|
zoux posted:I mean really the output of classical sculptors should put lie to the belief that the ancient classic artists were less skilled than today. A particular one to me is that people talk about how medievals got "bad at art" but I've seen medieval sculptural busts, they're often highly realistic and detailed. I fully expect in the future some people will think 21st century people got bad at art and cite the lack of realism in anime.
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 17:31
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 09:50 |
|
|
*watching 100 filler episodes of One Piece* We believe these works had ceremonial purposes.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 17:56
|
|
|
zoux posted:Lol I was about to reply with a link to the Fayum mummy portraits (because I didn't know that's what those particular portraits were called) because that was one of my watershed "oh the people in the past weren't stupid troglodytes" realizations. I've seen some pre-Simpsons lit where "Homer" is used ironically. For one, the name "Homer Simpson" comes from Nathanael West's The Day of the Locust. That Homer Simpson is, in very short, a midwestern bumpkin who moves to Hollywood and gets in over his head. It has been a long time since I read that one, but it's a pretty notable novel in American Modernism. Alice Munro also has a short story in the Who Do You Think You Are collection/cycle which includes a character named "Milton Homer" (that might be the name of the story/chapter in fact) - he's a developmentally disabled adult who does manual labour around the small town, and the children (including the narrator who is an adult recalling events from her childhood) are fascinated with this adult who is uncannily childlike. His name is mostly ironic, a combination of the names of two blind epic poets, but the character does have a few moments where he's ambiguously prophetic.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 18:47
|
|
|
Tulip posted:A particular one to me is that people talk about how medievals got "bad at art" but I've seen medieval sculptural busts, they're often highly realistic and detailed. I fully expect in the future some people will think 21st century people got bad at art and cite the lack of realism in anime. zoux posted:*watching 100 filler episodes of One Piece* We believe these works had ceremonial purposes. Sometimes I like to think about the things future civilizations might confidently claim 21st century humans worshipped, and also our religious practice. "They called the all-compassing entity of knowledge and communication The Internet. They visualized it as a world-encompassing spider's web, although early cults pictured it as a series of ceramic or terracotta tubes. Internet worship largely arose from ideas begun by Telephone, as shown by the 'dial up' ritual (circa 2000 HE) thought to be necessary to achieve contact with The Internet in its early manifestations. It was thought by some [whom?] that if a person's life events were not dutifully recorded 'online', they could not remain truly 'real'."
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 19:18
|
|
|
zoux posted:Much like the once revered name of Nimrod took on a different connotation thanks to Bugs Bunny, when did Homer go from "famous poet" to "dipshit"? Before the Simpsons right, it's always been considered a hick name, as far as I can remember I think that's usually hard to fully track, but I think a lot of stereotypical hillbilly and redneck names have really ancient roots, like there's old biblical stuff like Jebediah, but also Cletus has ancient Greek roots. There might be something going on with either insular isolated communities pulling upon the bible or classic literature to the exclusion of more recent or multicultural influences, or maybe it's a thing of outsiders stereotyping those communities as backwards or ancient. Maybe it's another irony-based thing where people remember most strongly the more elaborate and classy names in such low-class environments. Incidentally, here's a blog post of somebody diving into the whole folk-etymology of nimrod meaning dumbass. Daffy Duck is the one who says it first, insultingly, to Elmer Fudd, and Bugs Bunny says it only way later in a more pitying way about Yosemite Sam, but also there are possibly earlier instances of nimrod being used insultingly outside of the Looney Tunes.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 19:20
|
|
|
Mr. Nice! posted:The mythbusters set up the mirror test and found it plausible, though. They ruled it 'busted' - they could warm up the fake trireme, but they couldn't get it on fire. The problem was that you need to be in a good position, coordinate all of the mirrors, and hold them on target for a significant time, so it's not really something you could do to a moving ship at harbor distance. I've seen other people do 'death ray' setups, and they can work fine at 100 feet or less when you can set up to catch the sun well and hold it on a stable target for a minute or more, but keeping a beam focused at a longer distance and using more mirrors gets really impractical really fast, especially with tech Archimedes would have had access to. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8h15ae
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 19:27
|
|
|
Pantaloon Pontiff posted:They ruled it 'busted' - they could warm up the fake trireme, but they couldn't get it on fire. The problem was that you need to be in a good position, coordinate all of the mirrors, and hold them on target for a significant time, so it's not really something you could do to a moving ship at harbor distance. I've seen other people do 'death ray' setups, and they can work fine at 100 feet or less when you can set up to catch the sun well and hold it on a stable target for a minute or more, but keeping a beam focused at a longer distance and using more mirrors gets really impractical really fast, especially with tech Archimedes would have had access to. That was the first time they did it. When they revisted it with an MIT team they were able to make it work as the MIT team had already successfully done it. https://web.mit.edu/2.009_gallery/www/2005_other/archimedes/10_Mythbusters.html They're able to burn a hole in wet wood with ease. Catching rigging and other stuff ablaze would have been even easier. In the OG test it was even more successful. https://web.mit.edu/2.009_gallery/www/2005_other/archimedes/10_ArchimedesResult.html
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 19:39
|
|
|
Why in the world are they testing it on a part of the ship that would be underwater instead of the standing rigging?
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 20:27
|
|
|
Crab Dad posted:Why in the world are they testing it on a part of the ship that would be underwater instead of the standing rigging? it's a tv show
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 20:46
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:Fermented fruit isn't new, it happens naturally on the ground as airborne yeast digest fallen fruit. Animals seek it out, especially wasps which is why they're so interested in your picnic you lush It's generally not airborne by itself but hitches a ride on insects which feeds on it or its substrate. The common bakers yeast even have a spore capsule which is a sugar filled spore sac that is quite bad as an environmental survival structure but which is great at making the spores survive insect guts and increasing the yeast genetic diversity. Basically the spore sac acts as a sugar filled fruit and the actual haploid spores survive the gut passage like seeds and get pooped out on new fruits etc. where the spores can mate with other haploid spores from different spore sacs on a nice new food source. So humans love the effects of fly poop on their carbs.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 21:29
|
|
|
SlothfulCobra posted:I think that's usually hard to fully track, but I think a lot of stereotypical hillbilly and redneck names have really ancient roots, like there's old biblical stuff like Jebediah, but also Cletus has ancient Greek roots. i was assuming it also had to do with the classical fad in early american culture, considering you also get a lot of "Ulysses" and such in the 19th century (combined with a heaping helping of rural protestants developing personal relationships with the bible)
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 22:39
|
|
|
Mr. Nice! posted:That was the first time they did it. When they revisted it with an MIT team they were able to make it work as the MIT team had already successfully done it. Oh cool, I never saw the second one. That's impressive that they actually managed to get it to work.
|
|
#
?
Dec 4, 2023 23:25
|
|
|
Apparently the experiment had already been done in the 18th century! Gibbon talks about Archie’s supposed heater in comparison to the way Proclus of Athens supposedly helped defend Constantinople from the revolt of Vitalian (AD 515):Decline and Fall Vol IV Ch XL posted:A tradition has prevailed, that the Roman fleet was reduced to ashes in the port of Syracuse, by the burning-glasses of Archimedes; and it is asserted, that a similar expedient was employed by Proclus to destroy the Gothic vessels in the harbor of Constantinople, and to protect his benefactor Anastasius against the bold enterprise of Vitalian. A machine was fixed on the walls of the city, consisting of a hexagon mirror of polished brass, with many smaller and movable polygons to receive and reflect the rays of the meridian sun; and a consuming flame was darted, to the distance, perhaps of two hundred feet. The truth of these two extraordinary facts is invalidated by the silence of the most authentic historians; and the use of burning-glasses was never adopted in the attack or defence of places. Yet the admirable experiments of a French philosopher have demonstrated the possibility of such a mirror; and, since it is possible, I am more disposed to attribute the art to the greatest mathematicians of antiquity, than to give the merit of the fiction to the idle fancy of a monk or a sophist. He goes on to say another source says Proclus used sulfur, to which he adduces (admitting that he might be projecting) that primitive gunpowder was involved! Not sure about that one, Edward. The “most authentic historians” who are silent on the topic must be a reference to Polybius, who wrote at length about the siege of Syracuse and loved a gadget. He even has chapters just about Archimedes’ contrivances for that very siege—he’s the source of the story about the weird crane or “iron hand” that was used to flip the Roman ships. He doesn’t mention heat rays, alas. Of course being that this is the 18th century Gibbon doesn’t bother to specify who actually tested the mirror story. This article suggests it was the Comte de Buffon. skasion fucked around with this message at 00:06 on Dec 5, 2023 |
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 00:03
|
|
|
LITERALLY A BIRD posted:
Checkmate, Atenists
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 03:49
|
|
But, I did notice Egypt was being assailed by plagues right around that time, apparently, and it could have been my imagination running with me but "punishing people with plagues" has always been a thing people associate with pissed off Gods. It was a man named Horemheb that is credited with a lot of the restoration of traditional religion while Tutankhamen was king, but it seems like everyone official was pretty unified in the effort. If the country was being smote by plagues, and everyone was positive it was because they had been forced to worship the wrong God for the last twenty years, that probably accounts for a lot of the intensity and dedication behind the Atenism damnatio. Leaving up all the monuments to Aten wasn't just conceptually incorrect and blasphemous, it was also actively blighting them, just look around at this!!!
|
Nuclear War posted:Checkmate, Atenists New thread title???
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 03:55
|
|
|
Arglebargle III posted:New thread title??? It has been a while.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 03:59
|
|
|
skasion posted:A machine was fixed on the walls of the city, consisting of a hexagon mirror of polished brass, with many smaller and movable polygons to receive and reflect the rays of the meridian sun; and a consuming flame was darted, to the distance, perhaps of two hundred feet. This sounds like the James Webb Space Telescope...
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 04:11
|
|
|
Nuclear War posted:Checkmate, Atenists Arglebargle III posted:New thread title??? Grand Fromage posted:It has been a while. lmbo 
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 15:24
|
|
|
Nuclear War posted:Checkmate, Atenists
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 15:26
|
|
|
Nuclear War posted:Checkmate, Atenists
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 15:31
|
|
|
See This God Get CANCELLED
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 19:02
|
|
|
Grand Fromage posted:See This God Get CANCELLED https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vdPVCNNbkc
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 19:03
|
|
|
Nuclear War posted:Checkmate, Atenists
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 22:04
|
|
|
In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony sun god's blessing, but because Ma'at is maintained as the pharoah acts as an intercessory between the gods and man.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 22:55
|
|
|
zoux posted:In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony sun god's blessing, but because Ma'at is maintained as the pharoah acts as an intercessory between the gods and man.
|
|
#
?
Dec 5, 2023 23:05
|
|
|
CommonShore posted:I've seen some pre-Simpsons lit where "Homer" is used ironically. Pretty sure Matt Groenig's dad was named Homer as well...
|
|
#
?
Dec 6, 2023 03:56
|
|
|
zoux posted:In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony sun god's blessing, but because Ma'at is maintained as the pharoah acts as an intercessory between the gods and man. Wow, lots of triggered libs around here who have bought into Big Ma'at. Funny how there's all this injustice in the world but meanwhile I can gaze directly at the verifiable real Sun-disk for several minutes a day! I don't even have to worship the Aten myself, I just have to worship the king and he'll worship the Aten for me. Such convenience! Seriously tho
|
|
#
?
Dec 7, 2023 16:07
|
|
|
Reading all these Egyptian slave contracts, and most of them mentioned a "servant-fee"   What's the deal with this? The way it's written in them it seems like it's the slave paying the slavemaster a monthly fee? But, I don't get it, what sense does that make, how and why is a slave paying someone to be their slave?
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 02:03
|
|
|
BrainDance posted:Reading all these Egyptian slave contracts, and most of them mentioned a "servant-fee" For protection from men of the desert edge and “every red thing”, obviously! Maybe also protection of another kind. Idk much about Egypt so the experts should weigh in but it seems like these guys are selling themselves to gods, by way of their earthly representatives. Temples tend to own some land and to want to make money off it. Working it for them might be your only chance at a decent living if you lost your land or can’t support yourself by farming. If they want to take a cut of what you earn, that sucks for sure, but it doesn’t suck as much as starving because you have no property or work. In archaic Rome there was this obscure social institution of “nexum” where indebted farmers were compelled into agricultural bond-labor by legal or contractual means. (This was probably how the republic supported its elites/nobles before the Roman expansion into Italy began to supply the Romans with slaves in large numbers). It was legally abolished by the middle republic but that such a system was ever able to exist says a lot about the potential desperation that ancient subsistence farmers could experience.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 02:31
|
|
|
It looks to me like these are contracts for people selling themselves into the service of a deity or agreeing to do x work for y amount of time in exchange for certain divine favours. I base this mostly on the emphasis on spiritual protection from ghosts, demons, and spirits, which would generally be beyond a human landlord's ability to guard against. Please note that I am an Egypt enthusiast, not an Egyptologist.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 03:07
|
|
|
Mad Hamish posted:It looks to me like these are contracts for people selling themselves into the service of a deity or agreeing to do x work for y amount of time in exchange for certain divine favours. I base this mostly on the emphasis on spiritual protection from ghosts, demons, and spirits, which would generally be beyond a human landlord's ability to guard against. But a human landlord could subcontract the spiritual protection, right? Might even be able to get a bulk rate by paying a priest to protect “all of my possessions”.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 03:21
|
|
|
I heard this sort of Egyptian temple slave status was a bit of a legal loophole that was supposed to make you immune to corvee labor obligations or other similar things (since who would dare to order around the slave of a god)
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 04:23
|
|
|
BrainDance posted:Reading all these Egyptian slave contracts, and most of them mentioned a "servant-fee" There's actually no consensus among Egyptologists about how to interpret this. These three documents are all part of an archive from the temple of Sobek in Tebtunis, and they date to the 2nd century BCE. The archive has unfortunately never been comprehensively published, and a lot of questions remain about how to interpret it. The only major study of these texts is an article from Herbert Thompson in 1940 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3854523), who published an edition of two of the 50 documents in the archive, as well as some cursory observations about the archive overall. Thompson does not spend much time on the "servant-fee," noting on that the word used is the same as the word used for paying rent on land/a house, or for payment for holding an office. He doesn't make any real conclusion about this though, just commenting that "It is a strange feature of these documents that the suppliant after abandoning himself, children, and property to the god retains the right over some property (or earnings) sufficient to pay rent." The only other thing written about these texts I can find is a very short conference paper from 1994 where John Tait wrote that "these documents present problems as to their purpose - magical - financial - or social," and says that a full publication of this archive is forthcoming. This does not appear to have ever been published. The British Museum online catalog entries for these documents have a curator's note on them that says "To be published by Tait and Ryholt," but given that Tait said his publication of them was forthcoming 29 years ago, I'm not holding my breath. Some factors to be considered when thinking about these texts are the status of temples in the Ptolemaic period and the relative rarity of slavery during this period. The Ptolemaic Period was somewhat of a final Golden Age for Egyptian temples. The Ptolemaic kings, as outsiders to Egypt, sought to use the temples as a key pillar of their rule. They lavished privileges and gifts onto the temples (the Rosetta Stone is an example of this, its a grant of tax exemptions to temples). As a result, the temples were closely connected to the state administration, and literate priests seem to have been a key part of the Ptolemaic bureaucracy. Many key administrative functions were preformed by priests in temples, such as the registration of contracts and the collection of sales taxes. Temples also controlled a lot of Egypt's land during the Ptolemaic period, and they were permitted to collect harvest taxes on that land (this is not new in the Ptolemaic period, but this system was totally upended in the Roman period, so the Ptolemaic period is the final era when this was true). Slavery also was not all that common in Ptolemaic Egypt. The number of slaves in Egypt declined sharply after the end of the New Kingdom (c. 1000 BC), since the foreign wars that had produced enslaved war captives ended. The period was marked by the re-emergence of enslaved war captives, which are recorded on Greek-language documents, and these people appear to have been true chattel slaves, but this was not on the same scale as New Kingdom slavery. Temple servitude seems to have been more common than war-captive chattel slaves though. The phrase "born within the walls of the temple,” was used in the Ptolemaic period to describe temple servants/slaves. Debt slavery is also attested in this period, and so is the hereditary status of some slaves. Ptolemaic slavery overall is an understudied subject though, and a lot of the key publications on it are getting quite old at this point.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 07:24
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:I heard this sort of Egyptian temple slave status was a bit of a legal loophole that was supposed to make you immune to corvee labor obligations or other similar things (since who would dare to order around the slave of a god) This strikes me as being unlikely in this case, since the texts that were posted are from the Ptolemaic Period, and corvee labor was not practiced much if at all during that period.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 07:40
|
|
|
CrypticFox posted:There's actually no consensus among Egyptologists about how to interpret this. These three documents are all part of an archive from the temple of Sobek in Tebtunis, and they date to the 2nd century BCE. The archive has unfortunately never been comprehensively published, and a lot of questions remain about how to interpret it. The only major study of these texts is an article from Herbert Thompson in 1940 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/3854523), who published an edition of two of the 50 documents in the archive, as well as some cursory observations about the archive overall. Thompson does not spend much time on the "servant-fee," noting on that the word used is the same as the word used for paying rent on land/a house, or for payment for holding an office. He doesn't make any real conclusion about this though, just commenting that "It is a strange feature of these documents that the suppliant after abandoning himself, children, and property to the god retains the right over some property (or earnings) sufficient to pay rent." Thank you! I don't know why, but even though the answer, ultimately, is that there just isn't a clear answer now it's still incredibly satisfying for some reason. Maybe because the whole thing is really weird and it's sort of a validation of that. That and all the other information is incredibly interesting. I didn't expect to be interested in ancient Egypt. I thought I kinda just preferred Mesopotamia, but it was in The Context of Scripture so I gave it a shot. Couldn't understand much so I read a few other books on ancient Egypt to understand the mythology and context of it all and tried again. That worked, then couldn't put it down. Everything about them is interesting, it's just so well developed for how old it all is. And then there's tons of weird, mysterious things like this that make me want to dive into it. Or weird stories like the court cases from the harem conspiracy where a queen tried to get her son Pentawer to be Pharaoh in a plan that sounded like it never would have worked in a million years (for getting him to be Pharaoh, not for killing Ramesses III which apparently worked), then finding out it was just found right there with Pentawer's corpse when they discovered it. Or that story about a sailor who washes up on a ghost island, then a giant jewel snake takes care of him. That stories another mystery, because I just cant figure out what the point of it all is. Also, paper published in the 40s on it, collection still hasn't been fully published. This seems like it might be a trend? When I started reading the Nag Hammadi collection the books on it all mentioned that. One of the most important discoveries ever in early Christianity and it took decades for even most researchers to really see it, even for just pictures of it all to come out, let alone translations.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 09:57
|
|
|
BrainDance posted:Or that story about a sailor who washes up on a ghost island, then a giant jewel snake takes care of him. That stories another mystery, because I just cant figure out what the point of it all is. The Shipwrecked Sailor! I posted about that one in here this summer, while people were indulging me sharing a bunch of Egyptian literature  You can click through for my full post, but here is what I have thought the point to be --LITERALLY A BIRD posted:The Shipwrecked Sailor, transcribed from, again, the third edition of Literature of Ancient Egypt, the long way this time because I don’t like how the photos look in the previous post.
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 15:22
|
|
|
Quick question
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 15:33
|
|
|
And an excellent one
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 15:48
|
|
|
LAB is it cool if I DM you about Egypt Stuff 
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 15:49
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 23, 2024 09:50 |
|
|
Absolutely! I am just firing off posts while at work so I won't be able to read/answer until later but absolutely
|
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2023 15:51
|
|