5 ms·

3k-Year-Old Golden Bowl Adorned with Sun Motif Found in Austria

90 points by diodorus 5y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
It's amazing how many stuff in the ancient world infringe on Larry Ellison's trademarks. First there was the Oracle at Delphi, and now this. I am sure whoever, owns this object will be hearing from Oracle lawyers pretty soon about the need to get a license for the Sun motif.
arthurcolle 5y ago
That's hilarious the archaeologist's named is Michal Sip and he discovered a bowl What do you call it when people are named similarly to their profession?
- dwringer 5y ago
  Perhaps the concept of nominative determinism[0], or (more generally) the saying from Latin, "nomen est omen"[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nomen_est_omen https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nomen_est_omen
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    "Nominative determinism" is when there are reasons to suppose that the profession was inspired by the name. 'Aptronym' is a term for the expression "name checks".
  - ABraidotti 5y ago
    What's the opposite -- where someone has an unfortunate name for their industry? I know of a developer with the last name Null.
    - joshuaissac 5y ago
      Inaptronym: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym#Inaptronyms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym#Inaptronyms
- gimmeThaBeet 5y ago
  It's called nominative determinism
  - arthurcolle 5y ago
    Thanks this is what I was looking for My last name is Colle so maybe I should start a glue company
- marton78 5y ago
  No idea, but my zoology professor was called Prof. Elepfandt.
  - arthurcolle 5y ago
    Andreas Elepfandt? That is amazing. What are his thoughts on elephants?
- mdp2021 5y ago
  'Aptronym'. Edit: it should actually be 'aptonym', I do not know where that 'r' came from.
- i1856511 5y ago
  The library investigator's name is actually Bookman?
- lastofthemojito 5y ago
  Previously on HN: Things Unexpectedly Named After People https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888725
chmod775 5y ago
Looks like time wasn't too kind to it. I wonder what it would have looked like 3,000 years ago - how precise the original craftsmanship was.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Looking at it with the eye of someone who did a lot of metal working: the driving of the sheet was done expertly and given how old it is what amazes me is how well some of the detail stands out and how detailed it is. What an amazing object.
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    It must have been glorious.
mrweasel 5y ago
I half expected it to be Sun Microsystems and the Motif GUI based on the funky capitalization.
sillyquiet 5y ago
Some cultural context, this bowl is probably associated with the Urnfield culture, a wide-spread cultural horizon that was probably associated with Indo-European language speakers (probably late proto-Indo-European or pre-proto-Celtic). The sun motif is naturally widespread among many unrelated cultures, but in this case is probably associated with a dawn or sun deity (*seh₂u-el, cognate with Sol, Helios, etc). Sometimes female, sometimes male depending on the culture and period, but in this period, probably female.
- cabalamat 5y ago
  A similar culture (i.e. late PIE), with similar mythology, created the Trundholm sun chariot -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trundholm_sun_chariot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trundholm_sun_chariot.
caublestone 5y ago
I guess in 3k years archeologists will discover black bricks and say “it appears to have an apple motif. These people seemed to worship some apple god.”
- euroderf 5y ago
  At least one AOL CD will survive whatever civilisation-level apocalypse.
- motohagiography 5y ago
  A not un-funny observation. I used to suggest that after seeing what the equestrian world was like, that future archeologists would see how the wealthiest people of this era spent huge fortunes on temples and buildings for horses, when in fact they were just for horse shows - and this suggested that the ancient Egyptians probably didn't worship cats at all, but that cat shows were just a really big social thing back then. Someone from thousands of years in the future discovering the now ancient internet could interpret the same thing.
  - neilk 5y ago
    Every now and then you see anthropologists admitting that "ritual object" is just their way of saying they have no idea what it's for Some of the Moai of Rapa Nui (aka the giant stone heads on Easter Island) used to have eyes. The fragments of the whites of the eyes - almond-shaped white stones with a central hole - were misidentified as "ritual bowls" for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai#Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai#Eyes
- iamcurious 5y ago
  Interestly, it was also associated with black turtles and a fear of buttons. Some scholars think that there were two different apple gods, both named Steve, while others insist that it was two aspects of the same deity. Records point that there was a war for the skies between the thunder god, Macromedia Flash,and the apple god, Steve. The thunder god was huge and lived in the cloud, so Steve gave its followers very small boxes and put the clouds on them. Little by little there were no more clouds big enough for the thunder god and he falled into oblivion.
slingnow 5y ago
If I'm running an excavator at a construction site and I dig up a relic like this, do I get to keep it? Do all items of a certain historical significance immediately get confiscated by a government body?
- stickydink 5y ago
  It's going to depend on the country, and exactly what you dig up (bones is going to be different than gold coins). But in the US, dig up a gold bowl in your backyard? You'd do well to contact a museum or something, but it's yours.
- heikkilevanto 5y ago
  At least here in Denmark (probably most of Europe), anything really old you dig up belongs to the state. They do pay some kind of compensation for the finder.
  - rolleiflex 5y ago
    Same in Turkey, and this applies to ancient (not modern) shipwrecks as well. While diving my cousin and uncle found an ancient shipwreck off the Aegean coast of Turkey that was recently revealed by moving silt, reported it to the state, and have gotten a fairly significant compensation out of it. Eventually their find ended up in the local antiquities museum. There are some things that are ancient but common so you can keep, like Roman or Byzantine coins, but even then, you should bring it under for review so they can either pay you the value of it and hold on to it, or give you back with confirmation saying it’s not rare and OK to keep as a keepsake.
fvold 5y ago
Is it weird that I pictured the logo of Sun Microsystems?
- dcminter 5y ago
  ...and OSF Motif! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software)
  - hestefisk 5y ago
    Through the looking glass ….
- jjtheblunt 5y ago
  if so, you're not the only one with that idea!
inostia 5y ago
Apparently this bowl is typical of a Bronze Age culture known as the "Urnfield culture". They made some amazing hats[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urnfield_culture#/media/File:Cappello_d'oro_di_berlino,_1000_ac_ca._01.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urnfield_culture#/media/File:C...
ncmncm 5y ago
So this culture spread across central and northern Europe at just about the same time as every city on the Mediterranean was being sacked, producing a 300-year dark age (Egypt and mesopotamia excepted). It seems to matter whether they were all sacked first, or after.

90 points by diodorus 5y ago

It's amazing how many stuff in the ancient world infringe on Larry Ellison's trademarks. First there was the Oracle at Delphi, and now this. I am sure whoever, owns this object will be hearing from Oracle lawyers pretty soon about the need to get a license for the Sun motif.

arthurcolle 5y ago

That's hilarious the archaeologist's named is Michal Sip and he discovered a bowl What do you call it when people are named similarly to their profession?

dwringer 5y ago
Perhaps the concept of nominative determinism[0], or (more generally) the saying from Latin, "nomen est omen"[1]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nomen_est_omen https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/nomen_est_omen
- mdp2021 5y ago
  "Nominative determinism" is when there are reasons to suppose that the profession was inspired by the name. 'Aptronym' is a term for the expression "name checks".
- ABraidotti 5y ago
  What's the opposite -- where someone has an unfortunate name for their industry? I know of a developer with the last name Null.
  - joshuaissac 5y ago
    Inaptronym: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym#Inaptronyms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym#Inaptronyms
gimmeThaBeet 5y ago
It's called nominative determinism
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  Thanks this is what I was looking for My last name is Colle so maybe I should start a glue company
marton78 5y ago
No idea, but my zoology professor was called Prof. Elepfandt.
- arthurcolle 5y ago
  Andreas Elepfandt? That is amazing. What are his thoughts on elephants?
mdp2021 5y ago
'Aptronym'. Edit: it should actually be 'aptonym', I do not know where that 'r' came from.
i1856511 5y ago
The library investigator's name is actually Bookman?
lastofthemojito 5y ago
Previously on HN: Things Unexpectedly Named After People https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23888725

chmod775 5y ago

Looks like time wasn't too kind to it. I wonder what it would have looked like 3,000 years ago - how precise the original craftsmanship was.

jacquesm 5y ago
Looking at it with the eye of someone who did a lot of metal working: the driving of the sheet was done expertly and given how old it is what amazes me is how well some of the detail stands out and how detailed it is. What an amazing object.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  It must have been glorious.

mrweasel 5y ago

I half expected it to be Sun Microsystems and the Motif GUI based on the funky capitalization.

sillyquiet 5y ago

Some cultural context, this bowl is probably associated with the Urnfield culture, a wide-spread cultural horizon that was probably associated with Indo-European language speakers (probably late proto-Indo-European or pre-proto-Celtic). The sun motif is naturally widespread among many unrelated cultures, but in this case is probably associated with a dawn or sun deity (*seh₂u-el, cognate with Sol, Helios, etc). Sometimes female, sometimes male depending on the culture and period, but in this period, probably female.

cabalamat 5y ago
A similar culture (i.e. late PIE), with similar mythology, created the Trundholm sun chariot -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trundholm_sun_chariot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trundholm_sun_chariot.

caublestone 5y ago

I guess in 3k years archeologists will discover black bricks and say “it appears to have an apple motif. These people seemed to worship some apple god.”

euroderf 5y ago
At least one AOL CD will survive whatever civilisation-level apocalypse.
motohagiography 5y ago
A not un-funny observation. I used to suggest that after seeing what the equestrian world was like, that future archeologists would see how the wealthiest people of this era spent huge fortunes on temples and buildings for horses, when in fact they were just for horse shows - and this suggested that the ancient Egyptians probably didn't worship cats at all, but that cat shows were just a really big social thing back then. Someone from thousands of years in the future discovering the now ancient internet could interpret the same thing.
- neilk 5y ago
  Every now and then you see anthropologists admitting that "ritual object" is just their way of saying they have no idea what it's for Some of the Moai of Rapa Nui (aka the giant stone heads on Easter Island) used to have eyes. The fragments of the whites of the eyes - almond-shaped white stones with a central hole - were misidentified as "ritual bowls" for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai#Eyes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moai#Eyes
iamcurious 5y ago
Interestly, it was also associated with black turtles and a fear of buttons. Some scholars think that there were two different apple gods, both named Steve, while others insist that it was two aspects of the same deity. Records point that there was a war for the skies between the thunder god, Macromedia Flash,and the apple god, Steve. The thunder god was huge and lived in the cloud, so Steve gave its followers very small boxes and put the clouds on them. Little by little there were no more clouds big enough for the thunder god and he falled into oblivion.

slingnow 5y ago

If I'm running an excavator at a construction site and I dig up a relic like this, do I get to keep it? Do all items of a certain historical significance immediately get confiscated by a government body?

stickydink 5y ago
It's going to depend on the country, and exactly what you dig up (bones is going to be different than gold coins). But in the US, dig up a gold bowl in your backyard? You'd do well to contact a museum or something, but it's yours.
heikkilevanto 5y ago
At least here in Denmark (probably most of Europe), anything really old you dig up belongs to the state. They do pay some kind of compensation for the finder.
- rolleiflex 5y ago
  Same in Turkey, and this applies to ancient (not modern) shipwrecks as well. While diving my cousin and uncle found an ancient shipwreck off the Aegean coast of Turkey that was recently revealed by moving silt, reported it to the state, and have gotten a fairly significant compensation out of it. Eventually their find ended up in the local antiquities museum. There are some things that are ancient but common so you can keep, like Roman or Byzantine coins, but even then, you should bring it under for review so they can either pay you the value of it and hold on to it, or give you back with confirmation saying it’s not rare and OK to keep as a keepsake.

fvold 5y ago

Is it weird that I pictured the logo of Sun Microsystems?

dcminter 5y ago
...and OSF Motif! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software)
- hestefisk 5y ago
  Through the looking glass ….
jjtheblunt 5y ago
if so, you're not the only one with that idea!

inostia 5y ago

Apparently this bowl is typical of a Bronze Age culture known as the "Urnfield culture". They made some amazing hats[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urnfield_culture#/media/File:Cappello_d'oro_di_berlino,_1000_ac_ca._01.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urnfield_culture#/media/File:C...

ncmncm 5y ago

So this culture spread across central and northern Europe at just about the same time as every city on the Mediterranean was being sacked, producing a 300-year dark age (Egypt and mesopotamia excepted). It seems to matter whether they were all sacked first, or after.