"I love Tales of Times Forgotten - Making the Distant Past Relevant to the Present Day"

2022-05-14 15:24:00

Skip to contentTales of Times ForgottenMaking the Distant Past Relevant to the Present DayHow Did People in the Ancient Mediterranean World View Abortion?The United States Supreme Court is expected to announce its decision in the landmark abortion case ofDobbs v. Jackson Women’s Healthat some point before the end of the present term, which will most likely end sometime in June or early July of this year. Aninitial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito that has been obtainedbyPoliticoindicates that the majority of the justices have already privately decided to completely overturn the previous Supreme Court rulings in the cases ofRoe v. Wade(1973) andPlanned Parenthood v. Casey(1992), which held that the U.S. Constitution protects the inherent right of a pregnant person to choose to have an abortion until the point when the fetus becomes viable outside the womb, which is generally agreed to occur at around twenty-three or twenty-four weeks gestational age.In this new case, the court is expected to rule that the U.S. Constitution doesnotprotect any right of a pregnant person to choose to have an abortion at any point during pregnancy. Although the verdict is not final and the justices still have time to change their minds, it is unlikely at this point that they will do so. This will be the first (although possibly not the last) time in living memory that the Supreme Court has completely revoked something that it previously deemed a major fundamental right.Given the current situation, I thought it would be useful to write a post about attitudes toward abortion in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world. This post will cover attitudes among peoples of the ancient Near East, Greeks, Romans, and early Christians and will give some insight about how and why ancient Christians came to disapprove of abortion in the first place. Continue reading “How Did People in the Ancient Mediterranean World View Abortion?”Author Spencer McDanielPosted on May 10, 2022May 11, 2022Categories abortion, Ancient Athens, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, ancient Greek culture, ancient Greek history, ancient Greek medicine, ancient Greek religion, ancient Judah, ancient Judaism, Ancient Mesopotamia, ancient religions, ancient Roman religion, Ancient Rome, ancient sex, Aristotle, Bible, Christianity, Classics, Current events, Early Christianity, gender, Greek philosophy, Hebrew Bible, Roman Catholic Church, Roman emperors, Roman Empire, women in ancient Greece, women in ancient RomeTags abortion, abortion in the ancient world, ancient Athens, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, ancient Greek culture, ancient Greek history, ancient Greek medicine, ancient Greek philosophy, ancient Greek religion, ancient Judah, ancient Judaism, Ancient Mesopotamia, ancient religions, ancient Roman history, Ancient Rome, ancient sex, Aristotle, Augustine of Hippo, Bible, Borborites, classics, Current events, early Christian views on abortion, Early Christianity, gender, Hebrew Bible, Hippokrates of Kos, Middle Assyrian Empire, Ovid, Plato, Roman Catholic Church, Roman emperors, Roman Empire, Supreme Court, women in ancient Greece, women in ancient Rome, women in the ancient world18 Comments on How Did People in the Ancient Mediterranean World View Abortion?Is It Ethical to Exhume Mummies and Display Them in Museums?In October 2020, a team of Egyptian archaeologists working at the site of Saqqara, which is located about thirty kilometers south of the modern city of Cairo, excavated a total of at least fifty-nine sarcophagi containing the mummified corpses of Egyptian priests and officials from the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty (lasted 664 – 525 BCE). The Egyptian government sought to publicize this discovery as part of a massive ongoing effort to encourage tourism, since Egypt’s tourism sector has still not fully recovered from the hit it took after the 25 January Revolution in 2011. Consequently, the Egyptian archaeologists made a big display of opening one of the sarcophagi in the presence of reporters. A video of the opening of this sarcophagus was widely shared on social media, where it spawned considerable controversy. Many people were criticizing the archaeologists for exhuming the sarcophagi, insisting that exhuming human remains is immoral and unethical.I originally began writing this post as a response to this controversy shortly after it broke out, but, as I was writing, I found myself doubting my position. In my aporia, I gave up on the article and set it aside. Now, a year and a half later, I have come back to it. Alas, I will admit that, even now, after I have had a lot more time to think about it, I still don’t have a fully worked out sense of how I feel about all aspects of this issue. Iamconvinced that it isboth moral and ethical for archaeologists to excavate human remains. Nonetheless, I do think that these complaints raise some very important questions about how ancient Egyptian human remains are usually treated. Continue reading “Is It Ethical to Exhume Mummies and Display Them in Museums?”Author Spencer McDanielPosted on May 1, 2022May 1, 2022Categories Ancient Egypt, ancient Egyptian culture, ancient Egyptian religion, ancient religions, archaeology, Current events, death, modern history, Victorian EraTags Ancient Egypt, ancient Egyptian culture, ancient Egyptian religion, ancient religions, archaeology, Current events, death, human remains, modern history, mummies, museums, Victorian Era20 Comments on Is It Ethical to Exhume Mummies and Display Them in Museums?Is Everyone Really Born an Atheist?Those who have been reading my posts for a while may already know that I’ve been calling myself an agnostic since around mid-2019. In truth, though, I am functionally an atheist. The main reason why I’ve preferred to call myself an agnostic is because I don’t want to be affiliated with the sort of Richard Dawkins-style anti-theist activist atheists who acrimoniously denounce “religion” as inherently evil at every opportunity. I personally don’t think it is possible to assign any categorical moral value to “religion,” since “religion” is an imperfect western constructed category that can encompass various ideas and activities that may fall anywhere on a moral spectrum from “evil” to “good.” I have no particularly great interest in trying to convince people to stop believing in deities and I often find myself critiquing the claims and talking points of the anti-theist activist types.One extremely common talking point among anti-theist activist atheists is that everyone is born an atheist. I think that this talking point is factually incorrect for two main reasons. The first is because it incorrectly conflates people who are not aware of the concept of a deity with people who have made a conscious choice not to believe in deities. The second reason is because it ignores certain innate tendencies in the human psyche that lead even very young children to assume the existence of supernatural personal agents, which may be very similar or functionally identical to deities. Moreover, I think that this talking point is useless at best and rhetorically counterproductive at worst, because it does nothing to support the argument that deities do not exist or the argument that atheists should be accepted by society. Continue reading “Is Everyone Really Born an Atheist?”Author Spencer McDanielPosted on April 24, 2022April 24, 2022Categories atheism, psychologyTags atheism, deities, psychology, religion34 Comments on Is Everyone Really Born an Atheist?Who Was the First God?All the historical evidence that is currently available strongly suggests that humans have been believing in and worshipping deities for averylong time. The worship of deities almost certainly predates the advent of writing by tens of thousands of years, if not hundreds of thousands. Given this ancient history, it comes as no surprise that many people have wondered who the oldest deity or deities were.In this post, I will explore some of the oldest deities that humans are known to have worshipped, starting with possible examples from the Upper Paleolithic and continuing through the Mesolithic and Neolithic. Finally, I will conclude with the very earliest deities whose names are directly attested in writing in ancient Sumer in the Late Uruk Period (lasted c. 3500 – c. 3100 BCE). Continue reading “Who Was the First God?”Author Spencer McDanielPosted on April 19, 2022April 20, 2022Categories Ancient artifacts, ancient religions, Ancient Sumer, ancient Sumerian deities, ancient Sumerian religion, archaeology, Mesolithic, mythology, Neolithic, Oldest surviving things, Origins, Proto-Indo-European religion, Sumerian mythology, Upper PaleolithicTags ancient artifacts, ancient deities, ancient religions, ancient Sumerian deities, ancient Sumerian religion, anthropology, archaeology, Çatalhöyük, deities, Inanna, Kybele, Löwenmensch of Hohlenstein-Stadel, Mesolithic, mythology, Neolithic, oldest surviving things, origins, prehistory, Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Indo-European deities, religion, Sumer, Upper Paleolithic, Uruk Period, Venus figurines27 Comments on Who Was the First God?Update on My Graduate School Applications, 10 April 2022As many of my readers are already aware, since I have mentioned it in various places, unless something goes horribly wrong at the last minute, I am going to graduate from Indiana University Bloomington with my BA in history and classical studies (Latin/Greek), with an honors thesis in history, on 7 May 2022. I am naturally very excited about my upcoming graduation and the completion of my degree that I have worked so hard for.In December 2021, I applied to four PhD programs in ancient history: the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate Group in Ancient History (GGAH), the University of Michigan’s Interdepartmental Program in Ancient History (IPAH), the Princeton University classics department’s Program in the Ancient World (PAW), and the University of Chicago classics department’s graduate track in ancient history. Later, in February of this year, acting partly on the advice of one of my professors, I applied to Brandeis University’s terminal MA program in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies as a backup plan in case I was not accepted to any of the PhD programs.I have now officially heard back from all the graduate school programs to which I applied. I would therefore like to update my readers on how the process went and give some information about what I will most likely be doing this upcoming fall semester. Continue reading “Update on My Graduate School Applications, 10 April 2022”Author Spencer McDanielPosted on April 10, 2022April 10, 2022Categories metaTags graduate school, meta, personal update47 Comments on Update on My Graduate School Applications, 10 April 2022How Were Lesbians Regarded in Ancient Greece and Rome?Within the past month, I have encountered at least three different people asking the question of how lesbians were perceived in ancient Greece and Rome. This is a topic that is rarely covered in ancient history and classics courses, so I decided that it was worth taking the time to write an in-depth article on the subject.Unfortunately, while references to men’s homoerotic attraction and relationships are absolutely ubiquitous throughout the surviving ancient Greek and Roman sources, women’s homoerotic attraction and relationships are very poorly attested. To say that the primary sources on this subject are scant is an understatement. This paucity of evidence is mainly the result of the fact that nearly all the surviving ancient sources were written by men who were generally not interested in writing about anything women did among themselves when there were no men around.Based on the admittedly very few sources that we have, though, homoerotic attraction and relationships seem to have been relatively common and not heavily stigmatized among Greek women in the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Eras. Attitudes toward women’s homoeroticism in the Roman world, by contrast, seem to have varied drastically. Roman-era sources variously portray women’s homoeroticism as a degenerate Greek perversion, as something that should amuse and titillate male audiences, as an absurd impossibility, as an allegation against which a woman’s reputation must be defended, and, finally, in some cases, something that should be accepted as normal. Continue reading “How Were Lesbians Regarded in Ancient Greece and Rome?”Author Spencer McDanielPosted on April 4, 2022April 29, 2022Categories Ancient Athens, Ancient Greece, ancient Greek culture, Ancient Rome, ancient sex, ancient Sparta, Classics, gender, Sappho of Lesbos, women in ancient Greece, women in ancient RomeTags ancient Athens, Ancient Greece, ancient Greek culture, ancient Roman culture, Ancient Rome, ancient sex, ancient sexuality, ancient Sparta, classics, gender, lesbians, Sappho of Lesbos, women in ancient Greece, women in ancient Rome23 Comments on How Were Lesbians Regarded in Ancient Greece and Rome?Did Archaeologists Really Discover a Hebrew Curse Tablet from Mount Ebal Bearing the Name YHWH?At a press conference at the Lanier Theological Library in Houston, Texas, on 24 March 2022, Scott Stripling (the Director of Excavations for the Associates for Biblical Research, a fundamentalist Christian apologetics ministry), Pieter van der Veen (a professor of the Old Testament and Biblical archaeology at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz), and Gershon Galil (a professor of Biblical studies and ancient history at the University of Haifa) announced that they have (supposedly) discovered an inscription written in the Hebrew language using the Proto-Canaanite script inside of a 2 cm x 2 cm folded lead tablet that a team led by Stripling found in December 2019 while wet-sifting through the detritus of an earlier excavation that a team led by the late Israeli archaeologist Adam Zertal conducted at Mount Ebal near the Palestinian city of Nablus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank from 1982 to 1986.Stripling, van der Veen, and Galil claim that the inscription on the inside of the tablet is not visible to the naked eye and that they were only able to find it by examining thousands of tomographic scans made at the Czech Academy of Sciences. They claim that the inscription dates to between 1400 and 1200 BCE. They say that the text of the inscription reads as follows when translated into English: “Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW. You will die cursed. Cursed you will surely die. Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.” Despite these claims, they still have not shownanyof the scans they allegedly made, instead only showing photographs of the outside of the tablet and one drawing made by Galil of one supposed instance of the divine name.If all the team’s claims are true, this would be the earliest known attestation of writing in the Hebrew language and the earliest known attestation of the divine name YHWH by hundreds of years. Naturally, dozens of news outlets have reported this supposed inscription as though it really were the most astounding discovery in Biblical archaeology of this century. There are, however, very good reasons to be very suspicious of Stripling, van der Veen, and Galil’s claims and it is highly irresponsible for news outlets to report these claims as though they were settled fact. The reasons I am about to highlight are already well known to scholars, but I thought I would share them here for members of the general public who may have read about the supposed Mount Ebal curse tablet in the news. Continue reading “Did Archaeologists Really Discover a Hebrew Curse Tablet from Mount Ebal Bearing the Name YHWH?”Author Spencer McDanielPosted on March 31, 2022March 31, 2022Categories Ancient artifacts, ancient Judah, ancient Judaism, ancient languages, ancient religions, archaeology, Bible, Debunking, Hebrew BibleTags ancient artifacts, ancient Judah, ancient Judaism, ancient languages, ancient religions, archaeology, Bible, Debunking, Hebrew Bible, Hebrew language, Mount Ebal18 Comments on Did Archaeologists Really Discover a Hebrew Curse Tablet from Mount Ebal Bearing the Name YHWH?Why Are Some Names Used in the ‘Iliad’ Used in English Today While Others Are Not?If you have ever read the Iliad, you have probably noticed that there are many characters in it who have names that are not commonly used as given names in countries that are predominantly English-speaking today. I’m talking about names like Agamemnon, Menelaos, Patroklos, Idomeneus, Hekabe, Andromache, and so forth. Meanwhile, there are also names like Alexandros, Helene, Hektor, and Kassandra that are still used today in Anglicized forms like Alexander, Helen, Hector, and Cassandra. Many people have wondered why some of these names are commonly used today in English, while others of them are not.As it turns out, the vast majority of the names that are used in theIliadhave never been widely used in English, but a handful of these names have passed into English through various channels, mostly not through theIliaditself. Of all the names of characters in theIliad, the two that have been in continuous use as names for people in English the longest areAlexanderandHelen, which passed from Greek into Latin and from Latin into English very early due to both of these names having been held by particularly famous and revered ancient figures. The namesHectorandCassandrafirst passed into English a bit later via the medieval “Matter of Rome” (i.e., the corpus of romances based on ancient Greek and Roman stories), but they didn’t become popular until the eighteenth century. Continue reading “Why Are Some Names Used in the ‘Iliad’ Used in English Today While Others Are Not?”Author Spencer McDanielPosted on March 29, 2022March 30, 2022Categories Alexander the Great, Ancient Greece, ancient Greek culture, ancient Greek history, Ancient Greek language, ancient Greek literature, ancient languages, Ancient literature, classical reception, Classics, Greek mythology, High Middle Ages, Homeric epics, Late Middle Ages, Middle AgesTags Alexander the Great, Ancient Greece, ancient Greek culture, ancient Greek history, ancient Greek literature, ancient literature, classical reception, classics, Greek mythology, High Middle Ages, Homeric epics, Iliad, Late Middle Ages, medieval romances, Middle Ages22 Comments on Why Are Some Names Used in the ‘Iliad’ Used in English Today While Others Are Not?Can Archaeologists Really “Disprove” a Transgender Person’s Gender Using Their Skeleton?People who oppose the idea that transgender people should be allowed to exist and have rights often promote the claim that archaeologists can determine a person’s “true sex” based solely on their skeleton. They claim that, by examining a trans woman’s skeleton, archaeologists in the future will be able to prove that she was “really” a man and that, by examining a trans man’s skeleton, these archaeologists will be able to prove that he was “really” a woman. They claim that this proves that trans people are delusional and their genders are invalid.In this post, I will show that the argument I have just described is hopelessly wrong on many levels. First, I will show that sex and gender are two different things and that a person’s skeletal structure says absolutely nothing about their gender. Second, I will show that guessing a person’s sex from their skeleton is actually much more complicated than opponents of trans rights regularly portray it. Third, I will show that, at least in some cases, a transgender person’s skeleton may actually be noticeably different from the skeleton of a cisgender person of the sex the trans person was assigned at birth.Fourth and finally, I will show that reducing a person’s biological sex to their skeletal structure is extremely reductive and misleading, especially since gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can cause drastic, scientifically observable, physical changes to many other aspects of a person’s body, including their brain. Continue reading “Can Archaeologists Really “Disprove” a Transgender Person’s Gender Using Their Skeleton?”Author Spencer McDanielPosted on March 26, 2022April 3, 2022Categories Ancient artifacts, archaeology, Debunking, gender, MisconceptionsTags archaeology, Debunking, gender, human remains, Misconceptions, skeletons, transgender people33 Comments on Can Archaeologists Really “Disprove” a Transgender Person’s Gender Using Their Skeleton?Proselytism in the Ancient Mediterranean Before ChristianityToday, in the twenty-first century, Judaism is usually thought of as an ethnic religion and Jewish people are not generally known for their proselytizing. At least in the second and first centuries BCE and the first century CE, though, Jewish people in the Mediterranean world were far from totally disinterested in trying to convert other people to their religious practices and way of life. In fact, among ancient Greek and Roman authors in this period, one of the main things Jewish people became known for was their supposed habit of aggressively proselytizing.Early Christianity’s strong emphasis on proselytism is best understood not as a completely sudden new development or an example of early Christians doing something that no Jewish people had ever done before, but rather an example of Christians taking something that some Jewish people had already been doing and making it a major focus for their movement. Continue reading “Proselytism in the Ancient Mediterranean Before Christianity”Author Spencer McDanielPosted on March 19, 2022March 21, 2022Categories ancient Judah, ancient Judaism, ancient religions, ancient Roman religion, Ancient Rome, Bible, Classics, Early Christianity, eunuchs, Roman Empire, Roman RepublicTags ancient Judaism, Ancient Rome, Bible, classics, cult of Kybele, Early Christianity, eunuchs, galli, gospels, Hellenistic Judaism, Horace, Jesus, Kybele, Martial, New Testament, Paul, proselytism, Roman Empire, Roman Republic, Seneca the Younger16 Comments on Proselytism in the Ancient Mediterranean Before ChristianityPosts navigationPage 1Page 2…Page 43Next pageSupport me on Patreon!Become a Patron!Recent PostsHow Did People in the Ancient Mediterranean World View Abortion?Is It Ethical to Exhume Mummies and Display Them in Museums?Is Everyone Really Born an Atheist?Who Was the First God?Update on My Graduate School Applications, 10 April 2022How Were Lesbians Regarded in Ancient Greece and Rome?Did Archaeologists Really Discover a Hebrew Curse Tablet from Mount Ebal Bearing the Name YHWH?Why Are Some Names Used in the ‘Iliad’ Used in English Today While Others Are Not?Can Archaeologists Really “Disprove” a Transgender Person’s Gender Using Their Skeleton?Proselytism in the Ancient Mediterranean Before ChristianityRecent CommentsSpencer McDaniel on How Did People in the Ancient Mediterranean World View Abortion?Spencer McDaniel on How Did People in the Ancient Mediterranean World View Abortion?robertkirbyiii on How Did People in the Ancient Mediterranean World View Abortion?Philip du Plex on How Did People in the Ancient Mediterranean World View Abortion?Spencer McDaniel on How Did People in the Ancient Mediterranean World View Abortion?ArchivesArchivesSelect Month May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 PagesFrequently Asked QuestionsImage InformationOther Great Blogs to FollowPolicy on CommentsSpencer McDanielSubscribe to Tales of Times Forgotten via EmailTales of Times ForgottenProudly powered by WordPress