Puppets of ancient Greece

It's very likely that the Greeks had puppets--or more accurately marionnettes--and put on  shows.  Certainly their children had wooden dolls with articulated arms and legs that would have been suitable for the purpose with the additions of only a few strings.

The first known mention comes from Herodotus, where he says the Egyptians had a figure, certain parts of which could be moved by a string.  The word he uses for this is neurospasta, which means something like string-puller.  Next, Xenophon, in his Symposium, has Socrates present when a troupe of entertainers puts on a show that includes neurospasta.  The same word.  On the face of it, this is case closed, except by context it might also refer to the sinews of a boy contortionist who is mentioned as being present.  The third mention is Plato, who in his Laws refers to children being entertained by a thaumiston, which means something like a show of wonders.  Most people take this to mean a puppet show.  There are enough other mentions in passing that it seems a safe assumption.

Assuming they did have marionnettes, no one knows what stories they told, except that it can't have been Punch and Judy: that's a much later creation.


Meanderings and Muses: Writing For A Living...It's All In Your Head

Meanderings and Muses is a terrific author site.  It's run by Kaye Barley, a lady who loves mysteries.  Not that she writes very much on it herself.  Instead, since Kaye knows pretty much everyone who writes mysteries and thrillers, every few days a published author appears with a guest post.  Each year the contributor list looks like a Who's Who of mystery writers.

Today it's the turn of your correspondent.  Here is me, on the subject of Writing For A Living...It's All In Your Head.


Semitic languages

The Indo-European family of languages stretched from India to Europe, as is obvious from the name.  Everything from Sanskrit to Latin, Persian, Greek, German, and their descendants are all closely related.

There was one instrusion of non-Indo-European into this vast geographical expanse, and that was the Semitic family of languages.  Today the best known Semitic languages are Arabic and Hebrew.  Back in the days of Nicolaos and Diotima, by far the most important Semitic language was Phoenician.  Beginning with The Ionia Sanction, Nico will start to hear Phoenician being spoken about the place as the hangs out around sea ports.  The Phoenicians were massively successful sea traders.

The Phoenician language had an immense influence on world history, not because of anything about the language per se, but because at some point, some Phoenician genius decided it would be cool to write down his language, so he came up with this alphabet:

Aleph  alph
Beth  bet
Gimel  gaml
Daleth  delt
He  he
Waw  wau
Zayin  zai
Heth  het
Teth  tet
Yodh  yod
Kaph  kaf
Lamedh  lamd
Mem  mem
Nun  nun
Samekh  semk
Ayin  ain
Pe  pe
Sadek  sade
Qoph  qof
Res  rosh
Sin  shin
Taw  tau


Look familiar?

There's unicode support for Phoenician, believe it or not, but not even recent browsers support the extension so I was stuck and had to insert the letters as images from wikipedia.

As with all things involving the word Semitic, there's a lot of argument and politics involved, but it's apparent there must have been a Proto-Semitic language from which the others descended, just as there was a Proto-Indo-European language.  Proto-Semitic probably began in Africa, because Semitic is part of a much larger family called Afroasiatic.  The cognates (similar words) between the Afroasiatic languages are very much looser than the close connections between Indo-European languages, but still good enough to show family groups.  Semitic is the only part of the family found outside Africa.  The oldest recorded Semitic language, as far as I'm aware, is the Akkadian that was written in cuneiform on clay tablets.  The cuneiform was borrowed from Sumerian, which definitely was not Semitic (this is sort of like the LinearA/Linear B situation).  The closest living relative of Phoenician is Hebrew.  Arabic derived from a southern variant of the same family.

You too can decipher ancient texts

Thanks to The History Blog for pointing out a fascinating research project in which YOU get to decipher for-real ancient mysterious texts.  The Oxyrynchus Papyri were discovered by a couple of archaeologists, over a hundred years ago, in an ancient garbage tip.  The problem is, they're in a zillion tiny pieces.  And of course fragment shapes don't match precisely because papyrus has worn away and they don't necessarily have all the bits.  They need to identify the letters on all the fragments, so a computer can then speedily push bits back and forth until everything forms valid ancient Greek words.

So now Oxford University's enlisted the help of some astrophysicists, who are very good at sticking lots of tiny pictures together, to build a site where anyone can help them by identifying the letters on the fragments.  They need our help because computers are not conspicuously good at identifying handwritten ancient Greek.  People however are good at that sort of thing, even if they don't know a word of the language.

It's known for sure that there are some major lost works hidden in those fragments.  They've already pulled out parts of a lost play by Euripides.  




But if you come across any fragments that say Ἀτλαντὶς, just pass over them quietly, okay?