Text Says Research Articles

Some observations on Greek and Latin data relating to South Arabia

It is well known that, according to Pliny, the originating terminal for caravans conveying frankincense from South Arabia to the Mediterranean was at Shabwa; and there has been much talk of an ‘incense road’ followed by those caravans. It is, however, very unlikely that there was any single ‘road’ invariably followed. More probably, there was a multiplicity of routes, any one of which might be chosen according to prevailing circumstances. One such route runs directly from Shabwa to the eastern end of the Wādī Jawf, across a gravel corridor bisecting the Sayhad sand-desert, surveyed by Philby in 1936. The possibility of this route has been disregarded mainly because of a widely prevalent but tendentious translation of Pliny's remark, ‘evehi non potest nisi per Gebbanitas’, as ‘[the frankincense] cannot be exported [from Shabwa] except through the land of the Gebbanites’, where the text says nothing about a ‘land’ but merely ‘by the Gebbanites’. Other possible routes are one skirting the southern edge of the sand-desert and passing through Tumna', and one reaching the upper Wādī Bayḥān by way of Nisab and the Wadi Markha. West of Bayhan, the passes of Nagd. Marqad and Mablaqa clearly represent alternative routes.

Writing Journals in Courses

If you have ever leafed through some of the reserve in the library you know that knowledge of the penalties does not suffice to prevent students from commenting on the books they read. From this I conclude that it is hard for human beings to read without wishing to make some kind of response. Such response takes different forms. While reading perhaps you underline portions of the text with a pencil, a pen or a yellower. Perhaps you make notes on a separate sheet of paper or perhaps you write comments in the margins of the books you read. Finally, perhaps you are one of those students who seeks out other students to share your reading, who carries on the life of the mind with friends as well as in the solitary margins of your books. If you are such a person, you will also know that friends are rarer than margins and that therefore we have need of margins and other places to carry forward our inquiries. To carry forward your inquiries, I ask you in this course to write journals. These journals are but an extension and perfection of the casual, inconstant, or distracted responses which you may now give to the things you read. In preparation for each class I ask you to write your thoughts about the text and about the questions which arise from it. Each journal should be about two pages. I ask you to make them intelligible. I recognize that a few words scratched on a paper napkin have sometimes been the beginning of some great thing, but since I wish to comment on your journals, I need to understand them. I will not grade them. A journal is not a finished paper and not even a brief finished paper. In a journal you have the leisure to explore, inquire, question, and wander. By wandering I do not mean aimless wandering. Perhaps what follows will help you understand what an aim-full wandering would be. Our reading seems to be guided by two questions: what is being said here? and is it true? Your journals may wander between these two questions. Sometimes it will be all of your endeavor to make out what the text says (always, as you do so, silently ask: is it true?). At other times all your endeavor will be to examine the truth of what you read. (Always, as you do so, silently ask: Have I yet understood what is being said?) The questions, what does the text say? and is it true? are distinct but I wonder if they are separable or beneficially separable. Is it desirable to ask the first without the second in mind? Is it possible to read carefully without asking: is it true? It is of course possible to ask the question of truth without reading any book, without consulting the views of others. Indeed, thinking sometimes benefits from

The Persian Satrapies and Related Matters

KEITH Seele always impressed me by his insistence upon clarity and, above all, accuracy. Never, he once told me, pay any attention to what people say an author or an ancient text says; find out what the author or the text actually does say-or meant to say! With that in mind, I dedicate this modest study (which might perhaps more properly be entitled Some Possible Misconceptions about Old Persian Matters) to the memory of the late, very successful editor of this journal and to the distinguished Egyptologist that he was. late, beloved Roland G. Kent, in an article in this journal on The Lists of [Old Persian] Provinces, began his otherwise admirable-indeed, brilliant-study with the following statement: The Old Persian inscriptions give us five different lists of the lands belonging to the Achaemenian Empire under Darius and Xerxes, along with three other lists of no independent value (italics mine).' five lists referred to bear Kent's own rubrics: (1) DB (Darius, Bisitun; trilingual); (2) DPe (Darius, Persepolis e; Old Persian [hereafter abbreviated OP] only); (3) DSe (Darius, Susa e; originally trilingual); (4) DNa (Darius, Naqsh-i-Rustam a; trilingual); and (5) XPh (Xerxes, Persepolis h; trilingual). To these should be added also the lists on two Darius steles from the Suez Canal area

De Levendes Land

De Levendes Land (The Land of the Living).An interpretation By Niels EgebakBy way of introduction this analysis (which has also appeared in a book of readings on the poem) assumes that the cultural and literary complex of problems in which the poem belongs should be looked upon as a text, to which the hymn under consideration bears an intertextual relationship. The biographical and psychological data relevant to the text, on the other hand, only acquire the status of text in the poem “de Levendes Land”; therefore they should be considered in the light of the poem, and not vice versa.The structure of the poem reveals the covert process that opposes it to Kingo’s hymn “Far, Verden, far vel” (a farewell to the world). By making the final stanza appear as the initial stanza in a later version Grundtvig admits its strategic significance. The two main sections of the poem consist of four smaller subtexts with the mutual relationships ABGD, each consisting of three stanzas: A depicts a land beyond time, whereas B dismisses this dream, C: the lost Paradise is regained here and now through the Christian faith, which, although it does not disown human nature, does not deify or idealise it. D: hope, reborn and confirmed in baptism, makes possible the realisation of the dream of Paradise through love emanating from above. E: the last stanza points out what makes this possible: Christianity with its message of love which applies both in heaven and on earth—that is, even “when the eye is blue”.It is asserted that in the poem there is a direct connection between Grundtvig’s settlement with Kingo and his settlement with romanticism. The first main section is a parody on Kingo’s conceptual universe; in the second main section he is taken to task: his attempt to describe blessedness through wordly values is rejected with contempt, whereas the romantic conception of childlike naivete as the way of admission to the lost Paradise is repeated in the text in the prayer to “Kærligheds Aand” (spirit of charity) (st. 7 ), echoing the Christian commandment that »Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein”.The possibility that poetry “med Mund og Pen” (with mouth and pen) might restore the dream of Paradise is rejected: Nothing but a reflection, a likeness will come out of it (st. 5 ). Nevertheless, the poem itself is such a likeness, anticipated already in the poem “Nyaars-Morgen” (New Year’s Morning). Grundtvig must have wished to face the inevitability of death, live through the loss of an eternal life in a wordly sense, and then return without having become an unhappy man.—A comparison with “O Christelighed ’’shows that the word “I” has an important position in the original poem as compared to “we” in the rewritten version.C differs from the other three subtexts in that the textual sequence is reverse to the logical sequence. This inversion has the effect that the entire section 2 may be read as an inversion of section 1, which fact seems to have some bearing on what the text says about the relationship between romanticism and Christianity. The innocence we have lost may be regained through baptism, poetry gains power from a spark of the spirit of God, in Christian hymns the likeness becomes a hope that brings happiness, where the dream brought only grief and distress—this point is elucidated by a comparison of st. 4 and st. 10. In the poem we see a tension between two philosophies of life, romanticism and Christianity, an as yet unsettled struggle between an established ideology (romanticism) and an ideology that is still trying to find its proper course (Grundtvigianism). In the rewritten version “O Christelighed” the Grundtvigian ideology has become established. This, however, did not make Grundtvig a greater poet.

ペルセポリスのダリウス王宮の性格について

After linguistic criticisms on the opinions thus far proposed concerning Old Persian ardastana-, I have come to the conclusion that the word may be interpreted as treasure-place, i. e. treasury. O. P. arda- is a derivative of ard-, Ind. rdh- v. i. “to become large, prosperous, rich”, so also the Neo-Babylonian version kuburre of KBR “to become large”. The argument may be vindicated from the view-point of architecture. Comparatively small as it is (30m×40m), the palace is divided into 17 sections, excluding the portico. This very fact is a clear witness to the palace's having been intended as treasury as a whole. Besides, practically all of the 17 sections behind the niches inscribed are small treasuries. A file of servants represented on the southern stairway seem to show them transferring the tributes from, most probably, the Tripylon to the Treasury Ardastana. Lastly I have cited Denkard passages (a) and (b) (see above p. 138ff.). The text (a) says that Šabuhr I investigated the establishment of a Whole Treasury concerning the Mazdayasnian Religion (astenidan i hamag ardestan abar den mazdesn o uskar kerd) while in (b) the Whole Library of the Capital (+hamag diwan i-s dar) is referred to as a depository of the Original Denkard manuscript. The parallelism between both expressions, hamag ardestan and hamag diwan concerning the same functional structure seems to show my interpretation of ardestan as treasury to be correct. And if so, O. P. ardastana-, of which the Middle Iranian continuation is ardestan (or alestan), means inevitably treasureplace, i. e. treasury.

An Inscription from Caunus

Among the inscriptions from Caunus published by Mr. G. E. Bean in JHS LXXIV (1954), 85–110 there is one, no. 21, pp. 85–7 with fig. 36, which requires further comment. This ‘first recorded response of Gryneian Apollo’ consists of a prescript in prose, eleven lines very well preserved, and the first two hexameters of the oracle, the second with two not so short lacunae. The prose text says that under the priesthood of Eunomus, son of Leonidas, Menodorus, son of Sosikles, an Imbrian, was sent to the Gryneion and brought back an oracle. Good luck!

XIV. —The Pahlavi Text of Yasna XIX, 12–58, for the first time critically translated.

Zartūšt asked of Aūharmazd thus: O Aūharmazd, Spirit (good) and bountiful, Creator of the bodily worlds, holy, …. [this (is: hanā=aē for aēγ, that is to say, the meaning is this), that it is Aūharmazd (who is) the holy Creator, not merely ‘ the bodily worlds’ which are holy; the rest is for (ordinary) praise. Some (text) says (i.e. reads) ‘ dātār, aharūv′’ (so putting the aharūv′' of the text in unmistakeable position as applying to Aūharmazd)].