Month: July 2011

OCR with macrons and other funny letters in Finereader

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m scanning Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur.  It’s mostly in German, of course; but the Arabic is transliterated using a wide variety of odd unicode characters.  There are letter “a” with a macron over it (a horizontal line), and “sh” written as “s” with a little hat on it and so forth.  These don’t occur in modern German, so get weeded out.

But you can do this, in Finereader.  You just define a new language, based on German.  I called mine “German with Arabic”.  And when you do, you specify which unicode characters the language contains.  So all I had to do was scroll down through the unicode characters, find the funnies that Brockelmann had used, and add them in.

And, if you don’t get them all first time, you can edit the language, select it, get the properties, and add the next few in.  And … it works.  It really does.

Finereader is really amazing OCR software.  And I learned all this from the help file.  Look under “alphabet” in the search.

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Can we stop kicking Zahi Hawass, please?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The director of the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation — or whatever it is currently called — is one Zahi Hawass.  He dresses like Indiana Jones, and has brought colour and enthusiasm to the cause of promoting interest in Egyptology.  It is difficult, indeed, to see any TV programme about Egyptian archaeology which does not feature him.

But his position has been threatened because of the revolution in that country.  Like everyone in power, he had connections to Mubarak, and consequently was removed from office for that reason.  Following his fall, there was a torrent of sneering at him on blogs online — I shall not link to these, to spare the blushes of those responsible. 

It seems that a lot of people resented his control of excavation in Egypt — which, surely, was his job, not a personal thing — and his determination to seize control of Egyptian artefacts exported overseas.  The latter, involving interference with the art market, was something that any Egyptian in his position would have to do.  Personal attacks were not lacking.

Somehow he fought back, and was, mirabile dictu, reinstated.  But of course he is not out of the woods yet.  The situation in Egypt is still unstable. 

Cultural Property Observer blog is generally pro-art market.  There is no reason why it should not be.  A great many finds are made in Egypt by peasants who sell their finds to the illegal Cairo dealers, who in turn smuggle them out of the country.  The artefacts do get damaged in the process.  But if there was no market, the peasants would probably simply destroy the finds for fuel.  It is not obvious, at all, that the law of unintended consequences would not apply if a ban was enforced.

But CPO doesn’t like Zahi Hawass. 

Today’s New York Times has an interesting article that suggests that Zahi Hawass’ star may finally be on the wane in Egypt. See
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/world/middleeast/13hawass.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

The article also exposes business ties between National Geographic and Hawass.

National Geographic has also actively sought so-called “emergency” import restrictions on Egyptian cultural artifacts on Hawass’ behalf. See http://www.drhawass.com/blog/international-coalition-support-protection-egyptian-antiquities

But don’t these business ties suggest a potential conflict of interest that should be investigated before such import restrictions are considered at all, let alone considered a “done deal” as Hawass himself has suggested?

“One hand washes another” has been long a staple of Egypt’s corrupt political scene, but it should play no part in the State Department’s decision making whether to clamp down on the import of Egyptian cultural goods by U.S. citizens.

I’m a bit sad to see this.  Zahi Hawass has been good for Egypt, and for Egyptian archaeology.  He has done his best to promote the subject.  He has made it fashionable in Egypt itself.  What educated Egyptian boy would not wish to be like him?  This can only be good.

There is no purpose in complaining that, in an autocracy, he had to cosy up to the rulers.  Anyone in his position would have to do so, and to attack him for it is to attack anyone holding his job.  Nor is there anything to be gained by muttering about corruption, or “illicit wealth”.  To do so, when the object is a man in a third-world country, is only fair if we also demand  that the honest colonial rulers be reinstated.

Come, give the man a chance.  I should not care to have to make my way in the shark-infested waters of current Egyptian politics, with rivals eagerly seeking to seize my position and everything I worked for.  We should support him.  For his replacement, in the current climate, would at best quite likely be some official skilled only in back-stabbing and eager to grow rich.  At worst it might be an Islamist of the Taliban persuasion.

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Christians in Britain may have rights after all, announce thought police

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Curious Presbyterian has some interesting news for us, which might otherwise go unnoticed. 

He reports — from the Daily Mail, for the BBC has ignored it — that the Orwellian-sounding “Equalities and Human Rights Commission” has executed something of a U-turn — or at least a zigzag — on the question of whether “human rights” legislation might actually protect Christians. 

Non-UK readers may not know of this body.  It is an official body which was created by the previous Labour government by merging all sorts of bodies charged with ensuring that special interest groups got special legal protection.  Legislation was passed making it an offence for people to express certain views — it hardly matters what –, and to ensure that those holding those views were punished more severely by the courts than those not doing so.

All this was very bad, and a clear violation of the principle of equality before the law.  It seems as if the EHRC was created to advance the dogma of one side of the political spectrum by intimidating speech by the other.  Anything of the kind is objectionable. 

But the legislation went further, and encouraged pressure groups to recruit informers to act as agents provocateurs.  Notoriously the body started funding legal attacks on Christians, mostly isolated and poor, by well-organised and well-connected gay groups. 

Nor was this accidental.  The legislation was intended to go further still, but did not pass before the election.  It was part of a climate of opinion, deliberately created by certain members of the last government.  In a country where no-one can afford to go to law, a government minister was heard to boast that the churches would have to hire lawyers.  The harassment was intended, therefore, rather than an accidental effect.  The name of the body was, no doubt, a conscious nod to the Canadian “Human Rights Commissions”, of evil reputation.

Here’s what the Mail said:

In a major U-turn, the Equality and Human Rights Commission declared that judges should not have backed employers who pursued Christians for wearing crosses or for refusing to give sex therapy to gay couples.

. . . Just seven months ago it had championed the cause of civil partners Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy in their successful bid to sue Christian hoteliers who had refused them a double room.

He includes the following acute comment by Nick Donnelly:

It’s under a month since Trevor Philips, head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), claimed that so-called ‘Christian activists’ were exaggerating claims of persecution in the UK.  So how to make sense of this unexpected U-turn?

I suspect a number of developments have forced the EHRC’s hand – the decision of the EU Human Rights Court that there was merit in Christian’s claims of religious discrimination; the recent revelations of meetings between government ministers and Church of England bishops to discuss new laws to protect religious freedoms and the government’s general suspicion of the EHRC.

This analysis is undoubtedly correct.  A new government, looking for cost savings, will certainly look hard at a body set up by its political opponents to harry those who would, in general, be supporters of the new  government.  And so they should. 

After the election, the EHRC lay low, waiting to see what would happen.  But on June 20th, less than a month ago, as I reported, the EHRC was gearing up for the fight once more.  Its chairman made clear that the Christians were for the lion.  He could hardly keep his contempt out of his voice.  It was like listening to a KGB minister for religious cults; and uncannily reminiscent of Orwell’s “Ministry of Love”.

Thankfully Teresa May, the new Home Secretary, has clearly decided that these people need sorting out. 

England needs no thought police, Mrs May.  We don’t want inquisitors on the rates.  May I encourage you, then, to FIRE THEM ALL.

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Adding your own notes to your own print-out of an old book

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There is a German textbook which is unavailable for purchase, although still in copyright.  I need access to it.  So I borrowed a copy from the library, and for the last week I have been copying it.

In days of yore, this would leave me with a pile of photocopies.  Today I merely create a PDF of the raw page images and get that printed in perfect-bound form by Lulu.com.  It’s rather easier to handle that way.

So I’ve put each page in turn on my scanner, hit the button, got an image at 400dpi in black and white, and so on, for hundreds of pages.  Then I went through the pages and turned the alternate ones the right way up.  Then I cropped all the images down to a little larger than the text block in the middle.  Then I came out of Finereader, and ran ImageMagick on the .tif files, first converting them to .png, and then padding them each with whitespace on all four sides, to make them crown quarto size.  Finally I used Adobe Acrobat to gather up all the .png’s into a PDF of the right size for printing.  All well and good.

But perhaps I should do more.

You see, German is not my best language.  So what I will do, once I get the book-form, is go through it and write notes in the margins.  These I have made deliberately large for just this purpose.  Important pages will get turned down.  The table of contents will get a scribbled translation next to it.

But maybe I should type up some of this now, and just dump it onto the page images.  So underneath the section titles “Dichtern” I should add “(poets)”? 

Maybe I should go further.  I could perfectly well intersperse some more pages.  I could type up the translation of the table of contents that I have made, and interleave that with the PDF pages.  Possibly there are other things I could do. 

The book is also over 600 pages.  That makes a very thick, heavy book.  But nothing in the world stops me dividing that PDF into two 300+ page volumes, and printing them separately.

I don’t quite know what to do.  On the one hand I’d like a copy of the book, as is.  On the other hand, tampering with it might be useful.  Or it might just be annoying.

What to do?

 

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More papers of interest to be presented at the Oxford Patristics Conference

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve only scratched the surface of the papers being offered, but just looking down the list of tags on the conference blog is a treat!

Eleni Pachoumi is giving a paper on the invocation of “Christos” in a magical text:

This paper examines the spell “releasing from bonds” (XIII.288-95), in which Chrestos is invoked “in times of violence”. It is a short spell contained within the thirteenth magical handbook of the Papyri Graecae Magicae corpus originated to Greco-Roman Egypt and dated from the third to the fourth century. Questions to be addressed are: How is Chrestos described and what kind of influences does this depiction imply? Does the orthographical spelling of Chrestos with “?”, or “?” have a particular significance, or it is a matter of indifference? How is the invocation to Chrestos appropriated to magic? Is it related to the invocations of “biaiothanatoi” in magic? Finally, can we draw any general conclusions about the composer, or compiler of the spell and the possible users? I shall also pay special attention to issues of religious syncretism from Judaism, Christianity, Greek and Egyptian religion, and Gnostisism. 

Is this Jesus?  The magical texts invoke all sorts of people as power-sources.

Cyril Hoverun has a paper which will involve Stephen of Alexandria, the 7th century philosopher.  I suspect it will be too much about neo-platonism for me, but there’s no denying the interest of the subject.

Charles Hill will discuss whether Irenaeus treated the Shepherd of Hermas as scripture.

There’s a lot on Clement of Alexandria.  Java Platova has a paper which I really would like to hear, except … that it’s in German!  And my German is not up to listening to it.  It’s on the fragments of Clement in Greek and Arabic catenas.

In meinem Referat gebe ich aktuelle Übersicht der in den griechischen und arabischen Katenen erhalten gebliebenen Bruchstücke des Clemens und nehme Stellung zur Frage der Zugehörigkeit dieser Bruchstücke zur Clemens’ verlorenen Schrift Hypotyposeis. Meine Aufmerksamkeit wird vor allem auf diejenigen Fragmente gerichtet werden, die in die Stählins Edition nicht eingesetzt worden sind. 

I.e. (my translation):

In my paper I shall review the fragments of Clement currently known from Greek and Arabic catenas, and take a position on the question of the supposed fragments of Clement’s lost Hypotyposeis.  My attention will be focused mainly on those fragments not included in Stählin’s edition. 

Such a paper must be full of interest to me, as someone interested in catenas in general, and their transmission into Arabic.  Alas, that the paper was not given in a language that will be widely understood at the conference!

Grigory Kessel is a Syriacist.  He’s found new manuscripts in eastern libraries of the Second Part of Isaac of Niniveh.  The “First Part” is one of the most widely known mystical texts, but no-one knew that Isaac had written a sequel until very recently.  This paper will discuss his search and findings.  I’ll go to this, if at all possible.

Martin Wallraff, whom I think of as a chronographer, has a most interesting paper: The canon tables of the Psalms – an unknown work of Eusebius of Caesarea.

Eusebius’ Canon Tables are well known. Lavishly decorated, they can be found in many medieval gospel books. Their purpose is to help finding parallels in the four gospels. However, it is less known that Eusebius also drew up a system of “canon tables” for the psalms. This system is much less sophisticated, but it may be an important pre-stage of the famous gospel synopsis. It is significant both for the early history of illuminated Christian books and for the history of exegesis.

Got to hear that one!

I gather that there is a waiting list for places at the conference, where 850 delegates are already attending.  I can see why.  Today I checked my accomodation was booked (at Queens College) — it was.  I also asked whether I could park there — apparently not.  This may make it difficult for me to bring much stock of the Eusebius book to the conference, it must be said. 

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Oxford Patristics Conference blog – abstracts online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Oxford Patristics Conference is now less than a month away, although it seems a lot more to me, snowed as I am in work. 

Quite by accident, I learn this evening that the abstracts have been posted online as a blog by Markus Vinzent.

The Eusebius papers to be offered are here.  At least two of the papers caught my eye: Cordula Brandt on Eusebius’ Commentary on the Psalms, Satoshi Toda on Eusebius Syriaca — a very interesting subject.  Clayton Coombs is doing something on Eusebius’ use of the optative in the Ad Marinum (Gospel Problems and Solutions), which might be a touch technical for me.  Scott Manor is attributing a quotation from Porphyry to the same work.

None of the Tertullian papers seem especially exciting to me.

Erica Hunter is doing something on the discoveries of manuscripts at Turfan, which I shall definitely go  to.

Some of the Chrysostom papers look rather interesting too.

I need to start planning my trip, I see. 

UPDATE: Scott Manor’s paper is actually on Proclus the Montanist, it turns out — the wrong abstract was posted at the conference blog.

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A Babylonian priest of Roman Mithras

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I came across a reference yesterday to an inscription referring to a “babylonian priest of mithras”, here.: Amar Annus, The soul’s ascent and Tauroctony: On Babylonian sediment in the syncretic religious doctrines of late antiquity, Studien zu Ritual und Sozialgeschichte im Alten Orient, 2007, p.1-54.  On p.31 we find this interesting statement, after noting that “Chaldean” was synonymous with astrologers in late antiquity:

In a fourth century AD Latin inscription (V 522) we even find a reference to a “Babylonian priest of Mithras” in Rome:

“High-born descendant of an ancient house, pontifex for whom the blessed Regia, with the sacred fire of Vesta, does service, augur too, worshipper of reverend Threefold Diana, Chaldean priest of the temple of Persian Mithras (Persidiq(ue) Mithrae antistes Babilonie templi), and at the same time leader of the mysteries of the mighty, holy Taurobolium” (Clauss 2001:30).

V 522 is of course Vermaseren’s CIMRM, but my copy of this has still not arrived.

A search on the Clauss-Slaby database (which, I find, has moved — link on the right updated) gives this full inscription, found in Rome (CIL 06, 00511 (p 3005) = CLE 01529)

Matri deum Magnae Idaeae et Attidi Menoturano sacrum nobilis in causis forma celsusque Sabinus hic pater Invicti mystica victor habet sermo duos reservans consimiles aufert et veneranda movet Cibeles Triodeia signa augentur meritis simbola tauroboli, Rufius Caeionius Cae(ioni?) Sabini filius, vir clarissimus, pontifex maior, hierofanta deae Hecatae, augur publicus populi Romani Quiritium, pater sacrorum Invicti Mithrae, tauroboliatus, Matris deum Magnae Idaeae et Attidis Minoturani et aram, IIII Idus Martias, Gratiano V et Merobaude consulibus dedicabit, antiqua generose domo cui regia Vesta pontifici felix sacrato militat igne, idem augur, triplicis cultor venerande Dianae, Persidicique Mithrae antistes Babyloniae templi, taurobolique simul magni dux mistice sacri.

What a very long list of cults to share a priest!  In the reign of Gratian, Mithras had fallen on hard times, to be mentioned only in passing in a dedication to Cybele and Attis.  The date — 4 days before the ides of March, in the 5th consulate of Gratian and Merobaudes, must be early in 380 AD.

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From my diary – translating Cyril, marketing Eusebius, and Keston College

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email reached me last week from someone claiming to have experience of translating Cyril of Alexandria.  I have dusted off the Apologeticum ad imperatorem, therefore, and asked him to do the first page as a sample.  If it is OK, then perhaps we will at last get that work in English. 

The text is the work that Cyril wrote after the Council of Ephesus in 433, when even an ally such as Isidore of Pelusium suggested that Cyril may have been right in principle, but had behaved like a jerk.  It should make interesting reading.

Today I approved the design for the leaflet which I shall be distributing at the Oxford Patristics Conference.  No, it isn’t “Roger Pearse for King” — it’s the publicity for the new translation of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel Problems and Solutions (Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum), now available in hardback and paperback from good bookshops (i.e. Amazon).  This evening I paid for said design and leaflets — a not inconsiderable sum.

I’ve been thinking about the name of Mithras.  I read some hearsay that it was derived from the Old Persian name for the god, Miθra.  I don’t know much about Persian literature.  I’ve read more hearsay today, saying that Old Persian literature consists of inscriptions in cuneiform from the Achaemenid period, down to the time of Alexander the Great ca. 300 BC; that Middle Persian begins with the Sassanids ca. 250 AD, whose literature is mostly preserved in very much later copies; and that a transitional period happens in between.  I’ve also heard that Mithra, in Middle Persian, is “Mihr” or “Mehr”.  So I spent a bit of time reading around this.  Nothing very solid yet, tho.

I’ve also been corresponding with Michael Bourdeaux, best known as the director of Keston College during the Soviet era, when Keston monitored the treatment of the churches under the Soviets.  I’ve agreed to scan a couple of his books into PDF form, and I hope that he will give permission for them to appear online.  Fortunately the three that he suggested are the three I actually have! 

In the back of one of them, Risen indeed: Lessions in faith from the USSR, 1984, I found a small bunch of leaflets and newsletters from Keston.  I must have bought the book at the Round Church in Cambridge, and picked up the leaflets at the same time.  The faded flimsies brought a feeling of nostalgia to me, for days long ago when the course of my life was not yet set, and many of the difficulties of life lay as yet ahead of me and unknown.

It is curious how little one hears today about the mighty effort at Keston to help the persecuted.  The mainstream churches were too often silent, and Dr Bourdeax’s work was very necessary.  Then as now, the bully likes to do his work unobserved.

I asked Dr. B. if there was a history of Keston and its work.  It seems that there is!  Michael Bourdeaux wrote one.  But curiously it remains unpublished.  Is there no publisher that will take on this work?  Keston has largely moved into the past, yet its history will most certainly be of interest to historians of the 20th century, and a history of the treatment of religion by one of the prime movers ought to be published, and published now while everyone is still alive.

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Mithras in Plutarch

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In the Vita Pompeii Plutarch tells us that the Cilician pirates, originally equipped by Mithradates VI of Pontus, as we learn from Appian 63 and 92, worshipped “Mithra”. 

They were accustomed to offer strange sacrifices on Olympus and to observe certain secret rites, of which that of Mithra is maintained to the present day by those by whom it was first established.

Like most people I have supposed that the reference here was to Mithras of the Legions, rather than Persian Mihr / Mithra.  The last phrase “the present day” certainly suggests Mithras; or that Plutarch thought so, although he doesn’t say who it is that “first established” the rites of Mithra.  Perhaps he does mean Cilicians?

But worship on a mountain is not something that we associate with Roman Mithras, but rather with Zoroastrianism.  Roman Mithras was worshipped in a cave, while Zoroastrians, as I understand it, favoured high places.  The temple at Nemrud Dag, in Commagene, which certainly involves Persian Mithra, is on a hill. 

Similarly we are dealing with a bunch of people recruited by Mithridates of Pontus, a king of a semi-Persian kingdom bearing a Persian name which I understand is Mihrdad or Mehrdad, and is still used in modern Iran as a personal name.  The rulers of Commagene also used the name Mithridates, as did rulers of Parthia and Armenia.

Much about this reference in Plutarch makes sense as a reference to Persian Mithra.  The last part of the statement, however, has to refer to Plutarch’s own time, and suggests that he has heard that Roman Mithras is Persian in origin. 

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