Showing posts with label Ashkelon inscription. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ashkelon inscription. Show all posts

Saturday, 26 September 2020

Ashkelon invasion

This is a transcript made by the archaeologist Georges Perrot, of the Luwian inscription engraved on the 3,200-year-old, 29-metre-long limestone frieze which was discovered in Turkey in the 19th c. The stone with the original inscription was later destroyed...

This inscription is the longest known hieroglyphic inscription from the Bronze Age. When the text was eventually translated, it turned out to be a story about the "Sea People" naval expedition to Ashkelon in modern-day Israel (Illustration: Sea People by Giuseppi Rava)

The inscription tells the story of King Kupantakuruntas, who became king of Mira and ‘guardian of Troy’ after his father Mashuittas’s death, and was the brains behind the capturing of Ashkelon and turning it into a major army and navy base...You can read more about it in Rediscovered Luwian Hieroglyphic Inscriptions from Western Asia Minor...

Now recent genetic study "Genetic History of the Near East (Iron & Classical Ages)" - Haber at al. 2020 has shown that at that exact time the area around Ashkelon had a large influx of "Southern European and Western Anatolian DNA"...

You can read more about it in "A Genetic History of the Near East from an aDNA Time Course Sampling Eight Points in the Past 4,000 Years"

The important bit is that authors of the study say that "...according to ancient Egyptian texts and archaeology, the Sea Peoples conquered the Levant but failed to conquer Egypt. Therefore, we tested whether the Eurasian gene flow to Lebanon during the Iron Age had also reached ancient Egypt."

"The results of the measurement of the Steppe ancestry in both regions suggests that...either ancient Egypt did not receive the Eurasian gene flow that the Levant received during the Iron Age or that the Eurasian ancestry was replaced in Egypt later..."

Which matches the historical records from the area...

Friday, 17 July 2020

Philistine Inscription from Ashkelon

The origin and the nature of the Philistines is now even more of an enigma. 

The recent Harvard Leon Levy Expedition excavations in the area of the port of Ashkelon recovered 18 jar handles and one inscribed ostracon made from local clay...


According to two researchers, Giancarlo T. Tomezzoli and Reinhardt S. Stein this inscription was written in Cipro-Minoan script. This is the table giving the characters from the inscription with most likely vocal values...



So far so good. 

Now the bad bit. Bad in a sense that it will take some explaining and I can't wait to hear it. 


The proposed reading of the inscription is [L] *IUDI PADI PA WEDIMI, which according to the researchers is "Proto-Slavic inscription meaning 'People, come and see'"...


I would say that wedimi could also be "say to", "teach", "pass knowledge" which are all meaning of the word "ved" (wed) which means knowledge...In which case the meaning could be people "come to pass knowledge"...

Giancarlo Tomezzoli and Reinhardt S. Stein published their findings in "The Philistine Inscription 4.5 from Ashkelon (Israel)"


We know that recent genetic data points to European origin of Philistines...

So what the hell is going on? 

The researchers are not Slavic by the way, so their nationalistic bias is out of question I think...