What is the Tsinghua *Rui Liangfu Bi 芮良夫毖? Genre, Prosody, Theme, and Form in a Warring States Verse-album

Four sources of the texts of Shangshu are referred to in this article: fragmented texts found on Chu Bamboo Slips of Warring States kept in Shanghai Museum, fragmented texts found on Bamboo Slips of Warring States kept in Tsinghua University, the transcript edition of Shangshu of the Tang Dynasty in ancient script kept in Japan, and the Gengwu edition of Shangshu kept in Korea. These editions represent, respectively, different tralatitious periods of Shangshu. The Tang transcript edition kept in Japan was written in ancient script; the Gengwu edition in Korea contains both ancient and modern scripts; the Bamboo Slips kept in Tsinghua University are regarded as a transcription of the Warring States period. Of the Yueming chapter (part one), many texts in the Bamboo Slips that are kept in Tsinghua University are not compatible with those in the tralatitious editions, or are in contradiction with historical records. Even on a single slip, the texts are often in disorder and unreadable. However, this does not mean that the readable and fluent texts in ancient transcript and print editions testify to the authenticity of the materials. From the level of document dissemination, if the bamboo slip texts are authentic, then we can conclude that there were errors, missing characters, and transcribing errors in the three parts of Yueming in the period as early as the later Warring States period. A comparative study of different editions shows the disagreement in paragraphing and characters in the Tang transcript edition kept in Japan and the Gengwu edition kept in Korea which reflects the version of Shangshu after the merging of the modern and ancient script editions.

Together with material archaeology and the literary tradition of the Hebrew Bible, epigraphy is one of the main sources for the history of ancient Israel in the ninth century BCE. Although limited in number, West Semitic inscriptions throw some light on the history of this period. This chapter examines ninth-century West Semitic inscriptions and the historical information they contain regarding the history of ninth-century Israel. It starts with the Hebrew inscriptions, followed by inscriptions in the neighbouring southern Levant countries as well as Aramaic inscriptions from Upper Mesopotamia. The chapter deals first with inscriptions in ‘Canaanite’ dialects before analysing inscriptions written in Aramaic dialects. The Mesha and Tel Dan steles are the main West Semitic inscriptions that help us understand the history of Israel and Judah during the ninth century BCE.

The article analyses different translation versions of science fiction films directed by Denis Villeneuve with the aim of determining their semantic similarity through NLP analysis. There are four groups of metrics used in text analysis: semantic (cosine similarity and Word Mover’s Distance), lexical (Levenshtein distance and Jaccard coefficient), vector (Euclidean and Manhattan distance) and correlation (Pearson correlation coefficient and Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient). The material of the study is the subtitled translations into Russian of the ‘Dune: Part One’ and the dubbed and subtitled translations of the ‘Blade Runner 2049’. This study applies linguistic methods such as machine learning method, natural language processing (NLP), semantic similarity analysis and sentiment analysis, descriptive method, comparative analysis method and contrastive analysis method. The results of the complex digital analysis of two translation versions of four different fragments of the films show high scores of semantic metrics, while the overall similarity of the texts is closer to the mid-level, which is influenced by lexical metrics. Lexical metrics are also influenced by the type of translation: dubbing may change the lexical component due to phonetic synchronisation; subtitled translation, on the other hand, is closer to the source, but tends to be compressive. The sentiment analysis indicates that the tone of the source text is consistently conveyed in the translations; thus, the translated texts align with the source text in terms of emotionality as well.

Yue gong qi shi 越公其事 is a recently published manuscript from the Tsinghua University collection. The manuscript provides a new version of the well-known story of King Goujian of Yue 越王句踐 (r. 496–464 b.c.e.), who turned defeat into victory and overcame Yue's formidable rival, the state of Wu 吳. My exploration of this text focuses on its two most notable aspects. First, the story about the policy of self-strengthening allegedly adopted by Goujian offers new insights into the evolution of political thought in the Warring States period. Second, the text allows deeper insight into the genre of didactic historical narratives that became prominent at a certain point of time between the Springs-and-Autumns (Chunqiu 春秋, 770–453 b.c.e.) and the Warring States (Zhanguo 戰國, 453–221 b.c.e.) periods.

This article examines the development and spatial distribution of loom weights in Tel Reḥov and its vicinity during the twelfth through eighth centuries BCE. Non-perforated cylindrical weights (“spools”), dated to the early twelfth century BCE, are discussed in relation to their appearance in the Mediterranean world. Clay weights of the eleventh and tenth centuries were replaced during the tenth and mainly the ninth century BCE by specialized production of gypsum weights, only to be replaced again by clay weights in the eighth century BCE. The ninth-century textile industry (mainly of linen) at Tel Reḥov exceeds household needs and probably reflects commercial activity within the Northern Kingdom of Israel and perhaps beyond, towards the Phoenician coast and Cyprus. A relationship between weaving and ritual activities is suggested.

In this paper, I look at the Tsinghua University * Wuji manuscript as an argumentative essay whose deliberate purpose is to integrate moral values, i.e. the Five Virtues, into the narrative structure of the text through the systematic use of correlated categories primarily based on the number Five. This kind of correlative and number-based rhetoric constitutes the most salient feature of the * Wuji text. It provides new evidence on the early development of correlative thinking and correlative cosmology in the Warring States period.

The paper attempts to identify early stages of state formation in Judah, before the great leap forward in population growth, building activities and literacy in the late-eighth and seventh centuries BCE. It surveys the Late Bronze, Iron I and early Iron II finds in Jerusalem in particular and the ]udahite countryside in general, and then turns to ninth-century finds in the Shephelah and the Beer-sheba Valley. The finds are evaluated according to the ‘Low Chronology’ system for the Iron Age strata in the Levant. The article proposes that early steps toward statehood in Judah can be detected in the ninth century BCE, and that Israel under the Omride dynasty played an important role in the territorio-political and cultural processes that took place at that time in the southern kingdom of Judah.

Saul, Benjamin, and the Emergence of Monarchy in Israel: Biblical and Archaeological Perspectives edited by Joachim J. Krause, Omer Sergi, and Kristin Weingart, [Ancient Israel and Its Literature], SBL Press, Atlanta, 2020, pp. xii + 233, £28.00, pbk

Phonetics, the study of the sounds of a language, relies for an ancient language on evidence from writing, and this complicates the interpretation of phonological facts. In the case of Greek, several problems arise: the chronological scope of the documentation (from the fifteenth century bce to the fifth century ce), geographical dispersion (from the western Mediterranean to the Indus and from the Black Sea to Egypt), and from the multiplicity of uses (official and private inscriptions and papyri, literature). In the syllabaries which preceded Greek alphabets, the problems posed by both of them are very different: the rudimentary notation of syllabograms gave way to greater precision in alphabetic writing with the distinction between consonants and vowels. The first syllabary noting Greek is the Linear B, attested in the Mycenaean period (fifteenth to twelfth century bce) in the first millennium in Cyprus, a syllabary was used until the third century bce. Appearing from the ninth century bce, epichoric alphabets often reflect local differentiations. Greek dialects, barely perceptible in Mycenaean times, were expressed in writing, before gradually giving way to a common standard, the Koine and its graphic notation, the Ionian-Attic alphabet, which has remained in use to the present day. From Homer to the Church Fathers, Greek literature has known multiple linguistic forms, in the most diverse genres; in poetic works, metrics open up access to certain concrete linguistic realities, tackled on occasion by ancient grammarians; each literary genre is in principle linked to a particular dialect, used without any relation to the authors’ vernacular. But the evolution of the language and its variations are revealed mainly through epigraphy; even official inscriptions, which have a tendency to become standardized, reveal phenomena for which private inscriptions provide the clearest evidence. These phenomena include usages related to social conditions. Accent, which is essential to the functioning of the Greek language, is much less easy to grasp. Later, as early as the second century bce, there was also interference with Latin.

The Neo-Assyrian Empire in the Southwest: Imperial Domination and Its Consequences

In the last decade (2010–2020), various discoveries have been made concerning the Kingdom of Judah, which existed from the tenth century BCE until the destruction of the First Temple in the early sixth century BCE (ca. 1000–586 BCE). The main discoveries are organized in four chronological stages: one stage for every hundred years. The new data gives us a better understanding of the various stages in the kingdom's history. The discoveries from the tenth and ninth centuries BCE, which are the subjects of intense debate between different research approaches, are particularly notable. In the last decade we saw a tremendous contribution by interdisciplinary studies in "archaeological sciences". These are summarized separately, as they are not necessarily related to a particular century. Beyond the various viewpoints and debates, the most important development, in my view, is the awarness that drawing a hasty and unfounded connection to historical events to explain any archeological phenomenon in the Kingdom of Judah is a mistake. So is the notion that any development in the Kingdom of Judah was necessarily the result of foreign influence. Detailed research shows that the Kingdom of Judah evolved gradually as a result of local factors.

In 2017, a luxury bronze bucket was discovered near Kladina village in the Czech Republic. The bucket is dated to the ninth century BCE, and it is a unique artefact, having no parallel in Europe. Stylistically, it is a “transition type” dated between the Late Bronze Age (11th–10th century BCE) and the Hallstatt Period (eighth–sixth century BCE). Detailed palynological analysis of verdigris and soil infill of the bucket identified a wide range of pollen grains belonging mainly to herbs, with bitter‐sour properties, and cereals. Subsequent chemical analysis by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry of soil extracts revealed the presence of the compound miliacin that is a chemical marker of millet. Moreover, a starch analysis reveals the presence of enzymatically modified starch grains. These data, with the help of archaeological knowledge, indicate that the original content may have been millet‐based food/beverage with addition of herbs. We suggest that this luxury vessel, given the contents we have identified, was deposited, in the late spring/summer months of the year.

This study examines selected finds from three archaeological periods at Tell es-Safi in Israel, confidently identified as biblical Gath, the capital of the Philistine pentapolis. The article describes selected archaeological finds from the final period of Philistine occupation of the city in the ninth century BCE, from the period of the site’s abandonment, and from the period of the Judahite town at the site in the late eighth century BCE. The discussion is accented with passages from the Hebrew Bible. Philistine Gath was destroyed by the Aramean forces of Hazael of Damascus, ca. 830 BCE, and dramatic evidence of that attack and destruction is shared. Evidence of the powerful earthquake of the mid-eighth century BCE is also related. Discoveries from the late eighth-century BCE town we call Judahite Gath are laid forth, as well as the signs of the town’s destruction by the Assyrian forces of Sennacherib in 701 BCE.

The article is devoted to the study of semantic uncertainty in the texts of legal and media discourses using online programs. The object of the study is conflict factors caused by semantic uncertainty in problem areas. An assessment and description of problem areas in machine translation of media texts was carried out, taking into account lexical ambiguity. The prerequisites for possible conflict situations when translating texts on legal and environmental topics are described. In achieving this goal, both traditional linguistic and innovative methods of analysis (use of artificial intelligence technologies) were used. The characteristics of the philosophical category of uncertainty are given according to the following methodology: 1) assessment of the semantic uncertainty of reverse machine translation texts, taking into account the discursive factor; 2) comparison of legislative and media texts for their similarity to the original after machine translation. The comparative analysis took into account the following parameters: the total number of words in the texts; similarity of texts in percentage terms; presence of various fragments. It is shown that discursive and linguistic means of realizing semantic uncertainty have a significant impact on the reader’s perception of the text. A comparison of two discourses of the same thematic focus on environmental management revealed the influence of the context (discourse) and the intermediary language on the degree of translatability of the text. It has been established that semantic uncertainty and tension zones as conflict-generating factors depend on the quality of translation programs. The study took into account possible errors associated with the limited capabilities of the online programs used. Prospects for studying problem areas in reverse machine translation include expanding sources of empirical material, involving other computer-assisted translation systems, and the possibility of applying research results in an expanded context of “potential conflict”.

A far-reaching reign of David and Solomon is not very likely for the early first millennium in the general development of the southern Levant, and there is no extrabiblical evidence for the assumption of a United Monarchy. Against this background, this chapter outlines an alternative view. In stark contrast to the biblical view, it is shown that Judah was ruled by the Omrides and Nimshides in the ninth and eighth centuries BCE and was never truly independent. Judah was a subsidiary kingdom of Israel, ruled temporarily as a secundogeniture. This better explains the striking sameness of names of the Judahite and Israelite kings in the ninth century BCE.