"For passage over the water, there is a bridge"





Our Rosetta Stone was composed of balsa wood, bamboo leaves, brush and india ink, and twine. Our language included English, Sanskrit, and Ogham. It was definitely interesting to see the contrast and difference among these languages and civilizations as they came together, and also somwhat easy to see why each civilization used the medium they did (also factor in what was available to them).

Overall, the process of bringing the factors of each civilization together made for some cool experiences and thought progressions.

The Rosetta Clay

Clay tablet with Sanskrit, Greek, and English translations.

"स नः पितेव सूनवे.अग्ने सूपायनो भव |
सचस्वा नः सवस्तये"

"sa naḥ piteva sūnave.aghne sūpāyano bhava  

sacasvā naḥ svastaye"

"Να είναι εύκολο να μας όσον αφορά την προσέγγιση, έστω και ωςπατέρας στο γιο του: Αγνή, να είναι μαζί μας για ευτυχία μας."

"Be to us easy of approach, even as a father to his son: Agni, be with us for our weal.--"

We received from the "India" group this line from Book One Hymn One of the Rig Veda.  Since I remember Crista talking about the Rig Veda in her reports on India, I figured we should start there.  So, fortunately, versions of the Rig Veda are available online---and luckily the sentence was the last sentence of Book One Hymn One.  We were able to easily match the sanskrit.


English versions of the Rig Veda are also easily available, so all we had to do match Greek to the English as best as possible.


In doing this project, I realized a few interesting traits of working with clay.


First, working with clay is actually pretty easy, for the most part.  Writing in it was fairly easy. . .I mean, have you ever written in clay or Play-doh before? Pretty easy, right?  So was writing in the clay. If you mess up, then all you have to do is rub the mistake out of the clay.  It's like you're writing in pencil on an eraser.


Another thing I noticed is that while clay is easy to write on, once it's burned in a kiln, it's rather definitive.  However, it would seem rather inappropriate to bring clay to, say, a university to take notes on.  About the time that the written tradition started to take over in Greece, papyrus was also popular.  So, bringing clay to class and recording teacher's words would seem maybe out of place.


Which brings me to the point of this blog:  Are some mediums of writing more appropriate for a situation than another?  Today, you can take notes manually with a pen and pencil, or on a computer, or record them, or, I suppose, even videotape the lecture if you felt so inclined.  But then again, I rarely see someone bring their computer to church to take notes.  It wasn't until recent that it seemed appropriate to use the internet version of the scriptures to annotate and highlight.


This project taught me that mediums of writing are more than just materials, but, like the mother tongue and father tongue, there is a paternal implication for every material---in other words, there is an expectation for every writing medium.


So does that mean, for example, chiseling in stone is more manly than writing on papyrus? What do you think?

oops - where'd friday go???

So as we have been talking about the different groups and their experiences writing and translating ancient texts, it has really struck me how interconnected the different aspects of writing are.

First of all, I never realized how much the writing medium influences/is influenced by the subject of the writing. What really surprised me was the realization that I have made medium decisions at several times based on subject. For instance, I take class notes on loose leaf paper with whatever will write, but my personal journal is leather bound, acid-free paper and is only written on with select pens. There’s a reason sticky notes don’t hang around for years at a time – that medium is designed for a very specific kind of information.

Also, not all civilizations had stone tablets, or metal plates, etc. but I feel it is important to note that although the writing medium itself may not fit into this importance-hierarchy theory, I feel like the thousands of man hours of work and the immense amount of resources that go into building the temple to house the less durable mediums still allow us to count that as an effort to preserve the important stuff.

So, If we take this observation – important information is put on a lasting medium – and add that the harder it is to write on the medium, the more important the information has to be in order to be recorded (think of how writing in your personal journal would be different if it were on stone tablets) (mine would probably only include major events and their date, ie – “Marriage to Ashley M, 5-20-11”) I feel like we can make an argument that the texts that endured from ancient civilizations did so because the people of that civilization wanted them to because they are what were most valued by those people. If this is true, we can take a SUPER basic summary of what remains from an ancient civilization and make some pretty powerful inferences about that civilization.

For instance, my assigned civilization, Mesopotamia, has thousands and thousands of artefacts that remained through the years. Most of these are business and law related. So, Mesopotamian society, especially sumeria, we can assume that they were a very business oriented society. I would assume that this means they were probably a capitalist society (to some extent) and that they had relatively good social mobility.

I dunno, do you think I’m overstepping historical interpretation boundaries?

Ancient Greek Universities

We have been talking recently in class about how universities revolutionized the storage and transmission of knowledge throughout history and throughout the world.  The ancient Greek academies, lyceums, gymnasiums, and museums also contributed to this change.

Numbers and Letters

Today's discussion in class raised an interesting question:

What happens when a writing system combines numbers and letters?

In addition, what happens when they are separate?

From heavy mysticism to advanced math, I think it makes a world of difference.

I also think it doesn't.

MysticitsyM (oooh.... mystic-y.....)

thanks to the written system of ancient Mesopotamia, we have a REALLY good idea as to the procedures of the types of events that are typically shrouded in mysticism, such as marriage, birth of children, etc. The Mesopotamian's obsession with keeping logistical records has allowed us to see that a marriage contract to them was pretty much the same type of "contract" that we think of today. there were a lot of weird little rules and exceptions, however that differ greatly from modern marital laws. surprisingly, i wasn't able to find a lot of evidence for "mystical" procedures involved with marriage. in fact, the Mesopotamian wedding ceremony seems a lot less weird than Korean Thanksgiving. the only "odd" practice is when the groom pours perfume on the bride's head - but who doesn't want to smell nice on their wedding day, right?

there are a few traces of mystic beliefs in Mesopotamian lore. In the epic of Gilgamesh, there is an interesting series of dreams predicting the future (as interpreted by Gilgamesh's mother), strongly suggesting that dreams were a big part of how Mesopotamians believed they had mystical experiences. there is also strong evidence of a link between what Christians may call gentile beliefs and the beliefs of the people of israel - the biblical " Merkabah " or Ezekiel's chariot dream, contains mythical images that correspond to Mesopotamian traditions(Vita Daphna Arbel)

what commonly accepted things in our society may be considered "mysticism" in 500 years?

The Oracles and Knucklebones

Pythia---The Oracle at Delphi

I like how we're now exploring mysticism and the occult in class.  It turns history inside out and lets us see the weird and the abnormal.  Sometimes, it leads us to some still rather unknown and thus intriguing practices born in antiquity.  One of the more well-known mystic practices is that of the Oracles in Ancient Greece.  These oracles were the masters of divination and prophetic premonitions.  These mystic oracles served many purposes in Greek society, but I wish to focus on the purpose of our current topic: Written knowledge.