One of my favourite Bronze Age artefacts: a cup from Kea inscribed with the Linear A sign 'ki', a schematic depiction of a very similar cup, with the sign flipped so that the handle is on the right side.

The changing scale of archaeology:

Better 'long o' and and 'short o', after Greek lost the phonemic distinction between long and short vowels. Many letters have Byzantine names that only make sense after certain sound changes: e.g. epsilon (to distinguish homphonous ε from αι) and upsilon (to distinguish υ from

requiescat in pace.

Everytime I think of the word 'predate', I first make the connection with 'predator' and then remember that 'antedate' nicely avoids the issue.

This is quite beyond the basic point that language learning is entirely memorisation.

In many technical skills memorisation is the entire point. Pottery, papyrology, epigraphy: you can't understand anything unless you've seen, and remember, something like it before.

'nim' of course survives in 'numb'.

Needs to be 'thing that I don't', but otherwise perfectly standard in spoken English. Would put it differently in writing, though.

A remarkable essay by a PhD student, with very helpful bibliography attached

This ought to be interesting.

No aurora in Athens, but:

The underlying principle of licensing drivers is that driving is a privilege, not a right. America treats it like a right and thousands of people die as a result: urban.org/urban-wire/us-….

Wilamowitz vs Neitzsche
Fraenkel vs The Harvard Servius Project
Bowra, Page, et al. vs Dodds

The gods never really left.

Ἀθῆναι.