🙋 Dayjobber 📚 PhD in Religion ☀ Obsessed with Egyptian-Coptic historical linguistics Bylines on everything from cults to culture. Low-volume posting (focusing on writing and research!). www.mihalyfy.com 🇺🇲 Illinois, U.S.A.
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Maya stone records tell a social story. David Mora-Marín tracks a tiny linking word—“ti”—from early Tikal carvings (379/416 CE) across ≈1,075 cases, showing how status and scribal networks drove change in Classic Maya. Language change you can see. #langsky #linguistics doi.org/10.25189/267...
Fascinating world of ancient #glass: This magnificent #Roman #fish-shaped flask was found during the excavation of a storeroom in Begram/Afghanistan. It was probably made in a workshop at Alexandria/Egypt, dating 1st/2nd century AD. Begram was a....🧵1/2 🏺 #archaeology
Michelle Kingdom, fine artist based in Los Angeles, California, specializing in embroidery #WomensArt
Kitty Shepherd, UK ceramic slipware artist who exhibits her work internationally #womensart
Issue 1:1 of the journal Arabic Linguistics is now available online. Our Dr Uri Horesh is one the editors of the journal. The issue is available here: www.jbe-platform.com/content/jour...
There's still time to send in an abstract for this panel about #apocrypha at Kalmazoo 2026! #ICMS2026 #MedievalSky
New IFAO guide to predynastic Egypt, with "a complete overview of the current state of knowledge." Looks amazing!! 🤯 #Egyptology #AncientBlueSky www.ifao.egnet.net/publications...
Program is up for the XIIth European Conference of Egyptologists. #Egyptology #AncientBlueSky xi-ece-2025.hyperion.ro/index.php/su...
Discovery of 9,000-year-old hunter-gatherer tools in Senegal sheds light on African prehistory. phys.org/news/2025-09...
A video on the stunning and unique 'Words on the Wave' exhibition at the National Museum of Ireland which features precious manuscripts from the Abbey of St Gall, Switzerland — some returning to Ireland for the first time in 1000 years! www.youtube.com/watch?v=BikJ... #medievalsky
This new tech could save old languages from dying out | CNN Business buff.ly/e1XF85a #langsky #xl8
The 26th Dynasty was the final flowering of native Egyptian rulers.... 'Everything we found shattered our expectations': Archaeologists just discovered the 1st astronomical observatory from ancient Egypt | Live Science search.app/ZxQd92EYDQU1... #addEgypt #Egypt #Astronomy #Astrology
I'm trying to think of other similar developments with "measure" and "opportunity" words, but I can't think of any.
The original link between "measure" and "have room" seems curious to me, usage-wise.
The verb 'must' looks a lot like German 'musste' and Dutch 'moest'. But wait a minute: those mean "had to", not "have to". They're past tense forms. Well, 'must' used to be a past tense too! It ditched its present tense, which would've become *moot if it had survived. Here's the story of 'must':
We wrote a little overview chapter on Evolutionary Linguistics with Jonas Nölle and @stefanhartmann.bsky.social for the upcoming Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (3rd ed), edited by Nesi&Milin. Preprint here: osf.io/preprints/ps... (with extra references! the handbook had a limit on those)
this structure from Boethius (6th cent) looks to me like a very nice proto-form of the Romance and Germanic past periphrastic: and whatever star ..., he victoriously had [it] comprehended by numbers. which seems to want to say "he had comprehended it" (l'aveva compresa, il l'avait comprise, etc.)
The latest from me: Safety Not Guaranteed: The Myth of Data Anonymization Think your data’s safe because it’s been anonymized? Think again. It can be deanonymized. And AI may be helping. stribs.medium.com/safety-not-g...
Katarzyna Kobro (1898 –1951) Polish avant-garde sculptor and a prominent representative of the Constructivist movement in Poland #WomensArt
New volume of Eastern Christian Art Vol. 13 (2023-2024) poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?...
New volume of Anatolian Studies Vol. 75 (2025) @thebiaankara.bsky.social www.cambridge.org/core/journal... @cambup-archaeology.cambridge.org
Fascinating world of ancient #glass: A close-up of the spiral design of a mosaic glass bowl, one of the principal patterns employed by #Hellenistic glassmakers. The three-dimensional effect is truly mesmerising. 2nd century BC 📸 me
teaching myself a little bit about Old Nubian today in advance of a lecture and it's wild that between the disappearance of Meroitic (related to Egyptian hieratic/cursive hieroglyphics!) and the appearance of Old Nubian (related to Coptic script!) there's just 400 years of..... what exactly?
Just came across this old thread. There's strong continuity between Coptic and Old Nubian in representation of vowels in ways that's not Greek. FYI the newer van Gerven Oei grammar has a longer and better discussion of this than Browne. egyptianhistoricallinguistics.blogspot.com/2025/08/old-...
Scholars still debate Coptic's doubled vowels: Do they represent a long vowel, or a vowel + glottal stop? Old Nubian derived much of its writing from Coptic, and could be important evidence. #Egyptology #Linguistics #AncientBlueSky egyptianhistoricallinguistics.blogspot.com/2025/08/old-...
My next book “Literate Workers and the Production of Early Christian Literature” (Cambridge Elements) coming to you soon!
As a colleague from Divinity remarked by text, "I’m troubled by that but also think they’ve been such poor vessels for it that I don’t really care." One email mentioned student placement issues etc. in depts w/initial cuts. If that's true & they're like Div in 2010s, they should halt admissions.
Is this tied to loss of U.S. federal support for digs that they were partnering on, or something?
Due 9/1 - Position (tenured) in ancient/late antique Jewish history, religion, and culture at Harvard academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/14958
What challenges are ARCE facing?
layersonlayers.substack.com/p/in-vituper...
This is not some well-oiled machine breaking down, despite the mythic way that everyone is talking about UChicago's humanistic research. It's actually a hotbed of academic bullying and incivility and it's produced teaching & research misconduct.
People aren't talking about this, but UChicago has a 2019 report on graduate education that acknowledged "faculty abuse of power” that was affecting students’ “personal well-being” and “mental health.” For many faculty, facilitating production of quality dissertation research was not a priority.
There's several aspects to this-- Loss of language teaching, which amounts to loss of efficiency/responsiveness (but not really loss of knowledge unless it's an endangered language situation). Hindering/loss of research (no doctoral dissertations bc admissions stopped).
I would agree with this 100%.
The University of Chicago announced a string of budget cuts Thursday, slashing spending by $100 million in an effort to plug its mounting structural deficit.
layersonlayers.substack.com/p/in-vituper...
My job now is to go school to school, university to university trying to help them sort through the challenge of teaching in a world with AI and the first thing I recommend to improve the teaching of writing is cut the number of students per instructor in half. No one is going to do that, though.
More on rock art and early Egyptian state formation! #Egyptology #AncientBlueSky www.uni-bonn.de/en/news/155-...
I would also add this... ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️ bsky.app/profile/miha...
In-person language teaching can certainly be more efficient & responsive (also with palaeography). But, this evocation of lasting loss is unjustifiable & ties into an esoteric priesthood "magic in the classroom" concept that's actually counterproductive for true inquiry. bsky.app/profile/miha...
You have some marginal loss of efficiency and responsiveness with language teaching, and overall if positions reduce you won't have robust conversations that further knowledge. But, diss supervision hasn't been a recent priority for many UChicago profs. chicagomaroon.com/25957/viewpo...
This whole "magic of the classroom" thing also seems to be a bit downstream of the current tenure system. While some of it's true, a lot is also the flattery and elevated self-conceptualizations that come along with attaining and possessing lifetime employment as the purported "best."
The current tenure system is a huge problem. In practice, the screening for tenure can actually be screening out competition or screening for docility & complicity. You'd be better off with something like federal employment, where it's indefinite after hiring & a few years but firing for cause.
Yes, academia's the "first resort" place to look for expertise but expertise is not identifiable with its specialists -- it's based on content command. If anything, you need *more* scholars, because small fields are prone to lasting training gaps & bad effects from off-mission actors abusing power.
Check out this amazing program for the Special Session on Deep Phonology at the Annual Meeting on Phonology 2025 to take place at UC Berkeley on September 27! More info: sites.google.com/berkeley.edu...
In one Norse saga, there's a reference to an event happening "und Harvaðafjöllum" – 'under the Harvaða mountains'. This unique mention of "Harvaða" is thought to refer to the Carpathian Mountains, from a borrowing of Latin Carpatēs so old that it shows the effects of Grimm's law on the C, P and T.
Yeah, and in academia there can be abuse of power by mediocrities to hinder progress (like is mentioned in discussion of academic incivility/bullying).
It's what I call "a partial crisis of epistemological authority' -- some scholars with training gaps like that occupy positions to which certain expertise is attributed, but they do not actually possess it. Again, this is an unusual situation, but "the magic of the classroom" can camouflage that.
A prime example is the late Robert Ritner at UChicago. Coptic is super important to reconstruction of Egyptian because it consistently marks vowels. He taught the specialized class on that, and his essay in Daniels and Bright shows he didn't understand the vowel system on a very basic level.
My perspective on this comes from Egyptology, an outlier field when it comes to language/linguistics. The trouble is that linguistics has not been sufficiently integrated and the typical locus of expertise -- top-flight faculty at major departments -- do not necessarily possess necessary skillsets.
This thread is getting divided... In-person teaching is very important. I guess what I see from my research is that there can be counterproductive personal agendas behind the deployment of these characterizations of teaching. It can be abuse of power to hinder inquiry. bsky.app/profile/miha...
I actually critique Egyptology this way at conference presentations. There's a subcultural malfunction among a subset of philologists, and it's profoundly anti-intellectual... They use these sorts of rationales to disguise training tradeoffs that have hindered needed linguistic research.
Living teaching is def. more efficient/responsive than books. However, I also think that philologists can be prone to characterize language teaching as some sort of "sit at the foot of greatness" esoteric priesthood. Initiation with particular persons is not a valid form of intellectual authority.
But discussion/disagreement can take place with books, and the dead can be right when the living are wrong. If there's some info/perspective that is so unique and it's only in the classroom, that teacher should put it in writing so it reaches more people and so that it lives on after they're dead.
It's #NationalRedWineDay, but in Antiquity there was no strict distinction between red and white wines 🍷 #Roman wine existed on a wide spectrum, with colours ranging from white to amber and even black 🏺 #Archaeology Learn more (£) doi.org/10.15184/aqy...
Different cultures also divide up the color spectrum differently, so that could also factor in.
My latest! I wrote about a newly-discovered land crocodile the size of a siberian tiger, part of a larger story of competition between galloping crocodiles and predatory dinosaurs in South America that lasted well into the Cenozoic
trying to plan a UK trip. what are some good things to see in the British Museum (besides the Rosetta Stone obviously)? and apparently the Beowulf MS is in the British Library? what else would you recommend be seen in the British Library if we make it there?
My view is that learning Egyptian is currently hard bc the verb has been mis-systematized, a situation disguised by teaching of random factoids. It's a young field and knowledge is like 85% there, and current systematizations do mostly produce good translation values. But, it will become easier.
But those would be efficiency issues, and while it's not ideal, it's not like the knowledge dies. Professors can also be wrong in interpretations & not know appropriate references for particular interests/skills. We need professors & ongoing intellectual life, but downsizing isn't a new Dark Age.
Happy to share my just-published Oxford Bibliography on "Early Transmission of Rabbinic Literature." It was helpful for me to think through this topic, and I hope that the resulting annotated bibliography will be helpful to others! www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/docu...
There's def. efficiency issues & issues with personal attention to learning challenge areas -- this also occurs with stuff like palaeography -- but in-person teaching should not be exaggerated. What are they concretely doing that's not fundamentally transferable to a thoughtfully written book?
I'm not sure that's true. Scholars write books; there shouldn't be any oral Torah from Sinai thing going on. I've heard similar sentiments from Egyptologists re: language classes, and in retrospect that was a cover for philologists being uncomfortable with questions grounded in basic linguistics.
I'm not sure that's true. I've heard that from Egyptologists about language classes, and in retrospect that was a cover for philologists being uncomfortable with questions grounded in basic linguistics. Scholars write books; there shouldn't be any oral Torah from Sinai thing going on.
layersonlayers.substack.com/p/in-vituper...
layersonlayers.substack.com/p/in-vituper...
layersonlayers.substack.com/p/in-vituper...
AI advocates have warned that if every author in the class action filed a claim, it would "financially ruin" the entire industry.
To be honest, like other Egyptology departments, UChicago has had major training flaws that have hindered research into Egyptian-Coptic historic linguistics. I'm actually explicitly raising this at my Afroasiatic linguistics talk at NACAL in like a month.
To be honest, like other Egyptology departments, UChicago has had major training flaws that have hindered research into Egyptian-Coptic historic linguistics. I'm actually raising this at my Afroasiatic linguistics talk at NACAL in like a month.
Unfortunately, Cliff Ando uses very derogatory language to speak about the research of non-TT folk and schools that he perceives of lesser status. That tenurist rhetoric is unprofessional and simply unjustifiable.
layersonlayers.substack.com/p/in-vituper...
layersonlayers.substack.com/p/in-vituper...
After 22 years, Typepad is shutting down with one month's notice. Go back up your old blogs, old-school blogger friends. everything.typepad.com/blog/2025/08...
I just filled out the form. I encourage my fellow academics and other authors to do the same!
Some transliterations for major Ancient Egyptian words are also deceptive in ways that aren't recognized in the field (their writing isn't phonetically transparent). I have like 2-3 ideas that I need to research more and then probably write up and blog and then publish...
Yes, very true. It's also worth remembering that after whatever the ' and 3 sounds were disappeared, they began being used as vowel markers. For example, the adjectival verb prefix NA- was represented as n3-.
layersonlayers.substack.com/p/in-vituper...
A new paper by Harvard professor Claudia Goldin found that countries where men take on more of the household labor and child care have higher fertility rates. 19thnews.org/2025/08/fert...
The Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900) was planned by its publishers to be “businesslike”. Nevertheless, Leslie Stephen, editor of the DNB, was fascinated by humorous and curious anecdotes. Here is a thread of some oddities I've come across in the DNB. 🧵
Periodic reminder: The Academic Parity Movement is a key resource for academic bullying. Its low-volume email list is a good way to plug in and keep informed. paritymovement.org
For anyone interested in the late antique intersection of religious institutions and economic activity, have a look at our CfP! Julia Koch and I will host a session in May 2026 in Aarhus at RAC/TRAC (Roman Archaeology Conference / Theoretical Roman Archaeology Conference). Abstracts due 10 Oct.
#CfP Conference: "The Materiality of Jewish-Arabic Relations" (BMFTR-project "Beyond Conflict and Coexistence: An Entangled History of Jewish-Arab Relations) - deadline: 15 September 2025.
In Leiden for day 1 of the annual African linguistics colloquium #CALL54
Ooooh, good examples.🙏 There is also the issue of whether scribes acknowledged a long vowel that was present (perhaps their orthography didn't or inconsistently acknowledged it). Also, the AIAI example actually gets into a separate issue (I think), that I am raising at my upcoming NACAL talk.
My lovely friend is just about to have his latest book published. This one's on Roman Magic and looks like a great read. www.amberley-books.com/current-mont...
Fascinating!
One of my favorite things about this text is how it gives different types of sins time limits for repentance (+ has Jesus explain to Paul terms that Paul coined, since later Christians didn’t always know what to make of them)
Interesting new paper: doi.org/10.1111/1467... "Here, we show that linguistic evidence from four independent domains does indeed suggest that the Xiōng-nú and the Huns spoke the same Paleo-Siberian language and that this was an early form of Arin, a member of the Yeniseian language family."
Scholars still debate Coptic's doubled vowels: Do they represent a long vowel, or a vowel + glottal stop? Old Nubian derived much of its writing from Coptic, and could be important evidence. #Egyptology #Linguistics #AncientBlueSky egyptianhistoricallinguistics.blogspot.com/2025/08/old-...
I just reviewed a terrific documentary about the Stolpersteine, the artists and craftspeople who make them, and some of the families they memorialize. I'm not sure if it's available widely, but it's definitely worth a look.
My article from 2020 about the installation of memorial Stolpersteine ("stumbling stones"). contingentmagazine.org/2020/02/01/s...
Ronnenberg, Germany, remembers Fritz Cohen -- He was the last living member of the town's expelled Jewish community, and he will be the first burial since 1933 in its Jewish cemetery. epaper.burgbergblick.de/epaper/downl...
layersonlayers.substack.com/p/in-vituper...
layersonlayers.substack.com/p/in-vituper...
layersonlayers.substack.com/p/in-vituper...
Hey, do you know where Pat-El pointed that out? I looked at your article and then I scanned her publications on her website and academia (.) edu, but I didn't see anything there that looked relevant.
Thanks! I will look at this. I had looked at the 2nd edition of the Semitic Languages volume, but couldn't find anything relevant when I consulted different sections there.