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One of My Tools

Only a fraction of the tablets from the Achaemenid period which have been excavated have been published, and many of the published ones look like this: A typical entry in Strassmaier’s “Inschriften von Darius, König von Babylon” (Liepzig, 1892): “1 1/2 mina 2 1/2 shekels silver …” One Johann N. Strassmaier... Continue reading: One of My Tools

Technologies of recordkeeping in Mesopotamian history

Although this is the end of term in Austria, I made time to hear a very exciting talk by Dr. Jens Høyrup of Copenhagen. What was billed as an overview of mathematical and scribal culture turned into a survey of Mesopotamian history from the Agricultural Revolution to the Neo-Assyrian Empire as seen through the lens of the technology of numbers. Høyrup has some provocative views, including the idea that Sumerian is descended from a creole. He also had a good overview of the transition from counting tokens to impressions of tokens to sketches of tokens to cuneiform writing. The first stage of this transition does not seem to have soaked the popular literature, and I will try to find and link a good article on it one of these days. (A famous book is How Writing Came About by Dr. Denise Schmandt-Besserat of Texas).
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Two thoughts on the accession of Darius I

Darius the Great, fourth notable king of Persia, came to the throne under unusual circumstances. In the version which he tells, he was a distant relative of king Cambyses, an impostor pretended to be the king’s brother Bardiya and took the throne, and when Cambyses suddenly died it was necessary for Darius and six of his companions to slay the impostor, fight nineteen battles in a single year against rebels and pretenders, and restore order and unity to the world. This story has been preserved in one of his inscriptions at Behistun in Iran, in a damaged papyrus from Elephantine on the Nile, and by the Greek historian Herodotus. Some of my recent readings have made me reconsider my views on it.
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A Cheerful Winter Story

George Monbiot has a story to tell about life in the jungles of Brazil. The Guardian published it here and I urge my gentle reader to read his story before they read my thoughts, because it is a good story.

A New Book

After a recent trip to the bookstore, I believe that I have a copy of every English or German book on the Achaemenid army. This is easier than it sounds, because there are only three of them. One could of course add other books- Bezalel Porten’s on everyday life in a garrison town on the... Continue reading: A New Book

Philippus Arabs

Emperor Maximilian’s memorial at the Hofkirche is one of the most impressive monuments of Innsbruck. Being an early modern aristocrat, he made extravagant plans which could not be fully carried out after his death. A number of bronze busts of Roman emperors, which my guidebook tells me were meant to be part of a set of 34, are... Continue reading: Philippus Arabs

An Ajax or a Socrates?

A bust of Themistocles from the Roman empire, presumably based on a much earlier original. C/o Jona Lendering under a CC0 1.0 Universal license (original post: https://www.livius.org/pictures/italy/ostia/ostia-museum-pieces/ostia-themistocles/) My estimable colleague Jona Lendering recently expressed dismay that historians of the Macedonian Kingdom of Bactria tried to read kings’ personalities in their portraits on coins (here). Since no literature from... Continue reading: An Ajax or a Socrates?

Funding Canadian Universities

Alex Usher of the Higher Education Strategy Associates has posted a series of comments on the operating budgets of Canadian colleges and universities since 1992 (first second third fourth and fifth). In a comment he explains that his source is the Financial Information for Universities and Colleges survey by Statistics Canada (here). I have some... Continue reading: Funding Canadian Universities

The Monuments of the Sertorii

In the early Roman Empire, it was fashionable for wealthy soldiers to put up a stone with an inscription and their portrait at their tomb. Two such soldiers were Quintus and Lucius Sertorius, who erected their monuments at Cisolino (about 10 miles east of Verona) sometime in the late first century CE. Full-sized image at... Continue reading: The Monuments of the Sertorii

Two Views on Punching in Late Medieval Italy

This image illustrates drunkenness (Lat. ebrietas) in a Tacuinum Sanitatis from Italy in the 1390s (Bibliotheque Nationale du France, Paris MS. Nouvelle acquisition latine 1673 folio 88v: for this and other images see their Mandragore website http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp). The Tacuinum is a Latin translation of an Arabic book on the medical implications of various foods,... Continue reading: Two Views on Punching in Late Medieval Italy