky stayed and worked for a week.The excavation house in the village of Ergili, where Alwin Kloekhorst and Alexander Lubotsky stayed and worked for a week.
At the request of the Turkish archaeologists Kloekhorst and Lubotsky are producing a book on the joint discoveries. An article will also be published in which they will reveal the discoveries. But it probably does not end there. ‘Whilst we were in Turkey,’ says Kloekhorst, ‘every now and then a new shard with an inscription would be found. I can easily see us having to return next year.’
The original article includes photos of some of the inscriptions and relevant links to the people involved.
Rant: Talpiyot/Patio Tomb Inscription Redux Redux ad Nauseam
I’ve got a number of rants percolating inside of me and need to get one out before I damage myself.
As regular readers of rogueclassicism might be aware, Richard Bauckham has recently made another foray into trying to translate that inscription on an ossuary in Talpiyot Tomb B, a.k.a. the Patio Tomb. In case you haven’t seen it, it’s available via Mark Goodacre’s NTblog:
… in which he proposes the inscription consists of two names; this contrasts greatly with what he originally proposed on the ASOR blog back in March:
At the same time, Dr Bauckham conveniently collected most of the variant readings of the inscription in a guest post at Larry Hurtado’s blog:
… we should also mention H. Gregory Snyder’s comments at the ASOR blog on Christopher Rollston’s efforts:
… and, of course, Dr Rollston’s own posts:
I won’t even bother with my own efforts at coming up with a translation, because as I stared at the available photos, it was becoming increasingly obvious that I (nor others) did not have photos of sufficient quality to come up with a transcription, let alone a viable translation. I think the variations just in Dr Bauckham’s contributions alone serve well to underscore this fact. Adding weight to this, if I may dangle a participle, folks may know that I run an obscure mailing list for epigraphy and many of the premier Greek and Latin epigraphers on the planet are members thereof. A request for suggestions of what the inscription might say garnered zero response. Adding even further weight to the suggestion that the photos we have been provided with by the investigators of the Talpiot Tomb(s), when a similar request was posted at the Current Epigraphy blog, the very first comment was a request for a photo with raking light (i.e. light from the side) — not that a lot of folks weighed in at all. Interestingly, though, one attempt at photomanipulation which was done in reverse order of something I tried, came up with a very different reading.
The point of this rant is this: the photos of the inscription from the Talpiot Tomb B, a.k.a. the Patio tomb, are of insufficient quality to draw scholarly conclusions from. I don’t know if it’s by design or what, but the handful of photos which have been released are those which ‘tend to’ lead the reader to whatever it is Drs Tabor and Jacobovici want them to see, but it is clear that professional epigraphers can see other things, but just aren’t sure what. Like the ‘jonah fish’, however, it is increasingly being seen that it isn’t what Drs Tabor and Jacobovici say is there (and yes, it is a valid criticism to point out what is claimed isn’t there without there being agreement on what is there — just anticipating a standard response which we witnessed when scholars didn’t agree on what the vessel on the ossuary depicted).
FWIW, I am not positive the amazing GE technology which was used to investigate the tomb is capable of producing a photo with the necessary raking light, although some combo of light + snake cam should have been able to do so. I am also doubtful, however, whether the small handful of photos which the investigators have released to the public are the only ones, or even the best ones. Surely there must be video as well. This sort of robot investigation of tombs holds great promise for archaeology in general, but it obviously is dead in the water if scholars are ‘holding back’ all the evidence they have available in order for it to have proper, scholarly peer criticism. This isn’t a situation where a questioning scholar can go to the museum and look at the inscription, or possibly track down a squeeze or rubbing to verify what is there. This isn’t a situation where we have to rely on some drawing made by some dead guy in the 18th or 19th centuries. This is a situation where — I’m sure — there are other images available and we aren’t deemed worthy to look at them, for whatever reason. Until such time as Drs Tabor and Jacobovici release more/all photos/videos of the inscription and make them available to scholars, their interpretation of this inscription — and by extension, their investigation in general — cannot and will not be taken seriously by the academic community or by the learned lay community and should be delegated the same category as the Ancient Aliens series.
There … I feel better now.
rogueclassicism 