Black Athena of Martin Bernal into Arabic

The controversial book of Martin Bernal, Blak Athena:The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, with its first two volumes published in 1987 and 1991, is turned into Arabic by Egyptian classicists. Both the Martin Bernal's response to his critic, Moore, David Chioni (editor). Black Athena Writes Back: Martin Bernal Responds to His Critics. (2001), nor the third volume which dealt with The Linguistic Evidence, published in 2006, have not yet been translated into Arabic.

The book was published by the NCT in 1997 (Vol. I) and Vol. II in two parts; part 1 in 2004 and part 2 in 2005. 

Virgil, Aeneid into Arabic

Arabic posses now two direct translations of Virgil, Aeneid from Latin :

1- Abdelmoty Sharaway et alli  have translated Virgil, Aeneid  for the first time ever directly into Arabic . The transitions appeared in 1971  (Books 1-6)  and 1977 (Books 7-12) in Egyptian General Organization for Composing und Publishing, Cairo (Egypt). In 2011 the National Center of Translation has issued a second edition of translation. 

2-Mahmoud A. Alghoul, a Palestinian translator, has single-handedly translated Virgil, Aeneid from Latin into Arabic. The translation is published last year 2015 in Kalima Translations, Abu Dhabi (UAE). If you would like to have a copy of this translation, order it from here (in Arabic) : https://books.tcaabudhabi.ae/ar/external/pages/bookdetail.aspx?key=14481

Aeschylus, Supplices and Persae into Arabic by by Ibrahim Sukkar

In 1966 Ibrahim Sukkar translated Aeschylus, Supplices and Persae into Arabic. The translation was published by Egyptian House for Writing and Translation, Cairo (Egypt).

The Arabic translation of Homer's Iliad is the second most sold book in Cairo IBF 2016

The offical page of the NCT in Cairo has announced that Homer's Iliad is the second most soldbook in Cairo International Book Fair From January 27, 2016 17:00 until February 10, 2016 19:00.

On the first place comes Masnavi of Rumi and the third Goethe's Faust.

New Classics Publications in Arabic

As I am now preparing a list of books to buy,  I would like to share these titles in this blog. I will not be able to provide more than an image or a short tittle of the book for the moment, but will surely add some information about it in the near future.

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Arabic Commentary on Hippocrates' Aphorisms

The Greek medical tradition survived long after the decline of the Hellenistic world, thanks to the work of Arabic translators and commentators, who preserved the theoretical and practical discoveries of Greek physicians in Arabic translations. 

The translation of Greek medical texts into Arabic was mainly conducted under the ‘Abbasid caliphs and, in particular, in the circle of intellectuals linked to the name of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (circa 809–73). Among the Greek physicians, Hippocrates has always been considered an exemplary character, the symbol of the true and scrupulous physician, thanks mainly to the high regard for this founding figure shown in works by Galen and other physicians. 

The Aphorisms (sayings) of Hippocrates were widely commented upon in both the Greek and Islamic worlds. The present manuscript is a clear example of this tradition, as it consists of a fragmentary 14th-century copy of an 11th-century commentary on Hippocrates' Fuṣul(Sayings) by the Persian physician Ibn Abī Ṣādiq al-Nīsābūrī. The Arabic translations of Hippocrates' aphorisms are underlined in red ink, while a remnant of the text preserves al-Nīsābūrī's commentary. 


An interesting ownership note in English, found in the opening folio of the manuscript, indicates that it was given as a present to the American surgeon Valentine Mott by Dr. Franz Pruner, who worked as the head physician of Cairo hospital after 1838. The title page records several previous owners from the 15th century to the 18th, and the manuscript may date back to the 14th century.

More about this interesting item, see here : https://lccn.loc.gov/2008427062

Helen of Troy into Arabic: First from French then from Greek.

Helen of Troy by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

1- La belle Hélène into Arabic:

Modern Arabic knew Helen of troy in 1868. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi (1801-1873) translated the french operetta La belle Hélène (The Beautiful Helen) just after its first performance in Paris on December 17, 1864 with a lap of exactly 4 years. The translation was published on 31.12.1868 by Boulaq Printing Press. 

In 2015 the translation was republished by the GEBO (General Egyptian Book Organization). See below the book cover. 

2- Helen's Euripides in Arabic 1984: 

Helen's Euripides, whose plot is different than the above-mentioned operetta, was translated into Arabic by Amin Salam in 1984, who is best known among Arabic classicists by his translations of "Who is who in Greek and Roman Mythology". 

Using Alpheios Editor (AE) in Perseids, I have aligned the first line of Salam's translation with its Greek original. See it here : http://sosol.perseids.org/alpheios/app/align-editsentence-perseids.xhtml?s=1&numSentences=1&doc=28472

3- Helen's Euripides into Arabic from Greek by Mounira Karawan:

Recently Mounira Karawn has translated Helen's Euripides into Arabic directly from Ancient Greek. The translation is published by the NTC [date?]. Below is the cover page of this translation.

Arabic Commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms

Arabic Commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms


Professor Peter E. Pormann is currently pursuing a major research project entitled ‘Arabic Commentaries on the Hippocratic Aphorisms’, funded by the ERC (€1.5m). The project aims to examine the entire Arabic commentary tradition on the Aphorisms, from the ninth to the sixteenth century. The Hippocratic Aphorisms had a profound influence on subsequent generations; they not only shaped medical theory and practice, but also affected popular culture. Galen (d. c. 216) produced an extensive commentary on this text, as did other medical authors writing in Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew. The Arabic tradition is particularly rich, with more than a dozen commentaries extant in over a hundred manuscripts. These Arabic commentaries constituted important venues for innovation and change, and did not merely draw attention to scholastic debates. Moreover, they had a considerable impact on medical practice, as the Aphorisms were so popular that both doctor and patient knew them by heart.

More here: http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/subjects/classicsancienthistory/research/projects/arabiccommentaries/ 

Marja Vierros, Papyrology and Linguistic Annotation

Marja Vierros presentation in  Digital Classicist London & Institute of Classical Studies seminar 2014 Friday July 25th at 16:30 about the Papyrology and Linguistic Annotation, is available on the seminar's website. 

On the seminar's website (http://www.digitalclassicist.org/wip/wip2014-08mv.html) one can find a Video recording of seminar (MP4), Audio recording of seminar (MP3) and a the Presentation (PDF).

see also Sematia here (http://sematia.hum.helsinki.fi/signin).

An Interesting New Blog: The History of the Study of Antiquity through the Lens of Autobiography

Charles Jones, Tombros Librarian for Classics and Humanities, Pennsylvania State University Libraries,  has started a wonderful blog entitled "The History of the Study of Antiquity through the Lens of Autobiography". The blog, according to its author's words, is "a component of a research project initiated by  Charles E. Jones, ... , who has a long standing interest in the history of the study of the Ancient Near East and Egypt, and of old world Antiquity more generally. This blog will present the working bibliography of the project, and provide a platform for comment and discussion of autobiographical writing by students and scholars of the ancient world."

Jones also hopes that he will also "develop a venue for the publication of new autobiographical essays in the form of an online open access periodical".

The idea behind the project and the blog is amazing. Except for Taha Hussein's autobiography " The Days", which is available now in English from AUC press (2001), I don't know how many autobiographies of Arabic scholars of Altertumswissenschaften do we have, but I hope the project and the blog will include them. I would also recommend adding his book "The Future of Culture in Egypt", translated into English by Sidney Glazer and published by American Council of Learned Societies, 1954, to the working bibliography of the project/blog.

To see the blog follow this link: http://antiqauto.blogspot.de/ 

DH LEIPZIG WORKSHOP WEEK 2015

A very busy week in Leipzig !

The Leipzig Workshop Week is comprised of a series of three related workshops in the week beginning 14th of December. In addition, the Sunoikisis DC Planning Seminar will run on the 16th and 17th.

For more information see the website here: http://www.dh.uni-leipzig.de/wo/events/workshop-week-2015/ and see the full programme below.

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A new Arabic Book about Greek and Roman Mythology

I've come across a picture of the cover of a new Arabic book about Greek and Roman Mythology. The book is written by Dr. Joussif Khalil and titledقصص الأساطير اليونانية والرومانية  i.e. "Narratives of the Greek and Roman Mythology". Unfortunately, I was not able to have the content of this book. Whenever I do this I will post it here. Here is the book cover.

Index of open access Arabic Scientific periodicals

An Index of open access Arabic scientific periodical, called Directory of Free Arab Journals and abbreviated as DFAJ, is now available online (http://www.dfaj.net/).

PELLA: Coinage of the Kings of Macedonia

PELLA

PELLA is a project of the American Numismatic Society directed by Dr. Peter van Alfen. The web database, based on the Numishare platform, has been developed by Ethan Gruber.

Substantial work in developing PELLA has been carried out by Prof. Andrew Meadows (Oxford University). Cynthia Cheng, Yoorim Choi, Sylvia Czander, Clara Sanchez, and Elena Ferrero provided considerable assistance in organizing material within the ANS collection. Alan Roche is responsible for the photographs of ANS coins. At the British Museum, Martin Price, former Curator of Greek coins, was instrumental in cataloguing this material. Amelia Dowler is the British Museum's current curator of this series. Prof. Bernhard Weisser and Dr. Karsten Dahmen have done the same at the Münzkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Current contributors to the project are the ANS, the Münzkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, and the British Museum.

Translations have been provided by the following:
German: Karsten Dahmen
French: Frédérique Duyrat



PELLA: About PELLA

EAGLE 1st Short Storytelling Contest | EAGLE Portal

Deadline: January 15, 2016
We’re looking for short stories! Think you can write a winning story in 2500 words or less? Enter the 1st EAGLE Short Story Contest for your chance to win Euro Amazon Voucher for up to 200 Euross, get published in EAGLE Portal and Storytelling Application and participate in the EAGLE 2016 Conference! Stories must be related to one (or more) of the inscriptions featured in one (or more) of the EAGLE Collections. Stories can be in English or any other European language, as long as you provide a 250 word abstract in English. Stories must be accessible to the public and must make use of as much multimedia (music, videos, interactive presentations, linked open data) as possible. Authors are strongly encouraged to make use of the Storytelling App. Examples can be found here.

Prizes and more see here, EAGLE 1st Short Storytelling Contest | EAGLE Portal

EAGLE Portal

The EAGLE, The Europeana network of Ancient Greek and Latin Epigraphy, will collect, in a single readily-searchable database, more than 1.5 million items, currently scattered across 25 EU countries, as well as the east and south Mediterranean. 

More about it, see here Who we are | EAGLE Portal

Call for papers to Digital Approaches and the Ancient World

Posted in Digital classicist's email-list by Gabriel Bodard.

Digital Approaches and the Ancient World
A themed issue of the _Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies_

Editors:
Gabriel Bodard (University of London) gabriel.bodard@sas.ac.uk
Yanne Broux (KU Leuven) yanne.broux@arts.kuleuven.be
Ségolène Tarte (University of Oxford) segolene.tarte@oerc.ox.ac.uk

Call for papers:
We invite colleagues all around the world and at all stages of their careers to submit papers on the topic of “Digital Approaches and the Ancient World” to a themed issue of the Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. The topic is to be construed as widely as possible, to include not only the history, archaeology, language, literature and thought of the ancient and late antique Mediterranean world, but also of antiquity more widely, potentially including, for example, South and East Asian, Sub-Saharan African or Pre-Columbian American history. Digital approaches may also vary widely, to include methodologies from the digital humanities and information studies, quantitative methods from the hard sciences, or other innovative and transdisciplinary themes.

Papers will be fully peer reviewed and selected for inclusion based not only on their research quality and significance, but especially on their ability to engage profoundly both with classics/history academic readers, and scholars from digital or informatic disciplines. We are keen to see papers that clearly lay out their disciplinary and interdisciplinary methodological approaches, and present and interpret the full range of scholarly and practical outcomes of their research.

We encourage the use of and direct reference to open online datasets in your papers. BICS is not currently an open access publication, but self-archiving of pre-press papers is permitted, and the editors believe in the transparency and accountability that comes with basing scientific work on open data.

To submit an article to this themed issue, please send your full paper of 4,000–8,000 words in Microsoft Word doc, docx or rtf format, to <gabriel.bodard@sas.ac.uk>, along with a 150 word abstract, by January 31, 2016. You do not need to follow BICS style for the initial submission, but please note that the final version of accepted articles will need to be formatted to adhere to our style guide (http://www.icls.sas.ac.uk/sites/default/files/files/STYLE-V15.pdf).

If you have any questions about this issue, please feel free to contact any of the editors informally.


--
Dr Gabriel BODARD
Reader in Digital Classics

Institute of Classical Studies
University of London
Senate House
Malet Street
London WC1E 7HU

E: Gabriel.bodard@sas.ac.uk
T: +44 (0)20 78628752

http://digitalclassicist.org/

PhD position in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History - Uppsala University, Sweden

PhD position in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History - Uppsala University, Sweden



The successful eligible to postgraduate studies in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University has a) a first degree encompassing at least 180 credits, b) has passed and completed the undergraduate courses A, B and C in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History, and c) has been awarded a degree at advanced level with a major in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History. An applicant may also be considered qualified if s/he has acquired the corresponding competence in other ways in Sweden or abroad.

The application should include copies of a Master thesis, a brief CV, exam certificates, a research plan of c. 4-5 pages, and any publications.
For information and regulations, see Högskoleförordningen kap. 5, 8 och 9, the guidelines for PhD education of Uppsala University and those of the Historical-Philosophical Faculty at http://www.histfilfak.uu.se/Forskning/Forskarutbildning/

Information on the PhD education programme in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History can be found at http://www.arkeologi.uu.se/digitalAssets/148/148871_fn130122_antiken.pdf (Swedish only).

For more information, please contact the director of post-graduate studies, professor Neil Price, neil.price@arkeologi.uu.se phone 018-471 2073, head of department Lars Karlsson, lars.karlsson@antiken.uu.se phone 018-471 7552, and the faculty head of education Anna Sofia Hedberg, anna_sofia.hedberg@uadm.uu.se, phone 018-471 6982.

Deadline for application is January 6, 2016. dnr UFV-PA 2015/3078.



We decline offers of recruitment and advertising help. We only accept the application the way described in the advertisement.


Placement: Department of Archaeology and Ancient History

Type of employment: Full time , PhD placement

Number of positions: 1

Working hours: 100%

Town: Uppsala

County: Uppsala län

Country: Sweden

Union representative: Carin Söderhäll, TCO/ST 018-471 1997 1
Per Sundman, Saco-rådet 018-471 1485 1
Stefan Djurström, Seko 018-471 3315 1


Number of reference: UFV-PA 2015/3078

Last application date: 2016-01-06

Rachel Mairs gives a seminar about Archaeologists and Language in Petrie

Rachel Mairs (University of Reading) will give a seminar jointly organised by the Institute's History of Archaeology Research Network and the UCL Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology on 19 November.

Abstract

This paper explores the engagement - or lack of engagement - of nineteenth and early twentieth century archaeologists in Egypt and Mesopotamia with the Arabic language.  From Flinders Petrie, who believed that anyone who couldn't pick up Arabic simply wasn't trying hard enough, to Max Mallowan, who had to deal with a junior colleague's excuse that he had 'lost his Arabic book', attitudes to language shaped archaeologists' experience of the Middle East - and the local population's experiences of them.

All welcome!

Any enquiries about the event may be directed to Amara Thornton.

Some photos of my Talk about "Eurocentricity in Papyrology" in Leipzig

Three photos from my Talk about Eurocentricity in Papyrology: the case of papyri and papyrology in Egypt in a digital age. The talk was part of #DhEgypt2015 held in Leipzig from 3-6.11.2015.