Attack on Mosque, Quebec City an act of vile, barbaric & senseless violence!

Attack on Mosque, Quebec City an act of vile, barbaric & senseless violence!

At least 6 people were killed, 5 critically injured and 3 more injured in a shooting at a mosque in Quebec City during evening prayers, police said. Gunmen fired on about 50 people inside the Quebec Islamic Cultural Centre on Sunday at 8 p.m. local time (01:00 GMT).











“Six people are confirmed dead - they range in age from 35 to about 70”, Quebec provincial police spokeswoman Christine Coulombe told reporters, adding that eight people were wounded and 39 were unharmed. Police said two suspects had been arrested, but gave no details about them or what prompted the attack. The mosque's president, Mohamed Yangui,was not inside the mosque at the time of the shooting. He received frantic calls from worshippers.
He said, “Why is this happening here? This is barbaric.”

Comment by Richard Vallance Janke:

As a Canadian in a peace-loving and highly tolerant country such as Canada (quite unlike the United States with its xenophobic president, Donald Trump, at whose doorstep we can lay part of the blame!), I am utterly horrified and shocked at the act of vile, barbaric, senseless, violent murderous attack on a Muslim mosque in Quebec City, around 8:00 p.m., Sunday, January 29, 2017. Words cannot describe my horror or that of almost all 36 million Canadians at this savage act of terror! I urge and implore all who visit Minoan Linear A, Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae to tag this post with LIKE and to reblog it, as well as to retweet it on your twitter accounts! I dissolved in tears this morning when I woke up to hear of this vile act of terrorism. Here are two photos from the night of the attack:

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This Minoan object preceded the heralded Antikythera Mechanism by 1,400 years, and was the first analog and portable computer in history

This Minoan object preceded the heralded Antikythera Mechanism by 1,400 years, and was the first analog and portable computer in history

Researcher Minas Tsikritsis who hails from Crete -- where the Bronze Age Minoan civilization flourished from approximately 2700 BC to 1500 century BC -- maintains that the Minoan Age object discovered in 1898 in Paleokastro site, in the Sitia district of western Crete, preceded the heralded "Antikythera Mechanism" by 1,400 years, and was the first analog and "portable computer" in history.

"While searching in the Archaeological Museum of Iraklion for Minoan Age findings with astronomical images on them we came across a stone-made matrix unearthed in the region of Paleokastro, Sitia. In the past, archaeologists had expressed the view that the carved symbols on its surface are related with the Sun and the Moon," Tsikritsis said.  The Cretan researcher and university professor told ANA-MPA that after the relief image of a spoked disc on the right side of the matrix was analysed it was established that it served as a cast to build a mechanism that functioned as an analog computer to calculate solar and lunar eclipses. The mechanism was also used as sundial and as an instrument calculating the geographical latitude.  Source: Athens News Agency [April 06, 2011]

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This Minoan object preceded the heralded Antikythera Mechanism by 1,400 years, and was the first analog and portable computer in history. A stone-made matrix has carved symbols on its surface are related with the Sun and the Moon serving as a cast to build a mechanism that functioned as an analog computer to calculate solar and lunar eclipses. The mechanism was also used as sundial and as an instrument calculating the geographical latitude.

Previous paragraph by Rita Roberts

Breaking NEWS: Conference “Thinking Symbols”, University of Warsaw, Pultulsk Academy of Humanities, June 30 – July 2, 2015: Click to ENLARGE

Breaking NEWS: Conference “Thinking Symbols”, University of Warsaw, Pultulsk Academy of Humanities, June 30 – July 2, 2015: Click to ENLARGE



Richard Vallance Janke, the moderator of this blog, has been cordially invited to give a talk on The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B at the Conference “Thinking Symbols”, University of Warsaw, Pultulsk Academy of Humanities, June 30 – July 2, 2015. His talk will serve as the official public announcement of his discovery of some 30+ supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B throughout 2014 and early 2015.

This is the probably the most significant breakthrough in the decipherment of Mycenaean Linear B in 63 years since the genius, Michael Ventris, first deciphered the vast majority of the syllabary in 1952-1953. Although Michael Ventris and his mentor Prof. John Chadwick were able to decipher almost all of the syllabary, and there have been significant developments in further decipherment since then, one very large chunk of the syllabary (consisting of some 700/3,000 or 27 % of intact tablets from Knossos I meticulously examined in the course of 2014) have remained recalcitrant to decipherment for the past 63 years. From my intensive analysis of these 700 tablets, I have come to the conclusion that there has been no serious concerted effort in the past 63 years to thoroughly inspect the 3,000 or so tablets which I took the trouble to examine so closely. No doubt the task was not undertaken, since to do so would have required a team effort on the part of several specialists in Linear B linguistics.

But I could not wait on the problem any longer. So I took it upon myself alone to meticulously examine that many tablets! And what an exhausting job it was! But the pay-off in the exciting discovery I made was more than well worth the effort, to say the very least. When the Association of Historical Studies, Koryvantes, in Athens, Greece, happened upon our blog late in 2014, they were immediately impressed by the extensive research I had carried out, and very soon asked me whether I would like to participate in the Conference “Thinking Symbols”, at the Pultulsk Academy of Humanities, University of Warsaw, between June 30 & July 2, 2015. Of course, I accepted.

I shall be giving a 20 minute talk, more like a presentation, on the discovery of supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, and the significant rôle they play in the decipherment of at least 700 tablets which had previously proven recalcitrant. This talk is to serve as the premier public forum for the official international announcement of the rôle of supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B. The University of Warsaw will consequently be publishing the presentation in its entirety, along with those of all the other speakers at the Conference. The University of Warsaw is in the ideal position to publish our book, The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B, likely to run to 200 pp. or more, sometime late this year or early in 2016. This would be a huge feather in their cap, as the book itself represents the most significant breakthrough in the further decipherment of Linear B since 1952. Cambridge University Press had the honour of publishing the original book by Prof. John Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B (1958, 1970). So the University of Warsaw has much to celebrate in the publication of the second major book, The Decipherment of Supersyllabograms in Linear B, which takes the inspiration of its title directly from the title of the original.


Richard

KEY POST: A Résumé of the Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B

KEY POST: A Résumé of the Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B

This post, which is of supreme importance, has been a long time coming. I will be making a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT concerning this post in the next few days, as this constitutes the most significant breakthrough for us here at Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae since its inception 22 months ago.  The résumé as submitted to the institutions concerned is illustrated in the visual .jpg text here: Click to ENLARGE



This résumé, which I repeat below in a slightly less compressed format, but without the examples of supersyllabograms in Linear B, serves as the basis of a much more in-depth institutionally sponsored paper, The Rôle of Supersyllabograms in Mycenaean Linear B, which is to be published before the end of this year, and which may even appear in other venues.

***

A supersyllabogram (SSYL) is defined as the first syllabogram or vowel, i.e. the first syllable of a Linear B word or phrase, and it is always found adjacent to or inside an ideogram, and always with the same invariable meaning in a particular sector of Minoan/ Mycenaean society. Sectors include agriculture, military, textiles, vessels & religious. If the ideogram or the sector changes, so does the meaning of the supersyllabogram.

Here is an example of a Linear B tablet from Knossos which uses three (4)! supersyllabograms with the ideogram for RAM. Click to ENLARGE:



“What!”, I hear you saying. “I thought you said that super- syllabograms always appeared singly adjacent to or inside an ideogram in any sector of Minoan/Mycenaean society.”  But if you re-read what I said above, that is not quite what I said. I pointed out that a supersyllabogram is always a single syllabogram or vowel, and the first syllable only of any Mycenaean word or phrase in Linear B. I did not claim that more than one supersyllabogram could not appear adjacent to or inside an ideogram. To the contrary. Scribes frequently resorted to using as many as four (4) SSYLS on one tablet, thereby eliminating all extraneous text, which would have otherwise wasted much valuable space on what were (and are) extremely small tablets. Few tablets exceed 30 cm. in width or 15 cm. in depth. Some are so tiny you have to look at them through a magnifying glass to read them! The scribes knew exactly what they were doing. The fewer words or phrases they had to write out, the more space they saved on the tablets... which is precisely why some 800 of 3,000 tablets (27%) from Knossos, which I examined and read meticulously use supersyllabograms to replace words and even entire phrases in Mycenaean Greek.         

Scribes would never have written single syllabograms unless they meant something! - with ideograms, they do. SSYLs are a form of shorthand.

See the visual post above for examples of Supersyllabograms.

28 of 61 syllabograms (46 percent) are supersyllabograms. About 800/3000 tablets from Knossos I meticulously examined use supersyllabograms.

In the next post, we shall discuss the idiosyncratic characteristics of supersyllabograms.


Richard

Je suis Charlie – in French, English & Greek + 11 modern languages & 3 ancient Greek dialects!

Je suis Charlie - in French, English & Greek + 11 modern languages & 3 ancient Greek dialects!



I beg you, please be sure to RETWEET this, folks! As a polyglot Canadian, fluent in English and French, conversant with both modern languages and ancient, especially ancient Greek, with some 20 dialects under my belt, including Mycenaean Linear B & Arcado-Cypriot Linear C, I hope to reach not only everyone alive now, but as many of our ancestors as possible. I do this out of love for all the millions upon millions of people who have been slaughtered by warmongers, manaics, religious fanatics & terrorists, past, present and... God forbid... future!

Je vous prie de tout mon coeur de faire des RETWEETs de ce message des plus urgents! Tout en étant canadien parfaitement bilingue, je suis également polyglotte, connaisseur de plusieurs langues modernes et anciennes, dont une vingtaine de dialèctes grecs tels que le mycénien en linéaire B et le chypro-arcadien en linéaire C. Dans ce but, j’espère communiquer ce message de solidarité bienveillante à tous ceux qui sont encore vivants autant qu’à tous nos ancêtres, dont d’innombrables millions qui ont perdu la vie, tous massacrés par des bellicistes, des maniaques, des fanatiques religieuses et des terroristes d’antan, de nos jours et... à Dieu ne plaise ... incontournablement à l’avenir.

Richard Vallance Janke,
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada