Historical Events Database - History

[Palinurus]

Re: Historical Events Database

Thank you both, Laura and Dirgni, for your swift responses and helpful comments.

I think I would put it in this way:

Let's assume that it was under Nero, but J referred to him as Claudius.

Put the date range as 54 to 60 AD, location Palestine/Judaea

Put the text in the quote box and exactly what you have written about the problem in the notes box.

Good job!

Understood. I will put it in there in the manner you suggested.

Is there something mentioned in the text before or after your quoted one, which may help to narrow the timeframe?

If the famine was before the war in 60 AD and there was Ismael and a emperor named Claudius then the famine could have been between 58 AD and 60 AD (ca. 59 + / - 1 year). This is the second time Ismael was High Priest and during the time Nero (Claudius) was emperor.

Was there any high food prices or food shortages or any wrath of God mentioned elsewhere?

In database in 59 AD there is a thunderbolt (entry 1763) and in 60 AD there are earthquake, unusual weather and comet events (entries 1405, 1406, 244). Could fit to your famine. There were quite many comets (= wrath of God?) between 60 AD and 66 AD, too. The fifties AD were also quite 'interesting' times. These were no easy times for normal people back then.

I would mention your difficulties with dating in other notes field.

Just my 2 cents.

Your questions and remarks are very to the point, so thanks again for taking the time and the trouble composing and posting them, but they don't really help to solve the problem. That's not your fault of course but Josephus's.

When you close read the quoted passage, you will notice that Josephus doesn't mention this famine as such for its own sake but only uses it as a means to point the attention of his readers/listeners towards the behavior of the priests, in order to give them an example of the awe inspiring nature of the towering figure of Moses, even now, in his own time, after all those ages. We wouldn't have known anything about this famine at all if not for this specific reason. As such this famine appears right out of the blue in his narrative and there are no further details about it to be found anywhere else; not in this work, nor in his other treatise about the Wars of the Jews.

Granted, in that other work Josephus has mentioned the odd famine here and there but always in the context of warring factions, regional skirmishes, or sieges of cities. In short, as a by-product of war. Not as such, as a phenomenon of nature or as a result of mismanagement, dispossession, theft, or what have you.

As far as I can see, Josephus has nor the eye, nor the interest, and certainly not the compassion, needed to be keen on these types of misfortunes from which the common man, woman and child are frequently suffering. And he's not much into prodigies and the like, either. Therefore he won't be of much relevance to our database endeavor at all, I have come to think.

 

[seek10]

Re: Historical Events Database

This website has lot of roman historical texts _http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/home.html. some times I go there and search the website to short list possible quotes. Not a silver bullet answer though.

 

[Palinurus]

Re: Historical Events Database

Thanks for the reference, seek10. I already knew that site but had not thought of the specific use of it you suggested. Certainly worth a try...

I went there and did several searches, only to find results which didn't match the specifics -- which are sparse to say the least. So alas, no luck with it this time round.

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

Came across the following today. Perhaps it fits other data?

I've been awol for a bit working on other projects, but I sure have a pile of stuff to enter when I get back in the saddle.

Remains of 'End of the World' Epidemic Found in Ancient Egypt
By Owen Jarus, Live Science Contributor | June 16, 2014
http://www.livescience.com/46335-remains-of-ancient-egypt-epidemic-found.html

Archaeologists have uncovered the remains of an epidemic in Egypt so terrible that one ancient writer believed the world was coming to an end.

Working at the Funerary Complex of Harwa and Akhimenru in the west bank of the ancient city of Thebes (modern-day Luxor) in Egypt, the team of the Italian Archaeological Mission to Luxor (MAIL) found bodies covered with a thick layer of lime (historically used as a disinfectant). The researchers also found three kilns where the lime was produced, as well as a giant bonfire containing human remains, where many of the plague victims were incinerated.

Pottery remains found in the kilns allowed researchers to date the grisly operation to the third century A.D., a time when a series of epidemics now dubbed the "Plague of Cyprian" ravaged the Roman Empire, which included Egypt. Saint Cyprian was a bishop of Carthage (a city in Tunisia) who described the plague as signaling the end of the world. [See Photos of the Remains of Plague Victims & Thebes Site]

Occurring between roughly A.D. 250-271, the plague "according to some sources killed more than 5,000 people a day in Rome alone," wrote Francesco Tiradritti, director of the MAIL, in the latest issue of Egyptian Archaeology, a magazine published by the Egypt Exploration Society.

Tiradritti's team uncovered the remains of this body-disposal operation between 1997 and 2012. The monument his team is excavating was originally built in the seventh century B.C. for a grand steward named Harwa. After Harwa's death, the Egyptians continuously used the monument for burial (Akhimenru was a successor who built his own tomb there). However, after its use for body disposal during the plague, the monument was abandoned and never used again.

The use of the complex "for the disposal of infected corpses gave the monument a lasting bad reputation and doomed it to centuries of oblivion until tomb robbers entered the complex in the early 19th century," Tiradritti writes.

End of the world

Cyprian left a gut-wrenching record of what the victims suffered before they died. "The bowels, relaxed into a constant flux, discharge the bodily strength [and] a fire originated in the marrow ferments into wounds of the fauces (an area of the mouth)," he wrote in Latin in a work called "De mortalitate." The "intestines are shaken with a continual vomiting, [and] the eyes are on fire with the injected blood," he wrote, adding that "in some cases the feet or some parts of the limbs are taken off by the contagion of diseased putrefaction …"

Cyprian believed that the world was coming to an end.

"The kingdom of God, beloved brethren, is beginning to be at hand; the reward of life, and the rejoicing of eternal salvation, and the perpetual gladness and possession lately lost of paradise, are now coming, with the passing away of the world …" (translation by Philip Schaff, from the book "Ante-Nicene Fathers", volume 5, 1885).

While the world, of course, did not end, the plague weakened the Roman Empire. "It killed two Emperors, Hostilian in A.D. 251 and Claudius II Gothicus in A.D. 270," wrote Tiradritti. It is "a generally held opinion that the 'Plague of Cyprian' seriously weakened the Roman Empire, hastening its fall." [In Photos: 14th-Century 'Black Death' Grave Discovered]

The newly unearthed remains at Luxor underscore the plague's potency. Tiradritti's team found no evidence that the victims received any sort of religious rites during their incineration. "We found evidence of corpses either burned or buried inside the lime," he told Live Science in an interview. "They had to dispose of them without losing any time."

What caused the plague?

The plague may have been some form of smallpox or measles, according to modern day scientists. While the discovery of human remains associated with the plague will give anthropologists new material to study, Tiradritti cautions they will not be able to extract DNA from the bodies.

While stories about researchers extracting DNA from mummies (such as Tutankhamun) have made headlines in recent years, Tiradritti told Live Science he doesn't believe the results from such ancient specimens. "In a climate like Egypt, the DNA is completely destroyed," he said. DNA breaks down over time, and permafrost (something not found in Egypt) is the best place to find ancient DNA samples, Tiradritti said.

Immense monument

The discovery of the body disposal site is just one part of the team's research. Thebes is a massive site containing a vast necropolis, and the excavations of the MAIL are providing new data that allows scholars to determine how it changed between the seventh century B.C. and today.

The funerary complex of Harwa and Akhimenru, which the MAIL has been excavating since 1995, is one of the largest private funerary monuments of Egypt. Tiradritti notes that it is considered a key monument for studying a peak period in Egyptian art known as the "Pharaonic Renaissance" that lasted from the start of the seventh century B.C. until the mid-sixth century B.C. During this time, Tiradritti notes, artists created innovative new works that were rooted in older Egyptian artistic traditions.

 

[Dirgni]

Re: Historical Events Database

Hi Shijing.
Most comets between 1 AD and 1066 AD should be already in the database. Laura and Zadig were very busy and I filled in the gaps some time ago. We took them from the Kronk book, which includes the Yeomans quotes, too. Most probably for each comet Yeomans mentions there is already a Kronk entry in the database. Could you please check (Kronk) entries before you enter a new Yeomans entry? Thank you.

Event 2302 is most probably the same already described in event 1748. Kronk put it one year later but the keywords fit (667, 668). The same for entries 2301 / 1702 (year 607). I put in duplicate notes in all entries.

 

[shijing]

Re: Historical Events Database

Hi Shijing.
Most comets between 1 AD and 1066 AD should be already in the database. Laura and Zadig were very busy and I filled in the gaps some time ago. We took them from the Kronk book, which includes the Yeomans quotes, too. Most probably for each comet Yeomans mentions there is already a Kronk entry in the database. Could you please check (Kronk) entries before you enter a new Yeomans entry? Thank you.

Event 2302 is most probably the same already described in event 1748. Kronk put it one year later but the keywords fit (667, 668). The same for entries 2301 / 1702 (year 607). I put in duplicate notes in all entries.

OK, thanks for catching that Dirgni -- I just merged 1748/2302 as well as 1702/2301. I've been going through and looking for gaps myself recently -- I'll be looking out for situations like the two you mentioned above to try to avoid duplicates. When I hit 1066 AD, I'll start adding entries, if that's where it ends.

Also, I noticed that in the cases where the Kronk entries were scanned, there are several instances of hook hyphens (or whatever they're called) like the following from entry 1748:

Hal¬ley

We'll want to eventually proofread for those and eliminate them -- they are usually easy to find because they have a red underline.

 

[Dirgni]

Re: Historical Events Database

OK, thanks for catching that Dirgni -- I just merged 1748/2302 as well as 1702/2301. I've been going through and looking for gaps myself recently -- I'll be looking out for situations like the two you mentioned above to try to avoid duplicates. When I hit 1066 AD, I'll start adding entries, if that's where it ends.

Also, I noticed that in the cases where the Kronk entries were scanned, there are several instances of hook hyphens (or whatever they're called) like the following from entry 1748:

Hal¬ley

We'll want to eventually proofread for those and eliminate them -- they are usually easy to find because they have a red underline.

Thank you for your hint and eliminating some of the hyphens Shijing. All remaining "hook hyphens" are removed. I hope I found them all.

I started to do some spell checking and did a few updates. Below some entries which could be spelling errors, spelling variations or different words.

Entry 19:
Different spellings: Ch'u (Kronk spelling)/ Chhu , Chu (Yeomans spelling)
Kronk spelling in entry and source is the same.

The Chinese text Lun Heng Chiao Shih (80) is the only record of this comet. It says that when Duke Wen-Kung of Chin State was preparing for battle at Ch'eng Pu with the state of Ch'u, a "broom star" appeared at Ch'u [ε, ζ, η, λ, ν, τ, υ, χ, 26, and SAO 77354 in Auriga], with a tail pointing toward the Ch'u State.

Yeomans (1991):

A broom star comet appeared in Auriga with its tail pointing toward Chhu State.

When [Duke] Wen of Jin was about to battle King Cheng of Chu at Chengpu, a broom star appeared in [the astral space of] Chu, with Chu holding the handle. [Duke Wen] asked Jiu Fan about it. Jiu Fan said, "When there is a broom star during combat, the one on the contrary [i.e., sweep] end gains the victory." (Pankenier, Xu & Jiang 2008, p. 12)

Event ID 1269

600 years were prophecied by Hipparchus...

Event ID 44

year 77 that a comet of the Cerastes type...
Pliny noted that a comet shaped like a horn (ceratias type), was seen.

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

Thanks to ya'll for carrying the torch while I'm buried in this gargantuan editing job that was given to me. Meantime, I'm still reading when I take breaks and before bed. Just finished a fascinating book on Orphism which I got onto because I've been trying to track the origins of Roman religion. Funny thing is, I found Moses there and a few other things that will be useful.

One thing that I thought about as I've been following these Greek history/historiography threads is that we prolly ought to make a series of entries just for historians, to record their life dates, the dates of the history they wrote about (extant or not), whose material they borrowed from, who they were connected to, and any other details that may be important in evaluating their influence and veracity. All of that could be collected in the "quote" box and comments about them by modern scholars or our own comments would go in the notes box.

I'm not sure how to do them as entries just yet.

I guess we would put them under Society -> People

Under "date" put their date of birth - approximate/estimated date of birth

Duration - how many years they lived. Note years of birth and death specifically in the quote box when available.

Put the name of the historian in the Author Field

Put the word "Historian" in the Title field.

Put the years they cover in their history in the "Floruit" field.

Location should be where they were born.

Keywords should be the area(s) they wrote about. Greece, Macedonia, Italy, Rome, Roman Empire, Sicily, Western Greeks, Persia, Egypt, etc etc.

Other fields can be ignored.

I think it would be useful to produce a graph of the historians to show overlaps, gaps, geographical spread, influence, etc.

Obviously, we can get some stuff from Wikipedia, but I've found that it is often very lacking in the most up-to-date information. I've read three books now about Timaeus and it seems that the opinion about him vis a vis Polybius is changing based on close and careful analysis.

 

[Zadig]

Re: Historical Events Database

Dirgni on your entries about the Avars:

If you think that all the Avars raids were cover-up for celestial events, therefore link them to celestial events.

I mean, all your entries of Fredegar for the years 623, 628, 630, 635, 636 (I think it’s a literary creation, it would be better to read Islamic history in particular Ibn Ishaq and Al-Tabari) and 640 are in the middle of nowhere.

For example, for the year 640, change the date and put it in 639 or 641 to match with the Kronk’s comets.

I did the same with Arthurian and Irish mythologies but I always linked them with real celestial events.

When I hit 1066 AD, I'll start adding entries, if that's where it ends.

In fact, 1066 is my terminus, because after this date I don’t think that they are chronological problems, and the amount of work is too huge (but it would be very interesting to know all the earth changes during the crusades, see http://www.academia.edu/6098723/A_Collapse_of_the_Eastern_Mediterranean)

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

When I hit 1066 AD, I'll start adding entries, if that's where it ends.

In fact, 1066 is my terminus, because after this date I don’t think that they are chronological problems, and the amount of work is too huge (but it would be very interesting to know all the earth changes during the crusades, see http://www.academia.edu/6098723/A_Collapse_of_the_Eastern_Mediterranean)

I think we might go up through 1700 simply because it covers the crusades, the black death, and some very suspicious wars...

 

[Dirgni]

Re: Historical Events Database

I am still trying to find some more Huns/Avars in the sources. I am trying to close the gap in the seventh and eighth century. Bad luck till now; but I am including my findings in the database.

For the dates I took the ones given in my Fredegar book. Besides a lot of Avars/Huns entries were not entered by me. And I saw an entry from Laura where PtD describes a story very similar a Hun story complete with silver and gold mentioned but with Langobards instead of Huns/Avars.

The Huns/Avars mentioned in event 2278 could be in year 630 or the same event as in 623 or it could be later and filling my gap. Around 610 Fredegar stops to mention events like eclipses, prodigies, etc. and there are only stories about Frankish elite and elite from other countries (most probably propaganda or maybe made up or maybe redacted history). The book ends with its continuation with young Charlemagne. There are a lot of parts, which you could set to another year easily with just changing a few words. There are gaps (years without any description) and parts where stories from several different years are mentioned. And some of the stories between ca. 610 and Charlemagne looks very suspicious to me. I included them in the database.

Fredegar is considered as valid source Western European history by the historians. And he is one of the very few or single source for Western European history of his time. He wrote "bad Latin". He maybe either used a written form of oral Latin and / or Latin was a foreign language for him. Or there was no more experienced person available for the job. Later writers used a "better Latin" again. So the origin was most probably contemporary. When there was some cover up you may find traces here.

What I found that all sources from 6th to 10th century there were very few persons with Roman names or mentioned as Roman. There were nearly no biblical names either. So Roman names went out of use and biblical names were not yet used. Most persons have unfamiliar Germanic / Gallic names, which are not in use nowadays.

Yes maybe there is less propaganda in the Islamic sources but the Huns events are not specified as Huns but described in another manner. And as "bystanders (?)" they were maybe less affected by the Roman Empire breakdown events (hearsay only?).

 

[shijing]

Re: Historical Events Database

Thank you for your hint and eliminating some of the hyphens Shijing. All remaining "hook hyphens" are removed. I hope I found them all.

Great -- thanks Dirgni for correcting those.

I started to do some spell checking and did a few updates. Below some entries which could be spelling errors, spelling variations or different words.

Thanks for that too -- I just corrected the one in 1269. The ones in 19 are different Romanization systems used by the three different authors -- unfortunate, but I left them since they're that way in the original. The same seems to be true for the words in 44 as far as I can tell.

I think we might go up through 1700 simply because it covers the crusades, the black death, and some very suspicious wars...

I'll start adding then, once I get through with double-checking the existing entries. I have additional data from two other sources also (A History of Persian Earthquakes and Encyclopedia of Earthquakes and Volcanoes), where I stopped in the mid-1300s because the database currently ends there.

 

[Zadig]

Re: Historical Events Database

I think we might go up through 1700 simply because it covers the crusades, the black death, and some very suspicious wars...

It’s way too much. With the human resources we have now, it’s clearly infeasible. In 7 months we barely covered 1000 years, where primary sources are scarce. For example, you can cover the 10th century with circa 5 primary sources.

If you want to go through the first crusade, i.e. 3 years, you must read at least 10 primary sources, not including Islamic historiography. Imagine the amount of work to cover the Thirty Years' War and the reign of Louis XIV?

Also, I underline the fact that the Greco-Roman period is hardly done. Diodorus, Livy, Plutarch, Suetonius, Florus, Tacitus, Xenophon, Thucydides, Appian, Polybius, Arrian , Philostratus and so on, even the Alexander’s conquest is missing.

 

[Dirgni]

Re: Historical Events Database

I think we might go up through 1700 simply because it covers the crusades, the black death, and some very suspicious wars...

It’s way too much. With the human resources we have now, it’s clearly infeasible. In 7 months we barely covered 1000 years, where primary sources are scarce. For example, you can cover the 10th century with circa 5 primary sources.

If you want to go through the first crusade, i.e. 3 years, you must read at least 10 primary sources, not including Islamic historiography. Imagine the amount of work to cover the Thirty Years' War and the reign of Louis XIV?

Also, I underline the fact that the Greco-Roman period is hardly done. Diodorus, Livy, Plutarch, Suetonius, Florus, Tacitus, Xenophon, Thucydides, Appian, Polybius, Arrian , Philostratus and so on, even the Alexander’s conquest is missing.

Maybe others are interested enough in this project to join. If not let us take it step by step and source by source, Zadig. One at a time. And we do not need to be complete (yet). We can focus on certain times.

When we get "The Chronicle of the Fall" out in print it will be as large as a family bible. It has already more than 500 pages and it is still growing. I assume in the end there will be more than one volume with database still growing and growing...

 

[Palinurus]

Re: Historical Events Database

I'm currently reading Book IX of Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews and while searching for info about one of the many names he has the habit of dropping around in his narrative, namely Jeroboam II of Israel (i.e. the Northern Kingdom of ten tribes) I unexpectedly encountered the following on that man's Wikipedia page:

<snip>

Earthquake in Israel c. 760 BC

A major earthquake had occurred in Israel c. 760 BC, which may have been during the time of Jeroboam II, towards the end of his rule. This earthquake is mentioned in the Book of Amos as having occurred during the rule of "Jeroboam son of Jehoash" (Amos 1:1).

Geologists believe they have found evidence of this big earthquake in sites throughout Israel and Jordan.[5] Archeologists Yigael Yadin and Israel Finkelstein date the earthquake level at Tel Hazor to 760 BC based on stratigraphic analysis of the destruction debris.[6] Similarly, David Ussishkin arrives at the same date based on the "sudden destruction" level at Lachish.

According to Steven A. Austin, the magnitude of this earthquake may have been at least 7.8, but more likely as high as 8.2. "This magnitude 8 event of 750 B.C. appears to be the largest yet documented on the Dead Sea transform fault zone during the last four millennia."[7]

The epicenter of this earthquake may have been 200-300 km north of present-day Israel.

Multiple biblical references exist to this earthquake in the Book of Amos (3:14, 6:11, 8:8, 9:1), and also in Zechariah 14:5. Indirect references may be found in Isaiah 2:19, Joel 3:16, and Hebrews 12:28.

Recent excavations by Aren Maeir in ancient Gath have revealed evidence of a major earthquake.

"Based on the tight stratigraphic context, this can be dated to the mid-8th cent. BCE"...[8]

This Wikipedia snippet contains seven hyper links which didn't come through after the copy/paste process, so please consult the original for them.

I checked out the current status of the database and found no mention at all of an earthquake in those environs around mid 8th century BCE.

The problem with this earthquake is the current lack of primary sources mentioning it, although this Wikipedia snippet mentions archaeological evidence for its occurrence.

What should I do with it in regard of a possible entry into the database? Please advise...

EDITED to add: noteworthy also -- this earthquake isn't mentioned in this list: Historical earthquakes