‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ find of 1,300-year-old necklace dazzles historians • Hacker News Board

Re: ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ find of 1,300-year-old necklace dazzles historians

#71

Post by wl » Mon, Dec 19, 2022, 11:44 PM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #61

yboris wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect we're in some serious philosophy territory now. I find it problematic to insist that since governments make laws, they then are exempt from moral criticism. Just because a government can make a law doing something doesn't mean it's a morally permissible thing to do. I guess the word "stolen" could have a legalistic interpretation, but there's surely a moral one as well. And I think the legal discussion is e…

You said "stolen". That's a question of property rights. It's a legal definition. If the government takes my land via eminent domain, and pays me for it, I can criticize the government "morally", but I can't say it "stole" my land without engaging in hyperbole and some misdirection. This is why someone else would put "stolen" in quotes. Those quotes are what the thread is about. You can't just decide for yourself tha…

> Arab Egypt had ownership of the rosetta stone and a vast array of hieroglyphs for over a millennia and never understood it, and launched no program to uncover their secrets.

Significant parallel texts were unknown until the rediscovery of the Rosetta Stone in 1799. The Rosetta Stone was only deciphered as quickly as it was because Champollion had studied Coptic, a then-known and later form of the written Egyptian languages in question. If it weren't for Coptic Christians preserving their language, our understanding of Egyptian would probably be 150 years behind where it is now. If significant parallel texts were known in Egypt in 1000 CE, I'd be surprised if the Egyptians themselves wouldn't have cracked it by 1800 CE.

Also, Arab scholars did try to decipher hieroglyphs. See Ayub Ibn Maslama, Dhu Al-Nun Al-Misri, Ibn Wahshiyah, and Abu Al-Qasim Al-Iraqi.

Re: ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ find of 1,300-year-old necklace dazzles historians

#72

Post by thaumasiotes » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 12:32 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #14

thaumasiotes wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “This woman probably belonged to the first generation of English Christians in this part of England,” Francis Young, a historian of religion who was not involved in the excavation, told The Post. “This is people wanting to show off their newly acquired identity as Christians.” Artifact interpretation is always so tendentious. Lots of people wear necklaces with a cross pendant today. They are mostly not trying to sh…

We should at least consider the possibility that a domain expert may have knowledge not included in that single sentence given to a reporter.

This is exactly the idea that I'm pointing out is false. You should not consider that possibility; that is not the way interpretation of archaeological artifacts is done, particularly when talking to reporters.

Re: ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ find of 1,300-year-old necklace dazzles historians

#73

Post by jaclaz » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 7:14 AM UTC

tokai wrote: post #15

jaclaz wrote: post #8

To nitpick, cannot say if it comes from the journalist writing the article or from the archeologists, the jewel seems to sport a cross, not a crucifix.

To nitpick - you are wrong. A crucifix is the cross of Christ. It can still be a symbol of Christ's crucifixion while "just" being a cross without any Christ handing on it. The whole value of finding of the pendant that it shows very early Christian iconography in England.

>A crucifix is the cross of Christ.

No, the name itself makes the distinction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifix

>A crucifix (from Latin cruci fixus meaning "(one) fixed to a cross") is a cross with an image of Jesus on it, as distinct from a bare cross.

Re: ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ find of 1,300-year-old necklace dazzles historians

#74

Post by yboris » Tue, Dec 20, 2022, 5:25 PM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #68

yboris wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you very much! I really appreciate the amount of thought and care you put into all your responses. You're probably right that were it not for Europeans taking some artifacts from around the globe they would have perished; and so I agree that on the whole it may have been better that Europeans took many things into museums. I feel like Last Week Tonight show about Museums was probably a decent overview of the st…

That is kind of you. I will take a look, but 35 minutes of John Oliver is a big ask. Last time I watched him -- years ago -- he spent the entire segment in 100% outrage mode with a sledgehammer wall-of-sound style rhetoric in which nuance and empathy were entirely absent from his sequence of cherry-picked outrage nuggets. But at the same time, I didn't find him very funny. Sam Kinison was also a loud outrage comic, b…

Thank you for sharing more. I don't take Last Week Tonight as a thorough even-handed presentation of ideas, but more as a spotlight, trying to point attention at some ongoing problems in today's world.

I think the representativeness is the most important aspect to think about -- most likely the show focuses on and exaggerates absurdities / hypocrisies that are happening for a bigger punch, and as you point out, at the cost of its own credibility.

I know quite little on the subject we've been discussing - and I got more clarity reading what you wrote and thinking about it.

Stay awesome!