Stele Research Articles

Technology Strategy as Rosetta Stone

Before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, Egyptian hieroglyphicswere indecipherable. The stone tablet with its message inscribed in threelanguages, one of which could be read because it was similar to modernGreek, enabled classical scholars to break the code and enabled the wallsof the pyramids to again speak.Immensely detailed, electronically encrypted customer data are thepresent business world’s inscrutable writing on the wall. Businesses aresucceeding, to various degrees, in understanding these messages—ac-cording to how accustomed they are to viewing their core business asinformation management. For example, the financial sector has long un-derstood transactions and dollar movements as bits of information andits technology strategy has emphasized massively networked process-ing. As a result, we are used to spending money without ever touchingit. The transition to web-based banking, brokering, and other financialservices has been rapid.The utility industry has also embraced information technology. Butunlike the financial sector utilities have a huge asset base in productionhardware—generating plant, transmission, and distribution. Technologystrategy has focused on these assets—coordinating them, improvingtheir reliability and performance. In discharging its responsibility to so-ciety of maintaining this infrastructure, the utility industry treats energyas a physical production process and a resulting commodity.

Das meroitische Wort für Vater

It is argued that the Meroitic word nete means father and that netese means my father. This is based on the comparison of parallel of expressions in Egyptian royal stelae from the Napatan empire and on the fact that nete occurs side by side with tadahe for which a meaning mother has already been established.

Preliminary notes on the Stelae of Efrata and Gidim of northern Shoa

Résumé: L'auteur présente un site à stèles inédit du Nord Choa. Parmi elles, des stèles phalliques et anthropomorphes suggèrent des rapprochements avec le mégalithisme de la moitié sud de l'Ethiopie.

Etruscan and Lemnian appear to be twigs of the Pelasgian Branch of the Indo-European Language Tree

Bell and Howell Information and Learning: Foreign text omitted (...) In the light of the recent discovery that the Etruscan language is interpretable when viewed as a Creole language based on Ancient Greek, the notionally related Lemnian language is analyzed from this viewpoint. Despite the paucity of Lemnian inscriptions, and consequently of Lemnian words, a plausible set of translations is obtained. These are presented herewith, complete with their etymological bases and archaeological implications. Key Words: Etruscan, Lemnian, Pelasgian, Greek languages Introduction Among legends concerning the origin of the Etruscans, there is one grouping them originally with the inhabitants of the islands of Lemnos and Imbros into a nation known as Pelasgian (de Simone). Subsequently, so goes the story, some of this nation emigrated to Italy to become the (...) or Etruscans, while others remained in Lemnos. Interest in this legendary Etruscan-Lemnian relationship was heightened by the discovery, at Kaminia in Lemnos, of a funerary stele that bore a picture of a warrior, surrounded by an inscription in an archaic Greek alphabet. This alphabet was very similar to that adopted by the Etruscans (Kretschmer). The discovery was made around 1880 (Pauli, 1886), and it occasioned a long and lively debate over the relationship of the language of the inscription to Etruscan (Pallottino). Transliteration of Text of the Stele The Lemnian Language Lemnian uses essentially the same Greek alphabet as do Etruscan and Lydian. It further resembles Lydian (but not Etruscan) in using the character for I anomalously, and the symbol (down arrow) for q, but it eschews the many other Lydian anomalies. It has both aspirates: ph and th, for which it uses the appropriate Greek characters. Phonologically it has a distinctly Anatolian character, both as to vowels (using only one of the o/u pair, but atypically preferring o over u); and, as to stopped consonants, using only the unvoiced k and t (but avoiding the issue regarding p). It probably derived the aspirated stops: ph and th from Indic bh and dh. The text has a complement of diphthongs and glides matching that of archaic Etruscan. Syntactically, as far as one can tell with such a small sample, it seems cognate with Anatolian languages such as Hittite. Morphologically, however, it expresses its borderline geographic location in evincing a mixed Anatolian-Indic character. As in both Hittite and Lydian, it uses the particle -m as an enclitic copula. Etruscan-Lemnian Comparison Etruscan uses with complete orthodoxy (including the correct characters for l, p, and q) the same Greek alphabet that Lemnian employs with the alterations noted above. Etruscan phonology is similar to Lemnian, but it uses the vowel u rather than o, and adds the sound f, for which it uses the Lydian character 8. Etruscan syntax is completely anomalous, as would be expected in a Creole language, but, for the same reason, its morphology (apart from absence of b, d, and o) is Greek orthodox. Its resemblances to Lemnian consist of: (i) same alphabet; (ii)similar phonology (but lacking o);and (iii) the three words: maru

Peter Hulin's Hand Copies of Shalmaneser III's Inscriptions

The late Peter Hulin devoted much of his scholarly life to the study of the inscriptions of Shalmaneser III, king of Assyria (859–824 BC). He copied and studied a number of texts of this monarch excavated at Nimrud. Among them, the inscriptions on the throne base (ND 11000) were published in 1963. Unfortunately, however, his death in 1993 prevented him from publishing the further fruits of his effort. After Hulin's death his file of Shalmaneser III texts was placed at the disposal of Professor A. K. Grayson for use in his third volume of the series Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods: Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium BC II (858–745 BC), Toronto, 1996 (RIMA 3). Thus Hulin's study of several new texts from Nimrud, as well as some others, was effectively utilized and incorporated in RIMA 3, with full respect being paid to his contribution. The purpose of this paper is to supplement RIMA 3 by publishing Hulin's hand copies of Shalmaneser texts found among his papers in a publishable state, together with several photographs, and to add some philological notes on them. Among Hulin's copies, those of the lengthy texts on the large stone tablet ND 6237 (below, No. 1) and on the broken statue N D 5500 (below, No. 2) are of primary importance. These texts were originally assigned to Hulin by Professors M. E. L. Mallowan and D. J. Wiseman for publication in the journal Iraq. His copies were entrusted to Dr Jeremy Black of the Oriental Institute, Oxford University, by Mrs Mary Hulin and are gratefully used in this publication by the British School of Archaeology in Iraq.

'To allure vnto their loue': Iconoclasm and Striptease in Lewis Wager's The Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene

‘To allure vnto their loue’: Iconoclasm and Striptease in Lewis Wager’s The Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene Patricia Badir* (bio) Lewis Wager’s Reformation play The Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene purports to be a “godlie, learned and fruitefull” play designed to teach and extol Protestant virtue. 1 From the outset, this Edwardian morality play assumes that the agendas of Protestantism and of the theatre are not necessarily incompatible, as the heroic drama of the Reformation is staged by means of the vita of Mary Magdalen. 2 Never acquiescing to the scourge of the antitheatricalist pen that apparently marked the play as “spitefully despised,” the play’s Prologue insists that the work encourages [End Page 1] manly virtue, praises God with unyielding vehemence and teaches true, stalwart devotion to the King. “[T]here was neuer thyng inuented,” one is informed, “[m]ore worth, for mans solace to be frequented” (ll. 12, 36–37). 3 Making its robust Calvinism absolutely clear, Life and Repentaunce assures that the Magdalen’s exquisitely dressed, pre-penitent body reflects not only the dangerous entrapments of femininity but also the pitfalls of perverse piety and, by extension, the decadent and degenerate Catholic Church. At the point of her conversion, the stone tablets of God’s Law are presented to Mary by a personified looking-glass in whom she finds “knowledge of sinne.” The figure of Lawe announces: Wherefore as I sayd to a glasse compared I may be, Wherin clerely as in the sunne lyght, The weakenesse and sinne of him self he may se, Yea and his owne damnation as it is ryght. [ll. 1137–40] Mary is hereafter re-fashioned into a Protestant exemplar: “sadly apparelled,” supine and pious in her contrite posture. The play closes with long, sobering speeches from grave characters such as Justification and Love and the spectator witnesses the conversion of an immoderate, Catholic image into an appropriately fortified Protestant exemplar of the Word. A mirror is, however, at once the vehicle of the plain and simple truth and a tool for vainglorious deception. Wager’s play, this essay will argue, is a similarly paradoxical glass. Mary’s return to the stage in decent dress is conceived of as analogous to the stripping of the altars as the spectator’s idolatrous gaze is redirected to the naked truth of the scriptures. But, as in the presentation of the modern striptease, the divestment of Mary does not reveal the truth as promised. The magical and seductive trappings of the Magdalen’s sumptuous past, like the stripper’s exotic costume and props, go on pervading the saint’s figure even once they have been cast aside. The metaphorically naked Mary invokes Roland Barthes’ semantic of the striptease as she is re-dressed in “the enveloping memory of a luxurious shell.” 4 The spectacular allure of the old faith permeates her body enacting “the dialectic between iconophilia and iconophobia” now recognized as integral to the propagation of Protestant culture. 5 Life and Repentaunce beguiles and deceives by means of the very scenography it condemns as degenerate. [End Page 2] The allegorical representation of Mary Magdalen as the prototypical parishioner is not Wager’s invention. Magdalen’s medieval biography begins with the conflation of at least three New Testament figures: Mary Magdalen from whom Christ expels seven devils and who attends the sepulcher, Mary of Bethany who anoints Christ with her precious oils and Luke’s unnamed sinner who bathes Christ’s feet in the home of Simon the Pharisee. 6 By the thirteenth century, exegetical commentary and popular legend had further transformed this composite figure into the ex-prostitute whose exemplary penance rendered her the patron saint of all sinners. 7 Though initially the embodiment of material worldliness, Mary denies the temptations of luxury and the pleasures of the flesh and becomes the most sober and chaste of Christ’s devotees. Katherine Jansen has argued that this “masterful stroke of endowing the concept of penance with corporeal existence” helped to diffuse the cult of penance in the late middle ages. 8 The degree to which Wager was familiar with the medieval Magdalen, represented in the English canon by the surviving...

South Arabian antiquities in a private collection in Ar‐Riyad (Saudi Arabia)

A Saudi Arabian private collection of South Arabian antiquities is presented here. The material includes an incense‐burner, two funerary stele, four funerary human faces and four inscriptions all probably from the Ma'rib area.

The One and the Many in Stela Leiden V

Etude epigraphique de la stele de Leiden V1. Apres une breve allusion a l'ambiguite concernant la datation de ce monument (XVIIIe-XIXe dynastie), l'A s'interesse a l'usage du mot pw dans la partie du texte consacre a la production des statues de culte.

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Codes of Ethics and Ethical Conduct: A View From the Caring Professions

A growing number of occupational groups are creating codes of ethics, which prompts the question ‘What is the relationship between codes of ethics and ethical conduct?’ This article examines some of the issues around this question, with reference to examples from nursing, social work, physiotherapy and occupational therapy. The variability of the form, content and functions of the different codes is examined in order to shed light on the extent to which codes of ethics enhance or inhibit ethical conduct. It is argued that codes can perform a useful function in encouraging ethical reflection and debate, provided they are not treated as ‘tablets of stone’ or rigid rulebooks prescribing the minutiæ of professional practice.

The Christian's ABC. Catechisms and Catechizing in England c. 1530-1740 by Ian Green

The Christian's ABC Catechisms and Catechizing in England c.1530-1740. By Ian Green. (New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press. 1996. Pp. xiv,767. $125.00.) It has been two decades since Jean Delumeau drew attention to parallel efforts made by Protestants and Catholics in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to raise level of religious knowledge and spiritual awareness among their co-religionists. Although he does not endorse all of Frenchman's sweeping generalizations, Ian Green, reader in modern history at Queen's University in Belfast, has compiled and collated an enormous amount of data that support Delumeau's principal argument. He draws on Prayer Book rubrics, royal injunctions, visitation articles, episcopal circulars, sermons, pamphlets, and a of treatises of time. Green's principal source, however, is the several hundred Protestant catechisms composed between Reformation and early eighteenth century that come in a bewildering variety from multi-volume works to booklets of a few pages, from question-and-answer-form to lengthy treatises. Green divides his study into three parts. The five chapters in Part One describe medium, that is, catechetical tradition(s) and theory, tasks and techniques as they were practiced in church, school, and home. Green argues convincingly that catechizing not one but a series of activities and was not set in tablets of stone but forever adjusting to new situations and ideas:' The Book of Common Prayer, metrical psalms, hymns, and preaching are some of means that reinforced memorization and retention of catechetical formulae. Part Two concentrates on message found in a selection of best-selling or influential catechisms. Most focus on four staples of catechesis-the Apostles' Creed, Decalogue, Lord's Prayer, and Sacraments (baptism, holy communion). While some offer tell-tale clues to theological leanings of their authors, for most part catechisms eschew polemics and deal cautiously with controversial points or simply omit them as in cases of church government and forms of worship. In chapters 8 (Predestination) and 9 (Assurance,Justification, and Covenant of Grace), Green explores most divisive issues of time, and notes that conformists and godly authors parted ways when it came to role of visible church vis-a-vis a theoretical ordo salutis. …

Early Chinese Manuscripts: Including Addenda and Corrigenda to New Sources of Early Chinese History: An Introduction to The Reading Of Inscriptions and Manuscripts

From the outside, it would almost seem as if the authors and the editor ofNew Sources of Early Chinese History(hereafter, Sources) had completed their job before it was due. After all, this volume, which is no. 3 in theEarly China Special Monograph Series,1is the first Western book exclusively devoted to introducing a broad range of Chinese epigraphical materials: inscriptions in bones, turtle plastrons, and bronze as well as manuscripts written on stone tablets, wooden and bamboo strips, and silk.

Some Interesting Visitors' Records: Five Examples of Graffiti Found in a Tomb at Nurdi (Amritsar District, East Punjab)

The Persian inscriptions of India, which constitute an important source, particularly for the local history of a region, a district, a tehsil, a town and a village, have received inadequate if not scant attention from our historians. Worse and far more regrettable is the neglect of visitors' or travellers' records on the walls of sarais, tombs or mosques, and similar buildings which they passed and where they made a halt, overnight and otherwise. Against the commemorative stone tablets set in a monument to perpetuate the name of the builder, visitors' or travellers' records or graffiti, as they are also called, were written usually in ink and hence were of comparatively much less durable nature. Many of these graffiti have disappeared in the natural course with the passage of time.

La epigrafía del Tolmo de Minateda (Hellín, Albacete) y un nuevo municipio romano del conventus <em>Carthaginensis</em>

This paper deals with several inscriptions found in the Tolmo de Minateda (Hellin, Albacete) in the last years. Some of them belong to a monumental inscription dated in 9 bC, which must commemorate the concession to the town —perhaps Ilunum — of a privileged statute, in a similar way to the process of municipalization in other towns of the Meseta. There are also several types of funerary steles, which forms and personal names attest relations with the Alta Andalucia and the interior of the Peninsule.

Book Review: Graeco-Roman Funerary Stelae from Upper Egypt

Book Review: Graeco-Roman Funerary Stelae from Upper Egypt

Errors in measuring the percentage dry weight change of stone tablets : R. Inkpen, Earth Surface Processes & Landforms, 20(9), 1995, pp 783–793, diskette

Errors in measuring the percentage dry weight change of stone tablets : R. Inkpen, Earth Surface Processes & Landforms, 20(9), 1995, pp 783–793, diskette

The Temple of Confucius and Pictorial Biographies of the Sage

Sets of narrative pictures portraying the life of Confucius (Fig. 1; all figures appear at the end of the text) first appeared in considerable numbers in the late Ming period, typically under the titleSheng-chi t'u(Pictures of the Sage's Traces; hereafter SCT) or some close variant. Produced at varying levels of expense, these illustrated biographies or hagiographies were made in a variety of media, such as woodblock prints, paintings on silk, and incised stone tablets. The various examples also exhibit a wide range of artistic quality. These differences in quality and form suggest that pictorial biographies were made for multiple purposes and for diverse audiences. Furthermore, the pictorial biographies differ in total numbers of scenes and in specific episodes selected for inclusion. These differences in content imply disparate conceptions of Confucius and the significance of his life.

The Twelve Plagues

THE TWELVE PLAGUES / Gerald Shapiro WHEN THE PHONE RANG, Rosenthal was kicking a canvas to shreds Ui the middle of his studio. He'd already thrown a can of wet brushes against the far wall and had kicked a tray of paint across the room, leaving an attractive boat-shaped smear ofburnt sienna sailing along the whitewashed floorboards. The place should have been condemned, and so should Rosenthal: trapped inside another night of failure Ui a season of failure, locked Ui a listless, drifting orbit around a failing sun. "Kenneth Rosenthal?" the woman's voice asked him. "That's me," he panted into the receiver, still frenzied from his exertions . He wiped a damp hand across his brow. "Kenneth Rosenthal, the painter?" "The one and only," he muttered. "Who's this?" "Naomi Glick is my name. I hope this isn't an awkward moment. Tm calling on behalf of the Rivka Hirschorn Kissner Foundation in New York City. Perhaps you'veheard ofus? We're devoted to supporting the work of unknown visual artists who are of interest and significance to the AmericanJew," the woman said. Her voice was portentous, as if she were reciting something etched on tablets of stone. "I am very pleased to inform you, Mr. Rosenthal, that you are this year's winner of the Rivka Hirschorn Kissner Prize. My heartfelt congratulations." The Who? The What? But she'd said the word "prize." He stood with the phone pressed to his head, chilling his ear like an ice pack. "I'm one of several judges," Naomi Glick continued. "We comb the length and breadth of this country, Mr. Rosenthal—the Judaic highways and byways, artistically speaking. We receive sUdes from scores of exhibitions at reputable galleries around the United States. We're tireless in our pursuit of new Jewish visual artists. We take this work seriously. Some years no one is deemed worthy, and in those years we decline to award the Kissner Prize to anyone. Our standards are high. Your series of paintings, The Twelve Plagues, recently came to my attention , and it took my breath away." "The Twelve Plagues'. How'd you hear about them?" "The slides arrived in the mail last month. We received them from— let's see, I have it right here—the Umpqua Valley Arts and Crafts Festival, Roseburg, Oregon. Roseburg—is that by any chance a Jewish name?" The Missouri Review · 23 "I don't think so, Mrs. Glick." "Call me Naomi, Kenneth—please. Such insufferable paintings, these Twelve Plagues of yours," she purred. "Obnoxious in the very deepest sense of the word, like a set of precocious eight-year-old boys yammering away. I should know. My son Max is eight years old, and someday soon I may kill him." "Oh. Well." He hesitated. "Does that mean you Uked them?" "Positively haunted. AU that slashing, the paint knifed onto the canvas as though it were trying to burrow through to the other side! AU those reds and oranges and blacks saying to themselves, what in the name of God are we doing Ui these paintings? How can we get out of here? AU that energy flaming up toward heaven, like it couldn't wait to get out of the frame! I adored them, Kenneth. They're what Jewish art is all about." Rosenthal remembered the exhilarating, frightening experience of painting them, how they'd come to him like a bundle of gifts—no, like a string of anonymous letter-bombs in the mail—all twelve of them done in a week and a half of hysteria, a series of seizures a year ago, his last sustained and successful creative burst before something vital inside him dried up and blew away. Since then he'd wandered around his studio in a daze, an orphan Ui the wilderness. "You don't know—you can't possibly know—what this means to me," he said into the receiver, and then he paused. He had no idea of what to say next; he'd never won anything before, in twenty years of labor at the easel. He'd entered one competition after another, submitted slides to foundations, shown his work in art festivals...

Graeco-Roman Funerary Stelae from Upper Egypt

Graeco-Roman Funerary Stelae from Upper Egypt

À propos d'un buste féminin gallo-romain découvert à Agde (Hérault)

This carved block was discovered in the 60's (circa 1960) at Le Peyrou locality, 600 meters East of the ancient town, near the most acknowledged burial place of the city; it has been interpreted up to now as a pre-Roman work. It represents the bust of a woman cut under chest level and at the edge of the shoulders on the side. Though it looks crude and severe, the Agde bust is nevertheless significant : it points to the existence of a local workshop, and would probably show the use of Roman funerary rites - very unlikely in the Narbonnaise — within a sepulchral space previously marked by natives, then Greeks rites. Comparaisons can be drawn with funerary stelae representing a man, a woman or a couple attested during the late Republic time in Campania.