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Acesander's Cup
The Cup of Acesander (also Hakesandros or Hakesander) is a drinking cup from ancient Methone, a city in Macedonia (corresponding to modern Methoni, Pieria), that contains one of the earliest found inscriptions in the Greek alphabet. Dated from the first half of the eighth century BC (–720), the pot was made for use at symposia and was discovered during the archaeological excavations of 2003–04. The inscription, written in the Euboean alphabet, functions as an ownership tag and includes a short humorous curse in iambic verse that warns drinkers against stealing the cup. Along with similar inscriptions of the same period, the text is seen as an early indication of literacy and sympotic poetry in ancient Greece. The cup has been important for the study of the early Greek alphabet and epigraphy. Artifact The cup of Acesander, identified as a skyphos, was discovered along with several other inscribed drinking vessels in a sealed deposit in Methoni, Pieria. A contemporary of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greek Alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as well as consonants. In Archaic Greece, Archaic and early Classical Greece, Classical times, the Greek alphabet existed in Archaic Greek alphabets, many local variants, but, by the end of the 4th century BC, the Ionia, Ionic-based Euclidean alphabet, with 24 letters, ordered from alpha to omega, had become standard throughout the Greek-speaking world and is the version that is still used for Greek writing today. The letter case, uppercase and lowercase forms of the 24 letters are: : , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , The Greek alphabet is the ancestor of several scripts, such as the Latin script, Latin, Gothic alphabet, Gothic, Coptic script, Coptic, and Cyrillic scripts. Throughout antiquity, Greek had only a single uppercas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homer
Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his authorship, Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history. The ''Iliad'' centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War. The ''Odyssey'' chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Homer's Ithaca, Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The epics depict man's struggle, the ''Odyssey'' especially so, as Odysseus perseveres through the punishment of the gods. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language that shows a mixture of features of the Ionic Greek, Ionic and Aeolic Greek, Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaeological Artifacts
An artifact or artefact (British English) is a general term for an item made or given shape by humans, such as a tool or a work of art, especially an object of archaeological interest. In archaeology, the word has become a term of particular nuance; it is defined as an object recovered by archaeological endeavor, including cultural artifacts (of cultural interest). "Artifact" is the general term used in archaeology, while in museums the equivalent general term is normally "object", and in art history perhaps artwork or a more specific term such as "carving". The same item may be called all or any of these in different contexts, and more specific terms will be used when talking about individual objects, or groups of similar ones. Artifacts exist in many different forms and can sometimes be confused with ecofacts and features; all three of these can sometimes be found together at archaeological sites. They can also exist in different types of context depending on the processes th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pydna Curse Tablets
The Pydna curse tablets are a collection of six texts or catalogues written in Ancient Greek that were found at the ruins of Pydna, a prominent city of ancient Macedon, between 1994 and 1997. They were discovered during the archaeological excavations of the Makrygialos cemetery and were first published by Curbera and Jordan in 2003. Each tablet contains a curse or magic spell (, ''katadesmos''), probably all of judicial nature, and has been dated to the 4th century BC. Three of them are merely name catalogues, while the others also contain language which indicates they were meant to influence legal proceedings. The tablets document in total 66 individuals, most of whom bear well-known Greek names. The ''onomasticon'' of the tablets can be overall characterized as typically ancient Macedonian (e.g. Amyntas, Philippos, Pausanias etc.). The tablets have had important contribution to modern understanding of ancient Macedonian anthroponymy and prosopography, particularly in the city ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phiale Of Megara
The Phiale of Megara is an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek silver Phiale (libation vessel), phiale, a libation vessel, found in a tomb in Upper Macedonia near present-day Kozani. Dated form BC, it bears a one-line inscription in Doric Greek, which reads "sacred to the Athena of Megara" (, ). Today it is kept in the Archaeological Museum of Kozani, in northwestern Greece. Description On the basis of the reference to Megara and its well-known sanctuary of Athena, its provenance is usually assumed to be of that city, situated in southern Greece, and it is dated to the early part of the fifth century. Among the characteristics of its writing system is an archaic, B-like glyph shape for the letter E (epsilon (letter), epsilon), a feature found regularly in early inscriptions from Megara and nearby Corinth. However, James L. O'Neil, following Hammond and Griffith, conjectures that the inscription could also have been written locally in Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedonia. In this ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dipylon Inscription
The Dipylon inscription is a short text written on an ancient Greek pottery vessel dated to . It is famous for being the oldest, or one of the oldest, known samples of the use of the Greek alphabet. The text is scratched on an ''oenochoe'', which was found in 1871 and is named after the location where it was found, the ancient Dipylon Cemetery, near the Dipylon Gate on the area of Kerameikos in Athens. The jug is attributed to the Late Geometrical Period (750–700 BC). It is now in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens (inv. 192). Text The text is written in an archaic form of the Greek alphabet, with some letter shapes still resembling those of the original Phoenician alphabet. For example, the Greek letter zeta (Ζ) resembles the Phoenician letter zayin (I). The text is written from right to left, with the individual letters mirror-shaped in comparison with the modern forms. It is placed in a circle around the shoulder of the vessel. The text consists of 46 characters, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derveni Papyrus
The Derveni papyrus is an Ancient Greek papyrus roll that was discovered in 1962 at the archaeological site of Derveni, near Thessaloniki, in Central Macedonia. A philosophical treatise, the text is an allegorical commentary on an Orphic poem, a theogony concerning the birth of the gods, produced in the circle of the philosopher Anaxagoras. The roll dates to around 340 BC, during the reign of Philip II of Macedon, making it Europe's oldest surviving manuscript. The poem itself was originally composed near the end of the 5th century BC, and "in the fields of Greek religion, the sophistic movement, early philosophy, and the origins of literary criticism it is unquestionably the most important textual discovery of the 20th century." While interim editions and translations were published over the subsequent years, the manuscript in its entirety was first published in 2006. Discovery The roll was found on 15 January 1962 at a site in Derveni, Macedonia, northern Greece, on the r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Akanthos Curse Tablet
The Akanthos curse tablet is a double-sided text written in Ancient Greek that was discovered at the necropolis of Akanthos, a city in Macedonia located on the north-east of the Chalcidice peninsula. It was made public in 1993, along with three more tablets from Akanthos, at the 14th conference held by the Linguistics Department of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. The tablet has been dated to the late 4th century BC, when Akanthos was part of the Macedonian kingdom. It contains a magic spell (, ''katadesmos'') which belongs to the category of erotic or amatory curses. The text was composed by a man named Pausanias and was intended to bind down two individuals, Sime and Ainis, of whom the former is identified for certain as a love interest. The Akanthos tablet is an example of a love spell that is unambiguously written from the male perspective, and one of the earliest surviving examples of an 'attraction curse', a spell that expresses its intention to bring its target to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alpha
Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter ''aleph'' , whose name comes from the West Semitic word for ' ox'. Letters that arose from alpha include the Latin letter and the Cyrillic letter . Uses Greek In Ancient Greek, alpha was pronounced and could be either phonemically long ( ː or short ( . Where there is ambiguity, long and short alpha are sometimes written with a macron and breve today: . * = ' "a time" * = ' "tongue" In Modern Greek, vowel length has been lost, and all instances of alpha simply represent the open front unrounded vowel . In the polytonic orthography of Greek, alpha, like other vowel letters, can occur with several diacritic marks: any of three accent symbols (), and either of two breathing marks (), as well as combinations of these. It can also combine with the iota subscript (). Greek grammar In the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eretria
Eretria (; , , , , literally 'city of the rowers') is a town in Euboea, Greece, facing the coast of Attica across the narrow South Euboean Gulf. It was an important Greek polis in the 6th and 5th century BC, mentioned by many famous writers and actively involved in significant historical events. Excavations of the ancient city began in the 1890s and have been conducted since 1964 by the Greek Archaeological Service (11th Ephorate of Antiquities) and the Swiss School of Archaeology in Greece. History of Eretria Prehistory The first evidence for human activity in the area of Eretria are pottery shards and stone artifacts from the late Neolithic period (3500–3000 BC) found on the Acropolis as well as in the plain. No permanent structures have yet been found. It is therefore unclear whether a permanent settlement existed at that time. The first known settlement from the Early Helladic period (3000–2000 BC) was located on the plain. A granary and several other buildi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genitive
In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can also serve purposes indicating other relationships. For example, some verbs may feature arguments in the genitive case; and the genitive case may also have adverbial uses (see adverbial genitive). The genitive construction includes the genitive case, but is a broader category. Placing a modifying noun in the genitive case is one way of indicating that it is related to a head noun, in a genitive construction. However, there are other ways to indicate a genitive construction. For example, many Afroasiatic languages place the head noun (rather than the modifying noun) in the construct state. Possessive grammatical constructions, including the possessive case, may be regarded as subsets of the genitive construction. For example, the geni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prose
Prose is language that follows the natural flow or rhythm of speech, ordinary grammatical structures, or, in writing, typical conventions and formatting. Thus, prose ranges from informal speaking to formal academic writing. Prose differs most notably from poetry, which follows some type of intentional, contrived, artistic structure. Poetic structures vary dramatically by language; in English poetry, language is often organized by a rhythmic metre and a rhyme scheme. The ordinary language of a region or community and many other forms and styles of language fall under prose, a label that can describe both speech and writing. In writing, prose is visually formatted differently than poetry. Poetry is traditionally written in verse: a series of lines on a page, parallel to the way that a person would highlight the structure orally if saying the poem aloud; for example, poetry may end with a rhyme at the end of each line, making the entire work more melodious or memorable. Pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
