Global antiquity! 🌎 “Ancient inscriptions written in Indian languages [= Old Tamil] have been discovered on Egyptian tombs in the Valley of the Kings.” The graffiti discussed here is so cool and indicate Indian travellers to Roman Egypt in the 1st-3rd centuries CE www.livescience.com/archaeology/...
Maybe, but chicken-sounds aren’t “linguistic” anyways, so the painter would only need to know which letters make which sounds - which is pretty plausible
It’s weird! Probably to represent nonhuman sounds(?) they must have had a lot of fun with it
Surely it’s chicken noises? A random mix of chi/qoppa/digamma/epsilon sounds like chickens squabbling: …khekhqwkhekhqwkhqekhe
The program of the Leiden Summer School in Languages and Linguistics 2026 (6-17 July) is now online!
www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/education...
Hopefully, there will be some courses of your liking! (Hittite perhaps?)
The application form will be online soon, too, so keep an eye out for it.
Don't want to get my hopes up, but this sounds genuinely exciting. The seventh century is one of the most important era's in Western Eurasian history, witnessing the rise of Islam, the end of Ancient Persia, and the dramatic reduction of Eastern Rome losing its status as Mediterranean Empire.
Fins ara es pensava que l'hittita s'hauria deixat d'escriure per mor de la caiguda de l'imperi hittita devers el 1200 aC. Segons G. Marchesi, qui n'estudia uns fragments monumentals (cosa ja insòlita), a Carquemix va perviure fins al s. VIII aC. En promet un estudi.
www.academia.edu/161282819/A_...
oh well
Just TEN DAYS LEFT to submit your abstracts for @emjlynajsh.bsky.social's and my conference on EM practical texts @sheffieldcems.bsky.social. The conference has hybrid capability, and we have six self-funded student/non-waged ECR travel bursaries of £75 each.
sites.google.com/sheffield.ac...
Looking forward to running a stall all about ancient alphabets at the public Read Between the Lines fair in Oxford next week (Cheney School, Tuesday 11th). Come by to learn all about the history of writing — plus a short play about emojis!
@TheIrisProject @RumbleMuseum
pub.marq.com/40443503-03d...
That’s too kind of you — it really is a good book!
@theirisproject.bsky.social
For anybody interested in the subject who can’t make it, I highly recommend the recent book by @dannybate.bsky.social, which has inspired a lot of our activities.
Our stall will feature a handful of my homemade wax tablets (the ancient iPad), as well as the opportunity to learn which historical alphabet best suits your name, and how to best create your own alphabet.
Looking forward to running a stall all about ancient alphabets at the public Read Between the Lines fair in Oxford next week (Cheney School, Tuesday 11th). Come by to learn all about the history of writing — plus a short play about emojis!
@TheIrisProject @RumbleMuseum
pub.marq.com/40443503-03d...
New issue of Kadmos Vol. 64, Nos.1-2 (2025) www.degruyterbrill.com/journal/key/... @dgb-ancientstudies.bsky.social @fsrphil.bsky.social
Unsurprised, but disappointed, to see that Newnham College's JRFs are being defined as explicitly trans-exclusionary: newn.cam.ac.uk/research/res...
If you are a trans academic, or an academic who feels you cannot apply for these fellowships because they are trans-exclusionary, you should consider writing to Newnham College to let them know.
*Such* an enjoyable weekend after so much preparation, hosting New Voices on the Polis here in Oxford
So grateful to our excellent speakers, to the inimitable @nakhthor.bsky.social, and to my fellow organisers for making this all possible
And now: an early night and a lie-in, I think
Babe wake up, new letter of the alphabet just dropped
"To Aulus Sergius Italicus, patron. His freedmen made this."
Oops, what we meant to say was: "To Aulus Sergius Italicus, patron. Maxsimus his son AND his freedmen made this."
Amusing case of a later addition to the stone. Maxsimus was NOT gonna be left out of this dedication!
#EpigraphyTuesday
![Recruitment has begun to open a fourth gender centre at Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge, with eight planned across the country, each seeing 25 new child patients a month. Kingdon, who also chairs the provider network of new NHS gender clinics, said finding staff has been a struggle. “That’s due to the politicised and sometimes toxic nature of this topic,” she said. “It’s not necessarily the sort of environment that has people queueing up to work in it.”
Palmer said a particular challenge had been navigating “a hugely divided lobby of stakeholders”, adding: “There’s the very liberal end of the spectrum that think [we should focus purely] on access to a transitional arrangement. At the other end, people say NHS resources should not be spent on this area at all.”
Great Ormond Street and Alder Hey children’s gender services opened in June and Bristol started seeing patients in November. So far, 250 children have been seen, with a waiting list of 6,000 that is coming down after peaking in February.
“When we started, we had some individuals waiting for more than six years to be seen,” Palmer said. “By the summer, if our maths is correct, no one will be waiting for more than four years to be seen, but it will take another three or four years to get to ... something much more manageable.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cyefpiziml7b24sxpd74axq7/bafkreihnycksxiosjfqptop5xinjmihtvwrcso5pyccoarn73eyylrj2ge)
This is just the NHS admitting they are denying treatent to trans children
This is of very great concern. Labour has effectively declared war on trans academics and students. By defining transphobia as a “free speech” issue it is going to protect transphobes in higher education while preventing trans-inclusion. This is the opposite of “free speech”.
What pigments were used in the frescoes of Pompeii? Study published on the subject
www.finestresullarte.info/en/archaeolo...
I like Tolga Örnek’s 20003 “docu-drama” on the Hittites, with both Jeremy Irons and real spoken Hittite(!). A bit silly at times but very well-researched youtu.be/_9S40sXeJ2k?...
From the archives: George Bean, writing to a young Anne Jeffery, insisting on free & open academic communication by taking a shot at Louis Robert
oh dear! I hope you recover quickly
