Armchair Classicist (Ryan Schaller)

A photo of text describing the worship of Zeus Lykaios in ancient Greece.

The classical Greek version of the werewolf.
The travel writing of Pausanias is a gem for anecdotes of this kind.
#folklore

A flow chart titled "Which Greek Philosopher are you?"

I stole this gem from @lindsaypowell.bsky.social 's facebook page.

#Classics #Greek #Philosophy

Around three and a half feet long and 19 pounds!

A large long haired cat laying belly up

Large long haired cat laying belly up

Glorious cat belly.
#CatsOfBlueSky 🐈‍⬛📷

Grouchy but so handsome!

Good luck. Stressful situation

Woman in back left of photo is labeled: "Plato, talking about the dangers of poetry." Woman in front is labeled "Aristotle" and she's licking a coffee cup labeled "Poetry"

I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall of the Academy during the time that Aristotle studied with Plato.

#Classics #Poetry

White text over a black and white photo of Greek countryside: "But it is Fate, of course, that brings mortals evil as well as good, and the gifts of the immortal gods proves inescapable." Solon

"But it is Fate, of course, that brings mortals evil as well as good, and the gifts of the immortal gods proves inescapable."
Solon, the poet-politician of Athens

#Classics

A vibrantly colored painting of Agamemnon and Achilles at the verge of fighting one another with other Greeks standing by. The scene is the shore by Troy.

“Contesa tra Achille ed Agamennone ” by Giovan Battista Gaul.

Displayed at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen

#Art #Myth

Two cats, one on a bookshelf and one on the floor in front of the bookshelf.

Chaucer and Zora chilling out with the books.

#CatsOfBlueSky 📚💙 🐈📷 #Cats

Cover of “Land Tenure and Social Stratification in Ancient Mesopotamia”

Exciting new read in my study of ancient real property rights.
#ancientbluesky 📚💙

Chaucer is in love with this new scratching pad laptop computer my wife picked up today.

#CatsOfBlueSky 🐈‍⬛📷

Image of the described painting

This is an oil painting by Rembrandt that is often interpreted as a portrait of Athena, but some art historians have interpreted it as either Alexander the Great or the god Mars. Now at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon, Portugal.
#art #myth

🤦‍♂️ that should have been "More of" Zora... 🤦‍♂️

The words "The average human walks 900 miles per year and drinks 22 gallons of coffee. That means the average human gets 41 miles per gallon" written over a coffee cup.

Important Public Service Announcement going into the new week.

#funny ☕

brown tortoiseshell maine coon cat looking into camera.

Mora Zora doing her thing.

#CatsOfBlueSky #MaineCoon #Cats
🐈📷

brown tortoise shell cat naps on a work desk.

Zora is not being very helpful with research and content creation this morning...

🐈📷 #CatsOfBlueSky

9/9
You will still hear people refer to Hammurabi’s code as the oldest law code in the world. When it was first discovered and translated, it would have been accurate to state that it was the oldest *surviving* law code, but we do now have copies of earlier codes.

8/9
has been dated to 2050-1800. Hammurabi’s code is generally dated to 1750. If the dating on this is correct, it would be another example of a law code that predates Hammurabi. (Ur-Nammu’s code, from which this untitled code might derive, has been dated to 2050).

7/9
I think it’s disappointing that we’re missing the word that would have potentially modified “house” in item q and “land” in item r. Perhaps that missing word would have given more context about what types of land were freely alienable.

As a final, random fyi note, this untitled law code

6/9
would suggest that these laws are about smaller urban property.

If we look at the language of the code, it implies the ability to freely transfer and convey real property. I think that is a fair implication from the idea of “purchase” and a house having a “price.”

5/9
but there are two types of property that come up in the cuneiform records: rural agriculture tracts that provided for subsistence and on which taxes were owed to the king and much smaller urban tracts, sometimes “townhomes” or gardens. The use of the term “sar” here

4/9
“Sar” is an area measurement used in ancient Mesopotamia that was considered a “garden plot.” So we’re not talking about substantial farmland or even a full acre. The size of the tract could be important here. I’m jumping a bit ahead in the research here,

3/9
and it’s also important to point out that just because we may have evidence of alienation in one place, does not automatically mean that the same practice was followed in other cities of the region.

Do these two fragmented laws provide any hint to that practice?

2/9
One question scholars studying the history of ownership in Mesopotamia ask, is when does the evidence from cuneiform tablets suggest that the ability to mortgage or fully convey a piece of property began. As far as I know, there’s not clear and obvious answer to this question yet—

Item q: “If [a man purchases] one-sar of a (…)-house, its [price is x shekels of silver.]” Item r: “If [a man] purchases one sar of […]-land, its price is 1 shekel of silver.”

Post from my ancient land title research. Still very early in my research.

1/9 #AncientBlueSky

To truly have full ownership of a piece of real property, the ‘owner’ must be able to convey that land to a third party, whether that conveyance is for a mortgage loan from a lender or to a purchaser.

"there are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them." Bernard Malamud from "The Fixer"

"There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them."
Bernard Malamud, from his novel, "The Fixer" which involves the wrongful imprisonment and torture of a handyman by an authoritarian regime.

📚💙

2/2
who were frequent military antagonists to the kings of Sumer and Babylon. This statue is on display at the Met in New York. They have dedicated this photo of the statue to the public domain.

A photo of the described sculpture.

A solid-cast bronze sculpture of a figure in stride with ibex horns, a pointed beard, and upturned shoes. This is described as being “Proto-Elamite” and dated to approximately 3000 BC. The Elamites were a people in the hills of southwestern modern day Iran

1/2 #art #ancientbluesky