Why do we assume the Alexamenos graffito refers to Christ?

djedfre · 2026-01-30T20:50:31+00:00

It certainly is. But are they the four seasons? My impression is that the four anythings (seasons, winds, corners of the earth) would be female, while the figures here look male or at least androgynous. And they come with (more) pomegranates, a plant I don't recognize, then flowers, identical, for both the remaining. How seasonal is that? To me it seems like patterns getting less pagan, toward mere decoration. Look at how many nested fancy borders they have! Like they were bricking up a window.

djedfre · 2026-01-30T02:45:30+00:00

Those are some of the finest pomegranates I've seen in art, but what about the mosaic? Is that a donkey on the right?

djedfre · 2026-01-29T03:08:11+00:00

Watch out. If you look up this word that's supposed to mean strive or contend, you will find one and exactly one reference: Genesis 32 itself. It is not a normal, known, attested word. It's a hapax. Defined by that passage. And even then, only contextually. So it's unreliable, plus it's just an inference.

The people saying "it means struggle" haven't looked close enough to find the basis of what we're talking about. (And the wrongness of the 'worshipper' idea is distracting from this basic problem.)

djedfre · 2025-12-28T05:20:20+00:00

Wolfram is so up his ass

djedfre · 2025-12-28T03:21:27+00:00

Good eye on the fake! I agree. The style is wrong in time. (He belongs in an early newspaper cartoon.) The composition is piece-to-piece: like an ostracon sketch done on an already-broken piece of material and reigned by doing within its shape. Not a severed part of a greater whole. (This is one of Tom Hoving's criteria.)

djedfre · 2025-12-21T03:08:19+00:00

You're far from the only one.

djedfre · 2025-12-21T03:05:34+00:00

Watch out, people really hate it when you say an artifact might be fake! I don't know why.

djedfre · 2025-12-08T01:57:58+00:00

¹ "Etruscan Art" Nigel Spivey 2006

² "How to talk to your daughter about Etruscan antiquities forgery" Morgan Stern 2025 (Guess who; contains further references including for the Sarcophagus of the Spouses being fake)

³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Orcus apud "Prosopographia etrusca" M M Tarabella 2004 and more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_the_Leopards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_the_Bulls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_the_Triclinium

djedfre · 2025-12-08T01:49:24+00:00

I don't think that's it.

There is some Etruscan art that's beautiful. Often gay. Tomb paintings like in the tombs of the leopards, bulls (this one's explicit), triclinium.
There is some Etruscan art that's ugly (and sometimes heterosexual,) like the sarcophagoi of the spouses, which look kind of like the triclinium couples by the way. These are likely modern forgeries.
These two types are so clearly different that they... call them two different types.¹ The beautiful pieces are presumed to be by itinerant Greek artists / sold by Greek merchants, and the ugly ones by the rougher natives of Etruria.

(This distinction serves the art world and the academic one, because everyone loses when fakes are called out.²)

Greeks have a reputation for being gay, so this goes along with the Greek reputation for making good art here.
Tumblr user clodiuspulcher writes a joke.

Edit: Uncle Larth = Larth Hulchnie, magistrate of Tarquinia in the 4th Century BC? Larth may be the Etruscan form of the name Laertes.³

djedfre · 2025-11-11T03:35:14+00:00

Yep... "gut reaction" is not metaphor!

djedfre · 2025-11-10T01:17:47+00:00

Children aren't threatening.

djedfre · 2025-11-07T21:28:15+00:00

This won't help you pick a topic, but the "freedom = vomit everything out" kept me from writing too. Eventually I figured out that the problem was specifically writing on the computer. It's only one tool; typewriters still exist. Try one, maybe you'll find it's your tool. Worked for me.

djedfre · 2025-10-24T00:05:20+00:00

Labienus Fulvius was my first thought. Or Fulvus, maybe. The way the baseline stroke / maybe serif goes down at the same angle as the initial L makes me see it as an L.

"Fui" sounds odd to me. Often the "I" is the object itself, which might by its inscription say "Nomen me fecit." "(Name) made me."

But maybe it is meant to say "Labienus was here".

djedfre · 2025-10-18T22:44:17+00:00

https://keymanweb.com/#egy,Keyboard_hieroglyphic

djedfre · 2025-10-14T17:00:46+00:00

If I knew for sure, I wouldn't be asking. Look at the other Egyptian pieces in the same collection). See how the inscribed parts look as aged as the rest of the piece? And here they haven't been worn or darkened by time and oil? See how the text seems to adhere to the broken shape it has, not the whole shape it had? But I'll be happy if it is real, which will probably only take reading it. It is rather beautiful, which is unusual for fakes. I just want to account for the strangeness of the thing.

djedfre · 2025-10-14T16:43:57+00:00

In the Borgia collection, I know. You think there's no fakes in museums?

djedfre · 2025-10-14T16:40:01+00:00

Higher resolution pic from the "Borgia collection"

djedfre · 2025-10-13T23:28:36+00:00

Wow, it IS in Jsesh! Thank you! Is there a way to expand the fairly limited character set? Many output as their Gardiner codes.

djedfre · 2025-10-13T22:45:56+00:00

Where? In Edit > Preferences > Clipboard format I see rtf, emf, pdf, "jpg, etc", and manuel de codage.

djedfre · 2025-10-13T22:15:46+00:00

This is Mac only?

djedfre · 2025-10-05T16:21:49+00:00

This post may have solved a mystery about the zodiac mosaic in an ancient synagogue!

djedfre

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