Light, Camera, Action: Light displays are an important part of New Year celebrations the world over, so we are celebrating today with Pre-Raphaelite Photography by Minna Keene. 1. 🖼️ ‘Pomegranates’, c.1910. 2. 🖼️ ‘Woman with flowers (Violet)’, circa 1910. 3. 🖼️ ‘Fenn Lancaster’.

Pleased to say that my book review of ‘Runes Across the North Sea from the Migration Period and Beyond’ has finally been published in Futhark 14-15. You can read it here: uu.diva-portal.org/smash/record...

Ashurnasirpal II's inscription describing his lineage and military victories. Part of it reads: the king who (ruled) from the banks of the river Tigris (Diglat) to Mount Lebanon (Labnana) and the Great Sea (the Mediterranean).

Letting hunger strikers die, arresting Greta Thunberg — this is not incompetence or even indifference. The UK state is deliberately making examples of people to ramp up the crushing of basic civil liberties and silence opposition to genocide

Neo-Babylonian (ca 626-539 BC) lexical tablet from Borsippa listing sexagesimal numerals: šar-u (𒐬) = 36,000 šar-niš (𒐭) = 72,000 šar-u₂-šu (𒐮) = 108,000 šar-ni-mi-in (𒐰) = 144,000 šar-ni-nu-u (𒐱) = 180,000 šar-ŋeš₂ (𒄱) = 216,000 šar-gal-diš (𒐲) = 216,000 šar-gal-min (𒐳) = 432,000

Encountered in a lexicon: قَتَلَ أَرْضًا عَالِمُهَا وَقَتَلَتْ أَرْضٌ جَاهِلَهَا qatala ʔarḍan ʕālimuhā wa-qatalat ʔarḍun jāhilahā "A land is killed by a person who knows it. A land kills a person who is ignorant of it." The medieval version of environmentalist pessimism, I guess...

Late Babylonian astronomical tablet: 𒋫 𒁺 𒃻 𒌋𒌋 𒃻 𒀊 𒐈 𒌗 𒐈 𒌓 𒁹 𒇳𒌓 𒃻 𒁇 ultu izuzzi ša šamši ša Ṭebetu 3 arhū 3 ūmū ana šitqultu ša Nisannu From the standing of the sun (solstice) of Ṭebetu, 3 months 3 days to the equinox of Nisannu. cdli.earth/artifacts/34...

“What is happening [in Palestine] today is the true face of Zionist ideology . . . turning Palestinian existence into an unbearable hell,” declares the recently released Kairos Palestine document, "A Moment of Truth: Faith in a Time of Genocide." mondoweiss.net/2025/12/what... #Palestine #Israel

Sudan war: ‘As evidence mounts of the RSF’s barbarous attacks on civilians and cultural institutions, a clearer picture is emerging of an ongoing genocide, backed by the UAE and tacitly enabled by the UK. The comparisons with Gaza are chilling.’

The opening lines of Dumuzid's dream: 𒊮𒂵𒉌 𒀀𒅆 𒅎𒋛 𒂔𒂠 𒁀𒊏𒌓𒁺 šag₄‐ga-ni er₂ im‐si edin‐še₃ ba‐ra‐ed₂ his heart with tears having filled into the countryside he went out etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/c14...

The Ancient Greek sanctuary at Epidaurus had ramps, likely to help disabled visitor access. It's one of the earliest examples of an ancient society adapting architecture to the needs of the disabled community #InternationalDisabilityDay 🔗 from 2020 (£) doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

Excited that this piratastic monograph by Richard Frohock - Piracy Mythmaking in the 18th Century Criminality, Human Nature, & Civil Government - is latest monograph from 'Maritime Humanities, 1400-1800' series from @routledgebooks.bsky.social - out 8 May 2026! www.routledge.com/Piracy-Mythm... 🏴‍☠️☠️🏴‍☠️

The zigzag function can be visualised when the values on the tablet are plotted over 248 days (ecliptiqc.ca/ACT190.php), or 9 'anomalistic' months of 27.55 days each (the time between perigees). It predicts the Moon's daily angular displacement from its previous position, ranging between 11° and 15°

Instructions from Hellenistic Uruk for priests on what rituals to perform during a lunar eclipse, written in a neat Late Babylonian hand 𒀀𒁲 𒀭𒈪 𒌑𒉆𒈥 𒉈 𒀸 𒌋𒅗𒄭 𒂵𒊩𒆪 𒆷𒋼𒉈𒇷 adi antalû unammar išātu ina muḫḫi garakku lā tebelle Until the eclipse becomes light, the fire on the altar must not be extinguished

New soundtrack! Made for the surf Scottish ‘Silent Roar’ film which is now on BFI player 🏄‍♀️ Didn’t ever think I’d get a chance to release this, but super fun to make its eccentric sound. Trombone heavy, colliery brass, marimbas, synths, choir and guitars… 🌊🎥 🌊 silvascreen.ffm.to/silent_roar

Stealing refugees' jewellery won't make anyone's life better. Deporting children won't make anyone's life better. Making people wait 20 years to settle won't make anyone's life better. If Government chooses hostility over helping communities, more division and racism are the only possible results.

Scholars in Mesopotamia continued to study Sumerian nearly 2000 years after it stopped being spoken, and well after Aramaic replaced Akkadian as the language of everyday life. In this late 1st millennium BCE tablet the scribe Bēl-upaqqa wrote a list a Sumerian entries and their Akkadian translations

The @lmumuenchen.bsky.social cancels a seminar titled "the Targeting of the Palestinian Academia". They claim that there were "doubts this event's academic standard would be acceptable". This is outrageous. Yet again, a German university silences Palestinian academics www.lmu.de/de/newsroom/...

More Israeli theft of archaeological artefacts from Gaza #🏺

What perfect album came out the year you turned 16? Good memories with this one

✍ Introducing ✍ Sharpie, a letterform recognition game for beginner #EarlyModern #palaeography gjhilton.github.io/Sharpie/ AKA What I Did Over Reading Week. #skystorians I’d be so grateful if you had time to share or take a look and tell me what sucks and needs fixing. Love g 🗃️

" The heart " #Tamasheq : ulh #Tamajeq : əwəl #Tadaksahak : əwəl #Tetserret : ul In most Amazigh languages it's /ul/ Only Tamasheq dialect has retained the *h. And the WL form of Tamajeq and Tadaksahak is strange perhaps a metathesis of *LH/*LB ?

Mesopotamian astronomers probably observed or were aware of aurorae, or ‘red glows’. The word ‘akukūtu’ meaning “blaze” or “firebrand” is attested in a few tablets in which it refers to a rare meteorological phenomenon, described as ‘išātu ša ina šamê innappaḫ’, a “fire that flares up in the sky”.

From Sudan, to Palestine, genocide is a crime! 🇸🇩🇵🇸

'I saw death': Palestinian bus drivers in Jerusalem fear for their lives amid Israeli football fan violence www.middleeasteye.net/news/arab-bu...

"Fascism and AI, whether or not they have the same goals, they sure are working to accelerate one another." 🗣️📢 www.404media.co/ai-is-superc...

“Four years ago, we suffered an earlier redundancy programme that we were told would secure the future of the university. That clearly was not true." #UKHE www.leicester.news/university-o...

Finally one thing they are, due to being statistical models of text, these neural networks and other large language models are indeed designed to do: milquetoastify boringify language. LLMs steal and drain off human creativity originality verve by merely copying. english.elpais.com/technology/2...

Pleased that the @irishtimes.com has published this co-authored piece with a number of Palestinian academic colleagues on the destruction of higher education in Gaza. And the fears that the same will happen in the West Bank. www.irishtimes.com/ireland/educ...

Pages from a beautiful hand-written and illustrated treatise on firework design and manufacture published in 1785, including ‘blue-prints’ for the devices and explosive recipes. See the full book here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/manuscript-handbook-of-firework-design-1785 #Fireworks

#Palestine36 is performing well at the box office (for a small independent film). Thanks to all of you who have already seen it. Given the interest in the film it is showing at even more cinemas across the U.K. and Ireland next week. Please see the listings here:

Offering bearers adding to the pile in the tomb of Horemhab. Just remnants of the colourful paint that once decorated these scenes remains. #Egyptology #Archaeology

An interesting discovery: A manuscript (shelfmark Chambers 821 b) in #Qalamos that served as an English-Bengali dictionary or glossary, in which not only the Bengali words in the right column are written in Bengali script, but also the English terms in the left. .../1

The Maqlû is a series of well‐known Akkadian anti‐witchcraft texts, to be recited by an exorcist. It survives in a number of tablets from the early first millennium BC, some of which also contain explanatory commentary. One such tablet belonged to the junior exorcist (‘āšipu ṣeḫru’) Kiṣir‐Nabû

The bodies of 54 unidentified Palestinians, recently returned by Israel under the exchange deal, were buried today in southern Gaza. Families were unable to recognize their loved ones because of the severe mutilation and disfigurement the victims suffered while in Israeli custody.

This is (still, for a few hours EDT) the feast of Malchus of Syria, d. 390, whose Life was written by Jerome. Here's that text in an exceptionally handsome Humanist manuscript, BNF lat 1891. Admire the Gs! I kind of love this script. I wonder whose arms those are in the inital Q.

Medical texts were transmitted in various forms in #Syriac literature well into the modern period—for example, manuscript DFM 00696, located in Iraq. Take a closer look with Dr. James Walters, lead cataloger of Eastern Christian collections at HMML from 2020 to 2024: hmml.org/stories/seri...

One favourite among runologists is this inscription with ciphered runes mentioning a carver “most rune-skilled west of the sea” kulturarvsdata.se/uu/srdb/9cfa...

This 1850s cotton cloth was used by the Working Men’s Educational Union in its lectures to teach ancient scripts. It includes samples of Aramaic, ‘skeletal’ cuneiform signs, and the names of various kings from inscriptions published in ‘Nineveh and its Remains’. www.britishmuseum.org/collection/o...

A 3,300 year-old Egyptian-Akkadian vocabulary from Amarna, with Egyptian words written in cuneiform ši-na-aḫ=šnꜥ (unit of weight) ši-na-aḫ-wu₄=šnꜥwj (dual of šnꜥ) ḫa-am-tu₄ šu-nu-uḫ=ḫmtw šnꜥw (three šnꜥ) … na-ab-na-su=nꜣ bnšw (the doorposts) DU-as-bu=tꜣ jsbt (the chair) pa-ḫa-tu₄=pꜣ ḥꜥtj (the bed)

The genocide in Palestine has not stopped.

In this hymn praising the god Marduk's great knowledge, the scribe writes niṭluššu mala tikip dešši kippatu ul imṣi In his eyes the circle [of the world] is no bigger than the mark of a wedge To mean that understanding the world for Marduk is as easy as reading cuneiform marks, 'it's an open book'

increasingly feel like every powerful person in the world has some form of early 2000s forum mod psychosis

A 1491 publication of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Housed in the Wilson Library special collections at UNC. What a marvel to be able to handle such history.

In both Greek and Mesopotamian art, the κάλαθος and the 𒄭𒆷𒌅 ḫallatum became metaphors for prosperity, which is the origin of our modern notion of the cornucopia. Here for example is King Ashurbanipal of Assyria holding aloft a basket representing wealth:

A Turkic proverb recorded in the Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk, an Arabic-language compendium from the 11th century: 'birin birin miŋ bolur tama tama köl bolur' 'one by one becomes a thousand, drop by drop becomes a pond' dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/...

We've been working on this piece for a long time, and it's finally out! The Formation and Transformation of Medical Apartheid in Palestine: A Historical Examination Should be open access but currently behind a paywall, DM if you'd like a PDF! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

You can watch the recordings of the seminars we organised with our brave Palestinian colleagues here: everydayorientalism.wordpress.com/2024/01/12/i... and here: everydayorientalism.wordpress.com/2025/02/04/i...