Historical Events Database - History

[Mikey]

Re: Historical Events Database

DATA: will you please give me access to the database website now? Never got a PM up to now (just checked again).

Sent you a PM.

 

[Gaby]

Re: Historical Events Database

In other words, I would take an item, say for 190 BC, and if it broke down to 4 entries into the database, I would put the whole quote from Laura for that item in each category/subcategory of entries to keep the context and relation of the text intact.

That is how I did it. I think it makes it easier to see the whole context.

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

In other words, I would take an item, say for 190 BC, and if it broke down to 4 entries into the database, I would put the whole quote from Laura for that item in each category/subcategory of entries to keep the context and relation of the text intact.

That is how I did it. I think it makes it easier to see the whole context.

I've been doing that too. I just put it in the "quoted text" thing and any note I might have I would put over under the right hand text box. Thus far, I haven't had any reason to use the text area under location.

I try to make sure that the keywords emphasize the area of the text I am concerned with in a particular entry so it is easy to pick out.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Re: Historical Events Database

OK, thanks for the input, Gaby and Laura. I'll continue to do it that way then.

 

[Dirgni]

Re: Historical Events Database

Towns and cities were founded in good times or after disasters. I checked in Internet about data to see if there are any times with a low number of foundations between Caesars time and now. I found a gap between 2nd and 7th century with very low foundings of towns/cities in Germany. And there is another gap between 15th and 19th century (settlement elsewhere e.g. colonies on other continents also contribute to this?).


This diagram "Urban Foundations in Central Europe 1150-1950" I found here in Internet:

Urban Foundations in Central Europe, 1150-1950
The chart below gives an idea of the changing rate at which new cities and towns that were founded in central Europe, decade by decade, in the eight hundred years between 1150 and 1950. It encompasses about 2,000 foundations, which represents about half the total number of new settlements established during that period. The greatest wave of foundations began in the mid-twelfth century. Initially, the majority of these new towns owed their existence to long-distance commerce with older settlements and were established with commercial needs and interests in mind. After 1250 or so, most new towns served a different function, to produce and consume for local and regional markets. These were, for the most part, towns of smaller size; but they were also far greater in number. From 1300 on, finally, most new towns were so-called "agrarian towns" (in German Ackerbürgerstädte) whose economies were organized exclusively around local, agricultural needs and whose urban liberties were few. Central Europe's landscape of small- and medium-sized towns is a direct outgrowth of this three-staged process.

I appended a diagram I made from foundation dates for towns/cities in Germany (source Wikipedia) (I did not find similar data for other European countries and the 20th has mostly joining of two towns/cities).

 

[Zadius Sky]

Re: Historical Events Database

I'm currently working through Ammianus Marcellinus' Roman History. I'm hoping to get some feedback for my previous post, so I can be done with Zosimus.

The database website is pretty slow - there were times when I submitted an entry, it didn't show up so I had to do it again or a category won't show up.

Zadig, I've been updating a number of your entries (Theophanes the Confessor) with Ammianus since they talked about the same thing, so you'd have two sources included. When I get a chance, I'll go through your entries to include the source citations and I'll research those to verify, so you can keep adding more entries if you want (you have well over 4 pages of entries, to date).

Also, try not to add a space in location field like _Spain because when I clicked on location to sort it from A to Z, Spain or Jerusalem came up first because of an extra space in front of it.

And, check the existing date in the database before adding anything to avoid having a double entry about the same thing. I noticed you posted one event of which I already added earlier, so I deleted mine and included my source in yours.

Hmm, working on this database is a very similar process to working on SotT, so it's Historical SotT! :)

 

[Zadius Sky]

Re: Historical Events Database

I deleted the following entries from The Syriac Chronicle as they are related to the event I'm revising:

1) Insect Infestation, year 501
2) Famine, year 501
3) Earthquake, year 501

Taken from:

Book VII, Chap. III

"But an earthquake occurred. And locusts invaded 'Arab [districts] of Mesopotamia. And there was a famine in the year nine, of which James the doctor of Batnae wrote an account, in the eleventh (year) of the reign of Anastasius. And many of the Arabs died, both in Amida, whither they retired, and in various other places."

The entries from Michael the Syrian already covers these 3 entries pretty well. Just in case, I added this quote and its reference from The Syriac Chronicle in "other notes".

What year did you put these in? I don't see any entries for AD 501 and couldn't find it in close years to it. I thought we are using the earliest version of the event(s) first and use "other notes" for later version if available. Michael the Syrian was later, I think.

 

[Gaby]

Re: Historical Events Database

What year did you put these in? I don't see any entries for AD 501 and couldn't find it in close years to it. I thought we are using the earliest version of the event(s) first and use "other notes" for later version if available. Michael the Syrian was later, I think.

It is like a 15 entries event first mentioned in 498 by Michael the Syrian. Reading the entries from 500, 501 and up until 503, I realized it was the same events for that region. So I added a 5 year duration/uncertainty to include all these things. It is the "Broom Star, Spear" comet. It came along with pretty much everything.

 

[Zadig]

Re: Historical Events Database

Zadig, I've been updating a number of your entries (Theophanes the Confessor) with Ammianus since they talked about the same thing, so you'd have two sources included. When I get a chance, I'll go through your entries to include the source citations and I'll research those to verify, so you can keep adding more entries if you want (you have well over 4 pages of entries, to date).

I have updated all the entries of Chronicle of the Fall, i.e. 559-610 AD, with additional information from Theophanes, Agapius... So, Chronicle of the Fall is finished.

Also, try not to add a space in location field like _Spain because when I clicked on location to sort it from A to Z, Spain or Jerusalem came up first because of an extra space in front of it.

And, check the existing date in the database before adding anything to avoid having a double entry about the same thing. I noticed you posted one event of which I already added earlier, so I deleted mine and included my source in yours.

Ok, I will be more careful.

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

I'll be back in the saddle tomorrow. I got sidetracked on the Amanda Knox thing. Plus, I'm kinda disoriented because we are in the process of reorganizing the library. We've acquired so many books for this research project that we had to build two more bookcases and start re-shuffling things so that I don't have ten leaning towers of books stacked all around my desk.

 

[Palinurus]

Re: Historical Events Database

DATA: will you please give me access to the database website now? Never got a PM up to now (just checked again).

Sent you a PM.

Got it. Thank you, Data.

The St. John Thackeray translation is only available in book form. I found a few isolated volumes of the early 1920 nine volume edition on line but never a complete set. Later editions in thirteen volumes are nowhere to be found on line, only in bookseller stores and quite pricey. For purists only I dare say.

I have to amend this statement slightly because today I downloaded a copy of the Jewish Wars books 1 - 7 in two volumes (William Heinemann reprint 1966).
The English text is reasonably readable but the Greek one suffers from loss of signal and blurs quite frequently.

Jewish Antiquities on the other hand still is nowhere to be found on line in a complete version. I'll keep searching, though.

 

[Zadius Sky]

Re: Historical Events Database

I'll be back in the saddle tomorrow. I got sidetracked on the Amanda Knox thing. Plus, I'm kinda disoriented because we are in the process of reorganizing the library. We've acquired so many books for this research project that we had to build two more bookcases and start re-shuffling things so that I don't have ten leaning towers of books stacked all around my desk.

Oh, my. Best of luck! Wish I'd help y'all with that - a kind of work that I'd like to do. :)

 

[Dirgni]

Re: Historical Events Database

I finished Einhard's "The Life of Charlemagne" and included all entries into Historical Events Database. I hope the wars are not too much.
I am not too sure about the 811 ff. entry with keywords "Eclipses sun and moon; black sun spot"; maybe it should be included into one of the other eclipses around this time (the date is not very reliable)?
Could you please check the keywords/categories of the other 2 entries for 811 ff. with "Earthquake" and "lightning / thunderbolt"?

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

Also, I read a funny passage in Preston's book, "The Monster of Florence":

Speaking of Italy:

The unified country had been created in 1871, cobbled together from various grand duchies and fiefdoms, ancient lands awkwardly stitched into a new nation. The inhabitants spoke some six hundred languages and dialects. When the new Italian state chose the Florentine dialect to be official "Italian," only two percent of the population could actually speak it. (Florentine was chosen over Roman and Neapolitan because it was the language of Dante.) Even in 1960, fewer than half of the citizens could speak standard Italian. ...

In 1960, the poorest, most backward area in all of Italy was the barren, sunbaked interior mountains of the island of Sardinia. ...

It was an isolated culture that had turned its back on the sea. Sardinians had always been afraid of the sea, because in centuries past it brought them only death, pillage and rape. "He who comes from the sea, robs," went an ancient Sardinian expression. From the sea came ships bearing the Christian cross of the Pisans, who cut the Sardinian forests to build their navy. From the sea arrived the black feluccas of Arab pirates who carried off women and children. And many centuries ago - so the legends went - also from the sea came a giant tsunami that wiped out the seaside towns, driving the inhabitants into the mountains....

In 1960, almost nobody in Sardinia spoke Italian, using instead a language all their own, Logudorese, considered to be the oldest and least contaminated of all the Romance languages. ...

They followed their own unwritten laws, the Barbagian code, born out of the ancient region of central Sardinia called La Barbagia, one of the wildest and least populated areas in Europe.

At the heart of the Barbagian code was the man known as the balente, the wily outlaw, the man of cunning, skill, and courage, who takes care of his own. Stealing, particularly of livestock, was an exalted activity under the Barbagian code when it was committed against another tribe, because, aside from mere gain, it was a heroic act, and act of balentia. The thief, by stealing, demonstrated his cunning and superiority to his adversary, who paid a just price for his incapacity to take care of his own property and flocks. Kidnapping and even murder were justified under similar rules. The balente had to be feared and respected.

I had a look at the wikipedia entry about the language:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logudorese_dialect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardinian_language

The history of the island of Sardinia, relatively isolated from the European continent up into modern times, led to the development of a distinct Romance language, which even now preserves traces of the indigenous pre-Roman language of the island. The language is of Latin origin like all Romance languages yet the following substratal influences are possible:

Nuragic
Etruscan[citation needed]

Adstratal influences include:

Catalan
Spanish
Italian

...The early origins of the Sardinian language (sometimes called Paleo-Sardinian) are still obscure, due mostly to the lack of documents, as Sardinian appeared as a written form only in the Middle Ages. ...

Massimo Pittau claimed in 1984 to have found in the Etruscan language the etymology of many other Latin words, after comparison with the Nuragic language. If true, one could conclude that, having evidence of a deep influence of Etruscan culture in Sardinia, the island could have directly received from Etruscan many elements that are instead usually considered to be of Latin origin. Pittau then indicates that both the Etruscan and Nuragic languages are descended from the Lydian language, both therefore being Indo-European languages, as a consequence of the alleged provenance of Etruscans/Tyrrhenians from that land (as in Herodotus), where effectively the capital town was Sardis. Pittau also suggests, as a historical point, that the Tirrenii landed in Sardinia, whereas the Etruscans landed in modern-day Tuscany. Massimo Pittau's views however are not representative of most Etruscologists. ...

Linguists like Blasco Ferrer (2009, 2010) or Morvan (2009) have recently attempted to revive the theory of a Basque connection by linking modern surface forms such as Sardinian ospile "fresh natural cover for cattle" and Basque ozpil "id.", Sardinian arrotzeri "vagabond" and Basque arrotz "stranger", Sardinian arru "stone, stony" and Basque arri "stone", Gallurese (South Corsican and North Sardinian) zerru "pig" and Basque zerri "id.". Of interest, and in support to this theory, genetic data on the distribution of HLA antigens have suggested a common origin for Basque and Sardinian people....

The Roman domination, beginning in 238 BC, brought Latin to Sardinia, but this language was not able to completely supplant the Pre-Roman Sardinian language. Some obscure roots remained unaltered, and in many cases it was Latin that was made to accept the local roots, such as nur (in nuraghe, as well as Nùgoro and many other toponyms). Roman culture, on the other hand, became largely dominant; Barbagia derives its name from the Greek word Ό βάρβαρος-ου, which means "stuttering", due to the fact that its people could not speak Latin well. Cicero, who called Sardinian rebels latrones matrucati ("thieves with rough sheep-wool cloaks") to emphasise Roman superiority, helped to spread this conception.

Modern Sardinian, as it is known today, was the first language to split off from the others that were still developing from Latin, possibly as early as the first century BC.
...

During this time period, there was a reciprocal influence between Corsica and a limited area of northern Sardinia. On the southern side, though, the evidence favors contacts with Semitic and (later) Byzantine languages.

In the 1st century AD, some relevant groups of Hebrews were deported to Sardinia, bringing various influences; the Christianization of the island would probably have brought Hebrews to convert to a sort of independent cult of Sant'Antioco (perhaps a way to preserve some aspects of their ethnicity under a Christian form), still present in Gavoi. This contact with Hebrews, followed by another deportation of Christians, presumedly lasted for a couple of centuries, and makes it likely that by the 3rd century AD, Vulgar Latin began to dominate the island....

After this domination, Sardinia passed under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire, and more influences are derived from this culture. {This is what history claims.} The Greek language that was the main reference of Byzantines did not, however, enter into the structure of Sardinian (still a Romance language) except for in some ritual or formal formulas that are expressed in Latin using Greek structure. Much evidence for this can be found in the condaghes, the first written documents in Sardinian. {Which rather argues against any prolonged Byzantine influence.}

Some toponyms show Greek influence as well, such as Jerzu, commonly presumed to derive from the Greek khérsos (untilled), together with the personal names Mikhaleis, Konstantine, and Basilis. ...


The literature in this period is mostly made up by legal documents;...

The first document in which some elements of the language make their appearance, dates back to 1063: it is an act of donation to the abbey of Montecassino signed by Barisone I of Torres.

Then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuragic_civilization

The Nuragic civilization was a civilization of Sardinia, lasting from the Bronze Age (18th century BC) to the 2nd century AD. The name derives from its most characteristic monuments, the nuraghe. They consist of tower-fortresses, built starting from about 1800 [1] BC. Today some 7,000 nuraghi[2] dot the Sardinian landscape. {Check the link for cool photos of stuff!}

In the Stone Age the island was inhabited by people who had arrived there in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages from several parts of Europe and the Mediterranean area. ...

Remains from this period include more than 2,400 hypogeum tombs called Domus de Janas, the 4th millennium BC statue menhirs representing warriors or female figures, and the stepped pyramid of Monte d'Accoddi, near Sassari, which has some similarities with the monumental complex of Los Millares (Andalusia) and the later Talaiots in the Balearic Islands. According to some scholars, the similarity between this structure and Mesopotamian ones is due to cultural influxs coming from the Eastern Mediterranean....

The late Bronze Age (15th-13th centuries BC) saw a vast migration of the so-called sea people, described in ancient Egyptian sources. They destroyed Mycenaean and Hittite sites and also attacked Egypt. According to some scholars the Sherden, one of the most important tribes of the sea peoples, are to be identified with the Nuragic Sardinians.[9] Another hypothesis is that they arrived to the island around the 13th-12th century after the failed invasion of Egypt. However, these theories remain controversial. A lost work by Simonides of Ceos reported by Zenobius, spoke of raids by Sardinians against the island of Crete, in the same period in which the Sea People invaded Egypt. ...

Recently the archaeologist Adam Zertal, echoing the theory already presented in 2005 by Leonardo Melis,[10] has proposed that the Harosheth Haggoyim of Israel, home of the biblical figure Sisera, is identifiable with the site of "El-Ahwat" and that it was a Nuragic site suggesting that he came from the people of the Sherden of Sardinia....

In ancient times, Greek historians and geographers tried to solve the mystery of the nuraghe and their builders. They described the presence of fabulous edifices, called daidaleia, from the name of Daedalus, who, after building his labyrinth in Crete, would have moved to Sicily and then to Sardinia. Diodorus Siculus asserts that Sardinia would have been populated by Heracles, who sent here a colony of his children led by nephew Iolaus. He also speaks of the Ilienses tribe, who were repeatedly fought by the Carthaginians and the Romans, but in vain....

Around 1000 BC the Phoenicians began visiting Sardinia with increasing frequency. The most common ports of call were Caralis, Nora, Bithia, Sulcis, Tharros, Bosa and Olbia.

The Roman historian Justin describes a Carthaginian expedition led by Malco in 540 BC against a still strongly Nuragic Sardinia. The expedition failed and this caused a political revolution in Carthage, from which Mago emerged. He launched another expedition against the island, in 509 BC, after the Sardinians attacked the Phoenicians coastal cities held by the enemy. The Carthaginians, after a number of military campaigns in which Mago died and was replaced by his brother Hamilcar, overcame the Sardinians and conquered the coastal Sardinia, the Iglesiente with its mines and the southern plains. The Nuragic civilization survived in the mountainous mainland of the island.

In 238 BC the Carthaginians, as a result of their defeat by the Romans in the first Punic War, surrendered Sardinia to Rome. Sardinia became a Roman province. The Greek geographer Strabo confirms the survival of the Nuragic civilization in Roman times.

Throughout the second millennium and in the first part of the first millennium BC, Sardinia was inhabited by the single extensive and uniform cultural group represented by the Nuragic people.

Centuries later, Roman sources describe the island as inhabited by numerous ethnic groups which had gradually merged culturally. They however maintained a political identity, and were often warring each other for the control of the most valuable territories. Tribes mentioned include the Iolei or Ilienses, the Balares, the Corsi and the Civitatas Barbarie, the latter living in what is now Barbagia and defying the Romanization process.

The Balares have been identified with the Bonnanaro culture, deriving from the Beaker culture, and were most likely of Indo-European origins. They lived in what are now the Nurra, Coghinas and Limbara traditional subdivisions of Sardinia. They were of the same stock from which the Talaiotic culture of the Balearic Islands originated.

The Ilienses, identified by the scholars with a group coming from the Eastern Mediterranean (and perhaps with the aforementioned Sherden), lived in what is now central-southern Sardinia. Their mythical hero was Sardus, known among the Romans as Sardus Pater. The current name of the island comes from the latter's one.

The Corsi lived in Gallura and later colonized Corsica. They have been identified as the descendants of the Arzachena culture. In southern Corsica, in the 2nd millennium BC, the Torrean civilization developed alongside the Nuragic one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardus

According to Sallust, Sardus son of Hercules, left Libya along with a great multitude of men and occupied the island Sardinia, the island later called by his name. Later Pausanias confirms the story of Sallust and in the second century B.C. writes that Sardus was the son of Makeris (identificable with Melqart, the Libyan Hercules) and that the island of Sardinia changed is name from Ichnusa to Sardinia in honor of Sardus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherden

The earliest mention of the people called Srdn-w, more usually called Sherden or Shardana, occurs as the Akkadian "se-er-ta-an-nu" in the Amarna Letters correspondence from Rib-Hadda, mayor (hazannu) of Byblos,[2] to the Pharaoh Amenhotep III or Akhenaten in the 14th century BCE. Though they have been referred to as sea raiders and mercenaries, prepared to offer their services to local employers, these texts do not provide any evidence of that association, nor do they shed light on what the function of these "sirdannu-people" was at this time.[3][4]...

Michael Wood[9] suggests that the Sherden were an important part of the bands of pirates that disrupted Aegean trade in the end of the 13th century BCE, and that their raids contributed greatly to the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization.

Archaeologist Adam Zertal suggests that some Sherden settled in what is now northern Israel. He hypothesizes that Biblical Sisera was a Sherden general and that the archaeological site at el-Ahwat (whose architecture resembles Nuraghe sites in Sardinia) was Sisera's capital, Harosheth Haggoyim,[10] though this theory has not received wide acceptance in the scholarly community....

No mention of the Sherden has ever been found in Hittite or Greek legends or documents, suggesting that they did not originate from either sphere of influence. ...

Guido suggests that the Sherden may ultimately derive from Ionia, in the central west coast of Anatolia, in the region of Hermos, east of the island of Chios. It is suggested that Sardis, and the Sardinian plain nearby, may preserve a cultural memory of their name. Until recently it was assumed that Sardis was only settled in the period after the Anatolian and Aegean Dark Age, but American excavations have shown the place was settled in the Bronze Age and was a site of a significant population. If this is so, the Sherden, pushed by Hittite expansionism of the Late Bronze Age and prompted by the famine that affected this region at the same time, may have been pushed to the Aegean islands, where shortage of space led them to seek adventure and expansion overseas. It is suggested that from here they may have later migrated to Sardinia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sardis

Sardis or Sardes (Lydian: Sfard; Greek: Σάρδεις, Sardeis; Persian: سارد, Sārd) was an ancient city at the location of modern Sart (Sartmahmut before 19 October 2005) in Turkey's Manisa Province. Sardis was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Lydia...

The early Lydian kingdom was very advanced in the industrial arts and Sardis was the chief seat of its manufactures. The most important of these trades was the manufacture and dyeing of delicate woolen stuffs and carpets. The stream Pactolus which flowed through the market-place "carried golden sands" in early antiquity, which was in reality gold dust out of Mount Tmolus. It was during the reign of King Croesus that the metallurgists of Sardis discovered the secret of separating gold from silver, thereby producing both metals of a purity never known before.[2] This was an economic revolution, for while gold nuggets panned or mined were used as currency, their purity was always suspect and a hindrance to trade. Such nuggets or coinage were naturally occurring alloys of gold and silver known as electrum and one could never know how much of it was gold and how much was silver. Sardis now could mint nearly pure silver and gold coins, the value of which could be—and was—trusted throughout the known world. This revolution made Sardis rich and Croesus' name synonymous with wealth itself. For this reason, Sardis is famed in history as the place where modern currency was invented.

Disaster came to the great city under the reign of the emperor Tiberius, when in AD 17, Sardis was destroyed by an earthquake,[3] but it was rebuilt. It was one of the great cities of western Asia Minor until the later Byzantine period....

Since 1958, both Harvard and Cornell Universities have sponsored annual archeological expeditions to Sardis. These excavations unearthed perhaps the most impressive synagogue in the western diaspora yet discovered from antiquity, yielding over eighty Greek and seven Hebrew inscriptions as well as numerous mosaic floors. (For evidence in the east, see Dura Europos in Syria.) The discovery of the Sardis synagogue has reversed previous assumptions about Judaism in the later Roman empire. Along with the discovery of the godfearers/theosebeis inscription from the Aphrodisias, it provides indisputable evidence for the continued presence of Jewish communities in Asia Minor and their integration into general Roman life at a time when many scholars previously assumed that Christianity had eclipsed Judaism.

The synagogue was a section of a large bath-gymnasium complex, that was in use for about 450 – 500 years. In the beginning, middle of the 2nd century AD, the rooms the synagogue is situated in were used as changing rooms or resting rooms. The complex was destroyed in 616 AD by the Sassanian-Persians.

Sardis and the Hebrew Sepharad may have been one and the same.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sepharad

Sepharad, or Sefarad, or Sfard, is a biblical place name of uncertain location. It is mentioned only once in the Bible, in the Book of Obadiah Obadiah 1:20. There are, however, Old Persian inscriptions that refer to two places called Saparda (alternative reading: Sparda): one area in Media and another in Asia Minor. It is speculated that Sepharad could have been Sardis, whose native Lydian name is Sfard.

Since the period of Roman Antiquity, after the Peshitta of the 2nd century, Spanish Jews gave the name "Sepharad" to the Iberian peninsula.[1] The descendants of Iberian Jews refer to themselves as Sephardi Jews (Hebrew, plural: Sephardim) and identify Spain as "Sepharad" in modern Hebrew.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshitta

The Peshitta sometimes called the Syriac Vulgate, is the standard version of the Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition....

General, but not universal, consensus is that the Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated into Syriac from the Hebrew, probably in the 2nd century AD, and the New Testament of the Peshitta was possibly translated from the Greek, though the evidence is less than clear. ...

F. Crawford Burkitt concluded that the translation of the Old Testament was probably the work of Jews, of whom there was a colony in Edessa about the commencement of the Christian era. ...

From an exhaustive study of the quotations in the earliest Syriac Fathers, and, in particular, of the works of Ephraem Syrus, Professor Burkitt concludes that the Peshitta did not exist in the 4th century. ...

The Peshitta had from the 5th century onward a wide circulation in the East, and was accepted and honored by all the numerous sects of the greatly divided Syriac Christianity. It had a great missionary influence, and the Armenian and Georgian versions, as well as the Arabic and the Persian, owe not a little to the Syriac....

The Peshitta version of the Old Testament is an independent translation based largely on a Hebrew text similar to the Proto-Masoretic Text. It shows a number of linguistic and exegetical similarities to the Aramaic Targums but is now no longer thought to derive from them. In some passages the translators have clearly used the Greek Septuagint. The influence of the Septuagint is particularly strong in Isaiah and the Psalms, probably due to their use in the liturgy. Most of the Deuterocanonicals are translated from the Septuagint, and the translation of Sirach was based on a Hebrew text....

The Peshitta version of the New Testament is thought to show a continuation of the tradition of the Diatessaron and Old Syriac versions, displaying some lively 'Western' renderings (particularly clear in the Acts of the Apostles). It combines with this some of the more complex 'Byzantine' readings of the 5th century. One unusual feature of the Peshitta is the absence of 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation. Modern Syriac Bibles add 6th or 7th century translations of these five books to a revised Peshitta text. ...

Almost all Syriac scholars agree that the Peshitta gospels are translations of the Greek originals. A minority viewpoint, variants of an Aramaic original New Testament hypothesis, is that the Aramaic New Testament of the Peshitta represents the original New Testament and the Greek is a translation of it. The type of text represented by Peshitta is the Byzantine. In a detailed examination of Matthew 1–14, Gwilliam found that the Peshitta agrees with the Textus Receptus only 108 times and with Codex Vaticanus 65 times, while in 137 instances it differs from both, usually with the support of the Old Syriac and the Old Latin, in 31 instances is stands alone....

In reference to the originality of the Peshitta, the words of Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII are summarized as follows:

"With reference to....the originality of the Peshitta text, as the Patriarch and Head of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, we wish to state, that the Church of the East received the scriptures from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves in the Aramaic original, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that the Peshitta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision."

etc etc.

So, bits and pieces of this and that but nothing spectacular. But, since I pulled on this thread thought I would record it here in case anything later turns out to be useful.

What I HOPED to find was something that would reference the Sardinian legend about the tsunami.

 

[Zadius Sky]

Re: Historical Events Database

I finished Einhard's "The Life of Charlemagne" and included all entries into Historical Events Database. I hope the wars are not too much.
I am not too sure about the 811 ff. entry with keywords "Eclipses sun and moon; black sun spot"; maybe it should be included into one of the other eclipses around this time (the date is not very reliable)?
Could you please check the keywords/categories of the other 2 entries for 811 ff. with "Earthquake" and "lightning / thunderbolt"?

I added one from Einhard earlier ("a ball of fire" from heaven) because I was going through Lewis' Rain of Iron and Ice and found the source and researched a bit about Charlemagne's last campaign into Saxony, which put it around 810 AD. That 32rd chapter is full of omens.

From: _http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/einhard.asp#OmensofDeath

32. Omens of Death

Very many omens had portended his approaching end, a fact that he had recognized as well as others. Eclipses both of the sun and moon were very frequent during the last three years of his life, and a black spot was visible on the sun for the space of seven days. The gallery between the basilica and the palace, which he had built at great pains and labor, fell in sudden ruin to the ground on the day of the Ascension of our Lord. The wooden bridge over the Rhine at Mayence, which he had caused to be constructed with admirable skill, at the cost of ten years' hard work, so that it seemed as if it might last forever, was so completely consumed in three hours by an accidental fire that not a single splinter of it was left, except what was under water.

Moreover, one day in his last campaign into Saxony against Godfred, King of the Danes, Charles himself saw a ball of fire fall suddenly from the heavens with a great light, just as he was leaving camp before sunrise to set out on the march. It rushed across the clear sky from right to left, and everybody was wondering what was the meaning of the sign, when the horse which he was riding gave a sudden plunge, head foremost, and fell, and threw him to the ground so heavily that his cloak buckle was broken and his sword belt shattered; and after his servants had hastened to him and relieved him of his arms, he could not rise without their assistance. He happened to have a javelin in his hand when he was thrown, and this was struck from his grasp with such force that it was found lying at a distance of twenty feet or more from the spot.

Again, the palace at Aix-la-Chapelle frequently trembled, the roofs of whatever buildings he tarried in kept up a continual crackling noise, the basilica in which he was afterwards buried was struck by lightning, and the gilded ball that adorned the pinnacle of the roof was shattered by the thunderbolt and hurled upon the bishop's house adjoining. In this same basilica, on the margin of the cornice that ran around the interior, between the upper and lower tiers of arches, a legend was inscribed in red letters, stating who was the builder of the temple, the last words of which were Karolus Princeps. The year that he died it was remarked by some, a few months before his decease, that the letters of the word Princeps were so effaced as to be no longer decipherable. But Charles despised, or affected to despise, all these omens, as having no reference whatever to him.

It sounded like that fireball got very close and everything was shaking and there's lightning (plasma event?) and all that happening very fast. It could have been impacted further away somewhere?