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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22657388699762454702020-05-25T00:51:54.904-07:00Ancient ScriptsMusings about writing systems, archaeology, linguistics, and science in general.Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-14310265285863943412012-01-04T17:20:00.000-08:002012-01-04T17:26:15.099-08:00MaharajaI have learned from past years that when I said I was going to do something new for Ancient Scripts in the new year, I ended up not get to do them because of blah blah blah. So I'm not going to do it this time.

I guess I'll do a recap of sorts for 2011? I didn't get a chance to do much cultural activity with the exception that I did end up going to two very impressive exhibits in San Francisco, the Olmec at the De Young and the Maharaja at the Asian Art.

I already wrote about the Olmec exhibit here, so no need to go there again.

The Maharaja was an amazing exhibit. Not only did the sheer amount of gold, silver, and precious stones like diamonds, rubies, and emeralds (like in the turban ornament to the right) boggle the mind, but the incredible craftsmanship that displayed not just material wealth but also human wealth of the kingdoms and principalities of India. One could really say that India was the richest country in the 18th century before the English plundered it. In fact, the majority of the items in the exhibition either came from the British Museum or the Victoria Albert Museum.

I found the human aspect of the royals quite intriguing as well. Maybe because I'm a guy but I was impressed by the game box that Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar III of Mysore developed. It contains an incredible 11 board games in a beautifully decorated box. It was the PS3 of its day!

Another cool part of the Maharaja exhibition is the Indian-influenced pop artwork done by Pixar animator/artist Sanjay Patel. It was an interesting counterpoint to the classic and traditional art of the exhibition. Check out this mural done in a long corridor:

The Asian Art Museum itself also has the largest collection of Asian art outside of Asia, although it primarily specializes in East, Southeast, and South Asian art. Roaming its galleries is in itself a whole-day affair. I've done it twice and I still find new things.

Here are some pictures I took. Just a small feel of the remarkable collection.

Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-47373837639908622742011-10-23T22:00:00.000-07:002011-10-23T22:06:56.572-07:00Word of the Day: BoustrophedonI want to start a new series of blogs to talk about words that I frequently use in Ancient Scripts but sometimes ended up poorly defined because I don't want to make the pages go on too many tangents. Ultimately when I have enough of these "Word of the Day" posts I will collate them into a glossary in Ancient Scripts.

Anyway, here goes the first one.

Back in the day (yes I am THAT old) when we had books and computer screens of only 80 columns by 25 rows, I've never lost my place in a long paragraph. However, now that we have wide displays with high resolution, texts can span for 15 inches! When I reach the end of a line and move my eyes back to the left of the screen to the beginning of the next line, I lose my position in the text! It'd take me a few seconds to get context back and find the right line. It's extremely annoying.

My solution? Bring back boustrophedon!

What is this boustrophedon thing you ask? It's not some high-tech fancy gadget, but instead an ancient way of alternating the direction of writing. In the history of the Greek alphabet, there was a transitional period between the right-to-left direction inherited from Phoenician and the better known left-to-right direction where texts were written in both directions, alternating every line. The letters themselves appeared mirrored depending on the direction of writing.

In the example above, the grey dotted arrows indicate the direction of reading. The first line of the text starts on the left and goes to the right, then continues immediately on the right and goes back to the left. You can imagine a farmer plowing a field with an ox, and when he gets to one end of the field, he turns his ox around and goes in the opposite direction to plow the next row of his field. This is in fact the meaning of boustrophedon, which means "turning of the ox" in Greek.

Rongorongo tablets employed an even more extreme for of boustrophedon called reverse boustrophedon. The glyphs are mirrored both horizontally and vertically, or in other words, rotated 180° every line. The idea, perhaps, was to read one line, turn the tablet 180° upside-down and read the next line. On the example to the left, you can see that the brown glyphs are the same on both line, but they are upside down and mirrored. If anything, this style of boustrophedon fits the meaning of the name much better because the ox and the farmer really do turn 180° each time.

If we take this analogy of "ox turning" to ridiculous heights, then perhaps the most efficient kind of plowing (and writing) would to continuously turn in a circular surface. You might think this is contrived but I have seen verdant circular fields when flying over agricultural heartlands of America. Granted these fields are plowed and irrigated by machines, but the same logic of efficiency holds for writing as well. There is no interruption when the scribe arrives at the end of the line to move down one line. Instead he/she continuously turns the circular surface until he/she runs out of space.

And somebody precisely thought of this principle 3700 years ago. The Phaistos Disc (pictured to the right) is a one-of-a-kind artifact, the only example of a stamped text starting from the outside of the disc and spirals inward in a counterclockwise direction until the text terminates at the very center of the disc. Actually the disc is still undeciphered. The direction of writing is inferred from physical characteristics of the signs themselves.

I just noticed that this Blogger layout I chose is quite narrow. You probably read this whole post without losing your place in the text even once. I guess I've self-defeated my arguments to bring boustrophedon back. Oh well! Next time let's try to bring back logograms.Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-56536123576204492412011-09-05T09:00:00.000-07:002011-09-05T09:48:29.824-07:00This Old Building

Alhambra Theater, circa 1906
Courtesy of Martins West GP

It is not often that we have very old buildings in the West Coast of USA. California is a young state with a short architectural and a vigorous geological history. The earliest buildings were the Spanish missions which established the western-most edge of the Spanish Empire in the 18th century. Many other buildings have been torn down for new constructions or destroyed in earthquakes famous in this state. So it is fairly difficult to find an honestly old building, and that is why I've decided to write a quick blog post about my office building, the (former) Alhambra Theater.

One city that time forgot is Redwood City, the seat of the San Mateo county. Years ago the only reason to go to Redwood City was to go to court. Plethora of bail bond shops still dot the downtown area. In fact we jokingly call it "Deadwood City". As a result, many old buildings were left alone and were not demolished for shiny new ones.

Plaque

However, during the 19th century, Redwood City was a major center for shipping California coastal redwood lumber (hence the name) and a place for wealthy San Franciscans to buy property for estates. It practically went from ranchos owned by old Spanish/Mexican families into a business center overnight.

Although not to the extent of the southerly neighbor Palo Alto or San Mateo to the north, in the past two years the town has picked up steam again and now it is a pretty happening place. It is nice enough (despite the junkies loitering a block away) that the tech startup I work for has moved downtown. In fact we moved into one of the most historical and famous buildings in Redwood City.

Wyatt Earp

My office building, originally called the Alhambra Theater, was built in 1895 and miraculously survived the Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. It was billed as the finest theater south of San Francisco. It also included a bar and a restaurant that entertained fine ladies and gentlemen.

One such "gentleman" was none other than the famous lawman/outlaw Wyatt Earp. He was known to frequent the Alhambra quite a bit. His wife, Josie Earp, sang in the Alhambra and he would come to see her perform and have some whiskey later at the saloon.

What the 1906 earthquake couldn't do, the Prohibition did. The Alhambra closed it doors as a saloon in 1920 and it became the meeting hall of the local chapter of Freemasons. It remains so until 1950 when it fell into disrepair. An attempt in 2001 to fix up the building resulted in a catastrophic fire that left only the bricks. In fact, currently the bricks are fully exposed on the inside of the building, and you can easily see the smoke marks on the walls. It adds quite a lot of charm to the place.

Exposed brick walls and fire damage

Finally a few years ago the project restarted and now the entire building is occupied. On the ground floor is a very good gastropub called Martins West with a huge collection of scotch whiskey. Once again a saloon occupies the Alhambra. My company has some of the first floor and all of the second. Even our side reflects the history of the place. The staircase to the second floor is a narrow but beautiful marble staircase. It feels like going to the opera going up those stairs. Then it opens up to an airy 30-feet high ceiling with skylights and exposed brick walls. Perfect for musical theater.

I have a soft heart for stories of the West and it is quite amusing for me to know that everyday I sit in a place where one of the most famous characters of the West used to hang out. I like it when history flows forward.

Links:

History of Redwood City

History of the Alhambra Theater at the Martins West Gastropub website

Wall Street Journal article about startups in Redwood City, including a picture of the interior of my office

Wikipedia entry on Wyatt Earp

Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-18681739439695443762011-08-13T10:00:00.000-07:002011-08-13T10:00:00.065-07:00Fasting CoyoteSorry, Wile E. Coyote, I think you're in the wrong post. This is indeed about a certain "Fasting Coyote", but it's somebody else. In the meantime, go chase after the Roadrunner.

Anyway, I've been puzzled for quite some time by the name glyphs of Nezahualcoyotl and Nezahualpilli, successive kings of the city of Texcoco in 15th and 16th century Central Mexico. Their names literally mean "Fasting Coyote" and "Fasting Prince" in Nahuatl, respectively. Their name glyphs do contain logograms for coyotl "coyote" and pilli "prince". The common part of their name, nezahual is derived from the verb zahua, meaning "to fast". However, I couldn't say what is the glyph for zahua. It looks like a colorful vertical band, topped by two or more vertical colorful bars. In fact at one point I called it "inverted rainbow Π" (as in the Greek letter pi).

In the case of Nezahualpilli, the band is actually bent, like a road around a corner. This proves to be important.

My next step was visiting various Nahuatl dictionary. My usual suspects are AULEX Diccionario náhuatl - español and Nahuatl Dictionary at University of Oregon. I was able to confirm the meaning of zahua as "to fast" but not much else until I did the reverse search in English and discovered the word for "fast", moçaua. In the 16th century Spanish orthography was transitory. Sometimes they used ç instead of z, and also h was becoming silent, thus the inconsistent use of it. Therefore moçaua is really mozahua, which contains the zahua root again.

However, more important was that the entry for moçaua contains a small little picture for a fasting enclosure from Codex Borgia. It looks like this:

The rounded rectangle is presumably the enclosure. While not as colorful, it looks like the zahua glyphs. In fact the version in Nezahualpilli captures the rounded corner of the full structure. I am not really sure about the actual function of this fasting enclosure in context to Aztec rituals and ceremonies, as it's difficult to find more information online. However, at least I think I've figured what the "inverted rainbow Π" is. It is a part of the enclosure that represents the entire structure.

Reference:

Codex Telleriano-Remensis, page 36r, http://www.famsi.org/research/loubat/Telleriano-Remensis/thumbs0.html

Codex Borgia, page 9, http://www.famsi.org/research/loubat/Borgia/thumbs0.html

Nahuatl Dictionary, http://whp.uoregon.edu/dictionaries/nahuatl/

Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-8023330035042608942011-07-24T09:00:00.000-07:002011-07-24T09:23:53.119-07:00Software and Hard ShellI recently discovered an interesting translation. Being ethnic Chinese and living and working in the Silicon Valley, I am constantly exposed to technology news in both English and Chinese. One night on the Cantonese news hour I saw the reporter referring to Oracle Corporation as 甲骨 in Chinese. Now, 甲 literally means "shell" and 骨 means "bone". Why would a high-tech software company be translated to this strange name (other than being reduced to bones after paying for their software and services (but I digress))?

Turns out an ancient Chinese script is the intermediary in this strange relationship. The earliest Chinese text were divinations carved on animal bones and turtle shells. These bones and shells were then subjected to heat to form cracks, which a priest would interpret to foretell the future. Because of this usage, Western scholars called this highly pictorial script Oracle Bone Script. However, in China the name of the script was instead 甲骨文, which translates as "shell (and) bone script".

This essentially created an equivalence between English "oracle bone" and Chinese 甲骨, despite the fact that the Chinese word doesn't really imply any kind of ritual divinatory function. Then by semantic shift, 甲骨 came to just mean "oracle" in the mind of the reporter who wrote the first Chinese news article on Oracle Corporation. From there on it entered common usage and eventually onto the news program I saw on television.

Semantic shifts like this happen quite frequently in the history of languages. For example, the word "kleenex" now practically means "soft paper tissue" but obviously it originated from the brand "Kleenex". What other such semantic shifts can you think of?Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-18099225473650396362011-07-04T09:00:00.000-07:002011-07-04T09:00:08.155-07:00A Long Walk and MarathonThe weather in the San Francisco Bay Area has turned hot again and I like to take long walks with my family around parks near the shore. One thing I noticed consistently was how many wild fennel plants were growing in the marshy area right next to the bay (as you can see in the picture to the left, which ironically was taken in winter). I've also seen patches after patches of wild fennel growing right on the freeway. I even had one in my front yard, and it was quite a lovely sight until it grew too big and I had to cut it down.

Fennel is not native to North America, being an import from the Mediterranean brought by early European immigrants, but they grow really well here because the Bay Area has a Mediterranean climate. They could be considered an invasive species but they're already pretty much integrated into the landscapes of Northern California.

Fennel is quite a culinary chameleon in that you can use its root (or bulb), its fronds (the frilly leaves), its "seeds" (which are actually fruits) and even its pollen. And it is used in cooking from France to China and anywhere else in between, as also increasingly in regional American cooking. There is even anecdotes of restaurants using fennel in their parking lots when their stock in the walk-in runs out. It has also been used extensively as medicine. It has carminative (gas-relieving) properties that would alleviate stomach ailments. It is also an anticoagulant (prevents blood clots) and a diuretic (makes you want to pee but also lowers blood pressure). It also has low-level contraception properties, and in fact the famous contraceptive of the Classical world, silphium, might have been a relative of fennel.

Fennel is also attested quite early in ancient texts (indeed this is related to Ancient Scripts) and indirectly is quite important to world history. One very famous place in Greece is Marathon, literally meaning "Place of Fennels". In Mycenaean Greek it was marathwon, written as ma-ra-tu-wo. The modern word "marathon", which means a really long run (42 km or 26 miles), came from the semi-legendary feat of a Greek soldier who ran that distance from Marathon to Athens after the Battle of Marathon (490 BCE) to transmit the message that the Greeks had prevailed over the Persians. According to the story, the messenger died of exhaustion after delivering his verbal message.

The Hittites, the Mycenaean's eastern neighbors in Anatolia, also wrote about fennel. Coincidentally, among the Hittites fennel also has a martial connotation, but one associated with defeat. According to Durnford and Akeroyd, the Hittites had a ritual of cursing a conquered town to mark it as uninhabitable by planting the seeds of a particular plant commonly written in sumerogram ZÀ.AḪ.LI. Sumerogram is a cuneiform logogram directly borrowed from Sumerian, and as such does not provide any clue to actual pronunciation of the word in Hittite.

However, the recent discovery of a partially preserved "dictionary" of useful plants between Akkadian and Hittite revealed ZÀ.AḪ.LI to be marašḫanḫaš. Through process of elimination and contextual evidence, the authors identified marašḫanḫaš to be fennel.

Why would the planting of fennel seeds be considered to curse a city so it cannot be populated again, especially since fennel has so many beneficial uses? This goes back to my observation of how common fennel is in Northern California only after two centuries of European settlement. The plant grows extremely quickly in rocky or poor soil. When a city falls into disrepair, fennel is likely the first plant to take over the ruins. In other words, the prolific nature of fennel is a symbol of the abandonment of civilized life. Quick ironic to me.

One interesting linguistic observation is that the Mycenaean Greek marathwon and Hittite marašḫanḫaš seem to share a common root, namely *mara(s/t). Since both Greeks and Hittites were Indo-European whose ancestors came from the Central Asian steppes, it is quite likely they adopted the local name for fennel, a securely Mediterranean plant. Hence this common root could be part of a pre-Indo-European linguistic continuum stretching across both sides of the Aegean Sea.

My son loves curry, and I make it pretty much every weekend. I grind my own garam masala, a "warm" spice blend used in Indian cooking. My basic recipe is 3 parts cumin, 2 parts cardamom, 1 part cinnamon, 1 part caraway seeds, 1 part coriander seeds, and 1 part fennel seeds. Not only fennel but all these spices appear in ancient texts. This recipe I'm using could be 5,000 years old.

References:

Markos, Gavala, Mycenaean (Linear b) – English Glossary,
http://www.explorecrete.com/archaeology/linearB.pdf
S. P. B. Durnford and J. R. Akeroyd, "Anatolian marashanha and the Many Uses of Fennel", Anatolian Studies, Vol. 55 (2005), pp. 1-13, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20065532

Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-58436324555276990922011-05-28T10:00:00.000-07:002011-05-28T10:00:04.691-07:00Answer to Mystery Archaeology PictureMany of you guessed it is one of Cleopatra's Needles but only Bob McChesney figured it out it's the one in Manhattan's Central Park. Bravo!

In reality Cleopatra's Needles didn't belong to Cleopatra or even carved during her reign. They're actually 1000 years older than Cleopatra and erected by order of Thutmose III in 1450 BCE.

When I saw it a few years ago I was struck by how faded the hieroglyphs were on it. I have also seen the one in Paris and it was substantially in better shape than the one in New York. It was in such bad condition that Zahi Hawass, Egypt's Chief Antiquities Bulldog, issued one of his numerous rants that if New York doesn't take care of the obelisk he'd taken action.Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-25191472385765265982011-05-21T16:09:00.000-07:002011-05-21T16:15:56.027-07:00Another mystery archaeology pictureAfter a hard week at work, it's time to catch up on my non-professional life. That means it's time for mystery archaeology picture again.

Anyway, here it is. What and where is it? It might be a bit tricky so remember, context is everything. OK! Guess away!

Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-90187152120485341772011-05-15T09:30:00.000-07:002011-05-15T09:30:00.233-07:00Olmec Exhibit at De YoungLast week I went to Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico in San Francisco's De Young Museum. It was a splendid exhibition of the staggering artistic achievement of the Olmecs.

A little background first. The Olmecs are often called the mother culture of Mesoamerica, its florescence between 1800 and 400 BCE in the swampy areas of the Gulf Coast of Mexico, in particular the states of Veracruz and Tabasco. They were the first people of North America to really experiment with creating large monument works, both architectural and sculptural. And their view of the cosmos and the iconography to represent it became so pervasive in Mesoamerica that it even could be found as far away as Costa Rica.

The special exhibition area of the museum is entered via a tunnel. As I turned the corner I was immediately greeted by the impassive face of a colossal head, the massive stone carving of an Olmec ruler from the first site of San Lorenzo made between 1200 and 900 BCE. It was 6 feet by 4.7 feet by 4 feet (1.86m by 1.44m by 1.25m), and made quite an impression on me. Even the name is enigmatic, simply called Colossal Head 5 by archaeologists.

Obviously I could not take picture due to the exhibit's policy but professional photographers can and are willing to share, which is what you see above.

In addition to Colossal Head 5 there were many other large stone sculptures at the exhibit. Many were in the form of Olmec shamans in kneeling poses captured in the middle of a ritual, such as Monument 9 of El Azuzul. There were also fantastic zoomorphs, fierce combinations of different animals and humans, such as Monument 7 of El Azuzul, a fierce jaguar-human supernatural being. More over, what is really interesting is that Monument 9 and its twin Monument 8 were discovered facing Monument 7, the jaguar supernatural. Perhaps they were supplicating themselves in front of the jaguar deity.

A few of the great monuments contain some of the earliest writing in Mesoamerica. I was very happy to finally see Stela C of Tres Zapotes, which contains a Long Count date corresponding to 32 BCE. It is one of the few examples of the epi-Olmec writing system.

(Note image is not from the exhibit but from the Smithsonian Institute)

They also had the Stela 3 of Chiapa de Corzo, with an even older date of 36 BCE. I was amazed that they even call it a stela because it was quite small. The one fragment was no bigger than an iPad! One exciting thing about this "stela" is that there is currently a very active excavation at this ancient city, and just last year the team discovered the oldest royal burial inside a pyramid, and I expect in upcoming years to hear of discoveries of new epi-Olmec texts.

There were also other examples of monumental writing, like Monument 13 of La Venta, also called "Ambassador Relief". Its dating is very controversial, ranging from 1000 to 400 BCE. Its glyphs are also much different than epi-Olmec glyphs. Perhaps it is an older writing system that we know nothing about.

The last inscribed monument was the Chapultepec Stone. Although of unknown provenance, it is thought to be from the Late Classic period, between 500 and 800 CE, almost a thousand years after the Olmecs. Its inscriptions are completely unknown and unlike anything else, although given its location is it might be a late form of the epi-Olmec script. It is certainly another enigma to be tackled by future archaeologists.

While the colossal heads, full-size sculptures, stelae carved with text, and other stone works truly embody the "colossal" character of the exhibit, a substantial portion was dedicated to small-scale, portable objects as well. In particular, green stones like jade were prized by the Olmecs (and Mesoamericans in general) for its brilliant blue green hue and symbolic of life. It was carved into myriads of shapes and forms, from simply ceremonial axe heads to human portraits.

The jade piece on the left is called the Kunz Axe (after its discoverer) and depicts the so-called "werejaguar", originally thought to be a combination of human and jaguar aspects but more recently thought to be a human-reptilian conflation.

The piece on the right is a "celt", a ceremonial axe, and likely hung from a lord's belt (note the hole on the bottom that rope possibly went through). The carvings on it are very hard to discern but they represent the Olmec maize god, as identified by cruciform maize sprouting from its cleft head. The downturned mouth, also present in the Kunz Axe, is a prominent motive in Olmec art to mark deities, and even later Zapotec and Maya cultures continued this tradition. In fact compare the Olmec maize god to the Maya maize god on the San Bartolo murals and you'll see that they are basically the same.

It would seem that all the Olmecs ever carved were formal, rigid works displaying political and religious iconography. While certainly quite true for a majority of the artifacts, there is a small number of Olmec carvings that display remarkable humanity.

Take, for instance, my wife's favorite piece of the exhibition, very simply titled "Fragmentary Figure". As you can see in the picture above, it is quite broken, but fortunately the head is intact and one can almost feel a serious tension emanating from the character's face. There is also remarkable refinement and individualism in its facial features.

A jade statuette from La Venta depicts a woman with a hematite mirror on her chest. Sexist jokes aside, the mirror was in fact a symbol of power. This piece was found in a burial, and while the bones did not survive the acidic soil of La Venta, it means that the statuette was possibly buried with an elite lady who held some sway in Olmec politics. However, what intrigued me the most is her enigmatic smile, quite different than the typical scowl of Olmec sculptures.

However, this lady has nothing on the biggest smile of them all. There was a second colossal head in the exhibition, Colossal Head 9 of La Venta, who stood at the last room of the exhibition.

Who knows why this colossal head is smiling while its companion at the entrance showed a poker face? Maybe there was a reason or maybe the ruler who commissioned the work just felt like it. One thing we tend to forget about ancient people is that they have the same cacophony of emotions, needs, and opinions as we do. I think even the stone-faced Olmecs sometimes have to let loose a bit.

PS. Even though the Olmecs lived thousands of years ago, they left a legacy that permeated into later times and even into modern Mexico. After spending the morning staring at impressive stone sculptures my wife and I decided to go to our favorite Mexican restaurant in San Francisco, Nopalito. (No I am not turning this into a food blog. There is a point to this.) One dish we got was their excellent enchiladas de mole con pollo, the chocolate nicely prominent in this most Mexican of sauces. However, did you know that the other word for chocolate, cacao, originally came from the ancient Zoque language, the language most likely spoken by Olmecs? Say "cacao"...You just spoke Olmec! See, there is a point to this tangent.Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-74035677113302091432011-05-09T21:35:00.000-07:002011-05-09T21:34:11.422-07:00Answer to Mystery Archaeology Picture #2Work heated up again and two weeks passed before I realized that I didn't post the answer to the last mystery archaeology picture. To recap, here is the picture.

It's a carved panel in the doorway of the temple at the top of the Pyramid of Kukulcan, aka El Castillo, in Chichen Itza. Note the paint is still visible after a thousand years due to the arid conditions of the Yucatan peninsula.

Many of you were confused as to whether it's Maya or Aztec. That's because I threw a tricky curve ball at you. Many of the works of art in Chichen Itza display a highly cosmopolitan flavor, often with Central Mexican styles thrown in. To explain this similarity, archaeologists and historians proposed that the semi-historical Toltec king Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl was exiled from Tula, the capital of the Toltec state in Central Mexico, traveled across the Gulf of Mexico to the Yucatan Peninsula, and took over Chichen Itza. However, recent research into Chichen Itza proved that it thrived during the Late and Terminal Classic (600-1000 CE) whereas Tula was a Post-Classic city (1000-1200 CE). It is more likely that both cities adopted an inter-regional artistic style that was prevalent throughout Mesoamerica and even to a small extent the American Southwest.Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-55232454971871790222011-04-24T09:00:00.000-07:002011-04-24T09:00:00.586-07:00Mystery Archaeology Picture #2It's time for another mystery archaeology picture. Actually, this one is not much of a mystery, as it is from a fairly well-known site. Make sure you tell me your guess in the comments.

And if you can't comment on Blogspot for some reason as one reader has said, you can always do it on the Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/ancientscripts) or Twitter (http://twitter.com/#!/ancientscripts).

Once again, have fun guessing!

Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-91531503975262188792011-04-18T09:00:00.000-07:002011-04-18T09:07:56.661-07:00Answer to Mystery Archaeology Picture #1I know that a good number of readers looked at the mystery archaeology picture but I only got two guesses. Oh well. Maybe next time I ought to post something more eye-catching.

Anyway, here is the picture from last time.

I had some good guesses actually. Serapis got it pretty close in terms of geographical location. This is a petroglyph from the American Southwest, specifically from the Petroglyphs National Monument just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

As far as the petroglyphs, they are in fact macaws. The macaw in the lower left is actually in a rectangular cage or pen. This is because macaws are not native to the American Southwest. The closest natural habitat is tropical regions of Mexico and Central America. However, bones and egg shells of macaws have been found throughout the Southwest, meaning that they were traded from distant parts of Mesoamerica and then bred locally. The famous city of Paquimé (aka Casas Grandes) of the Mogollon culture in northern Chihuahua had pens where macaws were kept and bred. No doubt through them these beautiful birds were traded into the Southwest.

Macaws were imported luxury items for the people of the Southwest. Recently, chocolate has also been found in the Southwest (see Prehistoric Americans Traded Chocolate for Turquoise? ). In return they exported turquoise into Mesoamerica, whose cultures revered the blue-green color as symbolic of the nature world.

Cultural exchange likely occurred as well. Balls courts are found in Hohokam sites like Wupatki pueblo. Feathered serpents appear in some Hopi stories. On the other hand, it is less clear what cultural import Mesoamerica got from the Southwest. However, regardless of the exact types of exchange, there was nevertheless a lot of interaction between the two regions.Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-32562013538879258952011-04-10T14:44:00.000-07:002011-04-10T14:53:30.082-07:00Mystery Archaeology Picture #1Over at the Eruptions blog they have a mystery volcano of the month and I thought it might be a good idea over here in Ancient Scripts but I decided to change it up into Mystery Archaeology Picture of the week.

The game is pretty simple. You comment on what you think is the content of the picture and where it was taken. It shouldn't be too hard since I haven't been to too many exotic locations.

Anyway, this is the inaugural post of mystery picture. What do you think it is (that should be easy) and where do you think this is located.

Enjoy!Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-19854406121797135922011-04-05T07:00:00.000-07:002011-04-05T09:09:15.766-07:00ChiaLast night my wife made an enchilada lasagna/casserole, essentially alternating layers of tortillas and stewed chicken and vegetables. Interestingly enough, the tortillas were made with corn and chia seeds. Yes, chia as in Chia Pet, that little 80's ornament that grew green "fur" which were in fact chia sprout. It was actually an important pre-Columbian food source and it's coming into vogue in recent times due to the world's appetite for ancient, supposedly-exotic, nearly-lost grains. Tell that to Mexicans who've been eating it for hundreds of years.

The word chia came directly from its Nahuatl equivalent, namely chian, according to an online Nahuat dictionary. Wikipedia claims it's derived from chian "oily" but according to the dictionary, chiahuac is "oily", which feel like compounds with additional suffixes on top of the chia root. As chia seeds produces 25% to 30% oil, I think words with "oily" meaning in Nahuatl were actually derived from the root meaning the chia plant.

The Nahuatl glyph for chia looks like either a brown triangle or a half circle with dots inside, no doubt representing the dark grey chia seeds. However, there is also a variant in which the dots are replaced by conventional symbols of soil, such as the name Chiapan, which corresponds to Chiapas in modern times. Chiapas in fact means "above the river of chias" (http://geography.berkeley.edu/ProjectsResources/Glyphs/Plate12/Chiapan.html). However, a similar toponym, Teochiapan, does use the regular dotted variant (http://geography.berkeley.edu/ProjectsResources/Glyphs/Plate26/Teochiapan.html).

The chia glyph can also be used as a phonetic sign to write the chi syllable. One example of this usage comes from the Codex Xolotl, a book from the Texcoco region of Central Mexico written right after the Spanish conquest. It details the history of the Aztecs and especially the city of Texcoco, one of the three "allies" that made up the Triple Alliance aka the Aztec Empire. Like most Nahuatl manuscripts it is highly pictorial but a surprising amount of texts with phonetic spelling is used. A character named Achitometl, who was the king of the Tepanecs, has his name spelled out nearly phonetically as a-chi-(to)-me-e. For some reason the to syllable is missing, possibly because it served no grammatical function.

Also, take note of the syllabic glyph e, which is the black oval with a white smaller oval inside. Here it serves as a phonetic complement to reinforce the vowel of the last syllable. However, of interest is the fact that the syllabic glyph e is also the bean glyph, as "bean" in Nahuatl is etl. In fact, my wife said that's what's for dinner tomorrow, our approximation of the Costa Rican gallo pinto. However, instead of going into the wonderful world of beans, I shall stop here, and leave the exploration of another ancient staple for another day.

References/Links:

Nahuatl Dictionary

Byrne, Roger, et al, Nombres Geográficos de México, 1999

Lacadena, Alfonso and Wichmann, Søren, Longitud vocálica y glotalización en la escritura náhuatl, Revista Española de Antropología Americana 38.2: 121-150, 2008

Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-41509743841087372232011-03-20T15:52:00.000-07:002011-04-05T01:41:40.356-07:00Fun with AkkadianUPDATE: After this was posted on March 20th, a long-time reader argued that my final result is in fact incorrect. Scroll to bottom to see the debate and the new translation.

Recently a reader asked me how to translate "heart of lion" into Akkadian. More often than not I have to refuse requests to translate something into an ancient script because frankly (a) I can't possibly know every ancient language, and (b) I don't have the time to look it up and translate as a I learn. In this case I really knew little-to-nothing of Akkadian but since the phrase was fairly simple I took it on as a way to learn a bit more about Akkadian.

First, I looked up the words in the expression, namely "heart" and "lion". I also know that Akkadian was an inflectional language which means that the words change form depending on their function in a sentence. In particular, "of lion" is what is called the genitive case, and unlike English where this concept is expressed as a phrase, Akkadian would have it as a derivation of the root of "lion". In other words, I need to find the word for "lion" in Akkadian and then figure out how to modify it into the equivalent of "of lion".

I found this online dictionary which seems to be pretty good.

http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/cuneiform.languages/dictionary/index_en.php

From this, I found libbu to be "heart; belly, tummy; wish, mind; center, inside". Since the first definition is "heart", my guess is that the rest are metaphoric extensions of the original meaning. Next I found lābu to be "lion". This seems to be pretty straightforward.

Now there is an extra wrinkle in that the Akkadian dictionary states that "mimmation is omitted". This reflects a historical change in the Akkadian language itself that during the Old Babylonian period (20th to 16th century BCE) many words ended in -m, so "heart" would've been libbum. However, the last -m is lost after that time, and the word would be libbu in later dialects like Assyrian. You can see http://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/words.html#mimmation for more information. I personally prefer to use mimmation form.

Next we want to create the construction "heart of a lion". Naively, we can see that "heart" is the main subject of the phase, the so called nominative case, which would be libbum in Old Babylonian. The expression "of a lion" is the genitive case that we discussed earlier, which would be lābim in Akkadian. So the entire translation should be libbum lābim, right? Wrong!

Turns out that when putting two nouns together in Akkadian there's a special case called the construct state in which the nominative case is shortened down to the bone. The entire nominative ending of -um is omitted, and in this case the double consonant -bb- is reduced to a single consonant, so the final form becomes lib lābim.

See http://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/noun.html#declension for more details.

Next we move onto how to write the translated expression in Akkadian cuneiform. To write lib, we use the signs li-ib, so that we can indicate the final -b consonant. . Next up is lābim, where ā is a long vowel, and so we double the vowel [a] like so la-a-bi-im.

And here it is:

And yes, in a geeky way, it was fun.

I highly recommend the Akkadian Language site (http://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/) which touches on Mesopotamian history, cuneiform script, Akkadian grammar, and sample texts. Sometimes I've gotten lost in it for hours!

UPDATE: A friend Twitter disagreed with this conclusion of mine. This was followed by much tweeting back and forth and some more research on my part.

Specifically I found "A structural grammar of Babylonian" by Giorgio Buccellati on Google Books and it provided example of what I am looking for. Particularly I found the phrase libbi ālim which means "heart of the city" which is similarly enough to what I'm looking for, although lib ālim might still be correct in a more obscure way.

Here is the new translation in cuneiform:

Don't you just love this new social network thingy?

Reference:

Akkadian Language, John Heise, http://www.sron.nl/~jheise/akkadian/

Akkadian Dictionary, Association Assyrophile de France, http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/cuneiform.languages/dictionary/index_en.php

A structural grammar of Babylonian, Giorgio Buccellati, http://books.google.com/books?id=_Of_CeS5JRUC&pg=PA159&lpg=PA159&dq=libbum+construct+state&source=bl&ots=ccO6FdKi-2&sig=3whMSTkMWAd8nJMl5IpOWnlSSro&hl=en&ei=zveHTejRI4bmsQO-hMmODA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=heart&f=false

Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-5512431058073640492011-03-08T17:19:00.000-08:002011-03-08T17:19:00.100-08:00A grab bag of wiggling thoughtsIt's March 2011 already? My last post was in November 2010 and to be honest I haven't had any ideas on what to talk about. There are, however, updates over at the very Web 1.0 Ancient Scripts website, including new page on Cretan Hieroglyphs and an update on Linear A.

For the next writing system I am going to jump across the globe and work on Rongo Rongo, the mysterious scripts of Easter Island. It's going to be fun to read about all the looney crackpot theories about this script. However, aside from dubious claims with the aliens, supernatural beings, and even wandering Greeks/Egyptians/Phoenicians, there are actually solid research but with various degrees of convincibility. I've done a bit of reading already and it's quite fascinating!

Another subproject that I really want to get started is bibliography on each page. Right now all my sources are available on the Reference page (http://www.ancientscripts.com/reference.html), and I meticulously keep that updated. However, what would be really nice is to have each page lists its own source materials. It would be a bit of an undertaking, but it will really help one of my goals of Ancient Scripts which is to enable readers to go deeper (pardon the Inception reference) into a subject by providing both online and offline resources.

Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-61059834255966114322010-11-09T18:00:00.000-08:002010-11-09T18:00:00.939-08:00Writing of a Different MindWow it's November. I didn't post any entries for the entire month of October. Me bad. So I figure I return to this long-neglected blog and writing about something different for a change.

I am a huge science fiction fan. I especially like topics related to space and space exploration, and the news of more and more rocky exoplanets had me thinking about astrobiology or perhaps even xenolinguistics. If there are intelligent and sentient species out there, would they have writing systems, and if so, how would they look like?

For one I am a huge skeptic of UFO's as alien crafts so I am tossing out right away all the claims of "hieroglyphs" on supposed artifacts recovered in various Roswell-like incidents. Instead this is going to be a purely theoretical discussion and exploration.

Before we even start to think about alien languages and writing systems, we need to think about, well, how the aliens think and communicate. Here on Earth, humans communicate using sounds, primarily consonants and vowels but also pitch and clicks. Therefore all human writing systems always encode sound in various degrees. Even writing systems claimed as "ideographic" or "logographic" like Chinese do have roots in phonetic representation.

Now, imagine a species that communicates using non-sonic means. One possibility is communication via light. In that scenario, this species would have a light-emitting organ that generate light pulses in a certain range in the electromagnetic spectrum. Each recognizable frequency would represent a basic unit in their "language". Writing system is a way to record ephemeral communication into a more permanent form by a certain encoding scheme, so in the case of this species, their writing will encode light. Instead of "phonograms" (glyphs that represent sounds), maybe they'll employ "photoglyphs" (fyi the word "photograms" already mean something in photography) which would represent frequencies considered to have meaning in their language.

Polarization, the direction of the light wave oscillation, is also another property of light, and might also be encoded in this system. However, like tones among humans, perhaps some cultures of this species would use polarization to distinguish words while others might use it as a extra-linguistic information such as emphasis or subtext.

Another species might have echolocation capabilities and communicate via sonic means like songs or clicks like cetaceans (dolphins, whales, etc). This means that just be focusing their sound "beams" they can visualize three-dimension structures. So it is possible that signs in their writing is three-dimensional. To human eyes, their writing would appear to be abstract sculptures. Like our two-dimensional scripts, shape and position will carry certain meanings or sounds, but depth of indentation or protrusions can also carry linguistic values as well.

The material on which this species's writing system is inscribed might also affect how information is presented. For example, texture of the surface might encode information. Some beams can even penetrate certain materials so there might be nested levels or "shells" of writing inside one another. Echo might also come into play in this writing system, as certain materials might generate echoes that would represent yet another level of meaning, a phenomenon perhaps exploited by the poets of this species.

Another possibility could be a purely chemical-based language. Because chemicals are less transient than light or sound, it is possible that instead of encoding the language in a stable medium, the species could invent a technology to capture the communication chemicals that can be released later by replicating the compounds from the captured ones. Therefore in this scenario, the writing system is not an encoding mechanism, but a purely record/replay mechanism. It might not even be a writing system at all.

While it was a lot of fun coming up with this crazy stuff, whatever imagined species and their languages I can come up with will no doubt be nowhere near as amazing as real extraterrestrial species that we encounter in the future. However, I kind of doubt we'll have any alien contact in my life time. I'll just be happy with some bacteria on Mars or Europa. Just to know there's life out there.Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-53874754181960701462010-09-07T00:20:00.000-07:002010-09-07T00:20:45.117-07:00Surat BatakA few weeks ago I received an email from Indonesia, from someone named Andre Samosir who said that he was a member of the Batak tribe, and that he had emailed me years ago about writing a paper on the Batak script but hadn't gotten the chance to complete it until recently.

Remarkably I actually remembered that email conversation from 2007. So I opened the attachment and read through the paper on the Batak script, or Surat Batak. I thought that it was pretty well-written, especially about the script's changes through time from the earliest stage to the modern age. And since I haven't gotten a chance to write a page on Batak yet, I figured that I would share it here on the blog.

Here is a quick preview:

The full paper can be downloaded through this link. Also, the bibliography is separately listed below:

Sihombing, T.M. (1986). Filsafat Batak: Tentang Kebiasaan-kebiasaan & Adat-istiadat. Jakarta: Balai Pustaka.

And here is a little about Andre as written by himself:

I am Andre Somba Gugun Samosir, a 28-year-old guy from the Batak tribe in Indonesia. Andre means "man". The "Somba Gugun" in my name is a wordplay from Batak words meaning "asked/prayed for fervently". Samosir is just a family name (albeit being also the name of the island in the center of Lake Toba in Indonesia) of hundreds of people in Batak Toba. Batak clans zealously keep track of their family trees, so for that matter, I am the 15th Samosir in my line of genealogy. I graduated from the medical school of Padjadjaran University, Bandung, West Java in early 2007, and now worked as a general practitioner in a small hospital in Palembang (South Sumatra). In my leisure time among the tiring weeks, I am a passionate reader of just about everything except economy and political stuff. Supercars, gems, quantum physics, linguistics, Esperanto studies, world writing systems, philosophy, and Walt Whitman and Michael Crichton to name a few interests.

To contact Andre, you can find him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/k273Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-59649980646042156942010-08-25T15:03:00.000-07:002010-08-25T15:06:00.942-07:00InspirationsOver at Archaeology magazine there's a blog post titled "How Henry VIII's Racy Sex Life Turned Me into An Archaeological Writer" that talks about how archaeologist Heather Pringle got inspired for her choice of career by reading popular historical fiction.

This got me thinking why I'm so interested in archaeology and linguistics and all things old that I've been working on Ancient Scripts on and off for almost 15 years now. I can think of a few different reasons why.

When I was a kid way back in the early 80's there was this French/Japanese cartoon/anime called "The Mysterious Cities of Gold" which a mash-up of various legends including El Dorado and Atlantis set among the Spanish conquest of the New World in the 16th century. I was more fascinated by this anime more than big giant mecha or kung-fu superheroes or Ultramen. It didn't take me long to figure out all the Atlantis stuff was fluff, but the fascination with Aztecs and Mayas and Incas stayed to this day.

Another thing that really caught my eye when I was growing up in Hong Kong was the front of my Chinese class workbook at 1st grade (I think). It had ten simple Chinese characters like 山 (mountain), 月 (moon), 水 (water), etc, and their evolution from pictograms and Oracle Bone script through the seal and calligraphic scripts to modern types. I recalled being fascinated by the fact that the pictograms are stylized but recognizable natural objects. I didn't know how far back in time the pictograms were, but I understood that writing systems are not static but fluid and changing. Most of all, I think I developed an understanding of the time scales of human history.

I also have to credit my excellent education in St Francis College in Moravia, Costa Rica ("college" or "colegio" is actually secondary school in Costa Rica, sort of equivalent to middle school and high school together in USA), for inspiring my interests in all things ancient. First in 7th grade there was Maya arithmetic in math class. Learning to do math in base-20 is fun! Then there was units on ancient history and for some reason I got really interested in Ancient Egypt. I even did a project on Pre-Dynastic Egyptian art for Art class. The teacher took a look at my giant tome and promptly gave me 100%.

Then there was Linguistics 11 at UC Berkeley. While I was pursuing a computer science degree in university, I also took a lot of archaeology and linguistics classes. I even tried to figure out if there was an anthropology minor, but they didn't have that at the time. Linguistics 11 was Writing Systems. In other words, that was the beginning of Ancient Scripts. I started the website shortly afterwards, around 1996, and it's been alive ever since.Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-56510383592464413732010-07-20T11:25:00.000-07:002010-07-20T23:50:05.999-07:00Future PlansIt's been a while since I've last posted as I've been just ridiculously swamped. So instead of talking about something really interesting, I'll talk about what interesting things I'd like to do on Ancient Scripts. Aside from creating new pages for scripts, I'm planning some new higher-level content:

Bibliography on each page. Right now all my references are jammed into a single page. I would like each page to display its source material, as I actually get quite a few number of requests for that.

More interactive pages. I'm working on an Alphabet comparison chart. It's sort of based on the South Asian script comparison widget but a bit more complicated because alphabets are far more diverse than South Asian abugidas. One letter in one alphabet could correspond to two letters in another alphabet.

Page(s) on decipherment. This will walk through how the decipherment of a writing system actually happens. And why some scripts can't be deciphered yet.

Unicode. A lot of ancient scripts are being included in the Unicode standard, which means if there's a font for it, you can see it on your computer/smart phone/tablet screen. It'd be cool to display which scripts have Unicode and assemble a more comprehensive list of fonts.

Glossary. Certain keywords like "logogram" or "boustrophedon" will be active when the mouse pointer is over them and display a brief explanation

Script-wise right now I'm working on Lao, but for some reason I can't get it to work on my ancient version of Photoshop. So I'm using GIMP instead which is just different enough that it drives me bonkers. But do expect that coming soon.

I also uploaded a revised Aztec page the past weekend. I added the syllabary and new examples of glyphs including pure logograms, rebus, and phonetic signs. The link is http://www.ancientscripts.com/aztec.html

Lastly I have a lot of suggestions and corrections to make. Keep those emails coming!Ancient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-2196112077917353842010-05-30T00:36:00.000-07:002010-05-30T00:42:11.931-07:00What's in a name? Part IIYears ago when we were expecting our first child, my wife and I decided to name our son Alexander. We thought that it's a good solid name because it (a) can't be teased, (b) is not the most common but not too rare or weird, and (c) is a very ancient name. According to dictionaries, it is Greek in origin, Αλέξανδρος, meaning "protector of men" (while seemingly a lofty goal, in fact it has a martial connotation and implies one who protects others in battle).

Perhaps the most famous Alexander in history was Alexander III of Macedon (356–323 BCE), also known as Alexander the Great who conquered a big chunk of the eastern Mediterranean as well as Mesopotamia, Persia, and even bits of India. But even at this time, the late Classical Greek/Early Hellenistic period, Alexander was already an ancient name. There were earlier Alexanders from Classical Greece, such as Alexander of Corinth who lived from the 9th to 8th century BCE.

However, the name is even earlier than that. A clay tablet from the Mycenaean period (16th to 12th century BCE) of Greece found in Mycenae itself contains the sequence of Linear B signs a-re-ka-sa-da-ra (see figure 1.b), which reads Alexandra, the female form of Alexandros. Since Greek names typically can have both male and female forms, there is no doubt that Alexandros was being used as a name at least in the 12th century BCE.

Coincidentally, the late Mycenaean period is also widely believed to correspond to when the Trojan war happened. In the 19th century German archaeologist Henrich Schliemann discovered the ruins of Troy in Asia Minor (Turkey), bringing the Trojan war from legend into history. Later archaeological discoveries revealed the powerful Hittite Empire which ruled much of Turkey except for the very western part where a number of somewhat independent principalities existed. The imperial Hittite archives mention one particular kingdom named Wilusa, and one of its king was called Alaksandu (see figure 1.c) who lived around 1280 BCE.

What is really interesting is that Troy is actually Ilion in Classical Greek, and likely Wilion in Homeric and Mycenaean Greek. This means that Wilusa mentioned in the Hittite archives was probably Troy.

And what about this king Alaksandu, whose name suspiciously sounds like Alexander? Going back to the Iliad, we find that Paris, the prince of Troy who stole away Helen, was in fact also named Alexander. In other words, the mythological Paris of Troy was based on the historical Alaksandu (or Alexander) of Wilusa. Once again we find some grain of truth in myths and legends.

This brings up an interesting question. Earlier I mentioned that Alexander is a Greek name, but Trojans in the 13th century BCE most likely did not speak Greek. The most probable language spoken in Troy/Wilusa was Luwian. Does this mean that Alaksandu was actually a Luwian name that the Greeks adopted and reinterpreted into having a Greek meaning? Or Alaksandu a Greek name adopted by Luwians? Or maybe even a Greek named Alexander somehow weaseled his way into being king of a foreign city? Like the Trojan War, it's part history and part fantasy and we'll always be guessing as to what really happened nearly three thousand years ago.

Regardless of whether Alexander is Greek or Luwian, I find it amazing the depth of history and stories carried in everyday names. Why don't you investigate your name and see where it leads you?

References:

Chadwick, John, et al, "The Mycenae Tablets III", Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Vol. 52, No. 7 (1962), pp. 1-76

Hahn, E.A., "Hittite genuš(š)uš, genuš(š)i, and pankuš(š)i", Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 85, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1965), pp. 295-307

Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-46267993432747528242010-03-28T23:22:00.000-07:002010-04-07T00:17:54.595-07:00History of My Life, Part II (in Nahuatl)On and off I've been working on my "autobiography" using Nahuatl (Aztec) hieroglyphs for a few years now. It'd be somewhat like Mixtec manuscripts documenting the history of various towns in pre-Columbian Oaxaca, but using Nahuatl naming conventions. But since my Nahuatl is pretty rudimentary and the Nahuatl writing system isn't that well-understood, my progress is pretty glacial.

Two years ago I started the whole thing by figuring out how to write names of various local places that I've lived in Nahuatl, which I've detailed in History of My Life, Part III (in Nahuatl). I only managed to translate the names of two places, namely Mountain View (my hometown) and San Francisco, the nearest big city (and which I tell people is where I'm from when I'm not in California since Mountain View will draw blank stares):

The first glyph is that of San Francisco, phonetically transcribed using Nahuatl syllabograms because the meaning of San Francisco would be difficult to represent.

In case of Mountain View, I translated its name to Nahuatl as Tepetlachiayan, which written in a mixture of logograms and syllabograms. I actually made up a logogram for tlachia, "to see", by overloading the sign for "eye" and attaching a phonetic complement of tla (the set of teeth) on top of it to yield the reading of tlachia "to see" instead of ixco "eye".

My next attempt is to translate the other places I've lived. I spent my first ten years of life living in Hong Kong (香港), which in fact translates as "Port of Incense" in English. So I translate that into Nahuatl as Copalacaltecoyan, which is actually composed of copal ("incense"), acal(li) ("canoe"), teca ("to put something"), and -yan (location suffix). Probably not the best Nahuatl but what the hey, it got the job done.

On the left is Hong Kong, written in a mixture of logograms and syllabograms to spell out Copalacaltecoyan. Both copal and acal(li) are written in logograms, but when it came to write the verbal conjugation teco, I decided to fully use phonetic signs, but with a twist. The sign for the sound te is a stylized stone with wavy lines, and that of ko is a pot. I could've written a stone with a pot, but instead I combined or conflated the two signs into a single sign that looks like a pot made of stylized stone.

The next place I lived was Costa Rica, which means "rich coast" in Spanish. The Nahuatl name is Necuiltonolanahuac. While the second component, anahuac, has a well-known glyph as it means a body of water, the first part, necuiltonol- is actually a complex verbal conjugation from the root cuilonoa which means "to become rich" and completely stumped me as to how to represent it in Nahuatl glyphs.

Eventually after much futile research I just gave up and decided to write the name of the city that I lived in, San José. Once again, like San Francisco, I'll have to phonetically transcribe that using Nahuatl syllabograms. San José is written using the syllabograms sa-xo-se. First of all, Nahuatl writing doesn't write consonants at the end of syllables, and that's why "San" is written with only sa. Also, Nahuatl of the 16th century does not have the 21st century Spanish sound represented by the letter j (so called uvular fricative), I went for the closest sound, "sh" as in English "ship", represented by the 16th-century Spanish letter x. Modern transcription of Nahuatl in the Roman alphabet retains the letter x and so is used also in academic works.

The Nahuatl syllabary can be found at old Ancient Scripts preview at LiveJournal, or in real academic works:

"Special Nahuatl Writing Issue", PARI Journal Journal, Vol. VIII, No. 4, Spring 2008

"Longitud vocálica y glotalización en la escritura náhuatl", Revista Española de Antropología Americana 38.2, 2008.

This is all I got for now. Next time we should get to Part I, which would be my name.Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-49974951493385552162010-03-22T20:55:00.000-07:002010-03-23T23:33:36.568-07:00Relaunch of the (Two) MilleniaIn addition to obsessed with things ancient, I'm also a big foodie, so what's better to talk about then news of an ancient food establishment coming back to life again.

According to this article, an ancient Roman thermopoolium (fast food joint) once owned by proprietor Vetutius Placidus before being shuttered by a rather extreme form of healthy code violation known as the volcanic pyroclastic flow caused by the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius is being reopened by presumably whatever Italian governmental agency running Pompeii (the article didn't mention it).

A typical thermopolium would serve quick snacks like wines, meat, cheeses, or lentils. An establishment typically served just a few specialized items, rather like tapas bars in Spain.

If I were back then I'd seek out the best ham in ancient Rome. We know they had salt-cured hams like prosciutto di Parma or jamón de Serrano. Yes, pig is my weakness, and salt-cured ham my poison. Oh wait I think there's some prosciutto in my fridge. Hold on...

Anyway, before you lose me, I should tell you that you can see the thermopolium of Vetutius Placidus using Google Maps. In fact you can explore parts of Pompeii that way. It's pretty cool actually.

View Larger MapAncient Scriptshttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-70049984777932480522010-03-17T20:29:00.000-07:002010-03-19T08:43:45.838-07:00What's in a name?A while ago when I was working on revamping my Chinese page I stumbled upon this cool website called Chinese Etymology. It is actually a bit of a misnomer, because it doesn't tell you about the etymology of Chinese words but in fact allows you to type in a character and then shows the evolution of a character from Oracle Bone script (甲骨文, 12th century BCE) to Lesser Seal (小篆, 3rd century BCE) script.

So, curious, I typed in my family name, 盧, to see how far back it goes and what did it mean. To my surprise there is actually an ancient version of 盧 in the Oracle Bone script:

From the look of it, it is a compound of two other characters. On the left is some kind of pottery vessel (modern Chinese 皿), and on the right is a stylized tiger (modern 虎).

For a while it baffled me why such a combination. Was it some kind of ritual pottery that involved mythological tigers? Tiger drinking out of a basin in some hitherto-unknown poetic metaphor? I was getting a bit obsessed with the tiger since I was born on the Year of the Tiger. I wanted some magical way of tying my name to my birth year.

Further investigation revealed that the tiger character has a mundane, but not necessarily less interesting, explanation. You see, in modern Chinese dialects, tiger is pronounced hu in Mandarin and fu in Cantonese. My name is either lu in Mandarin and lo in Cantonese. However, using the wonders of historical linguistics, scholars have reconstructed the sounds of these words as far back as the Zhou dynasty, around 800 BCE, at an ancient form of the Chinese language called Old Chinese.

Using the STARLING Old Chinese reconstruction database, I found that 盧 had a reconstructed pronunciation of *rā (the asterisk indicates a reconstructed sound), and 虎 was pronounced *hlāʔ. While not identical, the two pronunciations are actually fairly similar, so it would've been likely that the tiger character was used to write the word for vessel in a rebus writing sort of way that is pretty common in early Chinese (another example was using the world for elephant *ziang to write the word for image, also *ziang).

At some point using the tiger character to write both "tiger" and "vessel" must've caused a lot of confusion, and so the vessel character 皿 was paired with the tiger character 虎 to provide the general meaning of some kind of vessel or container. In other words, 皿 was used for its general meaning but not phonetic value, whereas 虎 provided the rough phonetic value but no meaning whatsoever.

And what exactly is the original meaning of 盧? It's still a bit ambiguous but most
likely some kind of vessel used to hold food. That's a bit of a fall from a tiger crouching over a ceremonial cauldron, no? Actually, I much prefer the phonetic explanation of the tiger. This is a snapshot of the important step of introducing what's called "semantic determinatives" (which roughly correspond to modern Chinese radicals) in the evolution of the early Chinese writing system.

References:

Sears, Richard, "Chinese Etymology", http://www.chineseetymology.org/.

Starostin, S., Bronnikov, G., Krylov, P., "Database query to Chinese characters", http://starling.rinet.ru/cgi-bin/query.cgi?basename=\data\china\bigchina&root=config&morpho=0Ancient Scriptshttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-2265738869976245470.post-24941180425191593962010-01-28T13:33:00.001-08:002010-01-28T18:15:44.503-08:00The Rabbit Scribe's AdventuresOne of the icons on the Ancient Scripts home page is a rabbit scribe, a seemingly anthropomorphic bunny using a brush to jot down some ceremony he is witnessing. It is my favorite characters out of all Maya painted works, not only because it is so well executed artistically but also because of the story that is hinted. A story of whimsy and humor.

I have had the pleasure to see this rabbit in person. The pottery that he resides upon, a tall cylinder cup used to drink chocolate, was on exhibit a few years ago at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco and I managed to see the collection. I was quite surprised to see how small the cup was, and as a consequence, how fine the lines of the painting. It must've been a very experienced artist with a very sure hand who did it.

Fortunately, archaeological photographer Justin Kerr has taken rollout pictures of a good number of Maya vases and placed them on the web at http://www.mayavase.com/. And for your viewing please, this is the home of the rabbit scribe, the so-called Princeton Vase.

The scenery of the cup was very detailed. It is most likely a depiction of the Maya Underworld. The rabbit scribe is actually writing into a book bound in jaguar pelt. Above him, on the platform, is a group of women surrounding an old man in a wide-brimmed hat. To the left are two masked-and-head-dressed men wearing jaguar pelts in the processing of executing a bound prisoner on the ground.

The old man is likely God L (the name is still undeciphered), a god associated with trade, sorcery, and war. But despite his fearsome reputation, in this scene he looks nothing more than a lecherous old geezer, sweet-talking to the nubile woman in front of him. Behind God L is a lady eavesdropping on him, and below her are two girls, one pouring chocolate from a cylinder vase and the other waiting to drink the liquid. A really neat detail is the lady watching the execution is tapping the foot of the woman God L is hitting on with her finger.

The two men in masks are probably the Hero Twins, sons of the Maize God summoned to the Underworld to endure a series of trials and tribulations, all of which potentially fatal. According to the 16th-century Quiche Maya epic Popol Vuh, having realized they'll never be set free until they were dead, at their last trial they threw themselves into the fire and were burnt into ash. The ash were thrown into the river where they came back to life and became a duo of wandering entertainers that delighted the denizens of Xibalba by performing feats of magic such as sacrificing each other and then resurrect him. The lords of Xibalba heard of these magical feats and summoned them to their court, where they defeated Xibalbal by tricking God L's cohorts into offering themselves for sacrifice. The scene on the Princeton vase is most likely a moment from the disguised Hero Twins back in God L's court dispatching a god of underworld.

In most sources, both Popol Vuh and Classic vases, the narrative continues with the Hero Twins resurrecting their father, the Maize God, who was also killed by Xibalba many years earlier, transforming into sky gods (the sources don't agree on who becoming what), and leading to the beginning of the current world and of humanity.

But what happened to God L? In Popol Vuh, the equivalent of God L was killed, but it seems that in Classic times God L survived but is stripped of his clothes, jewelry, and hat and humiliated by the resurrected Maize God and the Hero Twins.

On the left that looks like one angry Maize God yelling and stomping on a lord of Xibalba. In the middle, God L is taking off his loincloth (!) which the dwarf is demanding. In Mesoamerica, complete nudity in males is a sign of complete defeat, and so the bare state of the lords of Xibalba indicate their defeat and humiliation.

The story continues in a vase from Naranjo with a reappearance of none other than the rabbit, who has stolen the bundle containing God L's possessions.

Starting on the right, the rabbit is holding a bundle in one hand and a staff and a headdress in the other. Note that staff is the same as the dwarf was holding earlier. He is standing on a mountain or earth monster in front of God L (in his godly appearance), who appears to be arguing with the rabbit to give back his possessions. This argument was apparently fruitless, as in the next scene on the left, God L has supplicated himself in front of the Sun God and the speech scroll emanating from his mouth says that the rabbit has stolen his possessions and he asks if the Sun God has seen the thief. In response, the Sun God says that the rabbit is not with him, and addresses God L as "grandfather", although whether that is an actual familial relationship or a figure of speech in reference to an older man is unknown. What is truly fun is that the rabbit is actually hiding behind the Sun God.

The story concludes in the final vase in which the rabbit is finally "apprehended".

In this scene, the Moon Goddess on the right (identified by a stylized moon) is holding out the rabbit, who still has the hat and cloak of God L (still in godly appearance and unclothed). The poor old God L is half-kneeling in front of the Moon Goddess. In all likelihood, the rabbit is forced to give back God L's possessions.

Does the rabbit get punished for this episode? Nobody knows. Maybe it was a light punishment, because the rabbit is also the constant companion of the Moon Goddess, as depicted in countless sculptures and vases. Maybe he got away without consequence at all. That trickster thief. But don't we all love a good ruffian, especially a cute and cuddly one? Or maybe he was the distant ancestor of Bugs Bunny?

On that note, it's back to the 21st century.

All images used on this post are copyright Justin Kerr. http://www.mayavase.com/.

Dialogue between God L and Sun God taken from:

"The First-Person Singular Independent Pronoun in Classic Ch'olan", Kerry Hull, Michael D. Carrasco and Robert Wald, Mexicon, Vol 31 No 2, April 2009, http://www.mayavase.com/First-Person.pdfAncient Scriptshttp://email@example.com


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|Dessert Table
|{No Sew} Onsie Bunting
|Lunch menu
|Party Cracker Favors
|Animal stamps hidden inside the party crackers
|Mason jar candles wrapped with fabric
|Paper straws and mason jar glasses
|Homemade Apple Pie
|Personalized place mats for the children's table
Coloring page from Twisty Noodle
|Fair prize ribbon cupcake toppers
and Two Sugar Babies cupcake toppers
| Cake Pops by Terri's Treasures
This weekend I had the pleasure of throwing a baby shower for my future nephew! We traveled 10 hours to get there the day after New England got hit with 24 inches of snow! Luckily the roads were plowed and ready for us and we made it there safely. The shower was so much fun.
Highlights of the shower:
We asked guests to bring a book for the parents-to-be rather than a card. We included a matching bookplate in the invitation for guests to sign and place inside their book.
Cake pops from Terri's Treasures were a huge hit!
- Favors were pig shaped gingerbread cookies tied with twine and matching thank you tag.
- A family of metal pig silhouettes greeted guests outside as they arrived (forgot to take a picture!)
- Food included soups, salad, chicken salad, croissants, and homemade country fair bread.
- We set up a children's table with personalized place mats and poppers. Inside the popper party favors were farm animal stamps to take home.
- Mason jar drinking glasses and paper straws
- Mason jars wrapped with fabric used as candle holders
- Onesie bunting hanging in front of the gift opening area
- homemade apple pie
- twine fabric garlands
Special Thanks to the following people:
Invitations and party graphics by Social Butterfly
Cake Pops by Terri's Treasures
Cupcake toppers by Two Sugar Babies
Farm Animal Stamps from Oriental Trading
Fabric from JoAnns
Piggy Banks: Dollar Store
All baked goods: Grandma Jan

subset: commoncrawl


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Ever since time began, men have regarded Penis size as the ultimate sign of masculinity. The desire for a larger penis dates back centuries. Some of the methods used over the years to increase penis size include stretching and pulling devices, pills and the ancient tradition of jelqing.
What Is Jelqing
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|The League of Incredible Vegetables
Music By:
Release Date(s):
October 16, 2012
LarryBoy, Dr. Flurry, Penguin Minions, Alfred, The League, Scooter
Theme Song By
It is the first LarryBoy episode in six years and the second VeggieTales episode to be subtitled "A Lesson in Handling Fear", the first one being "Where's God When I'm S-Scared?".
While At the Bumblyburg Science Museum a trio of pesky penguins in jumpsuits try to steal something known as the Fear-Dar. Once the Penguins defeat Bumbyburg's hero LarryBoy, Alfred calls upon "The League Of Incredible Vegetables" for help. Thingamabob (Bob the Tomato), S-Cape (Mr. Lunt), and Vouge (Petunia Rhubarb) have to try to stop the Penguins.
When Laura Carrot persuades Junior Asparagus to throw a snowball at a gate to help Vogue and Thingambob go through it, he is appointed onto the League and gets a suit of his own.
It turns out, the Penguins were sent by "Dr. Flurry" who is planning to freeze all of Bumblyburg using this device, the Fear-Dar, which can use fear and charge it into a freeze-laser. He and his Penguin army terrorize Bumblyburg using the Fear-Dar and a giant Metal Egg.
When The League tries to stop him, they all get frozen except for Junior. Once Junior learns that it isn't super-suits that help you to be brave, it is God, he and Alfred have to save the League with Junior's new identity "Ricochet."
Junior and Alfred save the League with the new learned lesson, and Junior becomes a full-time member of the League.
Cast of Characters
- Larry the Cucumber as LarryBoy
- Bob the Tomato as Thingamabob
- Junior Asparagus as Ricochet
- Mr. Lunt as S-Cape
- Petunia Rhubarb as Vogue
- Archibald Asparagus as Alfred
- Dr. Flurry as himself
- Eenie, Meenie, and Michael as themselves
- Scooter Carrot as Officer Scooter
- Laura Carrot as herself
- Ben Gourd as Supper Hero
- Even though Bob already dressed up as "The Red Wonder" in LarryBoy and the Bad Apple, he was given a new alter ego.
- This will be the first LarryBoy adventure in which Bob and Mr. Lunt star as primary characters.
- This will be the first 3D LarryBoy episode where LarryBoy will have to work with other superheroes.
- This is the second VeggieTales episode to be subtitled "A Lesson in Handling Fear", after "Where's God When I'm S-Scared?"
- This is the first LarryBoy episode to have Bob in it, aside from appearing in the kitchen.
- The episode's title is a parody of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
- Vogue is a reference of the X-Men character Rogue.
- This is the first LarryBoy adventure to feature a silly song.
- The song Trust in God is sung by Alfred Asparagus and Junior Asparagus. The last time the two of them sang together as a duo, was in the film Dave and the Giant Pickle, AKA LarryBoy's first appearance!
- An App game based on the show for the iPhone and iPod Touch will be available on iTunes soon!
- LarryBoy is already a member of the League, prior to the events of the film.
- For some reason, Bob likes the What We Have Learned song.
- Here were Junior's previous attempts at a superhero.
- Magnet Boy
- A balloon Junior
- A tornado Junior
- A jetpack Junior
- A cloak box Junior
- This episode was originally called "Larryboy and the League of Superheroes"
Behind the Scenes
Promotional Ads
At Family Christian Book Stores, there is a pre-order package that includes a free LarryBoy action figure, and a LarryBoy and the Rumor Weed DVD, along with the film when it comes out.
A game app based on the show is currently available on Amazon for the Kindle and on iTunes for the iPod Touch, iPhone, and the iPad.
- This is a problem too big for LarryBoy alone! - Alfred
- Alfred! LarryBoy to Alfred; I NEED BACKUP!!! - LarryBoy
- S-Cape, away! - S-Cape
- League of Incredible Vegetables, engage! - Thingamabob
- I...AM...THAT...HERO!!! - LarryBoy
- Time...to chill! - Dr. Flurry
- MY EYEBALLS ARE FROZEN! - LarryBoy
- The League Of Incredible Vegetables - Newsboys
|LarryBoy Franchise
Preceded By:
Followed By:


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The GMS band had a great day at Busch Gardens last week!
The 8th grade band received third place with the rating of "Excellent". The 6th grade band received second place with the rating of "Superior". The 7th grade band received first place with the rating of superior! The 7th grade band also went on to receive grand champion for instrumental music for the day!
Emily Roberts, the oboe player from the beginning band, received the outstanding musician award. Garrett Kemmerly received an outstanding musician award for his tuba playing. Dawn Ellis, a percussionist from the 7th grade group, also received an outstanding musician award. The 8th grade flute section received an award for the outstanding section of the day. Margaret Black from the 8th grade group received the outstanding soloist award for the day!
Way to go Mr. Sykes and Goochland Middle School band kids!


text: This is a page of my 9in. x 6in. handmade journal focusing on wolves. I created a journal specifically for my studies regarding animals and nature. When researching wolves, I was fascinated with the Native American's relationship with these mysterious creatures. I learned about their myths and legends along with the symbolic meanings of wolves in Japanse and Nordic cultures. From small wooden charms to glimmering constellations, the wolf has served as a prominent symbol of wisdom and bravery.


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BMW to Recall 1.6 Million Cars Worldwide on Air Bag Safety Concerns – Wall Street Journal
Posted: Wednesday, July 16, 2014
FRANKFURT—BMW AG on Wednesday said it would recall about 1.6 million cars of its 3 series sedans world-wide, as part of an initiative to replace passenger-side front air bags affecting seven major auto makers.
BMW said its recall is voluntary, and it will replace air bags that could explode under certain circumstances. Including other auto…


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Clarion is proud to invite you to join our network for Muslim reformers and others with in interest in challenging radical Islam.
Welcome to Let's Talk Islamism.
This group is a digital forum for solutions-oriented conversations about the fight for universal values in the face of Islamist extremism. After surveying some of the 3,000+ active members, it is clear there is a need for higher quality collaboration against Islamism. Activists from a mosaic of belief systems agree that Islamist extremism endangers lives and rights globally, but disagree on the nature of the problem and how to fix it.
Let's Talk Islamism creates opportunities for high-caliber global activists, journalists and thought leaders to collaborate and publicize their work more effectively.


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Carl Kammerling International has announced its biggest ever seasonal promotion for UK merchants.
Running from 2 September until 27 December, the promotion will feature star buys from CK tools, CK Classic, CK Magma, Kasp and Avit. With discounts of up to -55%, the year's best-selling lines will be up for grabs, along with eight exclusive purchase lines from Avit, all for under £20. These gifts include the Pocket Multi Tool, the 5-piece Scissor Set, the 7-piece Soft Grip Screwdriver Set and the 21-piece Avit Essentials Tool Kit.
A selection of clothing has also been added to the seasonal promotion, including a smart polo shirt, warming fleece, premium body warmer and beanie.
In addition, the campaign features 15 value-added products including the CK tools Wood Chisel Set, which is accompanied by a free CK Magma Chisel Roll, the Triton XLS Flexible Screwdriver with a free 8-piece bits set and the CK Core Tool Kit with a free torch.
With four levels of promotion available, merchants have the flexibility to choose the package that's right for them, dependent on their required order levels. The Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum packages all benefit from free marketing support, which includes consumer leaflets, point of sale posters, counter mats, window stickers, wobblers and a free fleece. In further support of its merchants, Carl Kammerling is also supplying branded USB drives pre-loaded with product and merchandising imagery.
Vanessa Molloy, brand manager at Carl Kammerling International, said: "Christmas is a key period for our trade customers and we want to support them with competitive price points to help them drive profits.
"Our Christmas promotion is bursting with fantastic deals and by creating varying levels of promotion, we have ensured there is something to suit everyone. We are constantly working to find new ways of offering our customers support, at key periods in the calendar and throughout the year, helping to increase footfall and drive sales."
For more details please contact your sales representative directly, call Carl Kammerling on 01758 704704 or visit www.carlkammerling.com.


text: Feeling sexy and confident while wearing a wedding dress will really show when you walk down the aisle; therefore, sexy wedding dresses can be sexy if the bride feels sexy. Whether you are a bride who wants that typical sexy wedding dress or a bride who wants to choose her own interpretation of sexy wedding dress, Jasmine Bridal is sure to have the right sexy wedding dress that will suit your own sexy wedding dress style. Jasmine Bridal most sexy wedding dress


text:
The most common and preferred treatment method is herbicide treatment. The best time for Japanese knotweed to be sprayed is when the plant is actively growing as the herbicide we use is a systemic translocating herbicide. The herbicide treatment is most efficient on a warm, sunny day.
We use various chemicals to eradicate Japanese knotweed. The chemicals we use are 300 times stronger than what is available to the public and some of the chemicals we use are simply dangerous to be available in any form to the public.
The Process for Herbicide Treatment
- If the herbicide treatment is used it would be a glyphosate-based product as this is a systemic translocating herbicide which kills the top of the plant as well as the rhizome or root.
- The chemicals we use are 300 times stronger than what you, as a member of the public, can buy.
- In year one, we treat the invasive weed by spraying it four to six times over the growing season. If there are other plants in the area that need to be protected then stem injection can be used for Japanese knotweed.
- Monitoring is carried out in year two. If no growth is seen, we monitor for a second year and then declare the site free of any invasive plants. A completion certificate is then issued.
- Soil should not be moved off-site – it may still be classed as controlled waste as it could still be contaminated with dormant rhizome. It should instead be used in landscaping areas where it can be monitored.
- Your 10-year guarantee starts once your certificate of completion is issued. We also offer a 10-year insurance backed guarantee.
To learn more about the eradication process we follow at Japanese Knotweed Expert, please click here.
Also see
Combined treatment methods
Permanent burial
Excavation & removal


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Matchday 11: Stat-attack
RB Leipzig's record-breaking debut Bundesliga season continues, Borussia Dortmund build on a club record against rivals FC Bayern München in Der Klassiker and 1. FSV Mainz 05 have a new all-time leading goal scorer. Bundesliga.com reviews the standout Matchday 11 statistics.
How did your Official Fantasy Bundesliga team do during Matchday 11? Look here!
Five sides recorded away victories during Matchday 11 - a new season record.
RB Leipzig became the first side to record six straight victories in the current campaign.
Mainz have scored six goals from corners this season, never have they recorded as many at this stage of the season.
RB Leipzig are the first newly-promoted side in Bundesliga history to go 11 matches undefeated and are also the first ever table toppers from Saxony.
Watch: Match winning goalscorer Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang gives his reaction to Der Klassiker.
Anthony Modeste's goal in the Rheinderby against Borussia Mönchengladbach was his 12th of the season for 1. FC Köln. Klaus Allofs was the last Billy Goats' player to score as many at this stage of a season, during the 1984/85 campaign.
SC Freiburg's Nils Petersen scored his 14th goal as a substitute in his Bundesliga career. He moves to third in the all-time rankings equal with Hans-Jörg Criens and Mehmet Scholl.
Borussia Dortmund have not lost any of their last 27 home games. Not even Bundesliga champions Bayern were able to break that club record in Der Klassiker.
Leipzig moved onto 27 points for the season during Matchday 11. Consequently Leipzig are now the best newly-promoted side in Bundesliga history.
Yunus Malli scored his 29th Bundesliga goal for 1. FSV Mainz during Matchday 11. He sits top of club's all-time top goalscorers list, level with Mohamed Zidan.
Kevin Kampl's goal for Bayer 04 Leverkusen came after just 61 seconds, the quickest goal of the season so far.
Modeste scored his 46th in his 100th Bundesliga appearance.
Benedikt Höwedes marked his 220th league appearance for FC Schalke 04 with his 100th Bundesliga win.
For all you need to know about Matchday 11, click here to head to our Match Center.


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Why recommendation letters are a vital link
As application deadlines approach pressure is on not just the applicants but also the recommenders. If you work in an educational institute or a large corporate setting, there is a chance you may be asked to write a recommendation letter on behalf of a student or employee.
For Universities abroad, letters of Recommendation (LORs) form an important part of the application process, both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. While all other documents of the application reflect the candidate's perspective and document their experience objectively, an LOR presents an external perspective on the applicant. It is a window into the traits, achievements and character of the candidate as viewed by someone who has worked closely with him or her. It can effectively corroborate claims of the qualities and achievements made by the applicant in the forms, essays and other materials. In many respects, an LOR is a validation of what has been claimed elsewhere.
Who Should Write An LOR? Students aiming to pursue undergraduate or post graduate studies, will need two to three LORs written by teachers/professors who have taught them in high school/undergraduate classes. Though any teacher can write the LOR, it is preferable to request a letter from teachers who have taught the applicant subjects that he or she plans to pursue during undergraduate or post graduate studies. Such teachers will be able to highlight achievements in specific focus areas and give the admissions committee an insight into performance, proficiency and passion for the subject. MBA applicants, on the other hand, require two LORs written by direct supervisors with whom they are currently or have worked under in the recent past. MBA recommenders are expected comment on the applicant's range of skill and characteristics. Therefore, it is important to select a recommender who knows the applicant well, both personally and professionally and will be able to comment on interests and contributions outside of work as well. The recommender is also expected to be a mentor and guide to the applicant, both personally and professionally. This requires the recommender and the candidate to share a rapport.
What are the Contents of a Good LOR? The undergraduate/post graduate LOR generally should not exceed one page and summarizes a student's level of involvement and behavior in class; his ranking vis a vis his peers; his proficiency and specific achievements in the subject, including details of projects accomplished and awards won through participation in events and competitions; skills developed on the subject in class and any exemplary submissions which impressed the teacher. An MBA LOR is much more detailed and is usually structured around specific questions. MBA LOR's begins by outlining the candidate's relationship to the recommender and his scope of work in the organization. This is followed by a brief overview of the applicant's skills in leadership, communication, initiative, creativity, integrity, collaboration, analysis, problem solving and strengths as a team player. MBA LORs ask the recommender to rate the applicant against others in the same role and discuss a time when the applicant was given constructive feedback and what s/he did to improve. A perfect conclusion to the letter should include details of the applicant's activities outside work and community orientation, which project as a well-rounded, socially conscious individual.
If you've been asked to write a recommendation for someone, treat the request with respect; you have someone else's future in your hands. If you feel you cannot write a positive letter it is perfectly acceptable to decline the request. But if you support the applicant, give it your best effort. Impactful letters of recommendation can go a long way in confirming an applicant's offer of admission.


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Here at Sustain Health we have helped many women with their reproductive health. We have seen them achieve natural conception, full term pregnancy and healthy babies with us at their side every step of the way from our female fertility treatment.
Our trained professionals have a strong emphasis on female fertility and reproduction. They have experience ranging throughout all of the issues relating to gynaecology and women's health including:
Serious About Your Health?
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Some of the key strategies we employ in the above sub types of female fertility are:
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Start working on your reproductive health today to optimise your chances of natural conception!


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USTA Nebraska
Volunteer at
ALL Stars Event
USTA Nebraska | April 30, 2018
USTA Nebraska is seeking volunteers to assist with the upcoming Fred Johnson ALL Stars event June 9 and 10 at Woods Tennis Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Over 100 adaptive athletes will be participating in the eighth annual event. Teams will come from Omaha, Neb., Lincoln, Neb., Kansas City, Wichita, Kan., and Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
You can sign up for work here:
The vounteer opportunities for the event are as follows:
Assignment #1: Check In/Set up
• Days/Hours: June 9: 10:30-1:30
Assignment #2: Court Monitors: Help on court; keep track of score and help participants
• Days/Hours: June 9: 11:30-2:30; June 9: 2:30-5:30; June 10: 8:30-11:30; June 10: 11:30-2:30
Assignment #3: Athlete outing at Memorial Stadium. Dinner set-up, Game set up and play, clean up.
• Days/Hours: June 9: 4:30-7:30
If you have questions, please contact Kara Heim.ADVERTISEMENT


text:
All my original watercolor paintings are made on watercolor paper of museum quality.
Each is hand-crafted and includes a signed Certificate of Authenticity.
Francelle Theriot original paintings are shipped in a solid protective package and waterproof film, large sizes are shipping in postal tube.
The price does not include mat or frame and it is shown in the picture as an illustration.
Please contact me if you have any questions.


text: Another start to another week. We're closing this year and what a damn one it has been. A lot has changed…some for the good, others for the better. But we are still here. Still here together because of all the decisions we've made, even before we knew of each other's existence.