Esus in Algeria (fighting the French, I'm sure)

[chronarchy]

Ladies and gentlemen:

I mentioned that I found an inscription relating to Esus recently. Well, PICTURES!

They're on my "About Esus" page that I've built (Quick Link to the spot on the page).

If you just want to look at the pictures I found, and don't care about what I think about them, then they're here:

Pic 1
Pic 2
Pic 3What really catches my

Comments

[chronarchy]

At Right, I've put a pic detailing nesting and migrating areas for cranes. I was wondering, though, if perhaps the word "crane" didn't get transferred with the myth, if instead the word used was just, "three birds"?

I can't make an argument that the idea of "cranes" is possibly foreign to the local area, as there are migratory spots near to the spot in Algeria. But it is possible that the myth, obscure as it is, was just poorly transferred.

[singingwren]

True true, who knows. I was going to ask you if Cranes lived in that area, but then it occurred to me that was irrelevant if the people who put it up had travelled from afar. Then again, there is the whole question of if the birds symbolize things or if they are just birds. Or even ornamental, though the cranes in the Esus reliefs are decidedly part of the story.

Vaguely similar to the dilemma of Cernunnos and his hound.

[singingwren]

Hmm, and picture 2 intrigues me. I can't stop looking at it. There's something about it. The tree is so simplistic compared to the bird, which is surprisingly detailed... and there's also odd lines like cracks in the tree, which look carved rather than accidental. The tree looks like it was split by lightning to me. Probably just me getting all artistic and thinking about how I'D portray such a thing, but who knows.

What does the the words on the reliefs translate into? And the hand-drawn pictures, are those imaginative recreations or sketches of reliefs that were lost?

I am intrigued by the bird 'lifting' the anchor.

[chronarchy]

1 translates, apparently, to "In Memory of Amanda", but it's not discussed in this article. I'll have to get ahold of the CIL to find commentary on this picture.

Re: #2:

No 224
Fragment d'une plaque de marbre brisée partout. L : 10 cm , H : 15 cm. Propriété Hanafi

Sur la partie supérieure de la plaque, un arbre ; au pied de l'arbre à droite, une ancre et à mi hauteur à gauche, un oiseau. Il existe à Cherchel trois plaques ou fragments de plaque présentant ces symbols (C.I.L. VIII 21421 ; gaukler (P.), Musée de Cherchel, Paris, 1895, p. 36 ; Leschi (L.), Découvertes archéologiques et épigraphiques à Cherchel, B.A.C., 1932-1933, p. 312-313 = Etudes d'épigraphie, d'archéologie et d'histoire africaine Paris, 1957, No 4, p. 395-396).
---]ACAP//M[---
---
J'ai cru utile de rassembler en une figure les quatre plaques présentant ces symboles, d'autant plus que l'oiseau qui vole au-dessus de l'arbre n'a pas été reproduit sur le croquis illustrant la publication d'une nouvelle plaque par L. Leschi (add., cf. infra no 247, p. 298)
Now, isn't that clearer? :)

basically, the inscription on 2 is untranslatable.

[chronarchy]

There, now it's correctly transcribed.

[singingwren]

Thanks. Ash and dictionary.com helped me translate; the translation is unhelpful. Just describes the bird and anchor and crap. Mentions he thought it useful to put them together and try to re-sketch them for a publication, but the bird was not reproduced in one of them, I guess.

[chronarchy]

Yes, the bird appears to have been left out of number 4.

Would you like me to seek out the CIL reference?

:)

[singingwren]

Totally. Let's not let the fact that I don't know what a CIL reference is stand in my way.

*blazes with scholarly glory*

Re: :)

[chronarchy]

CIL = Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum