While it has been known for a long time that human languages can change in various ways, it was only in the early 19th century that scholars realized that certain aspects of language change proceed in a surprisingly regular manner, allowing us to reconstruct historical stages of languages which have never been documented in written sources. The…[Read more]

While it has been known for a long time that human languages can change in various ways, it was only in the early 19th century that scholars realized that certain aspects of language change proceed in a surprisingly regular manner, allowing us to reconstruct historical stages of languages which have never been documented in written sources. The…[Read more]

The weblog Computer-Assisted Language Comparison in Practice, published on the Hypotheses platform for scientific blogging, offers tutorials and discussion notes on computer-assisted approaches to the history and diversity of languages. A substantial part of its content is contributed as part of the ERC Starting Grant “Computer-Assisted Language C…[Read more]

Two well preserved Punic texts from Carthage are translated and fully justified according to the scholar’s standard showing that Phoenician letter style texts are actually in the Akkadian empire language just like all other pre-Hellenistic Mediterranean texts. The black temple plaque has a poignant yet sophisticated argument blaming first one d…[Read more]

These seven alphabetic gravestone texts and one-coin texts from Sidon date to the Hellenistic era based upon their religious themes and their Greek Island letter styles. In contrast, one earlier coin style from Sidon from the Persian period has the Phoenician letter style. Their underlying language is Akkadian which was the empire language of…[Read more]

This paper provides evidence that Alphabetic Akkadian was being used in the Greek sphere of influence as an ancient authority temple language (like Latin in near modern Europe) prior to the mid-400’s BCE when the nationalistic fervor surrounding their war with the Persian empire replace it with Greek. Its Greek use is also evidenced by the 499 B…[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.

What happens when an exercise succeeds too well? Could a school exercise designed to teach
a foreign language also influence how a discipline interprets its central literary texts?
For centuries in Britain, Latin versification was the pinnacle of both pedagogy and scholarship,
the ultimate proof of a good teacher and a good pupil. Every day,…[Read more]

Giuseppe PEZZINI, Terence and the Verb “To Be” in Latin, «Oxford Classi-cal Monographs», Oxford University Press, Oxford 2015, XVI + 355 pp., ISBN 978-0-19-873624-0, 75 £.

Questo volume è il frutto della concreta collaborazione tra la SIAC e il Centro di Studi sulla Fortuna dell’Antico “Emanuele Narducci” di Sestri Levante. Le due istituzioni, insieme con il Liceo “Marconi-Delpino” di Chiavari e “Mediaterraneo S.R.L.” di Sestri Levante, hanno, infatti, proficuamente cooperato per la promozione delle XIV Giornate d…[Read more]

F. Prost, Quintus Cicéron, Petit Manuel de la campagne électorale – Marcus Cicéron, lettres à son frère Quintus 1, 1 et 2

J. Wildberger, The Stoics and the State. Theory – Practice – Context

The panel discussion was moderated by Prof. Jan Miernowski (Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw/Department of French & Italian, University of Wisconsin-Madison).

Review of . STRAUMANN, Crisis and Constitutionalism. Roman Political Thought from the Fall of the Republic to the Age of Revolution – M.C. ALEXANDER, Roman Amoralism Reconsidered. The Political Culture of the Roman Republic and Historians in an Era of Disillusionment

The modern names for the Hebrew vowels (qameṣ, pataḥ, segol, ṣere, ḥiriq/ḥireq, ḥolem, shuruq/shureq, qibbuṣ/qubbuṣ) are derived from a variety of medieval sources. The pair of qameṣ and pataḥ are the oldest, both having evolved in the earliest stages of Masoretic analysis of vocalisation. The remaining names are products of three different…[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]

Ancient Near Eastern Law. The oldest documented law comes from the ancient Near East. The earliest legal texts come from about 2600 B.C.E., a few hundred years after the invention of writing, and they predate by millennia the documentation for law from the other early civilizations of China and India.

Amnesty and Reform Texts. Edicts of amnesty and reform decreed by a king intervened in economy and society, invalidating loans, pledges and sales, cancelling debts, and issuing behavioral instructions to government officials. They were dated to a specific time at which their provisions would come into effect.

Der computergestützte Sprachvergleich (Wu et al. 2020) hat zum Ziel, Sprachvielfalt und Sprachgeschichte mit Hilfe einer Mischung aus computerbasierten und nicht-automatischen aber formalen Methoden zu untersuchen und dadurch grundlegende Fragen zur Entwicklung spezifischer Sprachfamilien (Sagart et al. 2019) oder zur Typologie von Sprachvielfalt…[Read more]

Selbst Gott hat eine Geschichte. Vom Vergessen der Geschichte und der Notwendigkeit einer geschichtlichen Dimension in der Exegese – am Beispiel der Frühgeschichte des Gottes Israels, G. Essen/C. Frevel (Hg.), Theologie der Geschichte – Geschichte der Theologie (QD 294), Freiburg 2018, 10-39