7 ms·
Seikilos epitaph
- mirimir 8y ago> ... in about 1893, as it "was broken at the bottom, its base was sawn off straight so that it could stand and serve as a pedestal for Mrs Purser's flowerpots"; this caused the loss of one line of text, i.e., while the stele would now stand upright, the grinding had obliterated the last line of the inscription. Sigh.
- vanderZwan 8y agoSadly, history is full of stories like that: > Mummy brown was a rich brown bituminous pigment, intermediate in tint between burnt umber and raw umber, which was one of the favorite colors of the Pre-Raphaelites. [It] was originally made in the 16th and 17th centuries from white pitch, myrrh, and the ground-up remains of Egyptian mummies, both human and feline. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown
- dogma1138 8y agoThe Egyptian's mummified everyone not just pharaohs and other people of note. Mummies have been used for resources by the local populous heck much more important things were used for local resources many monuments were turned into essentially quarries by the locals. Exporting "mummies" and their byproduct was going in Egypt since for ever during roman times mummified remains were used in medicine, alchemy, pigments and much more. Mummia which is the "medical" use of mummified remains is documented in Materia Medica which is essentially the oldest surviving medical encyclopedia and the documented use of it dates back to at least Imhotep which was an Egyptian physician (before he was made a god). While some of these artifacts may have had historical value in hindsight you are essentially arguing against recycling.
- paviva 8y agoDe materia medica refers to "mūmiyā", a kind of asphalt, and not to human mummies. The use of human remains began during the Middle Ages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummia
- utopcell 8y agoWhen the antikythera mechanism was recovered, it was embedded in a lump of mud. Nobody realized what it was so they left it in storage in a museum until a long time after, when the lump, now dried up, broke into pieces revealing its secrets.
- DanBC 8y agoSee also some of the standing stones from Avebury stone circle being taken and used for building material. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avebury https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/avebury https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/avebury
- mirimir 8y agoYes, it's been the norm to reuse stone from older construction. It's often more or less in the right place, and already reasonably shaped. Also, during cultural changes, destruction of old stuff was itself a key goal. And not just stone. Parchment from old manuscripts got scraped for reuse, or became book bindings. It's just ironic that this stone turned out to be so valuable.
- tuomosipola 8y agoOne of those unexpected things that has been preserved from the ancient times. I actually learned to sing this, I think it's quite sad. The 1951 film Quo Vadis features Peter Ustinov as emperor Nero singing a version of this in English with changed lyrics, Oh lambent flame: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBIswXv28GI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBIswXv28GI
- Apocryphon 8y agoHow serendipitous that the most everlasting song would be about the evanescence of existence!
- maxs 8y agoHow it may have sounded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xERitvFYpAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xERitvFYpAk
- tuomosipola 8y agoI think the pronunciation is quite good. Not your classical Attic Greek pronunciation but it shouldn't be since the stele is from a later time and from Anatolia where people would have spoken a Ionic dialect originally.
- fifnir 8y agoHi, are you saying this with a some linguistic expertise ? As a Greek without much background in linguistics etc I noticed a some pretty strong mistakes (to my ear) and since the original is pretty understandable to me I assume (potentially mistakenly) that the pronunciation can't have changed THAT much. She pronounces ai as 'aee' but ai definitely an 'ɛ' sound (as in head: /hɛd/) in modern greek She then pronounces 'meden' as mɛdɛn when it should be midɛn (η is an ee sound, at least in modern geek) and she puts a strongish h in holos (ὅλως) which again seems like a person without any greek knowledge reading the latin alphabet version of the word and assuming how it's pronounced... she says zɛn instead of zeen/zin So again, as a modern greek with no particular knowledge of how ancient pronunciation worked, this was pretty bad to my ears.. If you know more than me please correct me, it would be great to know
- hcayless 8y agoIt's a pretty good rendition. Greek pronunciation has shifted a lot from ancient to modern. See, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iotacism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iotacism. Among other things, the accentuation has gone from pitch, which comes out nicely in this version (though we don't know precisely what it sounded like), to stress. So while it may look quite familiar to you reading it, it would have sounded very different. There was a Modern Greek speaker in the intro to Ancient Greek class I took in college, and I remember him remarking how disorienting it was.
- CalRobert 8y agoCiv V turned me on to this song, and it's been intermittently stuck in my head ever since. I hum it to my infant daughter often (along with Ocarina tunes from Zelda..) The lyrics are bittersweet, but I find them fitting for a parent to sing to their child. ``` While you live, shine have no grief at all life exists only for a short while and Time demands his due ```
- 24gttghh 8y agoAh so that's the "Peace" song that plays when Alexander comes grovelling. Very cool.