Technology Aids in Understanding Ancient Language

I was really struck by the number of female specialists mentioned who are working on this project while reading this article. (Part of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project) From the University of Chicago website/news: Technology brings new insights to ancient language October 14, 2009 New technologies and academic collaborations are helping scholars at the University of Chicago analyze hundreds of ancient documents in Aramaic, one of the Middle East’s oldest continuously spoken and written languages. Members of the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California are helping the University’s Oriental Institute make very high-quality electronic images of nearly 700 Aramaic administrative documents. The Aramaic texts were incised in the surfaces of clay tablets with styluses or inked on the tablets with brushes or pens. Some tablets have both incised and inked texts. Discovered in Iran, these tablets form one of the largest groups of ancient Aramaic records ever found. They are part of the Persepolis Fortification Archive, an immense group of administrative documents written and compiled about 500 B.C. at Persepolis, one of the capitals of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Archaeologists from the Oriental Institute discovered the archive in 1933, and the Iranian government has loaned it to the Oriental Institute since 1936 for preservation, study, analysis and publication. The Persepolis texts have started to provide scholars with new knowledge about Imperial Aramaic, the dialect used for international communication and record-keeping in many parts of the Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian empires, including parts of the administration at the imperial court of Persepolis. These texts have even greater value because they are so closely connected with documents written in other ancient languages by the same administration at Persepolis. “We don’t have many archives of this size. A lot of what’s in these texts is entirely fresh, but this also changes what we already knew,” said Annalisa Azzoni, an assistant professor at the Divinity School of Vanderbilt University. Azzoni is a specialist on ancient Aramaic and is now working with the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project at the Oriental Institute. “There are words I know were used in later dialects, for example, but I didn’t know they were used at this time or this place, Persia in 500 B.C. For an Aramaicist, this is quite an important discovery.” Clearer images delivered more quickly Scholars from the West Semitic Research Project at the University of Southern California helped the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project build and install an advanced electronic imaging laboratory at the Oriental Institute. Together, the two projects are making high-quality images of the Aramaic texts and the seal impressions associated with those texts. They are distributing the new images to the international research community through the Internet. Inked and incised texts pose different problems that call for different imaging solutions. Making high-resolution scans under polarized and filtered light reveals the ink without interference from stains and glare, and sometimes shows faded characters that cannot be seen in ordinary daylight. Using another advanced imaging technique, called Polynomial Texture Mapping, researchers are able to see surface variations under variable lighting, revealing the marks of styluses and even the traces of pens in places where the ink itself has disappeared. Distributing the results online will give worldwide communities of philologists and epigraphers images that are almost as good as the original objects―and in some cases actually clearer than the originals―to study everything from vocabulary and grammar to the handwriting habits of individual ancient scribes. Researcher Marilyn Lundberg and her colleagues from the West Semitic Research Project built two Polynomial Texture Mapping devices from scratch at the Oriental Institute. They trained Persepolis Fortification Archive Project workers in using them, and also in using filtered light with a camera equipped with a high-resolution scanning device. Now a stream of raw images is uploaded every day to a dedicated server maintained by Humanities Research Computing at Chicago, then uploaded for post-processing at the University of Southern California. Fully processed imagery is available on InscriptiFact, the online application of the West Semitic Research Project, and in the Online Cultural Heritage Research Environment, the online application of the Persepolis Fortification Archive Project. Seeing the whole picture The Polynomial Texture Mapping apparatus looks a bit like a small astronomical observatory, with a cylindrical based topped by a hemispherical dome. The camera takes a set of 32 pictures of each side of the tablet, with each shot lit with a different combination of 32 lights set in the dome. After post-processing, the PTM software application knits these images to allow a viewer sitting at a computer to manipulate the apparent direction, angle and intensity of the light on the object, and to introduce various effects to help with visualization of the surface. “This means that the scholar isn’t completely dependent on the photographer for what he sees anymore,” said Bruce Zuckerman, Director of the West Semitic Research Project and its online presence, InscriptiFact. “The scholar can pull up an image on the screen and relight an object exactly as he wants to see it. He can look at different parts of the image with different lighting, to cast light and shadow across even the faintest, shallowest marks of a stylus or pen on the surface, and across every detail of a seal impression.” “This is a wonderful way to look at seal impressions,” said Elspeth Dusinberre, another Persepolis Fortification Project collaborator. Dusinberre, an associate professor of classics at the University of Colorado, is studying the imagery and the use of seals impressed on the Aramaic tablets. “Some of the impressions are faint, or incomplete, on curved surfaces or damaged surfaces. Sometimes Aramaic text is written across them. You need to be able to move the light around to highlight every detail, to see the whole picture.” The Persepolis Fortification Archive also includes about 10,000 to 12,000 other tablets and fragments with cuneiform texts in Elamite―a few hundred of them with short secondary texts in Aramaic. There are also about 4,000 to 5,000 others with impressions of seals, but no texts, and there are a few unique documents in other languages and scripts, including Greek, Old Persian and Phrygian. “That’s what makes this group of Aramaic texts so extraordinary,” Stolper said. “From one segment of the Persepolis Fortification Archive, the Elamite texts, we know a lot about conditions around Persepolis at about 500 B.C. When we can add a second stream of information, the Aramaic texts, we’ll be able to see things in a whole new light. They add a new dimension of the ancient reality.” Impacts are far-reaching The collaboration between the Oriental Institute at Chicago and the West Semitic Research Project at Southern California began with support from a substantial grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2007. To date, the teams have made high-quality images of almost all the monolingual Aramaic Fortification tablets. The next phase of the work, supported by a second Mellon grant that runs through 2010, will make images of the short Aramaic notes written on cuneiform tablets, seal impressions on uninscribed tablets and previously unrecorded Elamite cuneiform texts. The tablets have been studied since they came to Chicago in 1936, and many of them have been sent back to Iran. Oriental Institute scholar Richard T. Hallock published about 2,100 of the Elamite texts in 1969, and Margaret Cool Root and Persepolis Fortification Archive Project collaborator Mark Garrison are completing a three-volume publication of the impressions made on those documents by about 1,500 distinct seals. These publications have had far-reaching results. “They have transformed every aspect of modern study of the languages, history, society, institutions, art and religion of the Achaemenid Persian Empire,” Stolper said. “No serious treatment of the empire that Cyrus and Darius built and that Alexander destroyed can ignore the perspectives of the Fortification Archive.” “If that is the effect of a sample of one component of the archive,” added Garrison, “imagine what will happen when we can have larger samples and other components, and not just the written record, but the imagery, the impressions made by thousands of different seals that administrators and travelers―the men and women who figure in the texts―employed.” By 2010, the collaborating teams expect to have high-quality images of 5,000 to 6,000 Persepolis tablets and fragments, and to supplement these with conventional digital images of another 7,000 to 8,000 tablets and fragments. The images will be distributed online as they are processed, along with cataloging and editorial information. “Thanks to electronic media, we don’t have to cut the parts of the archive up and distribute the pieces among academic specialties,” said Stolper. “We can combine the work of specialists in a way that lets us see the archive as it really was, in its original complexity, as one big thing with many distinct parts.”

The Rubaiyat in Medieval Jerusalem!

The pottery and ceramics created by the peoples of the Persian Plateau throughout the ages have always been striking. This beautiful fragment demonstartes yet again their mastery of a craft honed over thousands of years. From Art Daily March 11, 2009 Jug Inscribed with a Persian Love Poem Discovered in Excavations of the Israel Antiquities Authority JERUSALEM.- A fragment of a pottery vessel of Persian provenance that dates to the Middle Ages (12th-13th centuries CE) was discovered in an archaeological excavation directed by Dr. Rina Avner, on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, in the Old City of Jerusalem, prior to construction by a private contractor. The fragment is treated with a turquoise glaze and is adorned with floral patterns and a black inscription. While studying the artifact prior to publication, Rivka Cohen-Amin of the Israel Antiquities Authority discerned that the inscription on the neck of the vessel is written in Persian. The inscription consists of a line that was taken from a quatrain. The inscription, which was translated by Dr. Julia Rabanovich of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reads: “Was once the embrace of a lover that entreat”. The inscription will be published by Dr. Nitsan Amitai-Preiss of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, within the framework of the final excavation report. According to Rivka Cohen-Amin the words are from the Rubaiyat, by the poet Omar Khayyam. Omar Khayyam was an astronomer, mathematician and one of the most famous Persian poets of the Middle Ages (11th-12th centuries CE). The following is the complete translation of the poem: Rubaiyat, by Omar Khayyam این کوزه چو من عاشق زاری بوده است This clay pot like a lover once in heat در بند سر زلف نگاری بوده‌ست A lock of hair his senses did defeat ایندسته که بر گردن او می‌بینی The handle that has made the bottleneck its own seat دستی‌ست که برگردن یاری بوده‌ست Was once the embrace of a lover that entreat The phenomenon of a Persian pottery vessel inscribed with a poem is known elsewhere in the world; however, this is the first occurrence of such a vessel in Israel. The question of how the vessel came to be in Jerusalem is a mystery – was it brought here by merchants or could it possibly have been a gift someone presented to his Jerusalemite lover?

Sasanian Burial Practice Indicates Special Status for Women

Interesting - CAIS NEWS © Latest Archaeological and Cultural News of Iran and the Iranian World Discovery of a New Sasanian Burial Method in Pahlauj 21 September 2008 LONDON, (CAIS) -- An anthropologist said that the nails around the ancient Pahluj skeletons imply an unknown style of burial carried out for females during the late Sasanian or early post-Sasanian era (650-851 CE). “We face an unknown style of burial, in which nails have been located upside down on the earth, maybe in order to hold a sheet of wood above the bodies in the graves,” Farzad Foruzanfar told the Persian service of CHN on Saturday. “The bodies have not been buried in coffins because no remains of wood have been found under the skeletons. However we have found a brown powder of wood on some of the nails’ points,” he added. The graves were discovered during the rescue excavation, which has begun at the site near the village of Mirar-Kola in northern Iran in late August. Pahluj, which is home to several sites dating back from 1000 BCE to 9th century CE, will be completely submerged under water and mud when the Alborz Dam becomes operational. Pahluj is located in the Savadkuh region of Mazandaran Province. “The nails have been used in the females’ burial and they have not been found in the males’ graves. This indicates that females were buried in a unique manner during that period of the times,” Foruzanfar explained. “The nails were located parallel at specific points at the same distances,” he added. Mehdi Abedini, the director of the archaeological team working at the 3000-year-old site had previously said that the bodies were buried with nails beside their knees and beside their left shoulders, and bunch of nails over and under their heads and feet. “The existence of bunch of the nails over and under the bodies’ heads and feet is very strange indeed and we have no explanation for them yet,” Foruzanfar said. The archaeologists have also discovered silver spoons, bracelets, and beads made of lapis lazuli at the graves. Due to the discoveries, experts believe that women enjoyed a special status during the late Sasanian, early post-Sasanian period in the region.

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These burials are well within the historical period, and yet there evidently is no written record of this particular burial practice and its meaning! Will it ever be known? Here is an initial report of the discovery on September 10, 2008 from the Fars News Agency: Pre-Islamic Necropolis Found in Northern Iran TEHRAN (FNA)- Archeologists have discovered a burial ground and a unique burial ritual dating back to Sassanid and post-Islamic eras in northern Iran. Recent excavations in the northern province of Mazandaran uncovered a burial ground, and brought to light a unique burial ritual. Nails were discovered around the ancient bodies, but archeologists say that these did not come from any coffin. The nails were found in a deliberate pattern. One nail was found beside the knee, one beside the left shoulder, some on top of the head and a few others under the feet, CHN reported. The specific practice has not been observed in any other historical study. Archeologists therefore believe the discovery of the burial ground could be of great importance. The graves all belong to young people and children, and the nail patterns have turned into a puzzle which archeologists are keen to try and solve. Silver spoons and bracelets, as well as turquoise beads were found near graves. Further studies of the burial site and the relics are expected to reveal more clues as to the meaning behind the nails, and the identities of those buried.

Guest Blogging!

Hola darlings! I spent all day after 11:30 a.m. yesterday working on my April column for Chessville. I made good progress; some hours working today adding images of the chess femmes and fact-checking should wrap it up. I was so wrapped up in working on the column that I didn't do any blogging here or any research that I'd intended to do this weekend. I'm just not as energetic as I used to be and I pooped out last night around 7 p.m., just in time to watch "On the Beach" on PBS. What an absolutely depressing movie. I cried through most of it and will never watch it again - ever! The piece that I promised Judith Weingarten back in November is now up and running at her blog, Zenobia: Empress of the East; it's a brief look at a few reasons why chess may have been invented in Persia and not in northern India (most chess historians accept the out of India theory). Please check it out and while you're there, take a look at Judith's great blog!

I have been searching for connections between the God Mithras and Chess. Any help will be Gladly welcomed. Here is a post from the Delphi. Persian Temple of Mithras Found in Germany Author: The Tehran Times Source: The Tehran Times Title: PERSIAN TEMPLE OF MITHRAS FOUND IN GERMANYArcheologists in southwest Germany have uncovered a 1,800-year-old temple built to the Persian god Mithras while they were working on a Roman dig, authorities in the town of Gueglingen said Friday.Well preserved parts of an altar, jewelry and pieces of a fresco have been discovered, said Andrea Neth, director at the site, which will be opened to the public on Sunday, AFP reported.Additonal Article Link: [Click HERE] Options: [Read Full Story]