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Cuneiform Students Exercise Tablet112mm x 100mm 583 grams
"The tablet is certainly a student’s exercise text that was part of his school work to teach him to read and write Sumerian around the year 1800BC, long after Sumerian had died out as a spoken language. In particular, this exercise was to teach all the Sumerian vocabulary dealing with food items. When complete, the list probably had over 500 entries. As part of their training, students had to memorize long lexical lists containing everything from plants and animals to metal objects, textiles, types of professions, body parts etc. These lists of vocabulary words were fairly standardized throughout Southern Babylonia at this time, so that you find many tablets containing the same entries, not always in the same order, but usually pretty close. Of course, some students were better than others, so some tablets contain more mistakes and some are written in messier script. Your tablet seems to have been written by a fairly good student, although there are a number of deviants from the standard version of the food items list.
The obverse of your tablet is the side with 3 columns and wide rows. The obverse represents a new part of the word list that the student is learning. In this case, each column repeats the same section of the list, so the student had a chance to practice it over and over. Unfortunately, not much is preserved on the obverse - just several different types of barley including “white barley” and “black barley.”
The reverse contains a much larger section of the list that the student had already memorized, and is just practicing here. This side is divided into 4 columns, the first column is almost entirely broken. The second column contains a list of different types of beer including “beer mixed with water,” “market beer,” “beer that foams like soap”, and “sweet beer.” Column three contains types of soup, most of which are not known from other versions of this list and will take more work to decipher, and types of fragrant plants, most of which are plants that we cannot identify."
Published in NABU 2017 List Ura 6 1Nemonater
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Gordian III Bronze Military Diploma 241/242 CEThe two faces, A and B, are duplicate copies of the first half of a diploma of Gordian III addressed to veterans of the ten Praetorian Cohorts, cohortibus praetoris Gordianis decem (numerals 1 – 10) piis vindicibus, granting them Roman right of marriage (conubium) with their wives even if of non-Roman status (peregrinae), provided they are their first and only wife. The evidence of date is contained in the third line of Face B (the equivalent text is lost from A), which describes Gordian as TRIB POT V COS II. This is the year which ran from 10 December 241 to 9 December 242.
Nemonater
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Gordian III Bronze Military Diploma 241/242 CE Highlighted ScriptThe two faces, A and B, are duplicate copies of the first half of a diploma of Gordian III addressed to veterans of the ten Praetorian Cohorts, cohortibus praetoris Gordianis decem (numerals 1 – 10) piis vindicibus, granting them Roman right of marriage (conubium) with their wives even if of non-Roman status (peregrinae), provided they are their first and only wife. The evidence of date is contained in the third line of Face B (the equivalent text is lost from A), which describes Gordian as TRIB POT V COS II. This is the year which ran from 10 December 241 to 9 December 242.
Nemonater
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Lead Weight37.30g 36mm
O: Δ Ι (=14?)
R: Incuse trapezoid stamp
Nemonater
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Military Diploma and Denarii issued by Severus AlexanderDated by line 3, side 2, to 229-230, 233-235: COS III, preceded by II, the last two digits of the TRIB POT number. He became COS III in 229, and remained this until his death in 235, so the possible years are 229 (TRIB POT VIII), 230 (VIIII), 233 (XII), 234 (XIII) and 235 (XIIII). **CLICK TO EXPAND**
Nemonater
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Military Diploma fragment issued by Severus AlexanderDated by line 3 to 229-230, 233-235: COS III, preceded by II, the last two digits of the TRIB POT number. He became COS III in 229, and remained this until his death in 235, so the possible years are 229 (TRIB POT VIII), 230 (VIIII), 233 (XII), 234 (XIII) and 235 (XIIII). (78x54 mm)
... M]AGNI II FIL
“Son of Magnus Pius”
... ALEXAN]DER PIVS FELIX AVG
“Alexander Pius Felix Augustus”
... TRIB POT?]II COS III P P
“In the ? year of Tribunician and Conul power, Pater Patriae”
... MI]LITAVERVNT IN
“Who served in”
... SE]VERIANIS DECEM
“Ten Severan”
... ] PIIS VINDICIBVS
“Loyal and Avenging”
... MILI]TIA FVNCTI SVNT
“Performed their military function”
... ] CVM SINGV
“With one”
?LIS ... ETIA]M SI PEREGRI
“Even if foreign”
NI IVRIS ... ] ...
"The underlined portions being the words that are visible on the fragment:
'The Emperor Caesar, son of the deified Antoninus Pius the Great [i.e. 'Caracalla'], grandson of Severus Pius [i.e. Septimius Severus], Marcus Aurellius [thus usually written] Severus Alexander Pius Felix ['happy'] Augustus, Pontifex Maximus, in the [...]IIth year of his Tribunician Power, Consul three times [i.e. 229 or later: see above], Father of his Country. The names of the soldiers who have served in the ten Severan Praetorian Cohorts (numbered) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Pius Vindex ['dutiful, avenging'], who have dutifully and bravely completed their service, (to them) I have granted the right of Roman marriage, provided it is with one woman only and she their first wife, so that even if they marry women of non-Roman status ...'" - Great thanks to the Classics Faculty in Oxford.
After serving twenty-five years in the Roman auxiliary units, a soldier was granted Roman citizenship as well as the legalization of his existing or future marriage. This was of relevance for his children who thus became Roman citizens and his full legal heirs under Roman law. His wife was not granted Roman citizenship. A diploma, copied from an original posted in Rome , served as evidence of these civic rights and no doubt was preserved as an important legal document by its recipient and his descendants.
Why have so few diplomas survived to the present? Is it possible that veterans received copies in wood, papyrus or bronze depending on what the could afford? Or perhaps only a select few received the small bronze copies of the public imperial constitutions? Whichever the case, far more questions surround these pieces than answers!
The old Praetorian Guard was disbanded by Septimius Severus after he seized Rome in 193 A.D., and was replaced by a new Guard of ten cohorts, each 1000-men strong, drawn from the Danubian legions which had supported his usurpation. It continued to be largely recruited from this source, with many Guardsmen being of Thracian origin, until it was finally disbanded by Constantine in 312 A.D.Nemonater
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Second Intermediate Period Steatite ScarabBase engraved with three figures, likely a goddess flanked by two gods.
Egypt was an ultrareligious land, every city and town had its own local deity, bearing the title “Lord of the City.” A list found in the tomb of Thutmose III contains the names of some 740 gods. (Ex 12:12) Frequently the god was represented as married to a goddess who bore him a son, “thus forming a divine triad or trinity in which the father, moreover, was not always the chief, contenting himself on occasion with the role of prince consort, while the principal deity of the locality remained the goddess.” (New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, 1968, p. 10) Only a few, relatively speaking, of the hundreds of deities seem to have received worship on a truly national basis. Most popular among these was the trinity or triad of Osiris, Isis (his wife), and Horus (his son). - http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200001265#h=2
Who is represented on this scarab? Perhaps Osiris, Isis and Horus or Latopolis Khnum, Neith and Heka? Or did the carvers have no idea what they were writing or inscribing? I suppose we will never know.Nemonater
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