All posts by D. Winterjas

Circumventing Silences in the Archives of Renaissance Florence

European Renaissance, Methodology

We all know that one scene from many adventure movies. The charismatic explorer, wizened wizard, or inquisitive secret agent – often, but not always, accompanied by a variety of plucky sidekicks and love interests – 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 – preferably a family member or ancestor of one of the available main characters – 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.

Continue reading Circumventing Silences in the Archives of Renaissance Florence →

On Broken Links and Lost Knowledge

Methodology

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 – if not primarily – 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 – 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.

Continue reading On Broken Links and Lost Knowledge →

How One Word Enriched Our Understanding of the Gilgamesh Epic

Ancient Mesopotamia, Antiquity, Methodology

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 – 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.

Continue reading How One Word Enriched Our Understanding of the Gilgamesh Epic →

In Praise of Secondary Literature

Methodology

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 – something that I am a big fan of, as you can imagine – 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.

Continue reading In Praise of Secondary Literature →

Forgotten Gods #1: Did NinSimug Exist?

Ancient Mesopotamia, Antiquity

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.

Continue reading Forgotten Gods #1: Did NinSimug Exist? →

Dragon Myths and Dinosaur Bones

Ancient Greece, Antiquity, Archeology

Dragons and dinosaurs. Not only does a substantial amount of children make one of these their entire personality for a while, but many adults are still highly interested in anything related to these respectively magical and prehistoric organisms.1 It is therefore only natural that both obsessions are regularly combined. And this has, amongst other things, led to the question we try to answer in this week’s blog: was it encounters with dinosaur bones that formed the basis for myths about dragons?

Continue reading Dragon Myths and Dinosaur Bones →

Searching for Forests in Ugaritic

Ancient Levant, Antiquity, Translation Studies

Translation is seldom a straightforward exercise.1 One may be reminded of all those hypothetical but nonetheless disappointed British tourists who happily tried to visit a football match in the United States of America and left very confused. And such contemporary matters, like when the sport that the British call ‘football’ is known as ‘soccer’ in certain other parts of the world, are complicated enough.2 Imagine if a chasm of more than three millennia separates us from the language we aim to understand! And it is bridging such a chasm that we are attempting in today’s blog. As I shall show you the difficulty with understanding the lexicon of the ancient Levantine language that is today known as Ugaritic.

Continue reading Searching for Forests in Ugaritic →

Ecomusicology and Serenading Different Kinds of Nature

Environmental Humanities, Music, Video Games

A while back we talked about the video game Tiny Glades and how the artifice of the landscapes you could create there showed how ‘nature’ is not a faraway sequestered space free of any and all human interference. On the contrary, in our Anthropocene age every environment, every biome, and even every imaginable place on earth is directly or indirectly, largely or in part, shaped by human influence.1 And this makes the topic I selected for this week’s blog, discussing some songs about escaping to nature, also theoretically interesting.2 Because if nature is not an unequivocally uniform concept, can it even be a shared refuge where all those artists envision themselves going? And it does indeed turn out, that very distinct kinds of nature are serenaded in these songs. Moreover, there is a field we can turn to, if we want to explain these differences: ecomusicology. So let us today survey that field and those songs in order to find out what an escape to nature would actually mean in a world where forests are as much an environment shaped by humankind as your average suburb.

Continue reading Ecomusicology and Serenading Different Kinds of Nature →

Reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Is Still Rewarding

Ancient Greece, Antiquity, Aristotle, Philosophy

A while ago, I told some people about the fascinating experience that reading Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics entailed for me. A few queries about the Ethics followed. Not because I am an expert on this book or anything, but because I read more of it – and about it! – than the others present. And I can very much not help myself, sharing my enthusiasm for anything slightly related to the humanities… During that conversation I got an interesting question that fit the ethos of the Nicomachean Ethics: Why? Why read a philosophical treatise from more than two millennia ago? Philosophy has moved on since then, after all. Nobody has the spare time – and neither do their friends – to live the good life as proposed by Aristotle in the company he envisioned. The author of the Nichomachean Ethics was also famously misogynist and harbored many other views that do not fit our modern societies, with their human rights and the like. His stance on slavery was at best ambiguous and at worst tacit resignation, for crying out loud!1 So let us today discuss that monosyllabic question – why? Because I wish for others that very same experience that I had with the Nichomachean Ethics. But there are also more practical reasons to dust off this tome.

Continue reading Reading Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics Is Still Rewarding →

Where Was Ancient Mesopotamia? The Case for Microecologies

Ancient Mesopotamia, Antiquity, Environmental Humanities, Methodology

That most people do not spend every waking hour contemplating the ultimate origins and regularly shifting meaning of everyday words – especially those of us who are not writing blogs for other’s infotainment – does not mean that this isn’t a very rewarding activity.1 Especially when it comes to area designations which are so ingrained that we hardly think about them, like the ancient Mediterranean or ancient Mesopotamia. Because it can be interesting to work out under which circumstances such large regions during such long eras can fruitfully be denoted with a single label and when this would obscure important subdivisions or local developments. For instance. if one studies people’s relationship to their immediate environment – be it ideologically, economically, or in any other conceivable way – it may be rewarding to break up familiar areas into what is called microecologies.2 And it is this useful methodological tool that I want to discuss with you today. Through this discussion we will also discover the ultimate origins of the label ‘Mesopotamia’ and encounter some of the conspicuous environmental differences within this region in ancient times.

Continue reading Where Was Ancient Mesopotamia? The Case for Microecologies →