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Tao Jones posted:Scholars believe we have an example of Cleopatra's handwriting on a document. She wrote γινεσθοι (ginesthoi), which means "do it", on an order to give a tax exemption to one of Mark Antony's cronies. The order is written in a different hand, so it's speculated that a scribe wrote the order and she "signed" it. Granted, that's not exactly a signature in the sense that she wasn't writing her name, but it seems to have been the style in Egypt -- another document from about sixty years earlier is one of the only other examples of what we think to be a ruler's personal handwriting on a document (from Ptolemy X) and it was in a similarly imperative style. Most rulers were illiterate from what I have read. Reading and writing smacked of manual labor and was thus beneath royalty. Hence most ancient literature prominently mentions scribes as in courts with influential positions - they were the ones who actually read and wrote everything. Many prominent people also seem to have employed scribes to do their reading and writing for them. There was apparently a fairly narrow class of merchants who did their own reading and writing, as those lower than them couldn't afford to learn and those above hired someone to do it for them.
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Aug 29, 2013 15:27
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This isn't at all accurate for Roman civilization. Literacy was relatively common among all classes in the cities, and basically everyone from the upper classes was literate. Greeks were generally pretty literate too, from what I know. Scribes existed as people dedicated to just working with written stuff. You don't see a narrowing to a small literate class until the Middle Ages, and even then that's been overstated somewhat.
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Aug 29, 2013 15:31
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Captain Postal posted:It doesn't count unless King Sargon actually held the hammer and chisel and personally carved the obelisk. Otherwise, it was just a scribe writing for him. Well, in Sumeria, the custom was for important people to have stone cylinders that they used to sign documents by rolling it in the soft clay before it dried. It was a way of notarizing or otherwise displaying the authenticity of the proclamation or decree (and a way of signing contracts and official records). There are lots of those seals lying around, and lots of clay tablets signed with them. Obviously, we don't know if, say, Urukagina himself rolled the seal on the clay tablet, but it is possible that some of the kings did it themselves.
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Aug 29, 2013 15:39
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", but also as in "when did legal systems develop sufficiently that rulers and other significant people could delegate their authority to a second party and demonstrate their delegation to a third party who will never meet them in person"? Or when did it become practice to add authenticity to a document such as saying "these are my thoughts, words or original creation and I endorse them" like an author or artist might?
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House Louse posted:Huh? The Bronze Age collapse and beginning of the Iron Age were centuries earlier. And I've never heard of an agricultural revolution between the Neolithic and the 17th century. Things take time to happen, it's not start and stop. The Iron Age didn't start everywhere at the same time, and it didn't affect every aspect of society simultaneously (in particular, it takes time for iron to be cheap enough to be widely used for farm tools). Similarly, the effects of the Bronze Age Collapse took decades to manifest. But the iron age brought with it the iron plow, and the capability for sustainable agriculture. There's a big difference in the yield of slash and burn harvesting versus deliberate planting and irrigation.
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Aug 29, 2013 15:44
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I was wager increased trade leading to better diets also had a huge impact.
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Aug 29, 2013 15:46
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How were cities and towns in Rome governed? Were there local senates or councils that discussed local issues? Wikipedia has an article on the topic, but it is extremely sparse.
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Aug 29, 2013 16:31
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Captain Postal posted:Quick question: what is the oldest surviving signature? As in, a person writing their own name (or using their own personal seal on wax themselves etc)? Would it be medieval or earlier? Referring to formal documents only (so excluding graffiti)  He used a stencil.
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Aug 29, 2013 18:23
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I would assume Mesopotamian cuneiform contains signatures of the scribes. This page http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/cuneiform.html says quote:The first use of cylinder seals in the Ancient Near East dates to earlier than the invention of cuneiform, to the Late Neolithic period (7600–6000 B.C.E.) in Syria euphronius fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Aug 29, 2013 |
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Aug 29, 2013 18:58
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Charlemagne: Eighth Century Banksy.Kaal posted:Things take time to happen, it's not start and stop. The Iron Age didn't start everywhere at the same time, and it didn't affect every aspect of society simultaneously (in particular, it takes time for iron to be cheap enough to be widely used for farm tools). Similarly, the effects of the Bronze Age Collapse took decades to manifest. But the iron age brought with it the iron plow, and the capability for sustainable agriculture. There's a big difference in the yield of slash and burn harvesting versus deliberate planting and irrigation. Well, yeah - a change that takes centuries to occur worldwide having a simultaneous impact on population for a specific period and then fading out? Anyway I think the problem is the age of the data - I think the chart's using information from this page, the 1978 column. Probably the information's just not that accurate compared to new sources or techniques historians could use today.
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Aug 29, 2013 19:24
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cheerfullydrab posted:I'm pretty sure there's lots of surviving things with Charlemagne's signature on them. That's cool, didn't know that. K(A)R(O)L(U)S, or K(aroli) R(egis) L(angobardorum) S(ignum), or what? Sleep of Bronze fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Aug 29, 2013 |
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Aug 29, 2013 20:14
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House Louse posted:Well, yeah - a change that takes centuries to occur worldwide having a simultaneous impact on population for a specific period and then fading out? Sure, that's what it would look like when its averaged out over the entire planet. And you can tell that it is caused by something fundamental like food technology because it has an exponential growth curve. Increased crop yield allows for more children, a larger population allows for greater land usage, etc., and the cycle continues until people have expanded into most of the newly arable and defensible farming land at which point the curve returns to normal growth rates. You can see the same kind of curve happening with the introduction of oil-based farming practices (mechanization, fertilization, pesticides) that was introduced in the Industrial Age. Do you have an alternate explanation? Kaal fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Aug 29, 2013 |
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Aug 29, 2013 20:17
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cheerfullydrab posted:I'm pretty sure there's lots of surviving things with Charlemagne's signature on them. In what way do you mean the word "stencil"? The image you posted has islands and cannot be stenciled (in the "paint through shapes cut in an overlaid flat material" sense). Or maybe I'm misunderstanding that image. Was the white part painted or the black part?
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Aug 29, 2013 20:30
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Plexiwatt posted:In what way do you mean the word "stencil"? The image you posted has islands and cannot be stenciled (in the "paint through shapes cut in an overlaid flat material" sense). Old time stencils quite frequently were not through-filled, but a pen would be traced along the edges. The only thing you need to draw freehand in Charlemagne's signature is the right angle thingy in the diamond under the R.
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Aug 29, 2013 21:00
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Sleep of Bronze posted:That's cool, didn't know that. K(A)R(O)L(U)S, or K(aroli) R(egis) L(angobardorum) S(ignum), or what? Charlemagne was a big fan of KRS-One, obviously.
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Aug 30, 2013 00:19
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Charlemagne didn't draw the letters or the lines going out of them, he did the middle part and put an X in it. The example I posted was not the best. KRLS really just means KAROLUS and it was used by a few other fellows with the name after the Magnus.
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Aug 30, 2013 02:45
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Here's a better example. 
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Aug 30, 2013 02:47
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Why would he even need a stencil in the first place? How many documents can he have possibly been signing?
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Aug 30, 2013 03:08
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karl fungus posted:Why would he even need a stencil in the first place? How many documents can he have possibly been signing? Illiterate.
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Aug 30, 2013 03:12
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Sleep of Bronze posted:That's cool, didn't know that. K(A)R(O)L(U)S, or K(aroli) R(egis) L(angobardorum) S(ignum), or what? The "A" of Karolus isn't implied. It's right there in the middle. KARL. It's just a monogram. Monograms are an easy way of making a symbol for yourself without having to dig up some sort of mythological reference or work out the symbols of heraldry, or associate yourself somehow with an animal. Of course, Charlemange did that last one eventually anyways. SlothfulCobra fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Aug 30, 2013 |
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Aug 30, 2013 03:16
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the JJ posted:Illiterate. How would he even know what he was signing?
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Aug 30, 2013 03:21
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karl fungus posted:Why would he even need a stencil in the first place? How many documents can he have possibly been signing?
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Aug 30, 2013 03:24
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karl fungus posted:How would he even know what he was signing? You get the literate to tell you. Typically in a relatively public forum (at Court), and you have more than one scribe who can validate each other. If you find out they lied to you, that's treason, and you murder the gently caress out of them.
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Aug 30, 2013 03:30
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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If only we had a surviving copy of the first Carolingian Empire court intrigue, where a conspiring group of literate scribes managed to get Charlemagne to sign off on some pretty kickin' rad fart jokes.
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Aug 30, 2013 04:03
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"We'll get our beloved Emperor to sign this fake order dispatching that particularly stuffy sendgraf on a mission up Abul-Abbas' rear end! It'll be hilarious!" *multiple chancery officials are executed*
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Aug 30, 2013 04:19
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Kaal posted:Sure, that's what it would look like when its averaged out over the entire planet. And you can tell that it is caused by something fundamental like food technology because it has an exponential growth curve. Increased crop yield allows for more children, a larger population allows for greater land usage, etc., and the cycle continues until people have expanded into most of the newly arable and defensible farming land at which point the curve returns to normal growth rates. You can see the same kind of curve happening with the introduction of oil-based farming practices (mechanization, fertilization, pesticides) that was introduced in the Industrial Age. Do you have an alternate explanation? Sorry, I was misreading you. Although, yes I do have another explanation - it was in the post you just quoted: the data are over 30 years old and aren't reliable.
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Aug 30, 2013 09:22
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House Louse posted:Anyway I think the problem is the age of the data - I think the chart's using information from this page, the 1978 column. Probably the information's just not that accurate compared to new sources or techniques historians could use today. So there. Pestilence, war, volcanos? Wikipedia artifact.
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Aug 30, 2013 09:28
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sullat posted:Well, in Sumeria, the custom was for important people to have stone cylinders that they used to sign documents by rolling it in the soft clay before it dried. It was a way of notarizing or otherwise displaying the authenticity of the proclamation or decree (and a way of signing contracts and official records). There are lots of those seals lying around, and lots of clay tablets signed with them. Obviously, we don't know if, say, Urukagina himself rolled the seal on the clay tablet, but it is possible that some of the kings did it themselves. Especially Assyrian kings, since we have found lots of old (clay-tablet) correspondence between Assyrian kings and their heirs. It's logical to assume at least some of these private messages were written or at least signed by the kings/heirs themselves. If cylinder seals used before the invention of actual script count as "signatures", there are even older examples, like others have posted.
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Aug 30, 2013 13:08
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Libluini posted:Especially Assyrian kings, since we have found lots of old (clay-tablet) correspondence between Assyrian kings and their heirs. It's logical to assume at least some of these private messages were written or at least signed by the kings/heirs themselves. If cylinder seals used before the invention of actual script count as "signatures", there are even older examples, like others have posted. Yeah, that cache of letters between the king and his two sons certainly humanizes those assholes pretty effectively. And provides valuable historical evidence to boot! e: Of course, those guys were almost certainly illiterate, so it would be a case of them dictating letters and then signing them with their seals. sullat fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Aug 30, 2013 |
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Aug 30, 2013 15:52
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Assyrian kings loved their letters talking about how they raped all your women and flayed the men alive and made piles of their skulls.
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Aug 30, 2013 15:55
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I think my personal favorite part of the whole "get morally outraged about 2,000 year old genocides" thing is no one ever mentions the rape. poo poo, the Legio XXI Rapax can be (very, very) loosely translated as the 21st Rapists. You'll get 10 pages of people yelling about how Julius Caesar was Hitler, but no one ever mentions that there probably wasn't a serious Classical Age commander who wasn't directly or indirectly responsible for raping at least thousands of people. If you grew up saying "I want to command legions!" it was tantamount to saying "I want to rape loving everything in sight". Marius probably raped like half of North Africa trying to take out Jugurtha. If I could go back in time I'd invent the fleshlight and sell it to the legions.
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Aug 30, 2013 16:17
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physeter posted:I think my personal favorite part of the whole "get morally outraged about 2,000 year old genocides" thing is no one ever mentions the rape. poo poo, the Legio XXI Rapax can be (very, very) loosely translated as the 21st Rapists. You'll get 10 pages of people yelling about how Julius Caesar was Hitler, but no one ever mentions that there probably wasn't a serious Classical Age commander who wasn't directly or indirectly responsible for raping at least thousands of people. If you grew up saying "I want to command legions!" it was tantamount to saying "I want to rape loving everything in sight". Marius probably raped like half of North Africa trying to take out Jugurtha. I think that extended way beyond the classical age; maybe to like, present day. Actually I think it was like Koramei fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Aug 30, 2013 |
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Aug 30, 2013 16:23
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And that whole thing where people trace the descendents of Mongols is just rape on an industrial scale across most of Eurasia.
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Aug 30, 2013 16:23
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How was rape handled in Rome and its later eastern counterpart?
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Aug 30, 2013 16:43
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physeter posted:I think my personal favorite part of the whole "get morally outraged about 2,000 year old genocides" thing is no one ever mentions the rape. poo poo, the Legio XXI Rapax can be (very, very) loosely translated as the 21st Rapists. You'll get 10 pages of people yelling about how Julius Caesar was Hitler, but no one ever mentions that there probably wasn't a serious Classical Age commander who wasn't directly or indirectly responsible for raping at least thousands of people. If you grew up saying "I want to command legions!" it was tantamount to saying "I want to rape loving everything in sight". Marius probably raped like half of North Africa trying to take out Jugurtha. To echo the other posters, this definitely isn't a thing that has gone away either. Rape is a very real part of war for nearly all armies that have ever existed, including many current ones. Which is unspeakably awful, but there it is. Are there actually people that flip out with "Caesar was Hitler!" arguments though? I can see their point, but I've also never seen anyone get worked up about it. 2000 years of removal tends to make people more objective about these things. Also, re: Marius; I'm kind of giggling to myself thinking about Marius loving his way through all of North Africa (consensually in my head, because that's way less hosed up) in sitcom form, and having failed to find him at the end of every episode screams "Jugurthaaa!" into the sky. I think I've had too much coffee today.
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Aug 30, 2013 17:27
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One of the interesting things I found in Xenophon's Cyropaedia is his depiction of 'proper' interaction with (aristocratic? Xenophon was kind of a classist rear end) captive ladies. Basically, it's a case of the men being within their rights, more or less, to take the woman, but Xenophon makes it pretty clear that 'good' men wouldn't take advantage of the situation. Basically:  "Yo Cyrus, you really gotta check out this chick, she's really hot!" "Ah well, I'd hate to fall in love with her; I've got to save myself for a political marriage." "Ha, love, what a quaint idea! I'll never fall in love." "Sure, whatever you say buddy. You know what, if you're so immune to love, why don't you watch her, make sure nothing bad happens." "..." "..." "... poo poo." "..." "Umm... you wanna, you know..." "Sorry, married." "... I could make you, if I wanted to." "You could, I can't stop you. But I'd rather you didn't." "... poo poo. Cyrus was right. It's like he's always right. Like some author is using him as a paragon of manly virtue. Well, because I follow his manly example, I must repent for my (unfulfilled) evil thoughts by going off on a nearly suicidal scouting mission. Cyrus will tell everyone I raped her and that I broke his trust and exile me, and I'll go to the enemy court as a double agent."{Later, in the enemy camp}  "Hey, you were with Cyrus right? Did, did anyone rape my wife?" "... no, of course not. Who would think of doing such a thing... besides, Cyrus would be really pissed..." "Really, it's cool that Cyrus is so cool. I'm going to go defect now. Hey Cyrus! Thanks for not raping my wife. As your divinely deserved reward for good behavior, I'm going to join your side and die a heroic death." "Sweet deal." "I'll just go get my tragic suicide kit together then. Come on eunuchs, you too. Hey Cyrus, can you, like, put up a statue for the two of us?" "Sure."Sooo... tl;dr: Yeah, the idea that raping people was a Bad Thing was an idea that existed, but it was really tied into expectations of female faithfulness (not a requirement of the men) and the idea of male self-control over their own base emotions more than, you know treating women like people.* *Arguably that first bit is something modern culture needs to work on what with this whole victim blaming thing.
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Aug 30, 2013 17:53
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On Charlemagne: Hasn't it been theorized that he wanted to read and write (It's known that he tried to learn as an adult), but was unable to, with some evidence pointing towards being dyslexic? He reportedly spoke multiple languages of the region, could keep reasonable pace with a Greek speaker, and had one hell of an intellectual curiosity. If that's the case, you kinda feel sorry for the guy. Went around fostering the growth/preservation of knowledge but because writing never looked anything but a jumbled mess (the script of the time notwithstanding - poo poo looks Arabic, but you can make out the letters once you know what it says) to him, he had to roam the empire like a total busta with his scribe, and everywhere he went, seeing that his work had granted people a gift of literacy he would never obtain.
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Aug 30, 2013 23:12
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The Entire Universe posted:On Charlemagne: Hasn't it been theorized that he wanted to read and write (It's known that he tried to learn as an adult), but was unable to, with some evidence pointing towards being dyslexic? He reportedly spoke multiple languages of the region, could keep reasonable pace with a Greek speaker, and had one hell of an intellectual curiosity. Charlemagne desperately wanted to be literate late in life and spent time with a wax tablet and stylus every night trying to figure it out. I think dyslexia is possible but he also was quite old when he began to take an interest in learning to read for himself instead of just having a scribe do it, so he may have been incapable due solely to that. His early disinterest in literacy might have been due to dyslexia or just cultural, I don't think we'll ever really know.
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Aug 30, 2013 23:57
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That is depressingly ironic. The guy who wanted to reestablish learning and literacy to europe couldn't learn to read.
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Aug 31, 2013 00:14
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I think learning to read and write is also just a lot harder for adults. Benefits of the particular plasticity of a young mind I guess.
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Aug 31, 2013 01:31
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Agean90 posted:That is depressingly ironic. The guy who wanted to reestablish learning and literacy to europe couldn't learn to read. I think it's really cool that he was interested in literacy for society long before he was interested in literacy for himself. Most illiterate kings, especially in his day, would have just said "gently caress this pussy reading poo poo" and gone off to kill some pagans instead of recognizing its value and trying to promote it. Charlemagne was a very sophisticated person for his time and place, especially when you look at previous Frankish leaders.
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Aug 31, 2013 06:38
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