Two early and still readable linear texts were found carved on the walls of turquoise mine L at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai of Egypt by William Petrie in 1906. They were never properly translated. These texts were inscribed within bas-relief steles indicating they were officially sanctioned texts. These texts reference a dimmed sun which would…[Read more]

Translations of three graffiti type texts dating from the last years of ancient turquoise mine at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai blame jealousy for an ongoing drought. This drought is continuing due to the lack of magic crafters needed to overcome that negative emotional magic. These texts are in alphabetic Akkadian using a script which derives…[Read more]

Translations of three graffiti type texts dating from the last years of ancient turquoise mine at Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai blame jealousy for an ongoing drought. This drought is continuing due to the lack of magic crafters needed to overcome that negative emotional magic. These texts are in alphabetic Akkadian using a script which derives…[Read more]

The inscriptions at Wadi el-Hol just north of Memphis, Egypt are a late variant of Minoan Linear A showing its progression towards alphabetic writing with its treatment of phoneme signs more as wildcard signs able to be followed by any vowel sound. The Minoans were in Egypt during the early 18th dynasty as revealed by Minoan artwork discovered at…[Read more]

The inscriptions at Wadi el-Hol just north of Memphis, Egypt are a late variant of Minoan Linear A showing its progression towards alphabetic writing with its treatment of phoneme signs more as wildcard signs able to be followed by any vowel sound. The Minoans were in Egypt during the early 18th dynasty as revealed by Minoan artwork discovered at…[Read more]

These are the first Minoan Linear-A translations ever made. Linear-A was solvable because its texts fit between the previously translated and highly pictographic Phaistos Disk (Olmsted May 2020) and the previously translated first alphabetic texts from the Sinai (Serabit el-Khadim) (Olmsted not yet published). The underlaying language of all these…[Read more]

The Phaistos Disk is a hybrid phonic and alphabetic text written in the empire language of Akkadian dating to about 1800 BCE. It is a philosophical debate about the cause of a recent drought and it represents the first use of alphabetic letters. It has many letter sign similarities with the pure Alphabetic Akkadian texts found at Serabit el Khadim…[Read more]

This note examines the use of the term “daric” in 1 Chr 29:7 for its ideological purposes, concluding that the anachronism was deployed purposely to signal resistance to imperial rule.

This article presents two newly-discovered fragments of Linear B tablets from recent excavations at the site of Ano Englianos, Bronze Age Pylos, along
with a third possibly inscribed object.

The final publication is available at http://www.degruyter.com.

This course explores the art, archaeology, and culture of the Greek world from prehistory to the Roman period. The course focuses on architecture, sculpture, painted pottery, and wall painting as its main object classes and situates artistic and stylistic developments within their social, political, and historical context. We will consider issues…[Read more]

This course explores the art, archaeology, and culture of the Greek world from prehistory to the Roman period. The course focuses on architecture, sculpture, painted pottery, and wall painting as its main object classes and situates artistic and stylistic developments within their social, political, and historical context. We will consider issues…[Read more]

This course introduces students to the study of Mediterranean material culture by focusing on the development of ancient Greek and Roman architecture from the Late Bronze Age to the beginning of Late Antiquity. The survey begins in the Greek world, examining the formal and technical development of Greek architecture. Topics considered will include…[Read more]

The Plague of Justinian began in 541 and quickly spread over the area of the late antique Mediterranean. There it continued in more than a dozen plague waves until the middle of the 8th century, causing much suffering and a great number of deaths. Academia traditionally debates it as the end of Antiquity. Isochronal, the effect of climate change…[Read more]

Interior design of medieval and modern pubs.

Durch die immer schneller voranschreitende Stadtentwicklung reichten Straßenbezeichnungen bald nicht längei aus, um sich ähnelnde Häuser zu unterscheiden. So musste ein Wirt sein Gasthaus den Einheimischen und Fremden kenntlich und attraktiv machen. Diese Kennzeichnung erfolgte mit diversen Hilfsmitteln, die sich im Laufe der Zelt entwickelten und…[Read more]

Computergestützte Methoden ermöglichen es, Informationen zv Raumnutzung und Bewegungsabläufen in architektonischen Strukturen zu gewinnen. Dies kann bei der Interpretation ergrabener Wirtshäuser hilfreich sein. Ein geeignetes Werkzeug hierfür ist die Space-Syntax-Analyse. So kann mit der angewandten Software UCL Depthmap 10 (Turner/Friedrich 2011…[Read more]

Review of said book.

Kingship has been a political mainstay in human history, even when peoples have lacked monarchic rulers. This essay examines the book of Samuel as a source for the cultural history of ancient Judah, focusing on the question of how Samuel’s representations of monarchy would function for its readers in the early Second Temple era. In this era, w…[Read more]

This chapter focuses on Ezekiel as a text, i.e., a collection of writings meant to be read again and again. As a text, it presents a range of ideas in dialogue with one another—and sometimes in tension—thus providing ample space for continual discussion and reinterpretation of its ideas among its original communities of readers in antiquity. Eze…[Read more]

Since the discovery of the Laws of Hammurapi in December 1901–January 1902,1
the dependence of biblical law upon Mesopotamian law has been hotly debated. Among
the most contentious issues is the abjudication of homicide, and the discussion has focused
on particular odd cases in biblical law, such as an ox that gored or assault on a p…[Read more]