Retail Therapy

[theyellowhobbit]

Every so often, when something goes badly in my life and there's nothing I can do about it but accept it, I buy myself something nice so I can feel better and take my mind off of whatever it is that's bothering me.

This time it was a patiche. I finally ordered it, and got the 40mm one.

I'm such an archaeological dork. Words cannot express how archaeologically dorky I am. It's beyond measure. (Normal people buy clothes or jewelry or something.)

So hopefully when I get back from Sukkot, or in the middle of next week, the patiche will be in. And then I'll be a real archaeologist (TM).

(Though I'm already doing a good job holding my own in my Historical Archaeology class, despite me not being a historical archaeologist. My very basic knowledge of Biblical/Near Eastern stuff is still more than Dr. S.'s. The first week he showed us a pot with a depiction of Rebecca at the well, and he didn't know what the biblical story was! So I told him at the end of class. And yesterday he asked me about when Hebrew inscriptions started. That I'm less familiar with, but at least I know that Hebrew is older than Aramaic and that they use the same characters. [At least in Jewish use of Aramaic. Maybe other people wrote it with different characters. I need to look into that.] And just in general I'm good with the whole common sense thing, and can take part in the discussions even when I haven't done the reading. [Maybe I have an archaeological mindset, if there is such a thing...] Go me!)

Comments

[arctic-alpine.livejournal.com]

nooooo.
hebrew and aramaic do not use the same characters, at least originially. they alphabet was in the same order but letters written very differently. the aramaic alphabet was only used for hebrew writing starting during the babylonian exile, so in our little bubble of history, hebrew alphabet is older, but according to wikipedia, the aramaic alphabet dates to 900 BCE while the hebrew one dates to 300 BCE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Canaanite
However, other sources suggest that old hebrew writing and aramaic evolved concurrently from phonecian, around 1000 CE
http://www.ancientscripts.com/old_hebrew.html

[sen-ichi-rei.livejournal.com]

Well when I say our Hebrew alphabet, I don't mean how it looks today. Obviously there's the old proto-canaanite stuff. That's what the Goliath inscription was written in. I drew him examples of both alphabets. I guessed that the modern one came around the year zero, though I told him it was only a guess.

Does anyone still use the aramaic alphabet for aramaic? And did anyone use the aramaic alphabet in the region of Israel? (Since we are only talking about archaeology found in Israel, not aramaic stuff in Babylon or something)

And I did say in brackets that I was specifically referring to Jewish use of Aramaic, and that I wasn't sure about other people's use. We didn't start speaking aramaic until the Babylonian exile, and we probably used the proto-hebraic characters to write it by then, right?

[margavriel.livejournal.com]

Definitely exist other scripts for Aramaic, e.g. the Syriac ones.