Thomas Yaeger's Blog, page 11

Greece and the cultural Impact of the Assyrian Empire

In 'The Threshold in Ancient Assyria' I discussed Pauline Albenda's work on pavement slab designs, which seem to have been derived from originals in carpet form. The designs may have originated in Egypt, and perhaps these may have been adopted as the result of cultural interaction beween Egypt and Assyria. 
This particular pattern of ornamentation was present in a Greek context of a similar period, somewhere between the later 8th century B.C.E., and the end of the 7th century B.C.E. Plate...

Bringing the Divine to Earth. Writing to the Poet Leona Esther Medlin

I wrote to Leona Esther Medlin on the 26th of January 2018, and headed the letter, 'After the Bronze Age Wreck'. The letter is an update on where I was with my research. The original (rather squibish) article 'The Bronze Age Wreck' was shared only with one archaeologist in May 2013, since it depended very much on an understanding of the arguments in 'The Sacred History of Being'. That book was not published for another two and a half years. 

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The focus of The Sacred History of Being is...

Writing to the Poet Leona Esther Medlin

I wrote to Leona Esther Medlin on the 26th of January 2018, and headed the letter, 'After the Bronze Age Wreck'. The letter is an update on where I was with my research. The original (rather squibish) article 'The Bronze Age Wreck' was shared only with one archaeologist in May 2013, since it depended very much on an understanding of the arguments in 'The Sacred History of Being'. That book was not published for another two and a half years. 

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The focus of The Sacred History of Being is...

Time to Move On (Writing to Josephine Quinn)

A response to the article 'Time to Move On', published in the TLS in September 2018.

Dear Dr. Quinn,

Eleanor Robson referenced your TLS article of 18 September on her Twitter feed. I couldn't agree more with your argument, though I might quibble (minorly) with some of the details. The term 'classics' is long past its sell-by date.

 I studied classics myself, but because I was studying in London in the early 90s it was possible for me to study the languages, history and culture of ancient Me...

Symmetry and Asymmetry in the Iconography of the Ancient Near East

Symmetry and Asymmetry

I first noticed a regularity (and accompanying irregularities) in images from the ANE a long time ago, and mentioned the phenomenon in 'The Sacred History of Being'. I described a number of images in detail because at the time I had no money to have the images copied (in the early eighties).  This extra labour turned out to have consequences. In compiling these descriptions I noticed that, where images possessed a symmetry, the same images often (but not always) con...

At the very Edge: Marking Transition and Transformation in Antiquity

One of the principle themes of my work is the importance accorded to the idea and the function of limit in ancient thought. Discussion of the idea of limit (and the unlimited) can be found in early Greek philosophy, and limit is a key idea in both Mesopotamian and Roman civilization. However currently it is not a major focus of interest for scholars, and so its importance is scarcely understood. 
Here are pointers to seven texts which discuss the significance of the idea of limit in antiq...

The Time Bomb Under Archaeology

Text from the Spectator archive, November 14, 1970. The programme was broadcast on October 31, 1970 (the Spectator came out once a fortnight). An edited excerpt from their review of TV programming. It is coming up for fifty years since the programme was broadcast, and the 'time-bomb under archaeology' may be about to explode. There is new information.

Magnus Magnusson wrote and narrated an excellent programme about even older good old days, four thousand years ago, when some of the natives of...

The Threshold in Ancient Assyria

In 1978  the scholar Pauline Albenda published ‘Assyrian Carpets in Stone’, in JANES [the
Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society of Columbia University], vol10,  which reviews the surviving representations of carpet designs in stone reliefs. Not much attention has been paid to these slabs, but they offer the possibility of insight into the significance of the use of similar motifs in other contexts, most notably of the sacred tree.

We know...

The Greek Ontological Model in the 1st Millennium B.C.E.

This is a discussion of the ontology and theology of the Greeks, in the context of the 1st Millennium B.C.E. It is essentially an overview of where I was, written between 26 July and the 3rd of August 2003. I have revised some of the English, and excised a couple of short passages, but the argument remains as it was. It is quite a long read (around six thousand words), but some readers will find the discussion rewarding and worth the effort. It has a number of themes, but essentially it is a...

Books by Thomas Yaeger at Bargain Prices in the Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale!

10th Annual Smashwords 2018 Summer/Winter Sale!
July 1, 2018 - July 31, 2018
All three of my books sold through Smashwords will be heavily discounted during the month of July, so this is a chance to pick up a bargain! The catalog for the sale goes live at one minute past midnight on July 1 Pacific time, and expires 11:59pm on July 31. Clicking on the image of each book's cover below will take you through to the Smashwords page for it. Clicking on the title will taken you to a blog page giv...