#greek prehistory

[gwydpolls]

Time Travel Poll: Winner Match Up 15

These Questions are the winners from the previous iteration.

Please add new suggestions below, if you have them, for future consideration.

[scentofpines]

in class today i felt so incredibly out of place again, why does it have to be so hard for me? and, i like this girl, but every single time we have class she mentions her "autism" while happily chatting with 3+ ppl at a time, completely effortless, while im sitting there, staring and trying to focus enough to even understand the conversation bc there is so much noise around me that i feel like i'm about to either explode or shut down completely and i feel like an alien trying my best to somehow socialize and understand what is going on and really to just get through this.

[indo-europeans]

from perkunos to indra & zeus

Anatolian languages:

tarhuan, tarhunna, tarhunnaradu - hittite (linked w bull in anatolia)

tarhu, tarhunz, tarhunta, tarhuwant - luwian

tarhuwanta - palaic

trqqas - lycian

taru - hattian

teshub - hurrian

turvant - sanskrit cognate for indra?

aleppo - 

hadad - mesopotamia?

iskur - sumeria?

zeus - greek

indra - vedic

trokondas - rome

jupiter dolichenus  - armenian/roman

- associated with sky, weather, lightning, thunder, battlefield, commander, mountains, helpful, slaying enemies with an axe, vanquishing, decided whether would be drought and famine or fertile fields and good harvests, thunderbolt becomes axe

religious treatment

- "Weather god of the thunderbolt, glow on me like the moonlight, shine over me like the son god of heaven!" - KUB 6.45 iii 68-70, Hittite king Muwatalli II’s personal god who he referred to as “my lord, king of heaven” (associated with Anatolia’s bulls instead of horses)

- Hittite king Warpalawas II made rock relief and animals were sacrificed to him 

- Luwian magic rituals intended to bring rain or heal the sick

- chief god of the luwians, whose chariot was pulled by horses. later depicted standing on a bull.

- cows + sheep were sacrificed to him for grain + wine to grow 

- in curses, he was called upon to “smash enemies with his axe” and gave the king royal power, courage and marched him in battle - in late Luwian texts

- Pegasus, Greek winged horse which carries Zeus’ thunderbolt name comes from one of his epithets piḫaššašši meaning “of the thunderblot”

cult sites

- Aleppo, Syria, major city of the weather god - conquered by Hittite king Suppiluluima I who installed his son Telipinu as priest-king. Temple for weather god was modified to conform to Hittite cult

snake/dragon slayer myth near Mount Kasios in Syria & Corycus in Turkey

- Illuyanka in Hittite

- Hedammu in Hurrian

- Typhon in Greek (taken from Cilicia)

- Naga in Sanskrit

[gemsofgreece]

It’s true that Palaeolithic and other era finds in Greece usually stay in the shadow of Classical Age.

New Paleolithic finds in Greece!

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Some Magic-Related Vocabulary

for your next poem/story

Amulet: An object worn, carried or placed to guard against negativity or other vibrations. A protective object.

Astral Projection: The practice of separating the consciousness from the physical body so that the former may move about unhindered by time, space or gravity.

Bane: A poison; that which destroys life. "Henbane" is poisonous to hens.

Banish: To drive away evil, negativity or spirits.

Beltane: An ancient folk-festival day observed by Witches that celebrates the fully blossomed spring. April 30 or May 1.

Censer: A vessel of metal or earthenware in which incense is burned. An incense burner.

Chaplet: A garland or wreath of flowers or leaves worn on the head, as in the chaplets given to classical Greek heroes as symbols of honor.

Clairvoyance: Literally "clear seeing." The ability to perceive facts, events and other data by other than the five "normal" senses, unaided by tools.

Curse: A concentration of negative and destructive energy, deliberately formed and directed toward a person, place or thing.

Divination: The art of finding things out through means other than the five senses, using tools such as tarot cards, crystal balls, and so on.

Enchant: "Sing to." Magically speaking, a procedure whereby herbs are aligned with your magical need prior to their use.

Evil Eye, The: Supposed glance capable of causing great harm or fear, once almost universally feared.

Fascination: The art of placing other people under one's power through sounds, gazes, colors, etc.

Hex: An evil spell; a curse.

Incubus: A male demon or spirit which was believed to sexually tempt and abuse women; the succubus was the corresponding female demon.

Infusion: An herbal tea.

Lughnasadh: An old harvest festival celebrated on August 1st or 2nd in Europe, reverencing the abundant (harvested) fruits of the Earth. It is still observed by Wicca.

Magic: The practice of causing needed change through the use of powers as yet undefined and unaccepted by science.

Magic Circle: A ritually-created circle (or sphere) that offers protection to the magician during magical rites.

Magician: A person of either sex who practices magic.

Magus: A magician.

Midsummer: The Summer Solstice, usually on or near June 21st, one of the Wiccan festival days and an excellent time to practice magic.

Pendulum: A tool of divination which consists of a heavy object suspended from a string or cord. The end of the cord is held between the thumb and forefinger; questions are asked and their answers divided by the movements of the pendulum.

Pentagram: A five-pointed star which has been used in magic for centuries. Highly symbolic, it is also a protective device.

Poppet: A small doll made of various substances to influence a person's fife. In herb magic, either a carved root or a cloth image stuffed with herbs. The use of poppets is known as "image magic."

Power Hand, The: The hand you write with; the dominant hand. This is a magically potent hand.

Samhain: An ancient festival day marking the beginning of winter. Also known as "Halloween" and All Hallows Eve. It is observed by Wicca with religious ceremonies.

Scry: To gaze into a pool of ink, fire, crystal ball, etc. to awaken and summon psychic powers.

Spell: A magical rite.

Talisman: An object worn or carried to attract a specific influence, such as love, luck, money, health; as opposed to an amulet which keeps forces from its bearer.

Wicca: A contemporary religion with spiritual roots in prehistory that worships the life-force of the universe as personified as a God and Goddess. It is sometimes erroneously referred to as "witchcraft."

Witch Bottle: A bottle or jar containing herbs, pins, shards of glass and other objects, designed to protect a person or area from evil and curses. Usually buried or placed in a window.

Witchcraft: The practice of natural magic, as that of herbs, stones, and candles. Spell-casting. Still used by some to refer to the religion of Wicca.

Wort: An old word meaning "herb." Mugwort preserves the term.

Excerpt from Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs More: Word Lists ⚜ Esoteric Vocabulary ⚜ On Magic

[max1461]

How is the statement that "English is kind of a Frankenstein language, it's a mix between German, French, and Latin!" wrong? I get it’s phrased in a misguided way: English and German supposedly both came from Proto-Germanic rather than German being in the “mix ”, the French influence being more lexical items and orthographic conventions than grammatical patterns etc. Is it that the statement ignores the way other languages have been influenced by surrounding languages?

sorry if this comes off as rude, I don’t know much about language

It's not just phrased in a misguided way, it's totally incorrect! You're right that the real truth is that English and German share a common ancestor, Proto-Germanic. This is very different than English being a "mix of German and [anything]". Indeed, there are many languages descended from Proto-Germanic, including Swedish and Icelandic and Dutch. Descent from Proto-Germanic is what defines the Germanic language family. You could just as well say "English is a mix of Swedish and [whatever]", but that would also be false.

Beyond that, all (or most) languages probably share a common ancestor somewhere deep in prehistory, it's just that we can't confidently trace things that far. English probably shares a common ancestor with Chinese at some time depth; this does not make English a "mix of Chinese and [whatever]".

The other reason this is inaccurate it that, yes, it's true that English has borrowed a lot of words from French, and a lesser but still substantial number from Greek and Latin. But calling English a "Frankenstein language" obscures the fact that significant areal influence (influence from other languages) like this is a part of most languages' histories, it's perfectly ordinary. There's nothing to be remarked upon regarding English specifically.

[specialagentartemis]

Feel like dropping the rant about how "pre-written records = prehistory" is not a good way of conceptualizing history? It's not my area at all so I'm fascinated.

Hah absolutely

It’s a mix of semantics, and word connotations, and the way history gets presented, and tbh legacies of racism.

So. Part of it comes from the distinctions between the academic field and practice of history, and the academic field and practice of archaeology. The practice of history means analyzing the past through written texts and records; the practice of archaeology means analyzing the past through the material remains left behind. This is fine. It refers to the way you approach information about the past and what tools and theories you use to do so. I have no problem with this part!

Of course, it starts to get more complicated when you also have classicists (who study ancient Greek and Roman history primarily through texts but also incorporate some aspects of archaeology) and Assyriologists (ditto but for Mesopotamia), which have their roots in old-school European practices of formal education. There’s also historical archaeology, which is primarily archaeology but incorporates written records of the time and place for a fuller picture, or uses archaeology to complicate or fill gaps in the records. Historical archaeology is a practice that can be applied to any place and time with historical records, but primarily it refers to archaeology of the Americas post-European colonialism.

These refer to the ways we study the past. Where I start to disagree is when these terms get applied to the past itself.

Historians study history through written texts, so there is often a delineation where history = the presence of written texts, and prehistory = before that. And I have problems with that delineation of time.

For one thing, the connotations of the terms. History, in common use, is important, it’s everything that built the world we live in and led to where we are now. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. While prehistory conjures images of dinosaurs, or cavemen. It implies that the things that happened in it aren’t as important as the things that happened once history proper started. It also feels very, very old—it feels weird to call, say, the Inca empire prehistoric, when the Inca Empire is younger than Oxford University and the first Inca emperor was crowned in Peru after the Norman Invasion of England in 1066—something nobody calls prehistoric.

Because that brings up a more objective issue with splitting time into “history” and “prehistory”: writing was invented at different times in different places, and used to different extents. Writing was first invented in Mesopotamia in the Early Bronze Age, about 5,000 years ago. It was probably independently invented in Egypt shortly afterward, and was independently invented in China 3400 years ago, and in Central America about 2500 years ago. Writing spread across Asia, India, North Africa, Europe, and Mexico/Guatemala; it was not used in North America, South America, southern Africa, Australia, most parts of Polynesia, Micronesia, Australia, or New Zealand at all until European contact. According to the written records definition, this means history starts in very different times in these different places. Not only does this unbalance what we think of as “history” a lot, it ends up discounting or minimizing these people’s own ways of reckoning history, making their history start when Europeans arrived.

This is an incredibly dismissive way to consider whole continents’ worth of people and cultures! It turns them into a “people without history,” and implies that whatever they were doing before Europeans (or Chinese, Indians, or North Africans depending on the region, but mostly Europeans) doesn’t really matter to what happened since. If anything happened at all in that “time before history”; a common perspective of both early colonists and modern pop-history in places like the American West or Australia is that the people there have been living the exact same way for thousands of years, unchanging since the Stone Age. Only upon contact with Europeans did anything change and “history” start. This is hugely dismissive of these people’s autonomy and their past. (You’ll notice it’s a lot of people who suffer from racism who are denied the title of “history”!) It’s also just not true.

I’m an archaeologist who studies the US Southwest/Mexican Northwest region; I focus on Arizona and New Mexico in the 1000s–1400s AD. And one of the things that opened my mind so much in studying the US southwest was just how much things changed from decade to decade and century to century in the past, the same way they did anywhere else in history at this time. There was no written history in this part of the world, but what we do have is very precise tree-ring dates. Using tree rings, we can date when this or that building was built down to the precise year. And because it’s a desert, things preserve well for a long time, so we have lots of ancient tree-ring dates. Because of this, we can see how art styles, architectural styles, settlement patterns, family organization, farming practices, religion, politics, and cultural interactions changed over the past four thousand years. And we can see that they did change, and sometimes they changed slowly and sometimes they changed rapidly. People did things. They had new ideas, they formed new political organizations and adopted new religions, they came together and broke apart, they developed new art styles and new technologies, elite lineages controlled the social order until their power fractured, people moved into new places and adapted their old practices to what they found there, or developed new ones… and because of tree-rings and desert preservation, archaeologists can see it in ways we can’t in cooler and wetter environments. This is history. This is people doing things, shaping the physical and social landscape for the centuries that followed.

And of course, Pueblo and Diné and Apache and O’odham people of the Southwest have their own oral histories that overlap with these archaeological studies. This is true in many, many places that did not traditionally use writing. They can’t be discounted just because they weren’t written down.

So to me, history = writing and prehistory = before writing is a false dichotomy that’s unhelpful at best and racist at worst. To me, history starts when people become socially organized enough that they care about what happened before, what happened where, and why it’s important, and what it means. Every culture has history, whether they wrote it down or not. Studying it may not always be suited to the skillset of historians, but that doesn’t mean it’s not history.

[barbucomedie]

Altar to Astarte from Corbridge, England dated to the 3rd Century CE on display at the Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery in Carlisle, England

This altar was set up by a man called Pulcher who had his inscription writted in Greek. It is dedicate to an ancient Near Eastern goddess called Astarte, who has been worshipped since prehistory. A patera, or pan, is depicted on one side of the altar and a jog on the other. Both these items would have been used during religious ceremonies.

Photographs taken by myself 2023

[olympianbutch]

Did ancient Greeks ever consider a particular deity their parent? I wouldn't even know how to start research this. And I mean like a regular person not Kings or Heros.

There is no evidence that I know of to suggest that common individuals in ancient Greece believed a particular god was their literal parent!

Because it's ancient Greece and mythology doubled as history, there was (presumably) an underlying sentiment held by all people that they were in some way descendants of the gods through ancestral heroes and kings (e.g., the Athenians descending from Athena through Erekhtheus even though that's not her biological son).

Alexander III of Macedonia, as I'm sure you know, was proclaimed the son of Zeus,¹ but whether he genuinely believed that he was boils down to mere speculation. Regardless, being named the son of Zeus was an obvious power play, not at all different from when the tyrant Pisistratus (💋💋💋😩) was carted into Athens on a chariot manned by the one and only 'Athena'.²

IMHO, believing or saying that you're the literal child of some god is only something a royal could get away with in ancient Greece.

¹ A. B. Bosworth, "Alexander and Ammon," Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean in Ancient History and Prehistory. Studies Presented to Fritz Schachermeyer on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, edited by K. H. Kinzl, (Walter de Gruyter; Berlin, New York, 1977), pp. 51 - 75

² Hdt. 1.60

[talonabraxas]

The Green Man by Talon Abraxas

Symbol of life and nature:

The most common and perhaps obvious interpretation of the Green Man is that of a pagan nature spirit, a symbol of man’s reliance on and union with nature, a symbol of the underlying life-force, and of the renewed cycle of growth each spring. In this respect, it seems likely that he has evolved from older nature deities such as the Celtic Cernunnos and the Greek Pan and Dionysus.

Some have gone so far as to make the argument that the Green Man represents a male counterpart - or son or lover or guardian - to Gaia (or the Earth Mother, or Great Goddess), a figure which has appeared throughout history in almost all cultures. In the 16th Century Cathedral at St-Bertrand de Comminges in southern France, there is even an example of a representation of a winged Earth Mother apparently giving birth to a smiling Green Man.

Because by far the most common occurrences of the Green Man are stone and wood carvings in churches, chapels, abbeys and cathedrals in Europe (particularly in Britain and France), some have seen this as evidence of the vitality of pre-Christian traditions surviving alongside, and even within, the dominant Christian mainstream. Much has been made of the boldness with which the Green Man was exhibited in early Christian churches, often appearing over main doorways, and surprisingly often in close proximity to representations of the Christ figure.

Incorporating a Green Man into the design of a medieval church or cathedral may therefore be seen as a kind of small act of faith on the part of the carver that life and fresh crops will return to the soil each spring and that the harvest will be plentiful. Pre-Christian pagan traditions and superstitions, particularly those related to nature and trees, were still a significant influence in early medieval times, as exemplified by the planting of yew trees (a prominent pagan symbol) in churchyards, and the maintenance of ancient “sacred groves” of trees.

Tree worship goes back into the prehistory of many of the cultures that directly influenced the people of Western Europe, not least the Greco-Roman and the Celtic, which is no great surprise when one considers that much of the continent of Europe was covered with vast forests in antiquity. It is perhaps also understandable that there are concentrations of Green Men in the churches of regions where there were large stretches of relict forests in ancient times, such as in Devon and Somerset, Yorkshire and the Midlands in England. The human-like attributes of trees (trunk-body, branches-arms, twigs-fingers, sap-blood), as well as their strength, beauty and longevity, make them an obvious subject for ancient worship. The Green Man can be seen as a continuing symbol of such beliefs, in much the same way as the later May Day pageants of the Early Modern period, many of which were led by the related figure of Jack-in-the-Green.

Symbol of fertility:

Although the Green Man is most often associated with spring, May Day, etc, there are also several examples which exhibit a more autumnal cast to the figure. For example, some Green Men prominently incorporate pairs of acorns into their designs (there is a good example in King's College Chapel, Cambridge), a motif which clearly has no springtime associations. In the same way, hawthorn leaves frequently appear on English Green Men (such as the famous one at Sutton Benger), and they are often accompanied by autumn berries rather than spring flowers. The Green Man in the Chapelle de Bauffremont in Dijon (one of the few to retain its original paint coloration) shows quite clearly its leaves in their autumn colours.

This may have been simple artistic license. However, acorns, partly due to their shape, were also a common medieval fertility symbol, and hawthorn is another tree which was explicitly associated with sexuality, all of which perhaps suggests a stronger link with fertility, as well as with harvest-time.

Symbol of death and rebirth:

The disgorging Green Man, sprouting vegetation from his orifices, may also be seen as a memento mori, or a reminder of the death that await all men, as well as a Pagan representation of resurrection and rebirth, as new life naturally springs out of our human remains. The Greek and Roman god Dionysus/Bacchus, often suggested as an early precursor of the Green Man, was also associated with death and rebirth in his parallel guise as Okeanus.

Several of the ancient Celtic demigods, Bran the Blessed being one of the best known, become prophetic oracles once their heads had been cut off (another variant on the theme of death and resurrection) and, although these figures were not traditionally represented as decorated with leaves, there may be a link between them and the later stand-alone Green Man heads.

There are several examples of self-consciously skull-like Green Men, with vegetation sprouting from eye-sockets, although these are more likely to be found on tombstones than as decoration in churches (good examples can be seen at Shebbear and Black Torrington in Devon, England). Such images might be interpreted as either representing rebirth and resurrection (in that the new life is growing out of death), or they might represent death and corruption (with the leaves growing parasitically through the decaying body).

The Green Man as archetype:

The very fact that images of the Green Man have appeared historically in such disparate and apparently unconnected locations have led some commentators, notably Roweena Pattee Kryder and William Anderson, to suggest that the figure is part of our collective unconscious, and represents a primeval archetype (in Jungian parlance) which is central to our relationship with Nature.

Phyllis Araneo has suggested that the appearance of the Green Man in European and worldwide art is a cyclical phenomenon triggered by times of crisis or significant change. For example, she suggests the proliferation of Green Man imagery after the 11th Century can perhaps be associated with feelings of relief and celebration after the widely predicted apocalypse of the millennium failed to materialize.

In the same way, the modern resurgence may have been triggered by the environmental crisis we are currently living through. In its modern revival, in the wake of James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis and the birth of the modern Green movement, the Green Man can be seen as the archetype of the “conservator”, whose brief is to counsel us to take from the environment only what we need to survive and to conserve the rest, and to remind us of our responsibilities for the stewardship of the natural world. A quote from Mike Harding succinctly summarizes this position: “If anything on this poisoned planet gives us hope of renewal it is this simple foliate head that has been there in one form or another since the beginning.”

-The Enigma of the Green Man - Theories and Interpretations

[whencyclopedia]

Ancient Greek Comedy

Ancient Greek Comedy was a popular and influential form of theatre performed across ancient Greece from the 6th century BCE. The most famous playwrights of the genre were Aristophanes and Menander and their works and those of their contemporaries poked fun at politicians, philosophers, and fellow artists. In addition to maintaining their comic touch, the plays also give an indirect but invaluable insight into Greek society in general and provide details on the workings of Greek government, political institutions, legal systems, religious practices, education, and warfare in the Hellenic world. Uniquely, the plays also reveal to us something of the identity of the audience and show just what tickled the Greeks' sense of humour. Finally, Greek comedy and its immediate predecessor Greek tragedy would together form the foundation upon which all modern theatre is based.

The Origins of Comedy Plays

The precise origins of Greek comedy plays are lost in the mists of prehistory, but the activity of men dressing as and mimicking others must surely go back a long way before written records. The first indications of such activity in the Greek world come from pottery where decoration in the 6th century BCE frequently represented actors dressed as horses, satyrs, and dancers in exaggerated costumes. Another early source of comedy is the poems of Archilochus (7th century BCE) and Hipponax (6th century BCE) which contain crude and explicit sexual humour. A third origin, and cited as such by Aristotle, lies in the phallic songs which were sung during Dionysiac festivals.

Continue reading...

[willtheweaver]

A writer’s guide to forests: from the poles to the tropics, part 6

Welcome back. We’re getting closer to the equator. Things are really heating up now.(…I’ll see myself out now)

Mediterranean forest

Here is where the line between myth and reality begin to blur, and history reveals itself.

Location- The region around the Mediterranean Sea, bordered by the Alps and the deserts of the Middle East and Northern Africa. Much of the forest area has been altered by human activity, with the largest expanse remaining located in the Iberian peninsula.

Climate- Warm and dry. Mountains are more reliably wet, with higher elevations being seasonal.

Plant life- Trees are evergreen at or near sea level, with cork oak and olive common. Atlas cedar grow in Morocco, and the Levant is home to Cedar of Lebanon. In Alpine regions, deciduous species such as Hornbeam, lime, and elm eventually give way to pines as one goes higher. Dry areas produce many hardy species of ground cover, including the unusual dewy pine (Drosophyllum lusitanicum)- this is the only perennial carnivorous plant that does not grow in a wetland or humid environment.

Animal life- Due to millennia of human activity, predators, such as lions, wolves, bears, and lions have mostly or totally vanished. The largest hunter one may stumble across is the Iberian Lynx, though this is unlikely. Extinction has also affected prey species, with the Pyrenees ibex going extinct twice (the second time occurred after a clone ibex died shortly after birth). Conservation efforts have meant that species from eagles to dormice have a chance to recover. North Africa and Gibraltar are home to Barbary Macaques. Where humans manage forestland, herds of goats and pigs forage.

How the forest affects the story- Unless you want your characters high in the mountains, you don’t have to worry too much about the seasons( granted, winters can still be cold, but trees are evergreen and the summer heat will be the biggest worry) As these forests have been cleared and managed since the Neolithic, it is your choice as to where your characters fit into the grand picture. Do your characters and their society harvest the forest or graze their livestock there? Or maybe your characters have decided to restore the forest. What would restoration efforts look like? And of course, history and prehistory can provide a backdrop and various peoples to interact with. Could your characters have crossed paths with Otzi the iceman? What about the Romans, pilgrims, crusaders, Phoneticians, or Celtic-Iberians? And you don’t have to limit yourself to history. This is the land of the Greek Myths, and countless others as well. Gods, heros, and monsters may lurk behind the trees and in the caves.

[dutch-and-flemish-painters]

Jacques-Albert Senave - Copyist in a gallery of the Louvre -

oil on panel, height: 28.5 cm (11.2 in); width: 36.2 cm (14.2 in)

Louvre Museum

The Louvre or the Louvre Museum is a national art museum in Paris, France. It is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement (district or ward) and home to some of the most canonical works of Western art, including the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the Medieval Louvre fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to urban expansion, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function, and in 1546 Francis I converted it into the primary residence of the French kings.

The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre primarily as a place to display the royal collection, including, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. In 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation's masterpieces.

The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, the majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property. Because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed from 1796 until 1801. The collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum was renamed Musée Napoléon, but after Napoleon's abdication, many works seized by his armies were returned to their original owners. The collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and bequests since the Third Republic. The collection is divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculpture; Decorative Arts; Paintings; Prints and Drawings.

The Musée du Louvre contains approximately 500,000 objects and displays 35,000 works of art in eight curatorial departments with more than 60,600 m2 (652,000 sq ft) dedicated to the permanent collection. The Louvre exhibits sculptures, objets d'art, paintings, drawings, and archaeological finds. At any given point in time, approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are being exhibited over an area of 72,735 m2 (782,910 sq ft), making it the largest museum in the world. It received 8.9 million visitors in 2023, 14 percent more than in 2022, but still below the 10.1 million visitors in 2018, making it the most-visited museum in the world.

Jacques-Albert Senave (1758–1823) was a Flemish painter mainly active in Paris during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He is known for his genre scenes, history paintings, landscapes, city views, market scenes and portraits.

[sorceresssiren]

Was listening to this...

And then I noticed the description. I really love what he writes:

"A nightclub is more religious than a church, as it is the place where the original religious rituals of our prehistory still take place today. The act of dancing to music, forgetting ones problems, losing ones sense of individual self and becoming part of a larger whole or feeling at one with others have always been natural human needs. Whether they take place in a shamanic circle, Dionysian procession, dance hall or rock concert, the psychological benefits which this behaviour brings are not lost on us.

What is a religious communion and where do these rituals come from? Eating & drinking are religious rituals. When we eat we assimilate the properties or nutrients of the food. If we ourselves were to be eaten our own powers would be taken on by our devourer. This is clear in early religions that were agricultural, the God was in the food which was grown and then consumed. This idea has survived even into the monotheisms with bread representing the God whose powers are taken on through being eaten. The meaning of communion is precisely this, to take on the powers of the God by eating him or her. This sort of communion is common and is apparent from the Bacchaic rituals of Dionysos to Jesus' last supper. The baccants eat the raw flesh of animals and drink wine to become intoxicated with the power of the God just as a Christian comes to be one with Christ by eating the bread & wine of communion. We should speak less of the food of the gods, like Terrence McKenna does, and see rather that the food is the God itself. When we eat we assimilate the powers, which is still apparent in the Christian tradition of thanking God before commencing a meal. We take our powers from whatever we choose to eat and assimilate into our bodies. As it is commonly said that character can be determined by diet. This is more specifically the case with those who choose to consume what our society calls "drugs". Narcotics have always been considered to be powerfully spiritual and hence their demonisation as "drugs" in modern societies. Both Catholicism and the secular state have felt threatened by the individuals direct contact to the divine through these mediums, not needing an intermediary. There are many examples similar to the better known Dionysiac cult of intoxication through wine, such as Corn Dolly deities sacrificed in various rural communities even to this day and age. The God is drunk as ale, or eaten as mushrooms and other psychedelics, which are now considered "drugs" were once called entheogens, quite literally to "put the God within you". This is also clear with the idea of the state of ecstasy. Literally from the greek for ex- stasis, out of the body.

Nightclubbers are thus engaging in the same Dionysian or shamanistic rituals today when they let a combination of music, alcohol & drugs, get them out of their everyday experience. A night club is then far more religious than a church, as it is only here where people, quite unknowingly for the most part, engage in the original religious rituals of dance and intoxication to become one with the world around them, while partaking of the same cathartic benefits that this ritualistic behaviour has always had and still brings us."

[aboutanancientenquiry]

Walter Burkert (1931-2015) "Greek Religion", Harvard University Press 1987

"In this book Walter Burkert, the most eminent living historian of ancient Greek religion, has produced the standard work for our time on that subject. First published in German in 1977, it has now been translated into English with the assistance of the author himself. A clearly structured and readable survey for students and scholars, it will be welcomed as the best modern account of any polytheistic religious system. Burkert draws on archaeological discoveries, insights from other disciplines, and inscriptions in Linear B to reconstruct the practices and beliefs of the Minoan-Mycenaean age. The major part of his book is devoted to the archaic and classical epochs. He describes the various rituals of sacrifice and libation and explains Greek beliefs about purification. He investigates the inspiration behind the great temples at Olympia, Delphi, Delos, and the Acropolis - discussing the priesthood, sanctuary, and oracles. Considerable attention is given to the individual gods, the position of the heroes, and beliefs about the afterlife. The different festivals are used to illuminate the place of religion in the society of the city-state. The mystery cults, at Eleusis and among the followers of Bacchus and Orpheus, are also set in that context. The book concludes with an assessment of the great classical philosophers' attitudes to religion. Insofar as possible, Burkert lets the evidence -- from literature and legend, vase paintings and archaeology -- speak for itself; he elucidates the controversies surrounding its interpretation without glossing over the enigmas that remain. Throughout, the notes (updated for the English-language edition) afford a wealth of further references as the text builds up its coherent picture of what is known of the religion of ancient Greece. (From the publisher)"

Table of Contents

Introduction I. PREHISTORY AND THE MINOAN-MYCENAEAN AGE 1. The Neolithic and Early Bronze Age 2. Indo-European 3. The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion 4. The 'Dark Age' and the Problem of Continuity II. RITUAL AND SANCTUARY 1. 'Working Sacred Things': Animal Sacrifice 2. Gift Offerings and Libation 3. Prayer 4. Purification 5. The Sanctuary 6. Priests 7. The Festival 8. Ecstasy and Divination III. THE GODS 1. The Spell of Homer 2. Individual Gods 3. The Remainder of the Pantheon 4. The Special Character of Greek Anthropomorphism IV. THE DEAD, HEROES, AND CHTHONIC GODS 1. Burial and the Cult of the Dead 2. Afterlife Mythology 3. Olympian and Chthonic 4. The Heroes 5. Figures Who Cross the Chthonic-Olympian Boundary V. POLIS AND POLYTHEISM 1. Thought Patterns in Greek Polytheism 2. The Rhythm of the Festivals 3. Social Functions of Cult 4. Piety in the Mirror of Greek Language VI. MYSTERIES AND ASCETICISM 1. Mystery Sanctuaries 2. Bacchica and Orphica 3. Bios VII. PHILOSOPHICAL RELIGION 1. The New Foundation: Being and the Divine 2. The Crisis: Sophists and Atheists 3. The Deliverance: Cosmic Religion and Metaphysics 4. Philosophical Religion and Polis Religion: Plato's Laws

A classic on ancient Greek religion! Herodotus is naturally used in it - alongside the other great ancient Greek classics- as a major source on ancient Greek religion. But Burkert highliths also Herodotus' role as one of the pioneers of the critical reflection on the religious beliefs and practices of the ancient Greeks.

[quinntessence]

Hey all! My name is Quinn and I use they/them, he/him, ze/hir, ae/aer and void/voids/voidself pronouns!

I am a 15 year old artist and animator (hobbyist) and I'm very friendly so feel free to interact!

I'm advenduromantic aegosexual, and afamilial

I'm simultaneously pangender and genderless, no I don't know how that works but it feels right

I'm Chinese-Australian

I block freely. If I don't like you, I will block you. Simple 😇

My interests (excluding specific fandoms) include speculative biology, greek, norse, aztec, incan and egyptian mythology, Shakespeare's plays, wildlife photography, musical theatre, singing, paleontology/prehistory (especially the mesozoic era), and astronomy :)

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#valleylily.exe + #oxceen's ocs (tag w/ old username in it.. cant be bothered to change that) - just stuff featuring my ocs

#my art + #quinntessence art - my art :) Also please note some of my older art in my art tag may have watermarks that don't match my current username!

#quinncoherent ramblings - normal text posts

#quinn's reblogs - reblogging stuff, however a lot of old reblogs do not have this tag on it

Fandoms I'm in (actively):

AvA/AvM

The Amazing Digital Circus

Gone

EPIC: The Musical

Romeo and Juliet (specifically Roméo et Juliette, les enfants de Vérone)

Alt Blogs:

@feathers-fins-and-fangs is my therian blog

@mefreakio is my fictionkin blog

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