The “Elgin Marbles”

The “Elgin Marbles”



The “Elgin Marbles” ... You dare call them that!
... as if your larceny could be justified
by such a vile name! It just reeks of scat,
a moniker no Grecian can abide!
“Lord” Elgin, axing stones, you hauled them off,  
with Ottoman connivance in your grasp,
your crime a mortal sin at which we scoff,
your pride of possession worthy of an asp!
By shaming Athen’s pride, the Parthenon,
your imperial gall’s outstripped your sins,
your every game you play another con,
another ploy in sick political spins.  
   The British Museum claims, “It’s for the best!”
   and touts your barefaced lies as if in jest.

Richard Vallance

April 20 2019

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The absurd fallacy of HERSTORY. There is no such thing in any language other than English, and in fact no such thing in English!

The absurd fallacy of HERSTORY. There is no such thing in any language other than English, and in fact no such thing in English!

If there is anything which raises my hackles, it has got to be the absurd notion adapted by English language feminists alone that the word HISTORY is somehow gender related, when in fact it most certainly is not! English feminists who insist on changing the word history to herstory are displaying the most egregious linguistic ignorance. As anyone with even a smattering of higher education knows beyond a doubt, the English word history is in fact directly derived from the ancient Greek i9stori/a=, which means: inquiry, knowledge, information, science, narration and above all, a story. Now the sheer absurdity of the position of English feminists is blown wide open by the equivalent words for history in practically every other language, for instance, Dutch = geschiedenis, French = histoire, German = Geschichte, Italian = storia, Polish = przeszłość and Portuguese = história, to cite just a few examples. Any French feminist would laugh out loud at the notion that herstory is somehow the same thing as history, since in French the word for “her” is “son” (masculine gender) and “sa” (feminine gender). Of course, some allophone English feminists will scream aloud that “son” is gender-biased, without realizing in the least that gender in French, and for that matter in any and all inflected languages, including Greek, Latin, German, Russian etc. has nothing whatsoever to do with masculinity or, what is even worse, in their silly “intellectual” construct, sexism! The Dutch and German words, geschiedenis and Geschichte respectively, blow the English feminists’ ridiculous claim right out of the water, let alone the Polish przeszłość. I could cite hundreds of other languages, and the results would always be the same, to wit, the English word history has absolutely nothing to do with masculinity or sexism. So all I have to say to unilingual English feminists, “Get a life!” and at least swallow the truth with grace and dignity.

In the citations below, all italics are mine:

Consider Wikipedia:

 

Herstory is history written from a feminist perspective, emphasizing the role of women, or told from a woman’s point of view. The principal aim of herstory is to bring women out of obscurity from the historical record. It is a neologism coined as a pun with the word “history”, as part of a feminist critique of conventional historiography, which in their opinion is traditionally written as “his story”, i.e., from the masculine point of view.[1] (The word “history”—from the Ancient Greek ἱστορία, or historia, meaning “knowledge obtained by inquiry”—is etymologically unrelated to the possessive pronoun his.

And Rational Wiki:

 

“Herstory” is a neologistic term for “women’s history,” a variant of the Marxist “people’s history”; while a people’s history professes to reinterpret history from the perspective of workers and/or common men, a herstory professes to reinterpret it from the perspective of women. Most feminists don’t use it.

The term is an illustration of its coiners’ belief that regular history is heavily slanted toward men’s point of view, a “systemic bias” reflected in the term history, which they seem to have simply assumed was a portmanteau of “his story”.

Unfortunately, it happens that the English word history is a loan word, derived directly from the Latin historia, which is itself a loan word from ancient Greek.[1] On the other hand, the English word his is derived from a proto-Germanic root,[2] and is not in the least etymologically connected to the first three letters of history. They just happen to sound the same, and only in English. The origin of this term is a testament to the intellectual laziness of extremists in any field, who are quick to grab hold of anything that seems to support their point of view but reluctant to examine it critically.

and Reddit:

Also, I appreciate the title quote is somewhat playful. But I find it extremely irritating – ‘history’ is directly taken from the Greek word historia, roughly translating to ‘inquiry’ or ‘investigation’. ‘His’ and ‘her’ as actual words do not exist in Ancient Greek; words in the language meaning the same thing do exist. But the only reason ‘herstory’ is a thing is because it’s an awful pun based on the conventions of the English language which the word ‘history’ does not follow; it betrays a lack of knowledge of context, a tendency to jump on anything resembling ‘gendered’ words, and it’s a bad pun.

My article, Lexicon of Chariot Construction in Mycenaean Linear B, has been accepted in advance by the international historical journal, Epohi/Epochs

My article, Lexicon of Chariot Construction in Mycenaean Linear B, has been accepted in advance by the international historical journal, Epohi/Epochs:

I shall be submitting it to the editor-in-chief, Stefan Iordanov of the Faculty of History of St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo (hence forward referred to as UVT), Bulgaria. The editorial board consists of highly prestigious researchers:

Executive Editor:

Stefan Yordanov, Associate Prof., Ph.D., St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo

Editor-in-Chief:

Ivan Tyutyundjiev, Prof., Dr. Hab., St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo

Deputy Editors in Chief:

Plamen Pavlov, Prof., Ph.D., St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo

Nikolay Kanev, Associate Prof., Ph.D., St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo

Editors:

Acad. Vasil Gyuzelev, Prof., Dr. Hab., Member of the Bulgarian Academy of science and President of the Association of Byzantinists and Medievalists in Bulgaria

Demetrios Gonis, Dr. Hab., Professor Emeritus of University of Athens (Greece)

Mirosław Jerzy Leszka, Prof., Dr. Hab., University of Lodz (Poland)

Tatyana Leontyeva, Prof., Dr. Hab., State University of Tver (Russia)

Milko Palangurski, Prof., Dr. Hab., St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo

Petko Petkov, Проф. д-р Петко Петков, St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo

Rumen Yankov, Prof., Dr. Hab., St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo

Mariya Ivanova, Prof., Dr. Hab., St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko Tarnovo

Dan Dana, Chargé de recherche de 1ère classe, Ph.D., Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique – Paris (France)

Issue editors:

Nikolay Kanev, Associate Prof., Ph.D.

Stefan Yordanov, Associate Prof., Ph.D.

Our primary partner, Koryvantes, the Association of Historical Studies (Athens) has a brand-new banner and new look! Check it out…

Our primary partner, Koryvantes, the Association of Historical Studies (Athens) has a brand-new banner and new look! Check it out...

Click on their banner to visit their superb site:

KEY POST! Slated for publication in Archaeology and Science Vol. 12 (2016),“Pylos tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris), the ‘Rosetta Stone’ to Minoan Linear A tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada) vessels and pottery”

Slated for publication in Archaeology and Science Vol. 12 (2016),“Pylos tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris), the ‘Rosetta Stone’ to Minoan Linear A tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada) vessels and pottery”:



“Pylos tablet Py TA 641-1952 (Ventris), the ‘Rosetta Stone’ to Minoan Linear A tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada) vessels and pottery”, is definitively slated for publication in Vol. 12 (2016) in the prestigious international annual, Archaeology and Science ISSN 1452-7448 (release date spring 2018). To be submitted by Nov. 15, 2016.

This is the ground-breaking article in which I announce to the world my success at a partial decipherment of some of the vocabulary of Minoan Linear A, not of the language itself, which no one is in a position to decipher, given the extreme paucity of extant tablets and fragments (<500), of which the vast majority are fragments.  

In the progressive layout of the draft of this revolutionary article, I shall be featuring the following Minoan Linear A tablets and commentaries on Minoan Linear A in my article (in this approximate order), as per previous posts on this blog (Click on each link to visit its post):

INTRODUCTION

Linear B tablet Pylos TA 641-1952 (Ventris) is the Mycenaean Linear B “Rosetta Stone” for Minoan Linear A tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada)



5 words of vessel types in Minoan Linear A: Linear A tablet HT 31 (Haghia Triada)



Linear A tablet tagged “19” & the Minoan word for “tripod” = puko (confirmation)



FAILED DECIPHERMENTS



Proto-Slavic interpretation of Minoan Linear A tablet HT 13 (Haghia Triada) — another decipherment gone awry



2 vastly different decipherments of Minoan Linear A tablet HT 13 (Haghia Triada). Does either measure up?



PROSPECTS FOR DECIPHERMENT

How far can we go deciphering Minoan Linear A? And now for the bad news



What are the current prospects for deciphering Minoan Linear A? Dismal but…



PRINCIPLES & CROSS-CORRELATION



The 5 principles applicable to the rational partial decipherment of Minoan Linear A

The principle of cross-correlative cohesion between Minoan Linear A & Mycenaean Linear B & logical fallacies



ACTUAL MINOAN LINEAR A TABLETS SUSCEPTIBLE TO AT LEAST PARTIAL DECIPHERMENT

Minoan Linear A tablet HT 132 qareto = lease field (post lost, to be reposted)



Mycenaean Linear B tablets on terms and activities related to olive oil as templates for cross-correlation to Minoan Linear A tablets



Minoan Linear A tablet HT 12 & qatidate = Mycenaean Linear B erawa = olive tree(s)



UPDATE on the military Minoan Linear A tablet HT 94 (Haghia Triada) = attendants to the king/foot soldiers


Minoan Linear A kirita2 (kiritai) = delivery & kiretana = delivered (nos. 67 & 68 deciphered)



Minoan Linear A tablet HT 13 (Haghia Triada) & wine



Minoan Linear whorls unearthed by Heinrich Schliemann at Troy in 1875 & their striking similarity to the Linear A whorls (recto/verso) illustrated here



Minoan Linear A words: 7 types of cloth on tablet HT 117 (Haghia Triada) compared with 7 types of cloth in Mycenaean Linear B



GLOSSARY OF MINOAN LINEAR A TERMS & CONCLUSIONS

Glossary of 134 words & Partial decipherment of Minoan Linear A : a rational approach from Mycenaean Linear B (final version)

The Institute of Archaeology, Belgrade, publishers of Archaeology and Science (Belgrade) ISSN 1452-7448 is our latest link to a partner site

Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, near Warsaw, Poland

Pultusk Academy of the Humanities, near Warsaw, Poland: Click to ENLARGE


This is the venue where I shall be giving my lecture on The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B between June 30 & July 2 2015. I am ready and raring to go!

Richard

Two New Book Titles on the Arcado-Cypriot Dialect, Rare Birds Indeed!

Two New Book Titles on the Arcado-Cypriot Dialect, Rare Birds Indeed! Click to ENLARGE:



This first title is most unusual, I dare say, unique, since I have never, ever seen, let alone heard of a book on ancient Greek philosophy written in Linear C, which is to say, if it is written in Linear C rather than in alphabetical Arcado-Cypriot. Either way, it is of inestimable value. Of course, I just have to lay my hands on it. What’s more, this title confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that Arcado-Cypriot, quite unlike Mycenaean Linear B, was a literary script, as well as legal + constitutional, given that the Idalion Tablet (which is in Linear C) runs along those lines. This characteristic in particular may lead to some complications in our attempt to correlate a significant cross-section of Arcado-Cypriot Linear C vocabulary, of which more words are bound to be connotative & abstract rather than merely denotative or concrete with presumably equivalent vocabulary in Mycenaean Linear B, of which of which more words are bound to be denotative rather than connotative, i.e. the reverse scenario. However, this situation is not all that likely to actually cripple the process of cross-correlation between Linear B and Linear C vocabulary, since after all, there are bound to be plenty of denotative, concrete nouns, along with connotative, abstract, in both dialects, given our personal interest in the latter for the purposes of establishing a corpus of derived (D) Mycenaean words, however minimal it may prove to be. Only time will tell. In this endeavour, I expect to be able to work well with another Linear B colleague and translator, Ms. Gretchen Leonhardt, who I suspect is rather more interested than am I in collating a derivative (D) vocabulary of Mycenaean connotative words in Linear B. But that I am sure is fine with both of us, as we are surely going to share our resources. 

You may visit Ms. Leonhardt’s blog here. Her approach to the decipherment of Linear B is both highly unusual, and to my mind, radical, running rationally, practically and instinctively against the grain to me at least, but fascinating nevertheless:



The second book to which I wish to draw your attention is — Click to ENLARGE:



Actually, I was astonished to find any books at all on Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, since practically no-one seems even remotely interested in it, not counting myself, of course, or another Linear B colleague of mine, Gretchen Leonhardt, who also wants to learn Linear C. All the more power to us! At least she and I will probably end up being the only two researchers in practically the entire world who can not only read Linear C but translate it as well. And trust me, if we do (more like, when we do, as it is only a matter of time), that is bound to raise a few eyebrows in the Mycenaean Linear B research community, given the extremely close relationship between these two dialects. One can easily call them kissing cousins, as they are even closer to one another than Ionic and Attic Greek are!


Richard