From hancock@dircon.co.uk Sun Sep 3 07:19:03 2000 Received: from mxu2.u.washington.edu (mxu2.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.9]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.05/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id HAA163594 for ; Sun, 3 Sep 2000 07:19:02 -0700 Received: from mailhost2.dircon.co.uk (mailhost2.dircon.co.uk [194.112.32.66]) by mxu2.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id HAA29909 for ; Sun, 3 Sep 2000 07:19:01 -0700 Received: from laptop (th-en136-187.pool.dircon.co.uk [194.112.54.187]) by mailhost2.dircon.co.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id PAA08858 for ; Sun, 3 Sep 2000 15:18:54 +0100 (BST) Message-ID: <005401c015b1$cfb51640$bb3670c2@laptop> Reply-To: "Ralph Hancock" From: "Ralph Hancock" To: References: <51.5d5cd7.26e31fe5@aol.com> Subject: Re: Roman die inscription Date: Sun, 3 Sep 2000 15:14:16 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2919.6700 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2919.6700 Allen Koenigsberg wrote, about the markings on the draydl, > << Nope. It's a Hebrew abbreviation. The order of the letters are Nun (for > the word Nes) Gimmel (for the word Gadol) Hay (Hyoh) shin (Shamah), or "A > great miracle was (or happened) there." Yep. The phrase ends with a > preposition. Up to a point, my lord. I was wrong about the nun. I quote Leo Rosten, _The Joys of Yiddish_, Penguin 1971 (original US edn 1968), appendices under 'Chanukah'. -------- The four sides of the draydl or trendl, the spin-toy used during Chanukah, were originally initialled N, G, H, S -- for the German-Yiddish words Nichts (nothing), Ganz (all), Halb (half), and Stell (put). In time, the N, G, H, S were reinterpreted to be the first letters of the Hebrew 'Nes Gadol Hayah Sham', meaning 'A great miracle occured there.' The miracle referred both to the Maccabean victory and to a one-day supply of oil that somehow burned for eight days when the Temple was rededicated. -------- All this is still moderately relevant to the original query, since it shows the complexity of interpretation that may be necessary to understand the inscription on the Roman die. Ralph Hancock hancock@dircon.co.uk http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~hancock/antioch.htm .