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The Revelations Of Ancient Graffiti

ramonmercado

ramonmercado

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Ancient 'Graffiti' Unlock the Life of Average People
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 131640.htm

An ancient Greek graffito from Beth She'arim. (Credit: Image courtesy of American Friends of Tel Aviv University)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 6, 2012) — A professor of classics is translating and analyzing ancient inscriptions from columns, stones, tombs, floors, and mosaics of ancient Israel to uncover the life of the common men -- and women -- of antiquity.

History is often shaped by the stories of kings and religious and military leaders, and much of what we know about the past derives from official sources like military records and governmental decrees. Now an international project is gaining invaluable insights into the history of ancient Israel through the collection and analysis of inscriptions -- pieces of common writing that include anything from a single word to a love poem, epitaph, declaration, or question about faith, and everything in between that does not appear in a book or on a coin.

Such writing on the walls -- or column, stone, tomb, floor, or mosaic -- is essential to a scholar's toolbox, explains Prof. Jonathan Price of Tel Aviv University's Department of Classics. Along with his colleague Prof. Benjamin Isaac, Prof. Hannah Cotton of Hebrew University and Prof. Werner Eck of the University of Cologne, he is a contributing editor to a series of volumes that presents the written remains of the lives of common individuals in Israel, as well as adding important information about provincial administration and religious institutions, during the period between Alexander the Great and the rise of Islam (the fourth century B.C.E. to the seventh century C.E.).

These are the tweets of antiquity.

There has never been such a large-scale effort to recover inscriptions in a multi-lingual publication. Previous collections have been limited to the viewpoints of single cultures, topics, or languages. This innovative series seeks to uncover the whole story of a given site by incorporating inscriptions of every subject, length, and language, publishing them side by side. In antiquity, the part of the world that is now modern Israel was intensely multilingual, multicultural, and highly literate, says Prof. Price, who has presented the project at several conferences, and will present it again this fall in San Francisco and Philadelphia. When the volumes are complete, they will include an analysis of about 12,000 inscriptions in more than ten languages.

History's "scrap paper"

The project represents countless hours spent in museum storerooms, church basements, caves and archaeological sites, says Prof. Price, who notes that all the researchers involved have been dedicated to analyzing inscriptions straight from the physical objects on which they are written whenever possible, instead of drawings, photos or reproductions. The team has already discovered a great amount of material that has never been published before.

Each text is analyzed, translated, and published with commentary by top scholars. Researchers work to overcome the challenges of incomplete inscriptions, often eroded from their "canvas" with time, and sometimes poor use of grammar and spelling, which represent different levels in education and reading and writing capabilities -- or simply the informal nature of the text. Scholars thousands of years in the future might face similar difficulties when trying to decipher the language of our own text messages or emails.

Most of these inscriptions, especially the thousands of epitaphs, are written by average people, their names not recorded in any other source. This makes them indispensable for social, cultural, and religious history, suggests Prof. Price. "They give us information about what people believed, the languages they spoke, relationships between families, their occupations -- daily life," he says. "We don't have this from any other source."

The first volume, edited by Prof. Price, Prof. Isaac, and others and focusing on Jerusalem up to and through the first century C.E., has already been published. New volumes will be published regularly until the project comes to a close in 2017, resulting in approximately nine volumes.

"I was here"

Graffiti, which comprise a significant amount of the collected inscriptions, are a common phenomenon throughout the ancient world. Famously, the walls of the city of Pompeii were covered with graffiti, including advertisements, poetry, and lewd sketches. In ancient Israel, people also left behind small traces of their lives -- although discussion of belief systems, personal appeals to God, and hopes for the future are more prevalent than the sexual innuendo that adorns the walls of Pompeii.

"These are the only remains of real people. Thousands whose voices have disappeared into the oblivion of history," notes Prof. Price. These writings are, and have always been, a way for people to perpetuate their memory and mark their existence.

Of course, our world has its graffiti too. It's not hard to find, from subway doors and bathroom stalls to protected archaeological sites. Although it may be considered bothersome and disrespectful now, "in two thousand years, it'll be interesting to scholars," Prof. Price says with a smile.

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by American Friends of Tel Aviv University.
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New graffiti clue to the exact date of the 79 AD / CE Vesuvius eruption ...

Pompeii Graffiti May Rewrite Time Line of Vesuvius Eruption
Graffiti scribbled on the wall of a Pompeii house that was being renovated in A.D. 79 may help solve a long-standing mystery about when Mount Vesuvius erupted that year, burying the Roman settlement in ash.

There is little doubt among archaeologists and historians that Vesuvius erupted and destroyed Pompeii in the year A.D. 79. But experts still debate the time of year when the volcano blew its top.

The newly discovered graffiti, written in Latin, indicates that it was created on a date that, on our calendar, corresponds to Oct. 17. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/63866-pompeii-graffiti-rewrites-vesuvius-timeline.html
 
Yithian said:
Did they really need to point out that the grafitti was 'written in Latin'?
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Hmm. Was it all written in Latin? I wonder if there was any in other contemporary languages such as Greek, Egyptian, Carthaginian, Phoenician, Cretan, Aramaic. Even if the population spoke and wrote Latin, there were servant and slaves, and it's possible some of them were literate and in other languages. As a seaport, there might have been traders visiting from other parts. Something to research.
 
Pompeii was not a Latin town.

I believe the native language was Oscan?

But it was pretty multicultural, so any contemporary language would be possible
 
madmath said:
Hmm. Was it all written in Latin? I wonder if there was any in other contemporary languages such as Greek, Egyptian, Carthaginian, Phoenician, Cretan, Aramaic. Even if the population spoke and wrote Latin, there were servant and slaves, and it's possible some of them were literate and in other languages. As a seaport, there might have been traders visiting from other parts. Something to research.
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Fair point--and not one I'm qualified to answer.

Kondoru said:
Pompeii was not a Latin town.

I believe the native language was Oscan?

But it was pretty multicultural, so any contemporary language would be possible
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By 79 AD Latin was definitely the dominant language. The graffiti is said to be interesting specifically because it offers so many examples of the kind of demotic Vulgar Latin that wasn't conveyed in more formal literature, although there was an argument that features of it indicate an Oscan substratum that survived in some form.

This article debunks the theory:

Screenshot 2020-07-28 at 04.19.53.png


Concluding:

Screenshot 2020-07-28 at 04.17.31.png
Screenshot 2020-07-28 at 04.17.40.png


Full Article (Free registration and reading):
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40266785?seq=1
 
Two aspects to the "written in Latin": firstly, there are a lot of perfectly intelligent people who have never had reason to know that Latin was the language of the ancient Romans; secondly, many other languages were spoken at the time.

It is quite common in TV quiz shows to have a question along the lines of "What is the main language of..." or "What is the currency of..." followed by the name of a sizeable modern country. People sometimes get these wrong, not because they are stupid but because they have never had reason to know.

As for the ancient Romans, Latin was by no means the perfectly architectured language of the school room. It was not a single perfect and universal language of the empire.

In the modern world, there are towns in England where the dialect is "I was, you was, he was, we was, you was, they was," and towns where it is, "I were, you were, he were..." alongside the "correct" (received) version of "I was, you were, he was, we were, you were, they were."

We have different regional pronunciation of common words, and whole areas of the country have their own dialects. All this is in a part of the world where almost everyone has access to radio, TV, print media, the internet, and education, and we would expect some homgeneity of language.

The Roman empire was huge, with many weeks of travelling from one side to the other. Conquered peoples no doubt spoke local patois mixing dog Latin with their tribal tongues. Slaves from the same background probably used their original languages between themselves, partly for privacy and partly to maintain their sense of identity. Meanwhile, social climbers would try to talk "proper Latin" and probably made hilarious mistakes that revealed their common origins. The real upper classes often spoke Greek between themselves.

So, pointing out that the graffiti was in Latin was worthwhile.
 
C'est vrai . . .
 
Around the 3rd century BCE a Roman (soldier?) living near Hadrian's Wall went to a lot of trouble to carve a penis and a graffiti insult into a building stone.
Penis graffiti and explicit insult carved into ancient stone 'raises eyebrows' at Roman fort

Archaeologists in the U.K. recently had their "eyebrows raised" when they discovered an X-rated carving on a stone at a Roman fort. The graffiti features a crude penis accompanied by a phrase that experts say translates to "the shitter" next to someone's name, and it seems to have been etched out by a Roman soldier to insult a comrade.

The stone, which is 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide and 6 inches (15 cm) tall, was uncovered May 19 at Vindolanda, the ruins of a Roman fort just south of Hadrian's Wall ... The archaeologists think the graffiti was carved into the stone sometime during the third century A.D. ...

The stand-out feature of the stone is the girthy graffiti, but researchers were more interested in the writing that accompanied it. Experts recognized the phrase "SECUNDINUS CACOR" as an abbreviation of "Secundinus cacator," which translates to "Secundinus, the shitter," according to the statement. ...

Phallus carvings were not uncommon in the Roman Empire: The new carving is the 13th phallus uncovered at Vindolanda, and only a quarter of the site has been fully excavated. In June 2021, a carving of a naked horseman and his exposed member was also uncovered at Vindolanda. Phalluses were normally carved as a symbol of good luck or fertility, according to the statement.

However, the recently discovered graffiti is clearly meant as an insult, which surprised researchers. The depth of the lines carved into the rock suggests that the artist spent a lot of time working away at the stone, which highlights how passionately they despised Secundinus, according to the statement. ...

Placing the stone somewhere visible at the fort would have been one of the most effective ways to shame someone at the time. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/roman-penis-graffiti-stone-uk
 
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