[HN Gopher] Arabic document from 17th-cent. rubbish heap confirm...
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Arabic document from 17th-cent. rubbish heap confirms semi-
legendary Nubian king
Author : wglb
Score : 135 points
Date : 2026-03-03 02:49 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| wglb wrote:
| Paper at
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0067270X.2026.2...
| from Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa
| nephihaha wrote:
| That was interesting, notwithstanding the editorialising comments
| by Tomasz Baranski.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I would expect no less from a graduate of the University of
| Warsaw.
|
| This writing (and speaking) style permeates this institution.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _That was interesting, notwithstanding the editorialising
| comments by Tomasz Baranski._
|
| you are upset by these comments which this article's author
| chose to quote?:
|
| _As lead author Tomasz Baranski explains, however, this
| transformation was far from sudden. "Nubia was not a marginal
| or isolated region of the Nile Valley, but a pivotal corridor
| connecting the Mediterranean world to sub-Saharan Africa.
| Rather than a civilizational dead end, Nubia functioned for
| millennia as a dynamic zone of movement for people, goods, and
| ideas. Through Nubia passed commodities such as gold, ivory,
| and enslaved people, but it also enabled the exchange of less
| tangible elements: technologies, religious beliefs, and
| political models._
|
| _" Moreover, Nubian communities were not passive recipients of
| outside influence; they actively shaped and adapted the flows
| passing through this corridor. This long history of exchange
| helps us understand later cultural transformations in the
| region, including Arabization and Islamization. These were not
| sudden ruptures, but part of a much older pattern of
| interaction, negotiation, and adaptation that has characterized
| Sudan throughout history."_
|
| _Baranski notes that further discoveries may yet follow:
| "Preliminary analysis of the letters from Building A.1 suggests
| distinct patterns in the circulation of correspondence, hinting
| at a coherent communication network. This network encompassed
| not only the city's religious and administrative elites, but
| possibly also the leaders of nomadic groups herding flocks in
| the surrounding regions."_
|
| _Additionally, he adds, "the discovery of this seemingly
| inconspicuous scrap of paper, when situated within the larger
| context of gift-giving culture and traditional royal patronage
| navigating local micropolitics, provides a vivid example of how
| archaeological fieldwork continues to produce material that
| bridges the gap between material culture and written history."_
| Oras wrote:
| The writing style (in Arabic) feels like a message in a chat.
| It's a mix between dialect and official Arabic.
| interstice wrote:
| Like, modern and understandable? I ask because English from
| more than a few hundred years ago is basically gibberish so I'm
| curious about languages where that didn't happen.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Depending on the author 17th century English can also be very
| close to modern English. A couple phrases will be off and the
| spelling is different, but most of the difficulty is more the
| author using constructions that have fallen out of use or
| "showing off" with overly complicated sentences.
|
| For example here's an excerpt from 1688's "Oroonoko"
| I have often seen and convers'd with this great Man, and been
| a Witness to many of his mighty Actions; and do assure my
| Reader, the most Illustrious Courts cou'd not have produc'd a
| braver Man, both for Greatness of Courage and Mind, a
| Judgment more solid, a Wit more quick, and a Conversation
| more sweet and diverting. He knew almost as much as if he had
| read much: He had heard of, and admir'd the Romans; he had
| heard of the late Civil Wars in England, and the deplorable
| Death of our great Monarch; and wou'd discourse of it with
| all the Sense, and Abhorrence of the Injustice imaginable. He
| had an extream good and graceful Mien, and all the Civility
| of a well-bred great Man.
| dghf wrote:
| Is six hundred years ago more than a few? Chaucer is still
| more or less comprehensible. (Though Sir Gawain and the Green
| Knight, from roughly the same time, not so much.)
| biofox wrote:
| The Middle English spelling and phonetic shifts are what
| make it so painful to read. The words themselves though are
| mostly comprehensible with a bit of effort.
|
| Go back another four hundred years to Old English and
| Beowulf and it becomes complete gobbledygook (to me at
| least).
| usrnm wrote:
| I wonder what modern English would look like if the
| battle of Hastings went differently
| Bayart wrote:
| Take a look at Frisian for the beginning of an answer.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisian_languages
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Since spelling was not standardized at the time, I
| suppose there would be no real loss of meaning if someone
| were to rewrite these works using modern/standard English
| spelling? Why are high schoolers forced to read these
| archaic texts as written? It was just so _tiring_ to try
| to read them; I could never get through any of them and
| resorted to Cliffs Notes.
| eszed wrote:
| English nerd (and former English teacher) here, and I
| think for high school students that's a good idea. It's
| not actually an impossible text, and an introduction to
| the real thing is useful and interesting, but forcing
| teenagers to go through everything in the original is too
| much of an obstacle for most students.
|
| Also: _only_ reading the "boring" bits. When I was in
| high school I was excused English classes (took English
| 101 at the local college instead - told you I was a
| nerd), but overheard my classmates hating their way
| through "The Wife of Bath's Tale", or "The Knight's Tale"
| - one of those - and introduced them (nerd!) to "The
| Miller's Tale" - broad scatalogical comedy - which they
| loved. Later I did something similar for them with
| _Gulliver 's Travels_, by showing them the bit where he
| has fairly graphic sex with the giantess. (I think that's
| an actual kink, but I certainly didn't know that at the
| time!)
| eszed wrote:
| Yep. If you hear Chaucer read aloud by someone who knows
| the phonetics and the meaning it's instantly like 75%
| comprehensible. If they give you a bit (like, half a
| class-period) more help, you'll get to ~90% without any
| more effort than that. Chaucer is more or less as
| incomprehensible as Glaswegian - that is to say, it's a
| bit tricky, and you won't know all the slang, but you can
| get used to it pretty quickly.
|
| What's _really_ fun is that if you keep the dialect in
| your head, and try reading it out loud with your best
| "Chaucer accent" it feels like slipping on a pair of
| glasses: you immediately "get" stuff that you'd have
| thought was impenetrable just looking at the page.
|
| Source: my medieval lit classes, with a teacher who was
| really good.
| asabil wrote:
| Yes Arabic from 1000 years ago is very much understandable
| today[1].
|
| [1] https://fluentarabic.net/arabic-unchanged-1000-years/
| Bayart wrote:
| The article doesn't expound on it, but it very much depends
| on what _Arabic_ means to you. Depending on the answer, it
| 's really a dozen different languages. I know people who
| only speak their own _darija_ and classical literature is
| utterly obscure to them.
| asabil wrote:
| Sorry to disagree, but no, they are not dozens of
| different languages. The challenge with Arabic is that it
| has a rather large vocabulary, and different regions use
| slightly different vocabularies.
|
| That being said, Darija, or rather North African Arabic
| is a messy mix of Arabic and Tamazight. Which can be
| difficult for Middle East Arabic speakers to understand.
|
| For reference, I speak Darija and understand both
| classical and modern Arabic. It would take me a few days
| to adapt my speech to other regional variations of
| arabic.
| Bayart wrote:
| What's your prior exposure to Classical and Standard
| Arabic ? The people I'm thinking about only have darija
| exposure without any formal education in Arabic and
| little exposure to pan-Arabic media.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| A lot of that is just that English along with much of western
| vernacular wasn't given standardized spelling until fairly
| recently, as most of the important writing was done in Latin.
|
| If you get past the weird spelling it's still fairly
| understandable.
|
| Exception being maybe stuff like Shakespeare, but a huge part
| of what makes that inaccessible is that his writing is full
| of references to current events, double entendres, and
| various 17th century memes. It's a bit like showing South
| Park's world of warcraft episode to someone from the 2400s.
| graemep wrote:
| Shakespeare is sufficiently close to contemporary English
| that audiences will watch and enjoy his plays. I have seen
| plenty of kids and audiences in different countries enjoy
| them.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| It isn't that it isn't enjoyable, but it just isn't
| enjoyable in the same way. How often do you view the
| jokes in shakepear's work as raunchy or sexual? Do you
| think younger teens get the jokes? Do you think anyone
| explains it to them?
|
| It is more akin to watching television from a different
| culture. I am American, live in Norway, with my Norwegian
| spouse. We wind up watching British television from time
| to time. We find the jokes funny, but we both realize
| that we are missing references to people and places - but
| understand the gist of the jokes.
|
| The difference between shakespear and modern times is
| even larger - you don't always know they are jokes
| because you don't realize they are referencing anything.
| Still enjoyable, but a different story without as much
| comedy.
| shagie wrote:
| > It isn't that it isn't enjoyable, but it just isn't
| enjoyable in the same way. How often do you view the
| jokes in shakepear's work as raunchy or sexual? Do you
| think younger teens get the jokes? Do you think anyone
| explains it to them?
|
| Yes... my own recounting of freshman high school English
| (it was the late 80s)
| https://everything2.com/node/1207826
| hnfong wrote:
| You had a great teacher. I learned something today :P
|
| But I think that affirms the GP's point. The jokes needed
| explanation, which is what you'd expect when the audience
| is from a different culture and don't understand them
| natively.
| shagie wrote:
| My apologies if I didn't make that clear - my "yes" was
| to the question "Do you think anyone explains it to
| them?"
|
| And yep, she was a very good English teacher. It was a
| more fun class than the other English classes I had
| through the years. Composition was a pain, but that the
| teacher was a stickler for _everything_ it helped with my
| writing and communication skills today. English lit from
| Beowulf to Pope was a slog. Ancient was ok (mostly
| Ancient Greek which got into more philosophy rather than
| word choice because it was a translation). Modern
| literature was only enjoyable because of Thoreau - I
| think that was also where I read Waiting for Godot and
| Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead ... the other plays
| weren 't as memorable.
|
| Aside on that - read The Necklace (in English) in one of
| those classes... I'm fairly sure that was senior year. In
| college I took French to finish out my foreign language
| requirement and the final exam was reading comprehension
| for _La Parure_ in French. I knew the story and so was
| able to quickly skim for vocabulary rather than needing
| to read every page.
|
| All in all, looking back it was good, but as with most
| school classes, they weren't classes that I _enjoyed_
| going to at the time.
| graemep wrote:
| Sexual and and current affairs references are the hardest
| to get - euphemisms change, for example In spite of this
| I do get a lot. Some are pretty obvious ("your tongue in
| my tail", for example) I am sure I miss many. Some
| productions try harder to make things obvious than
| others. Then there is all the stuff you do get so the
| comedies are still pretty funny overall.
|
| I think Your TV analogy is probably pretty accurate. Kids
| also do not get a lot of sexual references in TV comedy
| too!
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Also, they're plays, not books. I think much of their
| reputation for difficulty comes from generations of
| English teachers making students study them like books
| when they're meant to be acted on a stage. While it's
| still poetry, it's much easier for laypeople to
| understand when conveyed through acting.
| simonklitj wrote:
| Nah, you've got to go to Chaucer to get the really hard to
| parse but still understandable stuff.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Or reading Hitchhiker's Guide or Discworld as a non-Brit or
| non-English speaker.
| jkestner wrote:
| > A lot of that is just that English along with much of
| western vernacular wasn't given standardized spelling until
| fairly recently
|
| As many of us learned recently from this great article:
| https://www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-back-in-
| time-u...
| xrd wrote:
| I just love the sounds in sentence "...Arabization of Dongola in
| the Funj period."
|
| Dongola in the Funj period sounds like the place to be!
| ameminator wrote:
| Uh, probably it would have been a place to be avoided for a
| non-Arab
| nwhnwh wrote:
| Why?
| sach1 wrote:
| because then your dongola would be all Arabized!
| canadiantim wrote:
| Sounds Funj!
| philomath_mn wrote:
| Reminds me of this quote from Tonya Riley's _The Staff
| Engineer's Path_:
|
| > In The Art of Travel (Vintage), Alain de Botton talks about
| the frustration of learning new information that doesn't
| connect to anything you already know--like the sorts of facts
| you might pick up while visiting a historic building in a
| foreign land. He writes about visiting Madrid's Iglesia de San
| Francisco el Grande and learning that "the sixteenth-century
| stalls in the sacristy and chapter house come from the Cartuja
| de El Paular, the Carthusian monastery near Segovia." Without a
| connection back to something he was already familiar with, the
| description couldn't spark his excitement or curiosity. The new
| facts, he wrote, were "as useless and fugitive as necklace
| beads without a connecting chain."
| goodmythical wrote:
| That's kind of weird, isn't it?
|
| Like, presumably you'd know something of monastaries,
| materials, manufacturing...
|
| ""the sixteenth-century stalls in the sacristy and chapter
| house come from the Cartuja de El Paular, the Carthusian
| monastery near Segovia." "
|
| tells me that 500 years ago, the church reused either entire
| stalls or perhaps materials from another presumably older
| church that's near Segovia. I'd infer that there must have
| been some importance to both the intitial act and the
| preservation of the fact. Probably due to religious orders
| preferring lineage and continuity.
|
| Without knowing anything at all about either facility, the
| countries involved, or really just anything at all, I can
| still tell that we're observing the heritage of traditions
| and know enough to ask after details of how this facility
| relates to the one near Segovia.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| And yet still, while you remain mildly puzzled as you
| surmise the above, someone more familiar with the area and
| history standing right beside you will perceive the same
| sentence with a completely different emotional reaction.
|
| That gap - knowing this is probably fundamentally deeper
| when perceived by someone else - is what the author is
| getting at. He can feel that's missing for him. Even if
| he's not completely left devoid of all comprehension of the
| passage.
| coldtea wrote:
| Funj times!
| romanhn wrote:
| I did not expect the recovered order that confirmed the existence
| of a (semi-)legendary Nubian king to basically be "Dear X, when
| you get here, please take some sheep from Y in exchange for some
| cotton cloths. Kthxbye! -King Qashqash".
| nwhnwh wrote:
| Dots?
| coin wrote:
| Please don't edit the title
| syncsys87 wrote:
| Great find. This is the kind of content that makes HN worthwhile.
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