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Lead out in cuffs posted:How many have been digitized and OCRed? Oh please someone tell me where I can get a job to do this. Learning cuneiform would be a bonus.
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Jun 4, 2022 00:21
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There's a plausible interpretation of that event where the plebs set up a government-in-exile in direct competition to the existing patrician government. The popular assembly was the answer to the tribal and century assemblies, the tribunes were the answer to the consuls (notably, there were originally two tribunes of the plebs), and aediles were also originally from this government-in-exile (originally the office of aedile was plebeian only; a later reform added extra aedile slots that patricians were allowed to run for). So when you hear stuff like "the senate agreed that laws passed by the popular assembly were valid" that wasn't conferring an existing institution with additional powers; it was part of the compromise to unite the two governments under the umbrella of the patrician government--part of the compromise was to acknowledge laws passed by the plebeian government as fully valid.
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Jun 4, 2022 00:22
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Lead out in cuffs posted:How many have been digitized and OCRed? There are 351,605 texts in the Cuneiform Digital Library (https://cdli.ucla.edu/), which is the biggest database of cuneiform texts. There's currently no effective way to use OCR for cuneiform texts though, so all the transliterations of those texts have to be done by hand. Not all of the entries in the CDLI database have transliterations though, some of them are just pictures of tablets that may never have been studied extensively by anyone.
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Jun 4, 2022 00:25
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What do they write about? Any good ancient shitposts?
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Jun 4, 2022 00:35
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Grand Fromage posted:Huh. Are there any good books in English discussing this? Everything I've ever read that touched on Persia made a point that it's extra speculative due to a lack of Persian sources, even recent stuff. There's been a quiet revolution in Persian studies over the last few decades as previously neglected non-Greek sources have been compiled and studied as a group, but this is only just starting to seep into mainstream discourse on history. Part of the problem is academic fragmentation, since Persia sits at the intersection of Classics and Ancient Near Eastern studies. Classicists don't generally engage with cuneiform sources, even today there are plenty of Classicists who think that the non-Greek sources on Persia are too fragmentary to do anything other than provide some interesting enrichment to the Greek histories of Persia. Ancient Near Eastern studies is an extremely small field that doesn't usually get much popular attention, and Persia has often not been a focus in that field either. The Persepolis tablets were discovered in the 1930s, but a lot of the important work on them has only begun to be done in the last few decades due to Ancient Near East scholars previously having prioritizing other topics for research. What we have from Persia is still often very speculative, since what is documented and what is not is often very random, but its not quite as speculative as the traditional narrative from Classicists would imply. For a book in English, the book The Persians: The Age of Great Kings by Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones from the book review posted by icantfindaname that started this conversation is probably a good starting point. It was published just 2 months ago, so its as up to date as you can get. I just finished reading it and really liked it. It's somewhat pop history-y in writing style, but its pretty thorough and it makes a point of emphasis to discuss non-Greek sources in depth. That author has a lot of academic writings on the topic as well that are more narrow in scope.
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Jun 4, 2022 00:44
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I will check it oot. My history heresy is not only do I prefer reading a well done pop history to an academic book but I'll admit to it in public.
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Jun 4, 2022 00:51
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Grand Fromage posted:I will check it oot. My history heresy is not only do I prefer reading a well done pop history to an academic book but I'll admit to it in public. right there with you
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Jun 4, 2022 01:16
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Azza Bamboo posted:What do they write about? Letters to the King of Mari is a good pile of translated tablets. A lot of it is "I had a weird dream" or "your dog just had puppies, they are very cute", but there's an occasionally something like the king ordering a bunch of soldiers to go investigate a serial killer
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Jun 4, 2022 01:20
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Writing poo poo down is for scrubs. Real MFers just memorize and speak things out loud in front of an audience to pass it on.
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Jun 4, 2022 01:44
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Azza Bamboo posted:What do they write about? https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sumerian_proverbs Some of these are still pretty funny The fox, having urinated into the sea, said: "The whole of the sea is my urine!" The battle-club would not find out your name -- it would just find your flesh. Flies enter an open mouth. Whatever the man in authority said, it was not pleasant. Whatever the man in authority said, it was not right. A clown made fun of the city. They made fun of him and he wept.
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Jun 4, 2022 04:51
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Tulip posted:https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sumerian_proverbs Amazing the sumerians foresaw every comedian with a Twitter account.
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Jun 4, 2022 04:56
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Prehistoric pagliaci...
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Jun 4, 2022 05:15
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CrypticFox posted:There are 351,605 texts in the Cuneiform Digital Library (https://cdli.ucla.edu/), which is the biggest database of cuneiform texts. There's currently no effective way to use OCR for cuneiform texts though, so all the transliterations of those texts have to be done by hand. Not all of the entries in the CDLI database have transliterations though, some of them are just pictures of tablets that may never have been studied extensively by anyone. Thanks, this is super interesting. Lol I was browsing through the Uruk III period, and the tablets were so tidy. Like I'm sure they're all records of wages and such, but they're all just laid out in these neat grids. You compare it to later stuff, where they're trying to pack as many symbols into one tablet as possible, and they're all bleeding into each other like cursive. Tulip posted:https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sumerian_proverbs Yeah these are great. My understanding was that they were a standard "publication" that rich people would keep a copy of in their personal library. Presumably they were meant to be a resource in case you needed to lay a sick burn on somebody and weren't feeling inspired.
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Jun 4, 2022 08:49
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I think that came up before, it's really funny seeing what were clearly stock characters for the Sumerians. The fox is the idiot with boundless confidence, unless something might be hard.
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Jun 4, 2022 11:48
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I like that a clown who mocks the city but cries when he's mocked describes Twitter main characters really well
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Jun 4, 2022 14:58
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Azza Bamboo posted:What do they write about? There are some tablets from Ur written by schoolboys studying to become scribes where they are dissing each other.    
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Jun 4, 2022 20:08
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Were scribes also surveyors and adjudicators
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Jun 4, 2022 20:15
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This is you smoothing the clay: DUHHHHHHH AH CAIN'T EVEN SMOOD DIS DOYYYYY
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Jun 4, 2022 20:23
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CrypticFox posted:There are some tablets from Ur written by schoolboys studying to become scribes where they are dissing each other. Amazing nerds have literally never changed.
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Jun 4, 2022 20:25
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Great entry in the annals of people haven't changed.
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Jun 4, 2022 20:25
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Now I'm thinking someone's gotta translate these into rap battles.
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Jun 4, 2022 20:29
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Some sort of epic rap battle of history
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Jun 4, 2022 20:45
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Well now I'm interested in what a scribe is for. I take it literacy is rare and they have to write down every little thing someone might argue about, like receipts and property boundaries. Also the fox peeing into the ocean is fantastic
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Jun 5, 2022 03:14
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When I divide the estate, I divide the estate, know what I'm saying?
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Jun 5, 2022 03:25
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Azza Bamboo posted:Well now I'm interested in what a scribe is for. I take it literacy is rare and they have to write down every little thing someone might argue about, like receipts and property boundaries. Yeah and that’s what makes these texts fascinating and illuminating of the life during that time. Instead of being a rich man’s self-paid ”I am so awesome, I raided fifty towns, I have a big dick, women love me”-style writing that gives the illusion that history is full of great men, it’s literally just ”the 15th Legal District’s proceedings, week 23, 3733 BC” and it’s ”Family Uruk and Family Arak argue about property boundaries of the granary” before lunch, and after lunch it’s ”Breach of Contract by Family Erek during house sale”. While seemingly so mind numbingly boring, it’s where the every day life is figured out from, and where values of goods and services become apparent. A related topic are the Jewish Genizas. A genizah is the storage in a synagogue for texts, letters, and legal documents. If ”god” was written on a paper, it becomes holy text. For simplicity’s sake, a Jew can not throw away texts that have ”god” on them. So like a proper rules lawyer Rabbi, Jewish Synagogues came up with the idea of a genizah. A place where you just stuff all the texts you ever find because it allows you to say you didn’t discard them, you simply held on for long term storage. So what was preserved? Everything. Love letters, Army enlistments, legal proceedings, contracts, bills of credit, insurance documents, and every day bureaucratic paperwork. The most famous is the Cairo Geniza: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Geniza From 6th Century to 19th Century, Rabbis who lived in Cairo put all the texts in there. It documents Jewish, and Jewish adjacent, life in Egypt for almost 2000 years. It has over 400,000 preserved texts. Not all of them are separated from the stacks yet, and some aren’t translated either. There’s Arabic, Hebrew, and Aramaic in them. There’s Hebrew written in Arabic, and Arabic written in Hebrew. It is impossible to describe how amazing of a collection it is, and it’s an absolute wonderful collection of mundane daily life from virtually any given angle. I got to assist a professor in studying it and his work was chronologing a dispute/fraud law case from 950. I forgot the precise date, I’d have to check into my google docs. During this time, Abbasid/Ikhshidid Caliphate rules Cairo. In 969 the Fatimids took control. In summary, it had a Muslim man from Luxor who wanted a very specific type of trade ship for the Mediterranean. He had found out about a Jewish man in Al-Us̲h̲būna, Muslim Lisbon, who would sell one. He sent a letter to Cairo for his assistant, who, after going to Alexandria, secured contact with the Jewish man. Sometime later that year the Jewish ship seller brought his ship to Alexandria. There’s a preserved partial letter where the assistant sends back to the Muslim man in Luxor ”yo this ship loving blows and I think you got scammed there’s no way this is what you ordered.” The Muslim man, furious evidently, sets out for Alexandria. We don’t know where he saw it first, or how he describes it, and appparently the photos were poorly preserved. Anyway, next thing we know is that he files suit in the court in Cairo. The Muslim judges then traveled to Alexandria to examine this ship. Once again we do not know what they saw, as they never describe. But they issue a judgement that the Jewish Man is to pay back his contract payment at once, and that he is clearly a scammer and he should not scam a Muslim man. The Jew rebukes the court and leaves a written document how he will absolutely-loving-not obey them nor will he respect Muslim judges because they are biased since he is a jew. He says he will instead contract the local Rabbi and countersue in the Jewish court. Well, he owned himself. Apparently at some point the Jewish judges went to see a boat and by Jahve did they not like what they saw because they issued a judgement that the man is to pay the Muslim back double and that he will never trade in ships ever again nor is he allowed to say he is a ship trader of any kind. He should’ve been happy with the Muslim court, I guess. Being able to pry into this, relatively mundane, historical litigation was loving awesome and I thank my Professor endlessly for it. These texts were all pressed together because they were likely preserved together as they were shown to the courts, and thus were all conveniently together. There’s also some sort of insurance bought by the muslim man as he travels north. He buys it pre-emptively in Cairo, and then later says it is useless. I really wonder about that ship. EDIT; the man is from somewhere where Luxor/Thebes is and was. It’s not super clear since the first millenia saw Luxor changing hands and importance and names. Edit edit; also it is a lot to take in and my arabic is very slow and rudimentary and my hebrew’s even worse, and there’s so many translations of names from already translated names etc so be gentle. Vahakyla fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Jun 5, 2022 |
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Jun 5, 2022 04:29
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Vahakyla posted:Yeah and that’s what makes these texts fascinating and illuminating of the life during that time. Instead of being a rich man’s self-paid ”I am so awesome, I raided fifty towns, I have a big dick, women love me”-style writing that gives the illusion that history is full of great men, it’s literally just ”the 15th Legal District’s proceedings, week 23, 3733 BC” and it’s ”Family Uruk and Family Arak argue about property boundaries of the granary” before lunch, and after lunch it’s ”Breach of Contract by Family Erek during house sale”. dude this is so good
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Jun 5, 2022 04:47
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cheetah7071 posted:Were scribes also surveyors and adjudicators "Scribe" was a pretty broad job category in ancient Mesopotamia. School texts show that scribal students studied a pretty broad range of topics, including surveying, math, systems of weights and measures, and music (for singing hymns that were written down). A lot of this material seems to be for writing the different varieties of contracts, since drafting contracts was one of the major jobs of scribes. Another text from a scribal student written to another student includes a boast that he is able to write "marriage contracts, company contracts, sales contracts for houses, fields, slaves, securities in silver, lease contracts for fields, contracts for cultivating palm groves, and even adoption contract tablets."
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Jun 5, 2022 04:50
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I wonder if you could write God on something just to make sure it stays on record
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Jun 5, 2022 04:53
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CrypticFox posted:"Scribe" was a pretty broad job category in ancient Mesopotamia. School texts show that scribal students studied a pretty broad range of topics, including surveying, math, systems of weights and measures, and music (for singing hymns that were written down). A lot of this material seems to be for writing the different varieties of contracts, since drafting contracts was one of the major jobs of scribes. Another text from a scribal student written to another student includes a boast that he is able to write "marriage contracts, company contracts, sales contracts for houses, fields, slaves, securities in silver, lease contracts for fields, contracts for cultivating palm groves, and even adoption contract tablets." Yeah, I've gotten the impression that "scribe" often meant just an educated person, who could do a bunch of different administrative tasks for the government. That usually revolved around keeping records and writing stuff down, but wasn't exclusively that.
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Jun 5, 2022 04:59
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Post the history/culture related books you're currently reading as like a general recommendation to the thread. I am reading: Plagues Upon the Earth by Kyle Harper, about the history of human disease. (re-reading) God's Chinese Son by Jonathan Spence, about the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom but more specifically focused on Hong Xiuquan. San'ya Blues by Edward Fowler, about the lives of day laborers in San'ya, the closest thing Tokyo has to a slum area, in the late 80s/early 90s. The Horse, the Wheel, and Language by David Anthony, about Proto-Indo-Europeans. Stranger in the Shogun's City by Amy Stanley, about the life of a woman who moved on her own to Edo in the 1800s and left a huge record of her experiences. The Roman Emperor Aurelian by John White, which is uh... about Aurelian. Alaric the Goth by Douglas Boin which is uh... about Alaric.
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Jun 5, 2022 06:12
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I'm trying to keep my reading list pretty short, mostly focusing on Dawn Of Everything (it's not as good as advertised - it's much better). Also got Before the Pyramids in rotation, doing a bit of a re-read of Reform in Sung China, and got a bit of a double feature of Nourish the People and The Grain Market in the Roman Empire lined up.
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Jun 5, 2022 06:34
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Grand Fromage posted:Post the history/culture related books you're currently reading as like a general recommendation to the thread. Just finished Anthony Kaldellis' Streams of Gold, Rivers of Blood, absolutely loved it, can't wait for his grand history of the Empire to be finished. Currently on Peter Frankopan's The First Crusade: Call from the East, seems good but early pages.
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Jun 5, 2022 06:45
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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Azza Bamboo posted:I wonder if you could write God on something just to make sure it stays on record Jeffrey now has the duty to preserve your post for eternity. And this quote too.
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Jun 5, 2022 08:11
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Tulip posted:I'm trying to keep my reading list pretty short, mostly focusing on Dawn Of Everything (it's not as good as advertised - it's much better).
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Jun 5, 2022 09:15
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Grand Fromage posted:Learn cuneiform and find out how many other copper scammers are out there going unpunished. To be fair, isn't this like 'learn alphabet'? Sumerian is going to be a whole other thing for example.
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Jun 5, 2022 13:25
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Terrible Opinions posted:Is this the Before the Pyramids on amazon claiming they had to be planned from Britain? no, its by Teeter at the Oriental Institute claiming that pre-dynastic egypt is more nuanced and complicated than previously thought
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Jun 5, 2022 13:36
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That's Oriental Institute, University of Chicago which iirc is the premier egyptology institute in the Americas. On my amazon, it shows up after about a page and a half of the crackpot brits did pyramids book.
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Jun 5, 2022 13:57
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:That's Oriental Institute, University of Chicago which iirc is the premier egyptology institute in the Americas. Note that if you’re in Chicago the Oriental Institute museum is astonishing. Incredible amount of incredible things, all crammed into a relatively tiny space.
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Jun 5, 2022 14:19
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Remulak posted:Note that if you’re in Chicago the Oriental Institute museum is astonishing. Incredible amount of incredible things, all crammed into a relatively tiny space. It's genuinely one of, if not the, coolest museums I've ever been to. Just absolutely breath taking.
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Jun 5, 2022 14:52
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Vahakyla posted:[snip - geniza stuff] Things like this and what HEY GUNS used to post about legalism in the thirty-years-war HRE are so goddamn good. I would love a book that's just like a collection of random lawsuits with notes and explanations for the cultural and legal context - is there anything like that?
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Jun 5, 2022 15:50
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