Seems functional at first, but none of the links work and that big sidebar at the left won’t go away! reddit in late April 2018 without scripts.
Sometime in mid-April 2018, Reddit joined the crowd of sites which don’t work without Javascript. Its pages do not appear blank, but none of the links work, and the start of each line in the main part of the page is covered by an almost completely empty column at the left which cannot be removed.
Confessions of a Community College Dean without scripts, Note how the body text overlaps the sidebar rather than wrapping at the end of the column. Long paragraphs extend outside the browser window entirely so that only the first 100 or so characters are visible.Read more
The architecture of holy places in the Middle East has changed a bit since the glory days of the Ebabbar, but how about this photo of a mosque in Isfahan? A tablet from Sippar with the forgettable names BM 57222 and CT 57, 82 contains the following lines: “(6) 1/2 mina... Continue reading: Horse Troops and Troops of the Bow
Skillful axeman or a plucky castor fiber? Whoever or whatever felled this tree on the Inn near Hall in Tirol, I think it counts as Canadian content! Science for the People, the great Canadian radio show and podcast on science, is looking for more patrons to help pay for their costs. Making an episode requires... Continue reading: Cross-Post: Science for the People Needs Patrons
Are scale caps and aventails just a fantasy of the artist who painted these ruffians looting a house? Check out Medieval Warfare VIII-1 and find out! Photo courtesy of the British Library.
Another of my writing projects brings us to the 14th century AD, and the burning question “what kind of concealed armour could you buy in the Avignon of the Babylonian Captivity?” If you think that concealed armour is just for Assassin’s Creed and 16th century bravos, you might want to check out Medieval Warfare VIII-1!
But what if you want the original source? Medieval Warfare does not have room for sources in the original, so this week, I have pasted them from my rough draft of the article:
Sometimes the tablet-gods smile on us. Over the last hundred years, scholars have worked to establish when the properties known as bow, horse, and chariot estates first appeared in Mesopotamia. Earlier writers often saw them as examples of Iranian feudalism, imposed on Babylonia by the Medes or Persians, but there were a few examples under Nabonidus. Then in 1998 Michael Jursa reread a text from Uruk from the 35th year of Nebuchadnezzar with the following lines:
1 kur 2 pi of seed (ie. field which is sown with 7 bushels of barley), the bow estate of Dannēa, which Nergal-dān acquired to sow, is pledged to Gimillu, until Gimillu received the barley.
One of the graves of the kings of Elam at Tschoga Zanbil in Iran. If you haven’t invented any new mathematics, and are thinking of rounding up a gang of forced labourers to build a fancy tomb to give you immortal fame, keep in mind that the Assyrians may come around and dig up your... Continue reading: The Ancient Story of Stephen Hawking’s Tombstone
The cover of the Ace edition of The Cosmic Computer by Michael Whelan c/o http://www.zarthani.net/ Say what you like about the 1970s, but their oil painters could do cover art!
On Canada Day 2017 I finished re-reading the project Gutenberg text of Piper’s Cosmic Computer (my paperback copy with the wonderful red-and-purple cover is back in Canada). I read this novel every few years, and I always learn something new. Quite a few people who grew up on the American science fiction of the 1940s through 1970s have been reading the news, finding something uncomfortably familiar, and looking back to those Silver Age writers to understand some current madness (Phil Paine reread Revolt in 2100 for the same reason). I can’t talk about that here, but I want to talk about some of the things which I found valuable in this novel.
A reconstruction of a Scythian noble with the bowcase on his left hip. I almost wrote nobleman, but that is not a safe guess in the steppes! Probably from Philip De Souza ed., The Ancient World at War. A Global History (London: Thames and Hudson, 2008).
For a few years now, I have been trying to remember where I learned that Scythian bowcases (Greek gorytos, Babylonian šalṭu) often contained a hundred or more arrows. I have heard it in various places, including in a lecture by a famous classicist in the sunset lands beyond the Ocean, but what is the archaeological evidence?
Ellis H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks: A Survey of Ancient History and Archaeology on the North Coast of the Euxine from the Danube to the Caucasus (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1913) p. 68: 200 to 300 arrows in quivers from Scythian graves https://archive.org/details/scythiansgreekss00minn
Geo Widengren, “Recherches sur le féodalisme iranien,” Orientalia Suecanica V (1956) p. 152 n. 2: A gorytos in a kurgan at Solokha contained 180 arrows
Richard Brzeinski and Mariusz Mielczarek, The Sarmatians 600 BC-AD 450. Men at Arms 373. Osprey Publishing: Botley, 2002. p. 34: 128 arrows with painted shafts in a gorytos in Sholokhovskii kurgan at Rostov-on-Don (-IV); 228 iron heads, 4 bronze, 9 bone in two clumps in a kurgan near Hutor Kascheevka, Rostov-on-Don (-IV or -III)
Now, citing these sources makes me feel a bit dirty, because the ones after the Bolsheviks seized power don’t cite their sources. Unfortunately very few people talk about the Soviet excavations in English, German, or French, and when they do they do not give footnotes. So in the time I have available, these sources will do.
One would think that someone coming this way on a cycle with headlights and reflectors would need to watch out to the right and bear a little bit left, since cyclists coming from the left can see you coming and slow down if they want to make the turn onto the... Continue reading: A Tag from the Bard
Armed with the power of HITTITE IRON, reedy doctor Sinuhe breaks general Horemhab’s sword! From scene 12 of Sinuhe: The Egyptian (Michael Curtiz director, 1954)
Most people interested in ancient weapons know that early iron swords were not any better than bronze ones. But they don’t always know where the idea comes from, or how we know about the properties of early edged weapons. If you want to find out, the article is available in Ancient Warfare XI.6 (The Decelean War) from Karwansaray.
But in a little magazine article, I was not able to include all the references which I wanted. So what if you want to learn more?
