This article publishes a new join in SAA 18 100, a letter providing crucial historical detail about the assassination of Sennacherib in 681 BC. Published in Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires no. 2 (June 2019): 88-90.

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]

A little-known feature of the vast migrant labour system that supplied South Africa’s gold-mining industry was the Deferred Pay Interest Fund. For much of the 20th century, a portion of the wages owed to African mine workers was deferred and remitted to them only at the end of their contracts. This is well-known, but what happened to the i…[Read more]

As revealed by later Greek records, the Naxos revolt was a socio-economic conflict between rural interests and commercial trading interests which led to the much larger Greek/Persian wars. While the socio-economic component is true, these three archaeological texts also show that the revolt was triggered by a drought and sustained by religious…[Read more]

The text on this large stone stele is a defense of Phoenician temple activity. Consequently, it was likely placed outside the main temple in the Phoenician trading port of Nora on the southern coast of Sardinia. Its theme is also Phoenician in that it is promoting emotion magic to overcome a drought. This drought is most likely the drought of 730…[Read more]

Three texts inscribed on gold foil were found in a holy relic repository located in a side room to a Pagan temple near Pygi, Italy. Their language is Alphabetic Akkadian yet their text styles are Phoenician and Etruscan. They are a philosophical debate about the cause and cure for a recent drought. The Phoenician text argues that emotion magic…[Read more]

El lugar de importancia en la historia de la cultura hispánica medieval que ocupan los Claros varones de Castilla (BETA texid 1714) es absolutamente indiscutible. Su autor, Fernando de Pulgar, desde su evidente y marcado “pensamiento literario forjado en el tránsito de la Castilla enriqueña a la isabelina”, es considerado por muchos como el más…[Read more]

Three previously untranslated Philistine (Sea Peoples) texts are translated in the empire language of Alphabetic Akkadian/Aramaic. Their script style is in the Minoan lineage which began with the Phaistos Disk and continued on with Linear A. Unlike those texts these texts are now fully alphabetic meaning their inner word signs are consonants…[Read more]

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]

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.

Philology haunts the humanities, through both its defendants and its detractors. This article examines the construction of philology as the premier science of the long nineteenth century in Europe. It aims to bring the history of philology up to date by taking it seriously as a science and giving it the kind of treatment that has dominated the…[Read more]

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.

For centuries, continental Europeans have come to Wales for numerous reasons. During the Romantic period some came seeking a rural idyll, whilst others in the Victorian era travelled as industrial spies, and during times of war many refugees escaped to Wales to find shelter from persecution. Not only have continental Europeans left their traces…[Read more]

This article explores the nature of remembering as a lake, with a lake, or through a lake; the differential relationships, knowledge, and perspectives contained within; and the potentially troubling implications found at the intersection of scientific and humanistic perspectives on lake being. It also reflects on the totalizing nature of assuming…[Read more]

This article reflects on how our own technological developments can help us see Herodotus’ archetype of historical inquiry in a new light. It explores various aspects of place in the Histories—as spaces that are lived, constructed, and relational—to show how and why the idea of place can be such a powerful means for linking information and under…[Read more]

La valía militar y guerrera de Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba, universalmente conocido por su apodo de Gran Capitán, comenzó a difundirse casi de inmediato en la literatura de los tiempos que le tocaron vivir, hasta el punto de que se podría considerar al héroe cordobés como “la primera figura contemporánea a cuyo alrededor se agolpa esa intensa ac…[Read more]