If there is one occurrence that many people remember from antiquity, it is that three hundred soldiers from the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta once stood against the much larger army of the Persian king Xerxes.1 This is partly the result of its many depictions in pop culture, including the well-known fantastical â and fairly problematic â retelling in the movie 300 from 2006.2 The second Greco-Persian war, which occurred in the beginning of the fifth century BCE and that saw the aforementioned heroics of the Spartans, was a time of military savvy, masterful intrigue, and uncountable tears. But today I want to focus on one specific aspect, a single word even. I am concerned here with a term that the ancient historian Herodotus uses to describe the thought process of the Spartan king Leonidas I when the latter send most of the other Greeks soldiers away â yes, there were other Greeks present! â and prepared his Spartans for their last stand. That word is ĎÎŹÎžÎšĎ (taxis).3 And Herodotusâ metaphorical use of what ultimately was just a mere technical term, can inform us about the martial ideologies of Greece in that time.
Excel in Ancient Mesopotamia
You know what is useful in any kind of research endeavor? In addition to the expected copious amounts of caffeine, a disregard for the fact that your life is finite, and the merciful existence of takeaway food services while working overtime, that is.1 Tables! And this got me thinking: when did tabular accounts appear in ancient Mesopotamia? Or in other words: was there a cuneiform alternative for programs like Excel and Calc, that are so ubiquitous today? As with many questions we try to answer here at Bildungblocks â and one of the primary reasons that these blogs are often published irregularly â this matter turned out to be way more complicated then you would expect at first. But one could argue, if only for my own sanity, that such complications make a topic merely more intriguing than it already is.
You Canât Outrun the Clock: A Look at Pink Floydâs âTimeâ
Music can say more than words.1 And regularly, the words that are used in songs are able to communicate so much that a piece of narrative literature of equivalent length simply cannot convey. During the week-end I read a short story where this characteristic of music was used to great effect. In the wholesome tale âLet All the Children Boogieâ by Sam J. Miller, references to the music and lyrics of David Bowie and Iggy Pop were employed with great effect to communicate dreams, emotions, and hope.2 The change of perspective on the world and life that this brief adventure of two young outcasts in the early nineties can engender in the reader was, according to my opinion, in large part due to the use of those musical references. And such a change of perspective â including some of the same themes! â can also occur when listening to our topic of this weekâs blog, the song âTimeâ by the British rock band Pink Floyd from their acclaimed as well as wildly successful 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon.3
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Firearms as Accessories in Renaissance Italy
Sometimes I read something so fascinating, that I immediately want to write a blog about it and share my new interest with the digital world. But me being myself, I often run into practical considerations that are likely to delay such a project. For instance, I have to look into the broader scholarly literature to be certain that I present you with a proper overview of the learned consensus on a topic. And with new interests, this is hindered by the fact that even I cannot be an expert in all humanities â however hard I may try. So this week, in the middle of summer, we are going to talk about a subject that first grabbed me last Christmas: firearms as accessories in Renaissance Italy.
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Forgotten Gods #2: Where Did Marduk Go?
You know what is a sobering fact which keeps me with both my feet firmly on the ground? That there was once a time â unbelievable but true â in which people did not venerate the great and ancient Mesopotamian god Marduk. And you know whatâs even more indicative of the mere relative importance of everything? The fact that at one point people stopped venerating Marduk! Today we are going to look at the rise and fall of this imposing Mesopotamian god, of whom no-one in the second millennium BCE would have believed that their prominence could ever diminish.1 But nothing lasts forever and, as one age follows another, even the gods may become a mere historical footnote.Welcome to the second part of my always uplifting series on forgotten gods!
Circumventing Silences in the Archives of Renaissance Florence
We all know that one scene from many adventure movies. The charismatic explorer, wizened wizard, or inquisitive secret agent â often, but not always, accompanied by a variety of plucky sidekicks and love interests â visits an archive to further their quest. And almost without exception, though seldom without great effort, they do find the log of a person from the (distant) past â preferably a family member or ancestor of one of the available main characters â which tells them exactly what they needed to know.1 Such plot devices may be necessary to help a film move along and they regularly serve relevant themes of ancestry, cooperation, and responsibility. But if we want to understand the past through actual archives, we often learn as much from what the documents and objects therein do not tell us as from what do tell. And the same, rather uncinematically approach will help us today to get to know more about the Italian city of Florence during the European Renaissance.
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On Broken Links and Lost Knowledge
Scholarly and scientific research today is in large part dependent on our access to previous research, primary sources, and databases.1 As many of these resources are to a significant extent â if not primarily â consulted through computers, it is no wonder why many learned references are to a web address linking the reader with a location in cyberspace.2 This is not without its drawbacks of course. Books and journals smell infinitely better, for instance, than a toiling hard drive. And have you ever tried penning down notes on a computer screen? You run out of space almost instantly! But those are not the problems we are discussing today â however compelling they might be. Because we are going to talk about the potential loss of knowledge when a link changes after a reference has already been published or, even worse, when the information referenced is no longer available online.
How One Word Enriched Our Understanding of the Gilgamesh Epic
Much of our current knowledge is merely provisional. Specifically in the humanities, we can always encounter new evidence, construct unique theoretical frameworks that support novel interpretations, or make use of the progress in other scientific disciplines.1 And such fresh insights in the humanities can subsequently help us to find even more new evidence, to construct further unique theoretical frameworks, and to aid other scientific disciplines in turn.2 These developments do not always entail that scholars had been wrong before, though â quite the contrary! Our understanding may also be merely expanded or enriched. And this can happen for the most pedestrian of reasons. Even one word can suffice! So today we will discuss how one newly discovered word of the Epic of Gilgamesh ushered in a better understanding of this famous tale from ancient West-Asia.
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In Praise of Secondary Literature
Nobody can learn everything. Not only because of the limited storage capacity and processing capabilities of the internal hardware that most call the human brain, but also because it is impossible for most of us to find enough time and (affordable) teachers for any and all subject.1 If one aims to bravely defy such seemingly immovable limitations â something that I am a big fan of, as you can imagine â and go on a never-ending quest for knowledge, it is important to find an entry point into new subjects that fall outside the scope of your earlier education or readings in your spare time. And that is where the specific genres of secondary literature that we will discuss today become useful.
Forgotten Gods #1: Did NinSimug Exist?
The bulk of my readers, I assume, have made their peace with eventually being forgotten after their death. Because most of us will seldom be remembered after all that knew us have perished in turn. But one would expect that this could not be the fate of gods! After all, they have regularly amassed lots and lots of followers and their worship was often institutionalized. But even gods tend to be forgotten, be it after a shorter or a longer while. And nowadays many of them only figure in later reconstructions of past religions.1 In this new series, I want to introduce a few of these forgotten gods and through them illustrate some interesting aspects of ancient religious history, practices, and beliefs. This week, we survey the life and times of a deity from ancient west-Asia: NinSimug.