My very predictable top shelf, after doing some reorganising yesterday

For part of the project I am working on, learning…Urartian is now starting to look like a serious next step

Abigail Tan@symmetr1cgroup.bsky.social · 4w ago

Learning Elamite is starting to look like a serious next step

Akkadian word of the day: šagapūru(m) - "mighty, strong, majestic". Possibly reflected in the Ugaritic personal name ṯgbr, which is rendered syllabically as šag-ga-pu-ru).

Etruscan sentence of the day: Ei minipi capi ("don't take me!") The words are "spoken" by a bowl owned by a cetain Cupe Althrna; it's quite common for Etruscan objects with inscriptions to "speak" in the first person. Same with Latin inscriptions, sometimes.

Kulamuwa claims his predecessors did nothing as rulers of Sam’al; that he hired the king of Assyria against the Danunians; to have restored order as king; and curses one who destroys the inscription to have his head crushed by the gods Baʿl Ṣamd of Gabbār, Baʿl Ḥammōn of Bamaha, and Rākibʾil (2/4)

Latest acquisition

This is Kulamuwa, a 3rd-century (BC) Carthaginian elephant that I have named after a 9th-century Sam’alian ruler with an Anatolian name who used Phoenician for his inscription (1/4)

My academic interests are now mostly ANE-centric but I doubt I’d ever have got into ancient history without stumbling across the History of Rome podcast 5 years ago, drifting towards reading many classical primary sources, and eventually learning languages and engaging with academic work seriously

Dr Lindsey Fitzharris@drlindseyfitz.bsky.social · 3w ago

Some academics turn up their noses at movie adaptations or popular history books, but I call them "gateway drugs" into deeper scholarship. How many of us fell in love with history because a movie (or book) sparked our curiosity first? For me, it was Amadeus - it sent me down an 18thC rabbit hole.

I wrote a post for the public blog, Ancient Near East Today, about the satrap (governor) of Persian-ruled Egypt in the late 400s BCE. Available online here: anetoday.org/arsama-persi...

The House of Aršāma, Persian Satrap in Egypt - The Ancient Near East Today

Satraps (“governors”) did the everyday work of maintaining Persian imperial rule across its vast empire. Ancient texts from Egypt allow us to understand how this arrangement worked.

anetoday.org

Learning Elamite is starting to look like a serious next step

Have had a great time taking courses in Hittite, Ugaritic and Phoenician, Lycian, and Carian, Sidetic and Pisidian over the past two weeks in Leiden!

"Die Inschrift aber hat nichts hinter sich, sie ist sie selbst, und muß dir alles sagen" But the inscription has nothing behind it, it is itself, and must tell you everything. - Goethe, West-östlicher Divan I, 2

@bnuyaminim.bsky.social including a bonus Polish poetry reading (and asking the hard questions)

@mweissohcgl.bsky.social presenting on some #Sabellic inscriptions, this year's penultimate @unileiden.bsky.social Summer School evening lecture.

One of many interesting Babylonian omens (“šumma immeru…”) relating to sheep slaughter that I came across while browsing the Leiden Middle Eastern library a couple days ago (Cohen 2020)

In Leiden for the Summer School in Languages and Linguistics. Just finished the third day!

First evening lecture of this year's @unileiden.bsky.social Summer School in Languages and Linguistics on the age of Anatolian hieroglyphic, by Willemijn Waal and @alwinkloekhorst.bsky.social

"His speech was large, its contents were wide, The messenger, whose mouth was heavy, could not repeat it. Since the messenger, whose mouth was heavy, could not repeat it, the Lord of Kulaba flattened a piece of clay and put the word on it as on a tablet." #physicalmediaforever

The British Museum at least used to sell replicas of this (Egyptian naos door showing Darius I offering to Anubis) which I would totally have got if I had too much disposable income

Mateusz Fafinski@calthalas.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Here is me, pleading with museum shops. We do not want yet another bookmark and eraser with your logo for 11 euros. We. Want. Replicas. Of. Your. Nerdy. Stuff.

πολύπους in the 13C BCE 😄🐙 (ta-ra-nu , a-ja-me-no , e-re-pa-te-jo , a-to-ro-qo , i-qo-qe , po-ru-po-de-qe , po-ni-ke-qe, 𐃄) (footstool, inlaid with ivory: a man and a horse and an octopus and a date palm)

The Persian empire is for instance run for the interest of the ruling dynasty and its luxurious lifestyle, but also for a diaspora of Iranians in the provinces, who identify with the Persian empire. (Here the sarcophagus of a Persian "baron" in the western provinces, hunting down a hillsman). 5/

I have unironically just mentally used the term Tendenzwerk (which I have seen once ever in reference to propagandistic historical sources) - must be the first step in sliding towards the permanent "there is always a German term for this" mindset

Agreed - my undergrad was, to an extreme extent, a competition first and a learning experience second (and graded based on rank). There is always naturally more focus on assessments at undergrad than grad level in the UK but there was zero reason it had to be *that* monolithically exam centric (1/4)

Stephen DeCasien, Ph.D.@sdecasien.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Funded students often had more time to study while others had to work, so the system favored those with the most free time. The sad part is that if we'd studied together, we all could have done better, but some students saw grad school as a competition rather than a collaborative learning experience

I wondered for a while if it was really worth giving the helmet guy that much airtime/exposure by debating him - but this article is great for illustrating how it has become a pipeline, rather than just isolated incidents

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux@bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 2mo ago

This has been something I've been meaning to write for quite some time and the Homer contretemps gave it the opportunity. The thing I most wanted to draw out is that it isn't one fool on Twitter with a helmet, but a radicalization pipeline designed to lead antiquity-curious young men into fascism.

In the Histories, we encounter both a “boar” or "boar's head" prow (Hdt. 3.59) and the more standard embolos (ram, generally), which may have been either chisel-shaped or three-bladed, perhaps even preserving earlier ram forms (e.g., Hdt. 1.166).

#EpigraphyTuesday Inscription from the Nike of Paionios (IG V.1, 1568) Μεσσάνιοι καὶ Ναυπάκτιοι ἀνέθεν Διὶ Ὀλυμπίωι δεκάταν ἀπὸ τῶμ πολεμίων. Παιώνιος ἐποίησε Μενδαῖος καὶ τἀκροτήρια ποιῶν ἐπὶ τὸν ναὸν ἐνίκα. (📷own, plaster cast in Museum of Classical Archaeology)

today's Akkadian phrase is uznum rapaštum "understanding, intelligence" lit. "a wide ear" we are lucky enough to have it show up in one of the (100 BC–100 AD?) "Greco-Babylonian" student tablets as οζον ραφασθ at a stage where Babylonian had lost final short vowels.

Nats happened last weekend! Buzzpoints have been interesting to look at, but for now, I'm expecting to take a bit of a break from quiz editing after 8 months of work on this 2026-nationals.vercel.app/set/2026-acf...

Abigail Tan@symmetr1cgroup.bsky.social · 12mo ago

Excited to be editing Ancient History and European History for 2026 ACF Nationals, which has now been announced: hsquizbowl.org/forums/viewt...

We can go one better - working hard to become king of Babylon because your Elamite father told you he wasn't his father

Matthew Scarborough 𓀀@mattitiahu.bsky.social · 4mo ago

I love how—because of the nature of the corpus material—the translation exercises from Skjærvø's Old Persian textbook are more stereotypically Wheelock's Latin than even Wheelock's Latin itself.