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]

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]

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 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]