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+--- Thread: 116v (/thread-437.html)
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RE: 116v - Koen G - 21-04-2016
Interesting indeed.
He tells about the legend of how Alexander prayed to the gods to make two mountains move closer together. This happened, which allowed him to seal the pass with a gate. He coated this gate with aforementioned substance. One commenter interprets it as asbestos, but somehow that seems unlikely to me, it behaves more like a mythical substance that makes the gate inpervious to damage. He also covers the mountains in thorny bushes.
The reason why he wanted to block this passage is that behind it lived barbaric peoples (Gog and Magog are mentioned) who eat human flesh, drink animal blood and eat their dead instead of burying them. The location of these peoples is in the Northeast. Like this, Alexander is credited with saving the civilized world.
Not sure what or where this gate was, but it is called the Kaspic gate. I remember seeing an old map where the northeastern peoples were called androphagoi, man eaters. Too bad I don't remember which map, it may have been posted here.
The origin of this myth is uncertain, but the author deduces that it must be older than his sources. Among those sources are Islamic ones, who link it to the fulfilment of a prophecy, but the origin is older than Islam.
Great find, guys.
I'll translate the most interesting parts more completely.
RE: 116v - Koen G - 21-04-2016
Note: the Dutch in this text is a little bit dated; I will try to stay as close as possible without ruining the meaning in English.
The wall of Gog and Magog
In the 18th Sura of the Koran, we read: “And they will ask you about Alexander the Great, say: I will tell you about him.” Then is related first how he went from the faraway West to the uttermost East, and then (v91): “Then he followed a road, until he came between two dams, i.e. the two mountains in between which the wall was made. There he found, on this side of the mountains, people who almost could not express themselves in an understandable manner. They said: o Dhu ‘l-Karnain, behold how Gog and Magog commit evil in the land; shall we pay you a tax, on condition that you construct a wall between us and them?”
[summary Koen: He then asks for iron and molten copper and constructs a “dam”. On the day of Judgement, the Lord will crush this dam so Gog and Magog can “flood the earth”.]
P88: The belief, probably from Ezechiel 38, that at the end of days wild peoples from the North would come, summarized under the names Gog and Magog, is very old. It is already found in the Apocalyps [Book of Revelation -kg] 20 v8 and in the Targums the expression “days of Gog” is used. But is it not easy to say when exactly the tale of this wall, behind which Alexander trapped these peoples, was formed.
The oldest attestation we have so far in Western sources is in Pseudo-Callisthenes. Even though this book, according to qualified assessors, isn’t younger than the third century CE, while many stories in it are definitely much older, the story of the wall first appears in younger adaptations, of which it is hard to determine the age. Because, however, the same story appears in a shortened version in the Historia de praeliis, translated from the Greek around 950, it must have existed before the Greek original of this book. In Carl Müller’s edition of Pseudo-Callisthenes, two versions have been included, which I will show both:
In Cod. C (III cap.26 ed. Didot p. 138 b) it is told how Alexander wages war upon Eurymithras, the ruler of Belsyri (otherwise called Euagris, king of the Bebryki). This last one comes towards him with 800.000 men. When Seleucus brought into motion the phalanx against them, they fled instantly, so the Homeric word became fulfilled: he arrived like a lion, but returned like a deer. Seleucus’ soldiers moved forward and caught up with Eurymithras, upon which they slew many, chased the others for 50 days, until they came upon two great mountains in the dark part of the world, which they call the Breasts of the North [Greek text]. When the enemies had gone into there, they stopped the chase. But Alexander, seeing that these two mountains were suitable to close the road for them, halted there, and prayed to the Divinity, that the mountains would approach each other to prohibit a way out for the enemies. “Oh God of Gods and Lord of the entire creation, who controls everything by his word, the sky, the heavens, the earth and the sea; for whom nothing is impossible, because everything is submitted to the word of your command; you spoke and it was done; you ordered and it was born; only you are the eternal, originless, unlimited God, and there is no other but you.
[summary kg: this goes on a bit longer. Immediately after the prayer, the mountains approach each other to 10 ell (old unit of measure the size of a man’s forearm). Alexander praised the Deity and built copper gates, which he smeared with “asicheton”, a substance which would make it impossible to “decopper” the gates, i.e. it would make it impossible for fire or iron to damage the copper plating. Inside of the gates, until the plane, he planted thorns, which ended up covering the mountains. That way, he locked up 22 kings and their peoples behind these gates.]
He called them the Kaspic gates, the two mountains Mazoi. He locked up those peoples because they were unclean: they ate filth and unclean things, like dogs, mice, snakes, corpses, foetuses, yes, even their own dead. Alexander, having seen this, feared that they would come into the inhabited world, and locked them in.
In Cod. B (III cap. 29 ed. Didot p. 142 (?) seq.) the story goes like follows: […]
I found there many more peoples who ate human flesh and drank the blood of animals like water; for they did not bury their dead, but ate them. And seeing such most evil people, and fearing that they, by this way of feeding themselves, would infect the earth with their criminal depravity, I begged the high Providence, and acting against them with force, I killed most of them by the sword and submitted their lands.
[summary kg: it goes on like the other story. The peoples get afraid, run away and fight each other, and 22 of them flee past the Breasts of the North. The Lord makes the mountains move again and Alexander builds a copper gate. He covers it on both sides with “asochiton” (or asichyton, asycheton), so it would become impossible to “decopper” them. Because it extinguishes fire and crushes iron. ]
And outside of these gates, I made another construction of rock-stones … and having done this, I closed the building by pouring tin mixed with lead over the whole thing, and smearing it with asichytinon, so no-one would be able to overpower the gates. I called them the Kaspic gates. … And I cleansed the Northern regions of these godless ones…. And went back among the Turks and Armenians and attacked them like a lion…
The story in the Historia de praeliis is closest to the second version…. Here, the substance in which he covers the gates is called antichiton and anchiton.
[kg: he mentions some correspondences with other scholars in the footnotes, saying that they are uncertain, but tentatively prefer asineton as an origin. I looked up what this means: from the verb "σίνομαι"—sinomai, "to harm, to hurt". So asinomai would be non-hurt, or with some goodwill, protect from harm (!!!).]
RE: 116v - MarcoP - 21-04-2016
(19-04-2016, 10:54 PM)Searcher Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The first word of the second line I see as You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., which means some kind of sacred wood or another material for altar-fire, in another sources, a material which, vice versa, protects from fire. Personally, I think about first variant, but doubt that it is just wood, it can be a pitch (resin, tar), but it's an open question, of course, as only reading of an origin is a main argument for propositions.
Thank you, Searcher. I don't remember reading about "anchiton" before.
RE: 116v - davidjackson - 21-04-2016
I shall add it to the wiki!
RE: 116v - ReneZ - 21-04-2016
(21-04-2016, 01:15 AM)Anton Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But your note about anchiton has been truly encouraging, because we seem to have digged out what it actually is and... that settles the decades' dispute between "anchiton" and "michiton"!!! It's "anchiton" after all!
Hmmm, could you summarise what exactly is the reason why it should read anchiton and not michiton?
I really did not see it. A very tentative explanation of what 'anchiton' could mean does not settle it in my opinion, especially
since most of the other words cannot be read with certainty.
I am not saying that it is more likely to read one or the other, by the way. For me, the definitive reading should follow from either a comparison with other text in the same script (made by someone with some qualifications in this area), or by a convincing reading of the majority of the text.
I have been hoping to find some handwritten text that is similar to this. There are hundreds (thousands?) of German MSs online, but I never found a very close match. One that seems to come rather close is this one:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(One should look at several pages).
Characters that most usually are different from the text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are the 'd' and the 'p'. It is really quite rare to find any text that has these similarities.
The language used in the above MS is called "Südrheinfränkisch" but I wonder if there should be any connection between the script and the dialect. If so, our scribe would be from the Heidelberg-Karlsruhe area.
RE: 116v - Koen G - 21-04-2016
I agree that this is all very tentative, and we need a more or less complete reading that makes sense. The person who made this inscription could have come from anywhere, be he a scribe, copyist or anything else, so we should consider all options carefully.
So far, the book Anton found is the best source on "anchiton", but there are a lot of "ifs". The scholars who debated the origin of this name, settled on an invented word for a protective substance, derived from the verb meaning "not-harm", so the English equivalent would be undestructionite. Anchiton is then one of several ways in which this word changed over time.
Since we may be dealing with a charm, a word related to protection from harm (or even material damage, of the book?) would be very much expected though. In that way, it's one of the proposed solutions that make most sense. But etymologically it's a bit of a small chance.
RE: 116v - VViews - 21-04-2016
This is pretty awesome.
I'm especially amazed at the presence of both anchiton and portas in the same phrase. To me that looks like a massive hint that this is the right track.
RE: 116v - Koen G - 21-04-2016
Could it be a direct quote from a Latin translation of the story? In that case, the use of Anchiton and portas is completely justified.
In case anyone cares, I think these are the cannibals related to this legend: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
RE: 116v - MarcoP - 21-04-2016
(21-04-2016, 08:58 AM)ReneZ Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.I am not saying that it is more likely to read one or the other, by the way. For me, the definitive reading should follow from either a comparison with other text in the same script (made by someone with some qualifications in this area), or by a convincing reading of the majority of the text.
I have been hoping to find some handwritten text that is similar to this. There are hundreds (thousands?) of German MSs online, but I never found a very close match. One that seems to come rather close is this one:
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(One should look at several pages).
Characters that most usually are different from the text on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. are the 'd' and the 'p'. It is really quite rare to find any text that has these similarities.
Thank you, Rene!
Of course, this deserves a serious study, and I agree that a true paleographer would save us a lot of trouble!
Here is a comparison based on You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
- Top row (in black) "amen"
- Bottom row (in red) "ave maria"
RE: 116v - Helmut Winkler - 21-04-2016
There was a discussion on the mailing list two or three years ago, I remember it because I took part in it and as far as I remember Philipp Neal was the first to read the fist letter as an a, cp. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. And from the paleogaphy side I am quite sure you have to read anchiton, whatever it means and if it relates to the Glossa ordinaria text. It is very tempting to read a m, but it rally is an a, and the c before the h is well distinguishable from the t after the i.