The Pyrgi Tablets — Etruscan in a Phoenician mirror

What makes these tablets remarkable is their status as a rare bilingual inscription involving Etruscan, a language still only partially understood. The Phoenician text, written in a Semitic language already well deciphered, closely parallels the Etruscan message...

Of aliens and interstellar asteroids

Dr. Avi Loeb is a Harvard astrophysicist whose academic career has been marked by bold ideas, groundbreaking research, and controversial claims, particularly in the realm of extraterrestrial life. Dr. Loeb argues that the intersteller asteroid Oumouamoua could be evidence of an alien spacecraft.

A redemption of Salome

Salome said, 'Who are you, man, that you have come up on my couch and eaten from my table?' Jesus said to her, 'I am he who exists from the undivided. I was given from the things of my Father.' Salome said, 'I am your disciple.'

Of tentacles and sour grapes: Lovecraft’s side-eye at Mary Shelley

Lovecraft's praise of Frankenstein turns caveat with: "...despite its more or less mechanical plot and clumsy epistolary form." This is rich, coming from a man whose idea of narrative sophistication was to have a trembling narrator write down a ten-page panic attack before being eaten by an idea.

The Rosetta Stone ~ A portal into ancient Egypt

When Napoleon's expedition to Egypt unearthed a black basalt slab near the Nile Delta in 1799, no one present could have guessed its destiny as the most famous inscription in the history of linguistics.

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