Most people kind of merge the kingdoms together, while every kingdom is unique in both the culture and, say, external influence. And the late period is quite long as well.
There is a very strong connection between periods, of course. But 2500+ years of ancient egypt is a very long damn time. All of our modern history is, say, 3k years, starting with greeks, early chinese , india and all.
But egypt to me is like a star in the vast ocean of nothingness of early history. We know NAMES and DEEDS of people who lived 4500 years ago. We see things they've built, we can read words they wrote.
> But 2500+ years of ancient egypt is a very long damn time.
To put that in perspective, consider how long 100 years ago feels.. not in technological terms, but in human perception of time: The USA was founded 250~ years ago. Try to recall your own life from 20, 40, 50 years ago.. it's a literal lifetime. Most people only meet people as far back as their grandparents, just 2 generations back. Great-grandparents and the eras they grew up in are already almost impossible to relate to.. 2500 years is FIFTY such lifetimes!
So in "just" after 500 years the pyramids would already be a mythical unrelatable object to people from 2000 years before us...
I like to think Ancient Egyptians were descendants of the survivors from a Green Sahara and the pyramids were meant to be their post-apocalyptic marker in case the world went to further shit..
That sounds about right. People generally under estimate how old Ancient Egyptian really are, me included and think it sometimes around the era of Middle Ages.
As Mayor shows, the Greeks and Romans were well aware that a different breed
of creatures once inhabited their lands. They frequently encountered the
fossilized bones of these primeval beings, and they developed sophisticated
concepts to explain the fossil evidence, concepts that were expressed in
mythological stories. . . .
Like their modern counterparts, the ancient fossil hunters collected and
measured impressive petrified remains and displayed them in temples and
museums; they attempted to reconstruct the appearance of these prehistoric
creatures and to explain their extinction. . . .
Not the one I'm referring to. Which I just looked up and got the region wrong -- it was in Mesopotamia. It was an actual museum showing ancient artifacts in a building, 2,500 years ago. Some of the things in that museum were an additional 1,500 years old at the time they were on display.
It's a funny story because the modern archeologists who dug it up were very confused by finding objects from different regions and separated by hundreds or thousands of years, all in the same layer.
TFA originally meant "The Fucking Article" but on HN seems to have morphed its meaning to "The Fine Article" or "The Featured Article". I can't stop reading it as the former every time I come across it.
Doesn’t really work as OP used it, though, as it gets confusing. They wrote “the TFA mummy” every time, so it becomes “the the fucking article mummy”. Like saying you’re a fan of the The Beatles.
I had it both ways when it was first posted, about twenty minutes later after reading the “what is TFA?” comment I edited it to be consistent.
Only first line was the only “TFA” without the article…or with only one article? or is that two articles?
Anyway, the three article phrase “the TFA mummy” is equivalent to the three article phrase “the mummy in TFA” which is what I started to write.
And while “the TFA mummy” does not expand as cleanly as even I would wish, it has a better rhythm than “TFA mummy.” Or to put it another way, my poetic license removes “the TFA mummy” from grammar police jurisdiction.
Personally, I would’ve found that clearer. I know what TFA means but still found “the TFA mummy” awkward to read and parse every time. But maybe “TFA” itself was the biggest problem there. Since you were editing anyway, “the article’s mummy” was an option too. Sometimes we all forget how acronyms aren’t universal and can impede rather than assist communication.
> my poetic license removes “the TFA mummy” from grammar police jurisdiction.
It was a lighthearted comment on how I personally found the phrasing awkward to read, I haven’t insulted your mother. We’re writing random inconsequential comments on an internet forum about a subject which has no practical effect on any of our lives, not redefining dramaturgy. There’s no poetry to your comment and no one is “policing” your words. The comment wasn’t even directed at you. You can relax.
That is how I took it and I was just having fun with words. In this case, setting up “poetic license.”
Fun is why I write comments. Fun is why what-you-would-have-found-clearer was not my priority. I did not write my comment with you in mind. I wrote it for the kind of people who might like what I wrote.
Those multiple readings date back to Slashdot and have stayed consistent. It just means in plain speech the linked article in the original post. Now get off my lawn!
Well, if space is expanding and earth is revolving and spinning around the sun which is spinning around the milkyway which is moving through space then.... Was it really close in space either?
Pedantic side note maybe and sorry about that, but I found disturbing to see multiple "the TFA", where I guess TFA stand for "the fine article", so "the the fine article"?
If it’s about brevity, "the peg" is just as short and mean in journalism parlance "A topic of interest, such as an ongoing event or an anniversary, around which various features can be developed."
First of all, do as you please, really. Just be aware that on the other side it might feel surprising/awkward.
"The mummy in the fine article" is very aligned with the usual "preposition before article", while "the the fine article mummy" is apomediary¹ with its "article before article" structure.
Everyone should be champion of some lost causes, not because their own have much chance to succeed, simply because otherwise they are all certain to never happen while in the first case, at scale, it’s almost guarantee that some will defeat the odds.
That said, "TFA" is ok, but "the TFA" seems even more extravagant than "PDF format"
PDF format is the same as EXE format or BMP format. They are named for the file extension. And the etymology of the file extension is treated as opaque.
The pyramids aren't actually datable, because it's rock. Maybe if you were to find something with carbon that's provably from the time of construction, that could be used, but I don't think that happened. The popular datings for the older pyramids are educated guesses.
Edit: the Sphynx dating is even more controversial, because it seems to have rain erosion on it.
There's also optically stimulated luminescence which can tell you when a rock was buried! I don't know that it's ever been used on a pyramid, but it exists.
To add to the methods shared by others, one way I think is really cool is optically stimulated luminescence.
So, a grain of quartz destined someday to become the perfect OSL sample will
begin its journey by emptying its electron traps. This typically happens
through steady sunlight exposure, in a process called bleaching. Bleaching
resets the OSL clock. In this example scenario, the grain is fully bleached
by the sun as the wind blows it across the landscape, until it finally
settles and additional wind-blown material buries it.
Once it is cut off from light, the OSL clock begins running. The sediment now
surrounding the quartz will include tiny amounts of radioactive isotopes,
exposing the quartz to a steady flow of ionizing radiation. The quartz
captures electrons from this radiation; the radiation flow is called the dose
rate. This is like the steady ticking of a clock. The quartz begins trapping
electrons, and because it is cut off from light, the trapped electrons will
continue building up at a fairly steady, measurable rate.
To the degree that is a scientific argument, the scientific research and scholarship underpinning it is a subset of the scientific research and scholarship underpinning the dates the contemporary Egyptology community ascribes to the pyramids.
Egyptologists can access science and have access to cultural artifacts and those artifacts include writing and that writing can be read and what can be read includes dates.
The construction work camps for the pyramids have been dug. There is also wood, an organic matter in the Kings chamber and mortar inside the pyramid, which can be dated.
But the costumes look like ass (One of the extras was saying he had fit into the same armor for a low budget sword and sandal film), they are using a viking longboat as a greek ship (have already seen half a dozen experts spitting chips over the difference in boat design). I just cant bring myself to care about the film.
"Oh its a fantasy film" its set in a historical time period, I wouldnt watch a WW2 Zombie movie if the nazi zombies were wearing viking armor driving an Abrams tank either.
Would you choose the weapons, armour and tactics as described in the Iliad? Even though it is thought they are inaccurate for the time period that they think the Iliad is set? Not so easy I would say.
And the extra you describe, where does he appear on screen? Front and centre, or in the fourth rank behind the people in better costumes?
And the longboat, does it appear on screen in its original form, or with additions to make it look more period accurate?
> Would you choose the weapons, armour and tactics as described in the Iliad? Even though it is thought they are inaccurate for the time period that they think the Iliad is set? Not so easy I would say.
Either “best attempt at historical accuracy” (although that would have been difficult given the sparse record), or “true to Homer’s anachronistic story” would have been reasonable ways to go. Sounds like they picked neither, though…
>Would you choose the weapons, armour and tactics as described in the Iliad?
Thats fine but my ultimate preference would be fully period.
Theres an old painting of jesus getting stabbed by Longinus kicking around, and Longinus and the other romans are wearing modern (at the time of painting) Italian plate harness with sallet helms.
The reason we dont depict romans like this painting, or wearing modern army fatigues and carrying rifles, is that we know better.
>And the extra you describe, where does he appear on screen? Front and centre, or in the fourth rank behind the people in better costumes?
The gist here is that most of the costumes are rentals with a few exceptions. The extra himself is barely on screen, but he is one of apparently a large number of people in the same outfit. YMMV.
The costumes they have created for the film are no better in accuracy, the batmanesque helmet for Agamemnon has been thoroughly ridiculed online and I wont bother going over it again here.
>And the longboat, does it appear on screen in its original form, or with additions to make it look more period accurate?
They took the dragon head prow down at least. Not much more than that has been done.
> "Oh its a fantasy film" its set in a historical time period, I wouldnt watch a WW2 Zombie movie if the nazi zombies were wearing viking armor driving an Abrams tank either.
WW2 Zombie movie with Nazis in Viking armors and random tanks sounds so much more _fun_ than a "historically acurate Nazi Zombie" movie!
Different strokes for different folks. I think they are just used to the common trope of people immediately telling them because one aspect of a movie/film/play is unrealistic they shouldn't care if the entire thing is nonsense. Vice versa though, nobody should mind others enjoy or make such content, beyond these kinds of statements that it's not for them.
I also more often enjoy films which sit between "100% realistic/accurate" and "anything goes" than either extreme itself. 100% realistic/accurate and it tends to already be known unless it's relatively bland. 100% anything goes and it can still be good but there is a high risk it ends up feeling like every other "anything goes" movie of the same topic. In between you can often get the best of both worlds - something new, but still unique.
>I also more often enjoy films which sit between "100% realistic/accurate" and "anything goes" than either extreme itself. 100% realistic/accurate and it tends to already be known unless it's relatively bland. 100% anything goes and it can still be good but there is a high risk it ends up feeling like every other "anything goes" movie of the same topic. In between you can often get the best of both worlds - something new, but still unique.
I think that Nolan sells himself (The online worship can hardly all be organic) as an authentic, technical director interested in accurate physical props.
When mostly what he does is potter about and destroy sound design.
I agree no one is going to be 100% accurate and accuracy isnt always desirable. But an attempt? When thats the guys reputation? Doesnt feel like too much to ask for.
>I think that Nolan sells himself (The online worship can hardly all be organic) as an authentic, technical director interested in accurate physical props.
I'm not a huge Nolan-discourse-insider, but that seems like a pretty bizarre reputation to have for someone who's famous for directing three Batman movies, Inception, Interstellar and Tenet?
Is this reputation just because of Oppenheimer?
I haven't seen Dunkirk (and I'm not a WWII buff so couldn't tell if they used right planes/boats/guns/uniforms/whatever even if I tried), but even a short blurb on Wikipedia talks about a "balance historical accuracy with aesthetics that would favour the film stock".
The first batman movie was a paint by numbers reimplementation of The Shadow (1997). You can find comparisons online, nearly shot by shot and most of the same plot beats. The second and third went sort of back towards a very mechanical batman representation that reminded me of the planned low budget Iron Man movie where he wouldn't have had the ability to fly. Just stomping around punching badguys like a Power Rangers extra. The new Bat Mobile seems to inspire some of this reputation
>Inception
Inceptions pretty flat for a film about dreams.
>Interstellar
Neuro-Diverse level of detail until the bits with space magic at the end.
>Tenet
I couldnt sit through 10 minutes of it. Its like the antifilm. It didnt want me to observe it otherwise it wouldnt have emitted such a piercing screeching noise.
>Dunkirk
He has an old period watch, and he recorded the ticking. He overlays the ticking constantly. Also he tells the story out of sequence for some reason. But theres lots of practical effects if you include the stupid watch.
>Oppenheimer
Between tenet hating me on a physical level, and the perfectly servicable fat man and little boy film from the 70s I just havent seen it to comment.
Well, interstellar has also some nerd stuff in it. If I remember correctly Kip Thorne did physics consulting on the movie and they even use a simulation running on a cluster to visualize the black hole physically correct.
They could have used some arbitrary CGI…but no, they wanted it accurate according to science.
>I think that Nolan sells himself (The online worship can hardly all be organic) as an authentic, technical director interested in accurate physical props.
I just wanted to give an example of such accurate physics props, that this is not only due to Oppenheimer.
And yet the rest of the movie runs on movie logic, enough so that every physicist I know rolls their eyes at it. It gives me the vibe of the "IFLS" crowd, not anyone who actually understands science.
Your sound design comment reminds me of seeing Inception in the cinema sitting next to a friend who works in sound (Frozen, John Wick films, etc). Early in the film, I offered him some of my popcorn, and he politely declined. I spent a good portion of the film partially distracted by the idea that maybe he didn't want to be crunching away on popcorn because he was keenly focused on thinking about the sound experience, and the cinema speakers and the like. I ate my popcorn even more quietly than usual.
After the film, I asked if he'd turned down the popcorn for professional reasons. He said, "No, I just didn't feel like popcorn."
The example was really to me because one of the better Nazi zombie movies is Norwegian (Dead Snow) and given the Nazi obsession with old Germanic and Norse myths, it wouldn't seem wrong at all to come across Nazi Vikings in a movie like that.
This is fairly typical level of detail for Hollywood, most of stuff they do around Europe is insulting as hell if one cares about the topic, historical stuff being the most visible source of offense.
Dumbed down far more than required for short movie transition of any topic. But I guess they know their US audience, their level of knowledge and care for authenticity better than me.
For someone who purports not to care about the film, you seem very familiar with the discourse about it. (I have seen zero experts, or anyone really, discussing boat design.)
We've already accepted a lot of non-Greek casting, and always have. Movies like Troy are filled with people of German, English, Scandinavian whatever heritage, same here with The Odyssey.
I think they get a pass because we see Greek history as a shared western history, even though it's about as accurate as a black person in those roles.
So I think for a lot of people, when they see complaints about black actors playing historically "white" roles, what they're really seeing is a claim that black people don't have any right to our shared western heritage despite the fact that it's almost always a black person that has grown up in and only ever really been a part of western culture.
I don't know about what Americans think, but, as a Greek, the whole "whiteness" thing is an American social construct. There aren't whites and blacks in Greece, mostly because we don't have enough black people here to have a divide.
As far as I'm concerned, all your casting is wrong, it's not like Brad Pitt in Troy looks anything like a Greek person. Casting black people goes even farther, but it's just a matter of degree.
It does make sense, these are American movies, they're going to cast Americans, and the whole race issue is about who gets to star in them. There aren't enough Greek people in Hollywood to make a fuss about representation, so they don't get representation. It is what it is, but let's not pretend it's about accuracy or faithfulness to the original material, it's just about less racially biased casting.
Yes, people that get upset about racially “incorrect” casting hand wave away casting someone of Irish decent as Greek because it falls into some sort of western bucket.
So when someone complains about a black person being cast as Greek, in a movie filled with people of English, Irish, Scandinavian and who knows else decent, what they’re actually saying is that black people will never have a right to the shared western culture.
If you go to the streets of Athens and show them two pictures one of Diane Kruger and one Lupita Nyong'o, and ask them who they think represents Helena of Troy more I'm certain you are going to get Diane as the definitive answer.
I'm also certain that many will feel the casting of Lupita Nyong'o as cultural appropriation while the same will be less true for Diane Kruger.
I'm not saying the Greeks should decide who to cast in a US film, but the argument that if the actress isn't Greek then any other choice has the same level of accuracy is wrong.
The Odyssey is not a documentary that sets out to be as visually authentic as possible, it's a drama. If we exclude black people from any roles in western canon, then doesn't that mean we're also excluding them from being part of western culture?
I don't get the argument, there are a million other places you can (and have) black people being part of "western culture", just to list a few sports, music, politics, military, literature and the list goes on. In some of them they are the predominant group.
By your logic every movie should have a lot more east Asians, Indians, Native American etc. which I don't see anybody pushing for.
To be fair it is fairly onesided towards european history/folklore/tales and noticably always with black people inserted making it feel like there's some very... american focus on this from the opposing perspective as well.
(And when it's anything east asian they typically insert a white main character)
Which isn't helped by the industry basically farming this situation from both sides with actors and articles claiming queen charlotte, cleopatra and such were back. (to the point of leading to legal complaints in egypt, etc)
You care about the historical detail of the boats and armour, but don't care about the person (sex or colour)? And people who disagree with you need medical help?
Do you realise all the contradictions in your position? And then to suggest that the other person needs medical help for stating the obvious, indicates your malign intent. This is gas lighting, ie abusive behaviour. Your own conditioning is making you unable to see the obvious.
>Do you realise all the contradictions in your position? And then to suggest that the other person needs medical help for stating the obvious, indicates your malign intent. This is gas lighting, ie abusive behaviour. Your own conditioning is making you unable to see the obvious.
Its not gas lighting and you diminish the term by suggesting it is.
If you demand arbitrary whiteness for a film thats about people who were considered black until the 60s or so, when you arent also demanding greekness of the whites, you are just here to grind your culture war axe.
I was accused of being conditioned, all I did was point out that its the culture war practitioners who have been conditioned like pavlovs dog to bark every time they see a person of colour on film. And yeah, that requires medical attention.
> If you demand arbitrary whiteness for a film thats about people who were considered black until the 60s or so, when you arent also demanding greekness of the whites, you are just here to grind your culture war axe.
You think greeks were considered black in the 1960s?
Perhaps you have just received a very poor education. Perhaps the colours of people really have shifted a lot in your understanding.
> Its not gas lighting and you diminish the term by suggesting it is.
If the colours of different people have NOT shifted in your understanding, saying someone needs medical help for stating the obvious, common understanding is pretty close to the text book definition of gas lighting. It's just that you think it is for a good cause.
I’m just offended Helen isn’t depicted as having goose parts. After-all, Zeus was a goose when he seduced Leda, and Helen hatched from an egg. Some part of her must be goosey.
Edit: I meant swan. My recollection of mythology is rusty.
One thing that always rubs me the wrong way in this type of situations, is how patronizing it is towards black people.
It got the "let little timmy play too" vibe all over it. It hints that there are no interesting historical events with black people having a major role in it that you would want to create a movie about.
One thing that might change your mind is the 20th century mythic cowboy. Where I’m from, maybe 1/4 cowboys were black. So we accepted that as whites-only theatre. Do we have to keep accepting whites-only theatre?
I think this makes my argument even more true.
Imagine you have a budget and want to create a western/cowboy movie. You care about representation and want to have more black cowboys in the movies.
Option A: Take a story with a white cowboy, cast a black guy for him and shoot the movie.
Option B: Find a story of a black cowboy (and as you said there were many of them) and shoot a movie about it.
IMHO option A is patronizing while option B is empowering. Because option A assumes there were no black cowboys, there are no good stories too tell about black people.
I don't get your argument. You can look at historical monuments or modern Greeks and Brad Pitt doesn't look to different from them.
Let me try to elaborate on my argument.
Imagine you are in a park and there are three children playing, child A, B and C. Imagine child A has 10 toys, B has 7 and C 1.
Now if you forcefully took toys from A and B and gave them to C, then that's patronizing behavior as it means "you can't have your own toys, you need to steal them from someone else, you are not good enough".
A more respectful way of solving the dilemma for all involved parties is by just getting more toys for child C.
It's literally just manufactured faux-concern about a rumour and a very very minor character role:
Achilles does not actually appear as a living character in Homer's epic poem The Odyssey (as he dies in the Trojan War before Odysseus' journey home).
However, in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film adaptation, the character is rumored to make a brief appearance as a ghost in the Underworld. Viral rumors suggested Elliot Page was cast in this role.
Nolan movies will continue to fail or succeed, it's a stretch for the GP commentor to tie that to a person cast for a bit part.
Yeah he doesn’t appear as a living character in Homer’s poem but he does appear as a ghost in the poem when they visit the underworld (sorry for the spoilers). Not sure what difference it makes if Achilles shows up as alive or as a ghost but he is in the poem and it would be weird to have a non macho dude play Achilles.
Regardless I think it’s a bullshit rumor and people are running with it. The sad thing is how believable the rumor is.
Buenos noches Senores y Senoras Bienvenidos
La primera pregunta es: Que es mas macho, pineapple o knife?
Well, let's see
My guess is that a pineapple is more macho than a knife
Si! Correcto! Pineapple es mas macho que knife
La segunda pregunta es: Que es mas macho, lightbulb o schoolbus?
Uh, lightbulb?
No! Lo siento, Schoolbus es mas macho que lightbulb
Gracias. And we'll be back in un momento
I hate these gotchas but I can’t resist and it’s on a flagged comment so no one is really going to see this. Are you saying trans people are just cross-dressers?
No, it just suggests that to call Achilles "macho" is extremely weird. And the GP didn't even mention his extreme emotionality at the death of his lover, Patrocles, which is like half his plot in the Illiad.
... frequently interpreted and depicted as lovers in the classical period of Greek literature, particularly in the works of Aeschylus, Aeschines and Plato.
Other writers at the time, such as Xenophon in his Symposium, say that their relationship was not sexual, but instead an intense friendship.
Ancient writers referenced both sides, and additionally debated whether and how the relationship fit into the scheme of pederasty in ancient Greece.
I'm pushing 70, don't much care one way or the other, but can state it's been cast as a very probably just another example of Greek lovers since I was in school .. and, as linked above, thought to be as such since the Classic Era writers.
You're certainly entitled to the opinion that pederasty wasn't a thing in ancient Greece, multitudes of texts and vases from the period wear that down somewhat.
No, just observing that some 2,000+ years of story telling portray Achilles as a short (by modern standards - average by ancient Greek standards) cross dressing bisexual.
That's not really a gotcha.
Given that I'd say there's a lot of latitude for directors to portray the character .. as has been done in a few opera's over the past century or so.
You can't have a 1.55m woman play the greatest Greek hero of all time. It's an insult to Greek culture. If Sydney Sweeney played Martin Luther King it would be equally insulting.
A big part of Achilles' story in the Illiad is that he was hidden among a group of princesses, and that Odysseus had to use a trick to figure out which of the princesses he was. So, even though in other places he is described as quite manly, it also makes sense to portray him as having more feminine features if referencing this part of the canon.
I'd also note that Elliott Page is, of course, not a woman.
> I'd also note that Elliott Page is, of course, not a woman.
Scientists can tell that Lucy the hominid was a female even though only a few of her bones have survived since 3.2 million years ago when she died yet leftists think that Page is no longer a women just because she excised her breasts and changed her government papers.
If her bones get fossilized, 100 million years from now you'd still be able to figure out she's a woman.
> A big part of Achilles' story in the Iliad
Not only is it not a big part, but it's not even in the Iliad. You're clearly just regurgitating talking points.
That's a later invention. And it doesn't make him a transsexual. He marries a woman there.
If Greek machismo were blemished by mere fiction it would always have been eggshell thin. I have a feeling it shall hold up just fine as it has for millennia.
> the fragment contains lines from Book 2’s epic “catalogue of ships,” which lists all the vessels the Achaean army sends off to Troy
It's been about 30 years since I've read The Iliad, but I remember that chapter as the worst part of the book. Just pages upon pages of names and where they came from. I wonder what significance it held for the buried individual to have been specifically included so.
This is an old technique that appears in Beowulf and other classic texts that came from oral traditions: it is cataloging. It is often used to list treasured collected or in this case to show expansiveness of the fleet (and memory of the teller, perhaps?)
Think about 10 year olds talking about all the different candies they are going to devour on Halloween night to get a sense of how it is meant to resonate with a crowd.
If the only way you could hear about Napoleon's battles was having a guy recount them to you in verse, I bet it would sound pretty impressive when he started listing off all the regiments present for a battle, their commanders and deployments. There's a sense of scale to it, that probably isn't captured by just saying "such and such number of ships and such and such number of soldiers".
Sounds like an Order of Battle that armies publish these days after a war which documents the entire list of units, unit size, commander, equipment, experience etc etc
In case anyone doesn't know, Oxyrhynchus is a major source of archaeological discoveries. Particularly ancient (Ptolemaic/Roman Egypt) papyrus fragments recovered from an ancient landfill on the outskirts of the city. Notably some of the earliest-known Christian textual artefacts were found there (the actual earliest fragments came from elsewhere in Egypt). It turns out that Egypt's hot and dry climate provides the perfect environment for their long-term preservation.
Is this true? Paper (and I assume papyrus) expands and contracts with varying humidity even below the saturation point, and this motion embrittles and cracks it, no? So consistent humidity is key, and "consistently dry" is much more achievable than "consistently at an arbitrary other point."
Your intuition is more correct: it is not true. The relative humidity of the air matters below 100% as well. I think the parent commenter mistakenly assumed that only "condensation" matters, but materials will absorb moisture from the air even if the water doesn't condense. Entropy drives the dispersion of moisture, and some materials are "hygroscopic", meaning they don't merely reach equilibrium with the air, but actually concentrate moisture from the air and get significantly more wet than the air which feeds it water.
Sadly, the article says nothing about how old the fragment is or how it compares to other early copies of the Iliad. Somewhat amazingly, the earliest complete copy of the Iliad is from around 950 C.E.
It's not that surprising. The earliest complete copies of many ancient texts is similarly dated. For example, the earliest copy of the Rg Veda is dated to about that age as well. It's hard to keep complete copies of big books.
As well, both the Iliad and Vedas are originally oral traditions. Likely there were different versions and different parts of the stories were emphasized to appeal to their audiences and local tastes and current events. Something that can still be apparent in historical texts but probably greatly reduced by the function of printed versions presenting a singular "authoritative version."
Only in the beginning, in the wake of the Greek Bronze Age dark age, was Homeric epic an improvised oral tradition that could be tailored to a listening audience’s preferences. By fifth-century Athens, writers depict the text as already definite, composed by one guy named Homer (instead of a long series of anonymous bards). Greeks may still have been learning and passing on Homer orally, but it was as a text that one received and was expected to relay onward faithfully.
It's likely that there have been bottlenecks, where a single written version became the main common ancestor to copy from. Long after the oral tradition died down and other written versions were lost. Or because some patron decided to fund the dissemination of a particular copy, like Guttemberg or King James, or the Toledo School of Translators. Or because a particular heir of the oral tradition wrote it down, like Homer.
It doesn't necessarily mean that the story was stable, it's just the version that got to us.
What you are saying is generally true (and certainly true for many Indian texts), but the oral tradition of the Vedas really is old. Having been brought up in the West I only learned enough for daily and occasional rituals. My guru taught me without looking at a book and although I have such books now I bought them for curiosity only; if I had a question about recitation it would not occur to me to consult them. My son has learned the same way.
Could be but all across different regions across the subcontinent where the Vedas are orally recited, except for some technical tones and notes (which is the mechanical part of Vedic Sanskrit) there is little difference.
There are serious attempts made to write down the vedas. The thing is, historically, very few people learned all 4 vedas by heart; Instead different families recited very small part and passed the recitation as heirloom.
If you meet all those families and compile their recitation, it exactly matches to what we have from different earlier efforts of canonisation.
Most complete copies of anything were destroyed by the end of the ancient world. So that is not a surprise. Even the bible that most people considered sacred only has copies from the 4th century and at one point the only Hebrew sources available were from the middle ages.
Actually, now that I think about it, I guess there is a certain type of Tolkien nerd who would choose the long listing of elf lineages as the section to have in their pocket for their funeral.
Back then, ships might almost have felt like the starships of our scifi today. Capsules that can transport mankind beyond the limits of the known universe to discover strange new worlds and civilizations. Certainly worthy of epic cataloging.
This reminds me of a piece I just saw at the Legion of Honor (SF) special exhibit on the etruscans. They have a Etruscan manuscript, written on linen, that was used to wrap a mummy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_Linteus
Ironically a huge percentage of the historical documents we had came from "the garbage", and/or other cases of people reusing documents for other purposes.
In large part this was because paper was incredibly expensive back then, so it got used for one purpose, used again for another, and that continued until you were out of room ... at which point it may get used yet again (for say mummy wrapping).
Another classic example: Jews believed you couldn't burn a piece of paper once you wrote the name of God on it, so there were special towers in ancient cities for Jews to throw away their paper. But again, because paper was so expensive, each paper often had lots of other things on it.
Because these towers were sometimes preserved better than libraries were, historians have found huge treasure troves of saved papers in them. Like the mummy wrappings, they only still exist due to a special quirk of ancient peoples ... but because of the price of paper they have lots of other non-mummy-wrapping/non-God's name stuff.
> Jews believed you couldn't burn a piece of paper once you wrote the name of God on it, so there were special towers in ancient cities for Jews to throw away their paper.
Fascinating!
The Cairo Genizah
Located in the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo), Egypt, this particular Genizah was a massive, windowless attic room built high into the structure. To put papers in it, the synagogue's caretaker had to climb a tall ladder and drop the documents through a hole in the wall. Because the local community never got around to burying the papers, this high, hidden room acted like a time capsule for over a thousand years. When it was rediscovered in the late 19th century, it contained nearly 300,000 manuscript fragments.
>In large part this was because paper was incredibly expensive back then
The largest contributor to having garbage as historical sources for western European cultures was the millennium-long program of genocide and cultural destruction perpetrated by Christians against anything or anyone non-Christian they could get their hands on.
It's no coincidence the few primary sources for pre-Christian religion we have from Europe comes from Iceland... it was the furthest away. Surviving works of European mythology like Beowulf and Snorri's eddas are filled with Christian references because that's the only way they survived.
Much much more existed 1600 years ago and would have survived if the empire had not converted.
Wasn't the Ptolemaic dynasty (300-30BC) Greek speaking and culturally Greek, presumably the Library at Alexandria had a full set of classic Greek texts.
For instance, the Library of Alexandria had up to 500,000 scrolls (which of course were all handwritten). And it was partly stocked by confiscating all the books from any ship that happened to dock in the nearby port.
I am a little disappointed the tomb where the mummy was found is from the time where Egypt was part of the Roman Empire. At this point ancient Egypt had been a colony of Rome for quite some time and beforehand a Greek/Macedonian colony for a few more centuries (under the Ptolemaic dynasty, founded by a general of Alexander the Great). If it was from a previous era, it would have been a much more interesting find (in my eyes).
The Iliad was written after the classical era of Bronze Age Egypt, so no classical age mummy could be buried with the Iliad because it didn't exist yet.
I think the point was that it would be a lot more interesting had it dated to a time prior to people for whom the Iliad was part of their culture were present in the region and when such artifacts would have been normal-ish
Finding american freed slave papers in a grave at Valley Forge -> ever so slightly interesting, we know those people were around there at that time.
Finding american freed slave papers in a grave outside an 1870s British encampment in Sudan -> very interesting how did this get here.
Or kind of like how finding Christian stuff in a roman grave varies a lot in implication by the year.
The article describes the veneration Roman -> (old) Greek -> (old) Egyptian and this finding appears to show that the veneration went both ways.
Frankly I can understand that: Homer really did smash out an absolute banger with Iliad. I might ask for a copy in my grave too, when the time comes.
The whole point of the article appears to be that when civilizations overlap, the "good old days" becomes a two way street (to gargle metaphors). I do find that interpretation very interesting and it fits in with my world view that history ("historia" - Latin for "story") is generally rather more complicated than many would like it to be to fit their current (or current as was) world view.
Most commonly used for paint or to colour bricks, yes. It's disgusting, but the British and Italians didn't really care at that point because anthropology and archaeology were not respected professions in the 1820s. They were just hobbies of wealthy gentlemen who liked to travel.
Most disturbing is that apparently people kept using them for paint up until the last supplier ran out of mummies sometime around 1960. Yes. 1960.
The trick is to find non-white people so indifferent to their traditions and culture* that they’ll sell it to white supremacists for material gain.
*Also did 19th century Muslim Egyptians really consider mummies part of “their” culture? Or is the idea of “Egypt” also a White imperialist imposition?
We're specifically talking about the British Empire and its attitude towards colonized people and cultures. I'm sure that Muslim Egyptians had their own prejudice, but Muslim Egyptian prejudice didn't inform British people's alienation and dehumanization of non-white cultures whereas white supremacy did. They didn't use mummies for firewood, to garnish their soup or grind them into paint because Egyptian Muslims considered them pagans or whatever.
I don't know why you're being so defensive, this is just history.
It is as a student of history that the more I learn, the more I realize that The "White people did colonialism and everyone was sad" attitude I grew up with is simplistic when not flat out wrong. Egyptians (who were technically not part of the British Empire) were willing participants in the mummy trade. To ignore that is also dehumanizing.
But white people did do colonialism, and a lot of people were "sad." Genocide and slavery do tend to make people sad.
That the Egyptians were willing participants in the mummy trade doesn't somehow cancel out the nature or effects of British imperialism, any more than Africans participating in the slave trade cancels out chattel slavery.
But fine - "white people did colonialism and everyone was sad and Egyptians helped." Would that satisfy you?
Sure. I’m not trying to whitewash colonialism just pointing out that it is a lot more complex than the standard anti-colonialist view would have you believe. E.g. in the context of Egypt, the Ottomans were also a colonial imperial power. To ignore that is also “White supremacist”.
This is a common refrain but in reality I'm not sure it made much difference. Papyrus just doesn't age well and most manuscripts from this era would've been on papyrus.
What really decided what texts survived and what didn't was monastic traditions in in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages [1]. At this time, a monk might spend their entire life transcribing a particularly long manuscript. The materials were also expensive. So monasteries were selective in what got retain and unsurprisingly it skewed heavily to texts of religious significance and then to texts of significance to, say, Roman and Greek tradition and history given that monasteries were European.
Greek was the language of most fields of learning besides law in the Roman Empire. But the Greeks themselves wrote works on these papyrus scrolls that crumbled fast, so anything not actively used by the Romans was quickly lost.
There's a good chance that if the papyrus scrolls in any library (Alexandria or otherwise) weren't being copied regularly they were crumbling even before they burned or were lost to time for other reasons.
Towards the end of the Roman Empire, a few philosophers took the time to transmit Greek knowledge in Latin as knowledge of Greek faded in western Europe. What these guys happened to translate was the basis of most of European learning in philosophy, math, and other fields for centuries.
But they weren't monks (the most famous, Boethius, was not Christian either but a lot of later writers thought he was), the monks in scriptorium came later and grew slowly.
St. Benedict said that monks should be taught to read and do so regularly, which required copying books, but he prioritized physical work (to create self-sufficient communities) and prayer. But future Benedictines responded to the incentives of the time and began scaling up the copying and doing less agricultural work as the years went on.
Boethius was a Christian. He wrote a book explaining the Trinity, for example (De Trinitate). The work for which he is most famous today, the Consolation of Philosophy, does not mention Christ by name, which have led some to speculate that he lost his faith later in life. There is an absence of direct evidence for that claim.
It is not an uncommon view among scholars that humidity and age caused more papyri to be lost than the burning down of the library of Alexandria did. Many of which would have survived by being repeatedly copied and disseminated throughout the region.
It probably held a bunch of relatively boring local administrative records as far as "documents found only in the Library of Alexandria" from what I've read. Of course some scholars of the boring administrative history of the world would be thrilled though.
I don't discount the scholarly value of these works as you note. They provide a very important insight into these early and semi-documented societies but they don't have a visceral impact for the public like "The Hidden Mysteries of Things Previously Unknown" we accord to the Library of Alexandria in popular acclaim
People say this without any evidence. This ai-post is just regurgitating hn-thread "received wisdom". The evidence for the existence of a library is thin and hard to piece together, but points to more than a myth.
I appreciate that people want real proof of anything, but dumping an ai-slop summary is hardly doing any better than accepting the existence of a large library.
The sieges and fires you are referring to were hundreds of years before the supposed destruction at the hands of Christian mobs (e.g. as depicted in the movie Agora or in Sagan’s Cosmos). The latter is unsupported.
If you want to know what the science says on some topic, you have exactly two valid options:
1. Become an expert in said topic, reading the broad literature, becoming familiar with points and counterpoints, figuring out how research actually works in the field by contributing some papers of your own, and forming your own personal informed opinion on the preponderance of the evidence.
2. Look at the experts' consensus on said topic
Of course, you have other options. A popular one is to adopt the view of one expert in the field that you happen to like, who may or may not accept the consensus view - but this is far more arbitrary than 1 or 2.
If you are not in the field, consensus is often almost impossible to figure out. Remember what gets published is things that are controversial. Thus, things that have consensus are things that are going to be silent in literature if you search for it. Thus, if you're searching for something, you may not actually find the consensus if you're looking, and so the study is hard when you're not already an expert.
This is quite false and the opposite of what is actually true. Textbooks and other teaching materials are entirely based on consensus science, surveys report on consensus, meta-analyses identify consensus, the abstracts of novel studies lay out the consensus that they are reconfirming, adding to, or challenging. Your statements about "what gets published" and "things that are going to be silent" are completely nonsensical and have no relationship with reality. There isn't a single field where there is a consensus where I can't immediately find out what it is.
"Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the vast majority of active, qualified experts on a conclusion in a specific scientific discipline.[1] Scientific consensus results from the self-correcting scientific process of peer review, replication of the event through the scientific method, scholarly debate, meta-analysis, and publication of high-quality review articles, monographs, or guidelines in reputable books and journals to establish facts and durable knowledge about the topic."
The whole point of that publication is to make the "durable knowledge" accessible.
> Thus, things that have consensus are things that are going to be silent in literature if you search for it.
Not really; generally consensus ideas will be mentioned in passing while discussing something else. You can get a strong sense of the consensus that way.
For example, I bought several textbooks on early Mesopotamian history, which taught me that Marxism enjoys a strong consensus in that field. And it's not even relevant to the field!
As a Canadian I love the US, think of them as family, but also view them as some sort of relative which has lost their senses. Before most recent times, we'd sadly shake our heads, as this relative does weird things, yet still hope for the best for them. Yet while rambling blathers about invading Canada and compelling 51st statehood would be fondly tolerated in grandpa, not so much for a nation with a massive army and a joy in using it.
So I purpose we strengthen another aspect of American "democracy" that Canadians find amusing, the concept of "hiring people for popularity not competency". Americans, especially at the local level, vote for judges, police chiefs, even dog-catchers, so why not a local scientist! Rather than 1 or 2, we can conjoin this concept with your third option, yet with the officiousness that only a vote can provide!
Each municipality can have a local head scientist, which will proclaim what scientific fact is correct. People can vote on such candidates, and their platform of scientifically correct "things" during election time.
It will all work out very well for them I'm sure, and hopefully, with science thus democratized, perhaps they will be less of a threat over time.
(Sorry, I don't know why your comment made this pop into my head)
Consensus in science has nothing to do with voting. It's a consequence, not a cause, and arises when the accumulated evidence is clear enough and unambiguous enough that there is general agreement among experts in the field--that is, those who are intimately involved in the production and tracking of that evidence.
Of course science is consensus based ... consensus is a fundamental part of the scientific process, which is conducted by a community of scientists. Consensus is the end result of attempts at reproducibility and falsification, of the ongoing process by which scientists challenge the claims and purported findings of other scientists. Without it, all you have are assertions from which people can pick and choose based on their biases (as we see, for instance, with people who deny climate or vaccine science by cherrypicking claims).
And even if you reject consensus as being essential to science, calling the consensus view "the non scientific view" is obviously mistaken, a basic error in logic.
This is all well understood by working scientists so I'm not going to debate it or comment on it further.
I have seen several real historians say the same thing. I'm not a historian myself, but when I see professors of history in various institutions saying something, I tend to suspect they actually have a consensus, although as others pointed out, maybe it's not a consensus and I would have no way of knowing.
I'm not doubting the library existed and it was destroyed possibly burned more than once but the common trope that Christians did it does not seem to be backed up by history.
What bothers me is the Vatican library. It's too vulnerable to fire. There should be staff taking photos of the pages, and store those copies elsewhere.
Yes, you can quickly photograph an entire book with a phone camera. No, you do not need archivists to do it. No, you do not need a scanner. No, you do not need special lighting.
Don't believe me? Pick a book of yours, open it, and take a photo with your phone.
For some reason, there is a gigantic and ancient monastery on Mount Sinai with a commensurate collection of ancient manuscripts and papyri. Totally coincidence.
those are certainly Christian curated documents. The previous six hundred+ years had seen the development of vivid and exotic religion, philosophy and arts. The Christians famously slew the Dragons, condemned Herod as a sorcerer and astrologer, and replaced the Apollo cults with the scripture that many know well.
I imagine that the Library of Alexandria was plural and diverse with respect to the traditions and inquiry that was represented there.
The early Egyptian Christians were a particularly violent bunch. Lots of murders and political scheming against each other and other Christian authorities in the larger world of the Late Antique. They came to power in Alexandria by murder and looting, specifically
Imagine that paper is insanely expensive because it is very labour-intensive to make. People reused paper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest). Cloth is also insanely expensive. People wore clothes long after we'd consider them worn out.
Your job is to wrap mummies, so you use and reuse whatever is available, scraps of completely worn out clothing, or in this case some scraps of paper that happen to have writing on them. Which you cannot read because literacy rates are fairly low, especially amongst the poor working class.
According to Iliad 2.645-670, in the direct vicinity of Egypt (notably 1000+ years before those mummies got wrapped) ships from Rhodes (Lindos, Ialysos and Kameiros) and also Crete had taken part in the Trojan War (Knossos and Gortyn, Phaistos and Rhytion).
It wasn't a whole book, it was cartonnage: scrap paper from discarded books and documents, assembled and glued together like papier-mâché. The cartonnage was used to make funerary masks and some other parts of the mummification apparatus.
There is a whole subfield of archaeology that deals with deciphering and identifying book fragments found in the form of scrap paper in Greco-Roman era Egyptian mummies.
I find it interesting how uncommon it is for this to yield new works.
It seems like it's always the same handful of texts. Ancient readers liked what they liked and weren't out for variety it seems.
At the same time, Juvenal has a whole satire about how everyone is trying their hand at writing books and mentions in another how booksellers are always getting new volumes.
I spend way too much time pining for the chance to read the other parts of the Trojan Cycle, even though the ancient said they were much lower quality. Like your favorite show getting canceled.
You are falling victim to frequency bias. Popular books are popular – and especially before mass printing technologies, really popular. A lot of people may have tried to write books doesn't mean they're writing books good enough to dedicate an actual person's time towards copying them down.
Also, Juvenal was a poet. He most likely knew other poets, or aspiring poets, or at least people who liked writing. Your average, generally functionally illiterate, individual at the time is not trying their hand at writing books.
Many cultures bury their dead with objects that the person enjoyed during their lifetime.
This is present even today, I saw a burial in Eastern Europe where the parents put a game of chess and toys in the coffin. While it will do no good to the deceased my theory is that it is a way for the living to deal with the loss.
I wonder now and then about the extent of dissent and cynicism in ancient Egypt. This is a vague question, I know, not least because the scope covers thousands of years. But officially, everybody gets grave goods in proportion to their status, especially their closeness to royalty, and these are provided so that they can have chairs and games and sports and clothes and food and so on in the next world, to make approximately four out of their eight forms of soul feel comfortable. Then these grave goods are often immediately stolen, probably by the same priestly officials who organized the burial. I wonder if ancient Egyptians silently thought their own religion ridiculous.
"I wonder if ancient Egyptians silently thought their own religion ridiculous."
The more who believed that, the less power their religion had at holding the empire together until it transcended into becoming a vassal and later out of existing.
Religion was the foundation of the empire, but judging from the many artifacts we have, at least some did take it very seriously.
The religiously faithful would disagree somewhat, but not I.
I wonder, however, why such Christians (for example) think a prayer for the soul of the deceased would alter God's plan in any way. "Gee," he says to Michael, who happens to be flying nearby, "John Doe was a dirtbag sinner, but that was a really nice funeral mass... Screw what I said in Scripture; let him in!"
> This is present even today, I saw a burial in Eastern Europe where the parents put a game of chess and toys in the coffin. While it will do no good to the deceased my theory is that it is a way for the living to deal with the loss.
Spoiler: they do that so that future grave robbers and archaeologists will know all about the dead person's lifestyle. Surely that kind of everlasting glory has to be worth something to the deceased, one would think?
While the collection is now termed by modern scholars as "Book 2 of the Iliad", there was no such thing as a "book" as we know it, in those times; there were codices and scrolls and manuscripts, etc., and everyone's favorite: the palimpsest!
"Book" has been used to translate the Latin word "liber", which is the word used by the Ancient Romans for the parts of a bigger document, each of which would have been written on a different scroll.
Latin "liber" was used to translate the Greek words "biblion" or "byblos", which are thus the oldest source of the word "book". "Byblos" originally meant papyrus in Greek, but later it was also used for the parts of a big document. A later form of this word, which was more specialized with the meaning of "material for writing" or "book", is "biblion" (a diminutive), having the plural "ta biblia" = "the books", which is the source of English "bible".
It's actually a modern innovation, AFAIK. Common people were stripped and wrapped in linens (or equivalent). Obviously, mummy wrapping would be the extreme example of it, but wills often designated who would inherit "my best tunic", because the clothes were quite valuable if still wearable.
I'm speaking of the common people; kings and bishops were buried in finery. And it's not universal by any means. In times of disaster or plague bodies were buried quickly in their current clothes. This leads to some interesting finds, as when all that remains of an entire outfit is the silk stitching and things like metal buttons.
Recency bias probably colors my perception but I really enjoyed Stephen Fry's audiobook performance of his four book series on Greek and Roman myths, mostly dramatized by him but asides with etymology, history and other source references so it's a synthesis of many works into one coherent narrative, with about the last 45 minutes dedicated to what happened to Aeneas and the Telegony, for anyone else new to this, Telegonus was son of Odysseus via Circe.
The article sounds convincing enough, but discoveries can easily be faked, just like crop circles can be made by farmers using rake-like devices.
Luxor and Las Vegas = same thing.
Not trolling, but it's worth keeping this notion in mind. It's great for tourism and building mystique. At least when there is fakery, it's makes the real thing all the more valuable.
Fakery sells movie tickets - it can sell plane tickets too.
People still love Milli Vanilli - so many don't even care because it's just entertainment.
How much of history is real, how much is entertainment (and diversion) by vested interests and the "winners" ?
You may be right about one observation, but that doesn't mean complimentary observations are genuine and all discoveries are real. In central Australia, and you find some indigenous rock paintings somewhere, and then someone else finds similar ones nearby a year later. Can't question that, right?
The Grand Egyptian Museum (first year in) frequently hits "its maximum planned capacity of around 15,000 to 18,000 visitors per day."
It's not necessarily about Egypt, it's about questioning discoveries in general.
I've even heard theories of the pyramids existing before "Ancient Egypt" even existed. If so, it may never have even been designed to be a tomb. I read in channeled information that it was to anchor the Earth in space and stop it wobbling. Others have said it is/was a jumping point into other dimensions.
"Despite building them as a gift of love and light to humanity, Ra expresses deep regret over how the pyramids were used."
That's c. 400 AD. Closer to today, than to the time of King Tut...and King Tut was closer to the TFA mummy than to the First Dynasty.
Ancient Egypt is really really old. The Great pyramid was 3000 years old at the time of the TFA mummy.
The TFA mummy is about equidistant between today and the events of the Iliad and the book was already more than 1000 years old in 400 CE.
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