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Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

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Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#231

Post by throwfaraway135 »

anang wrote: post #196
xdennis wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We've already accepted a lot of non-Greek casting, and always have. Movies like Troy are filled with people of German, English, Scandinavian whatever heritage, same here with The Odyssey. I think they get a pass because we see Greek history as a shared western history, even though it's about as accurate as a black person in those roles. So I think for a lot of people, when they see complaints about black actors playi…

If you go to the streets of Athens and show them two pictures one of Diane Kruger and one Lupita Nyong'o, and ask them who they think represents Helena of Troy more I'm certain you are going to get Diane as the definitive answer.

I'm also certain that many will feel the casting of Lupita Nyong'o as cultural appropriation while the same will be less true for Diane Kruger.

I'm not saying the Greeks should decide who to cast in a US film, but the argument that if the actress isn't Greek then any other choice has the same level of accuracy is wrong.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#232

Post by brudgers »

latexr wrote: post #197
maksimur wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA originally meant "The Fucking Article" but on HN seems to have morphed its meaning to "The Fine Article" or "The Featured Article". I can't stop reading it as the former every time I come across it.

To expand on this: It started as “RTFA”, which is a riff on RTFM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM#List_of_similar_initialis... Doesn’t really work as OP used it, though, as it gets confusing. They wrote “the TFA mummy” every time, so it becomes “the the fucking article mummy”. Like saying you’re a fan of the The Beatles.

They wrote “the TFA mummy” every time

I had it both ways when it was first posted, about twenty minutes later after reading the “what is TFA?” comment I edited it to be consistent.

Only first line was the only “TFA” without the article…or with only one article? or is that two articles?

Anyway, the three article phrase “the TFA mummy” is equivalent to the three article phrase “the mummy in TFA” which is what I started to write.

And while “the TFA mummy” does not expand as cleanly as even I would wish, it has a better rhythm than “TFA mummy.” Or to put it another way, my poetic license removes “the TFA mummy” from grammar police jurisdiction.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#233

Post by enoint »

throwfaraway135 wrote: post #230
enoint wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that might change your mind is the 20th century mythic cowboy. Where I’m from, maybe 1/4 cowboys were black. So we accepted that as whites-only theatre. Do we have to keep accepting whites-only theatre?

I think this makes my argument even more true. Imagine you have a budget and want to create a western/cowboy movie. You care about representation and want to have more black cowboys in the movies. Option A: Take a story with a white cowboy, cast a black guy for him and shoot the movie. Option B: Find a story of a black cowboy (and as you said there were many of them) and shoot a movie about it. IMHO option A is patro…

Because dime novels were indeterminate about race, it’s not a binary set of options. Those novels relied on dialect rather than physical description.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#234

Post by withinboredom »

latexr wrote: post #197
maksimur wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA originally meant "The Fucking Article" but on HN seems to have morphed its meaning to "The Fine Article" or "The Featured Article". I can't stop reading it as the former every time I come across it.

To expand on this: It started as “RTFA”, which is a riff on RTFM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM#List_of_similar_initialis... Doesn’t really work as OP used it, though, as it gets confusing. They wrote “the TFA mummy” every time, so it becomes “the the fucking article mummy”. Like saying you’re a fan of the The Beatles.

I am a fan of the Beatles. What’s wrong with that?

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#235

Post by throwfaraway135 »

enoint wrote: post #233
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this makes my argument even more true. Imagine you have a budget and want to create a western/cowboy movie. You care about representation and want to have more black cowboys in the movies. Option A: Take a story with a white cowboy, cast a black guy for him and shoot the movie. Option B: Find a story of a black cowboy (and as you said there were many of them) and shoot a movie about it. IMHO option A is patro…

Because dime novels were indeterminate about race, it’s not a binary set of options. Those novels relied on dialect rather than physical description.

I think we agree there are a lot of books which you can make movies about where it is more than reasonable to have a black cowboy protagonist.

And this is the right way to do things, and not by pity race swapping some famous character/historical figure.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#236

Post by NetMageSCW »

brudgers wrote: post #110

Unearthed from a 1,600-year-old Roman-era tomb That's c. 400 AD. Closer to today, than to the time of King Tut...and King Tut was closer to the TFA mummy than to the First Dynasty. Ancient Egypt is really really old. The Great pyramid was 3000 years old at the time of the TFA mummy. The TFA mummy is about equidistant between today and the events of the Iliad and the book was already more than 1000 years old in 400 CE…

And I thought being able to trace my ancestors back 2600 years was impressive (okay, maybe 1500 non-apocryphal ancestors)!

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#237

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

latexr wrote: post #197
maksimur wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA originally meant "The Fucking Article" but on HN seems to have morphed its meaning to "The Fine Article" or "The Featured Article". I can't stop reading it as the former every time I come across it.

To expand on this: It started as “RTFA”, which is a riff on RTFM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM#List_of_similar_initialis... Doesn’t really work as OP used it, though, as it gets confusing. They wrote “the TFA mummy” every time, so it becomes “the the fucking article mummy”. Like saying you’re a fan of the The Beatles.

That's related to PNS syndrome (PIN Number Syndrome syndrome (Personal Identification Number Number Syndrome syndrome)).

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#238

Post by NetMageSCW »

brudgers wrote: post #232
latexr wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To expand on this: It started as “RTFA”, which is a riff on RTFM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RTFM#List_of_similar_initialis... Doesn’t really work as OP used it, though, as it gets confusing. They wrote “the TFA mummy” every time, so it becomes “the the fucking article mummy”. Like saying you’re a fan of the The Beatles.

They wrote “the TFA mummy” every time I had it both ways when it was first posted, about twenty minutes later after reading the “what is TFA?” comment I edited it to be consistent. Only first line was the only “TFA” without the article…or with only one article? or is that two articles? Anyway, the three article phrase “the TFA mummy” is equivalent to the three article phrase “the mummy in TFA” which is what I started…

But you missed a chance to call it the new mummy!

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#239

Post by brudgers »

dmos62 wrote: post #167
brudgers wrote: post #110

Unearthed from a 1,600-year-old Roman-era tomb That's c. 400 AD. Closer to today, than to the time of King Tut...and King Tut was closer to the TFA mummy than to the First Dynasty. Ancient Egypt is really really old. The Great pyramid was 3000 years old at the time of the TFA mummy. The TFA mummy is about equidistant between today and the events of the Iliad and the book was already more than 1000 years old in 400 CE…

The pyramids aren't actually datable, because it's rock. Maybe if you were to find something with carbon that's provably from the time of construction, that could be used, but I don't think that happened. The popular datings for the older pyramids are educated guesses. Edit: the Sphynx dating is even more controversial, because it seems to have rain erosion on it.

To the degree that is a scientific argument, the scientific research and scholarship underpinning it is a subset of the scientific research and scholarship underpinning the dates the contemporary Egyptology community ascribes to the pyramids.

Egyptologists can access science and have access to cultural artifacts and those artifacts include writing and that writing can be read and what can be read includes dates.

Re: Iliad fragment found in Roman-era mummy

#240

Post by NetMageSCW »

gerdesj wrote: post #103
baud147258 wrote: post #100

I am a little disappointed the tomb where the mummy was found is from the time where Egypt was part of the Roman Empire. At this point ancient Egypt had been a colony of Rome for quite some time and beforehand a Greek/Macedonian colony for a few more centuries (under the Ptolemaic dynasty, founded by a general of Alexander the Great). If it was from a previous era, it would have been a much more interesting find (in…

The article describes the veneration Roman -> (old) Greek -> (old) Egyptian and this finding appears to show that the veneration went both ways. Frankly I can understand that: Homer really did smash out an absolute banger with Iliad. I might ask for a copy in my grave too, when the time comes. The whole point of the article appears to be that when civilizations overlap, the "good old days" becomes a two way street (t…

I’m thinking I would pick Snow Crash. Or maybe The Matrix DVD.
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