importan archeological discovery for greek macedonia

[mayan king]

below is a thread from another forum....I'delike to thank that person for such a great discovery...I mean seriously...did anyone doubt that ancient macedonia wasnt hellenic?


"Until now we had no text in Macedonian. We knew many personal names and several words. Most words were common with those of various Greek dialects and some appeared exclusively Macedonian. From those latter words, most were or appeared to be Greek and some were clearly not.
Those who supported that the Macedonians were not Greek claimed the non-Greek words were Macedonian rather than words borrowed from Thracian and Illyrian neighbours. Also that the Greek words in Macedonian were borrowed and that Greek was a kind of "kultursprache" of the Macedonians. That their names were Greek because it was "fashionable" to have Greek names and that the upper classes were Hellenised but the ordinary Macedonians did not speak Greek.

In a humble tomb of an ordinary Macedonian in Pella a very significant piece of evidence has been found. A led strip with writing on it. Led strips of this kind, rolled up, were common at the time and many have been found at Dodona. The punters of the Oracle wrote their questions on them and awaited the answer from the priests. The text from this tablet is ready for publication and will cause a stir. It proves beyond doubt the language of the Macedonians was Greek. Not the "koine" or "common" Greek that they used in their dealings with other Greeks but a Dorian dialect.





I don't have the full translation but I can easily make out in the first line the words TO TELOS KAI TON GAMON KATAGRAFW and in the second line KAI XHRAN (in Attic it would have been XHRWN) KAI PARTHENWN MALISTA DE THETIMA (female name with characteristic Macedonian Doric ending)."



http://abnet.agrino.org/htmls/D/D009.html


fyrom ..eat your heart out 8)



p.s.: There has been lots of archeological discoveries the past 2 months that took place in greece as well as in the balkans. These recent discoveries will be revealed next year or so. Greece is waiting for the right moment.

[Jona Lendering]

The text from this tablet is ready for publication and will cause a stir. It proves beyond doubt the language of the Macedonians was Greek.

I think that most scholars have already agreed on that. Some think that ancient Macedonian was a language very close to Greek, others say that it was a remarkable dialect, but that's a matter of semantics.

fyrom ..eat your heart out

Perhaps it is better to keep comments like these out of your message, even as a joke. You are right, a joke is possible and we are grown up people, but it is better to resist the temptation.

What I always think is remarkable is the element of shadow-boxing in this debate. The current political issue is (or was) control of the port of Thessalonica. Two nations have claims on it (or believe they have); both have used ancient history as an instrument for modern politics. I think that this is strange. I can not imagine that people from modern Belgium will ever think of adding the south of the Netherlands to their country, because it used to be part of Belgica and used to share the same pre-Germanic language.

All this being said: I am looking forward to read more about this.

[mayan king]

The current political issue is (or was) control of the port of Thessalonica. Two nations have claims on it (or believe they have);

both have used ancient history as an instrument for modern politics

.

not true...only since the creation of fyrom has there been 2

I am looking forward to read more about this.

great!!

[mayan king]

Really?

How exactly do you explain, then, the fact Macedonians spoke the Doric dialect of the Greek language, just like Spartans? Or the fact that both Macedonians and Macedonian regions had Greek names. That Macedonians participated on the ancient Olympics, which, as any first-year classicist knows, were only held among Greeks. The fact Macedonians worshipped the Greek pantheon and followed the Greek customs, and most importantly, the fact Macedonians themselves, as well as the rest of the Greeks (and Persians, and Romans, and Hebrew), considered Macedonia to be part of the Greek civilisation.

On the language of the Macedonians the Roman writer Titus Livius says (from "The Foundation of the City", Paragraph 31)
quote:

The Aitolians, the Akarnanians, the Macedonians, men of the same language, are united or disunited by trivial causes that arise from time to time; with aliens, with barbarians, all Greeks wage and will wage eternal war; for they are enemies by the will of nature, which is eternal, and not from reasons that change from day to day.



Want more?

How about what ancient historians had to say about the ethnicity of Macedonians?

Herodotus confirms their Greek origins on numerous passages, one of which I will quote herein.
quote:


Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know and will prove it in the later part of my history. That they are so has been already adjudged by those who manage the Pan-Hellenic contest at Olympia.



And it was certainly not Philip alone, as you purport, among Macedonians that considered himself a Greek. They all did. His father, Alexander the first, had this to say on the origins of Macedonians, as recorded in Herodotus's history (Book 9, paragraph 45.2)
quote:

... I myself am by ancient descent a Greek, and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery ...



Arrian, another ancient historian, records Alexander the Great as having spoken thusly to the king of Persians (Anabasis of Alexander II,14,4)
quote:

Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury [...]



With regards to Alexander the Great, Arrian also describes the following incident.. After winning an important battle in Asia..
quote:

He [Alexander the Great] sent to Athens three hundred Persian panoplies to be set up to Athena in the acropolis; he ordered this inscription to be attached: Alexander son of Philip and the Hellenes, except the Lacedaemonians, set up these spoils from the barbarians dwelling in Asia (Alexander the Great" 1,16,7)



If Macedonians were of different ethnicity, why on earth wouldn't he make separate mention of them? He only spoke of Greeks, except Lacedaemonians!

More ancient sources, this time about Philip II.. (Diodoros of Sicily 16.93.1)
quote:

Every seat in the theater was taken when Philip appeared wearing a white cloak and by his express orders his bodyguard held away from him and followed only at a distance, since he wanted to show publicly that he was protected by the goodwill of all the Hellenes, and had no need of a guard of spearmen.



Flavious Josephus (11.8.5) we have the following incident where Alexander clearly considers himself a Greek:
quote:

And when the book of Daniel was showed to him (Alexander the Great) wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended



What did the rest of the ancient Greeks think? They considered the Macedonians to be Greek as well. This can be easily proved because the Macedonians were members of all the Greek institutions, such as the Delphic amphictiony:

Pausanias writes in his book "Description of Greece" (10.3.3):

"The Phocians were deprived of their share in the Delphic sanctuary and in the Greek assembly, and their votes were given by the Amphictyons to the Macedonians."

and also in his book "Phokis" (8,2 & 4):

"They say that these were the tribes collected by Amphiktyon himself in the Hellenic Assembly: [...] the Macedonians joined and the entire Phocian race [...] In my day there were thirty members: six from each of Nikopolis, Macedonia and Thessaly [...] "

Isocratis, one of the most impotant orators of ancient Greece says in his speach "To Philip" addressed to King Philip II of Macedonia (Paragaraph 127):

"Therefore, since the others are so lacking in spirit, I think it is opportune for you to head the war against the King; and, while it is only natural for the other descendants of Heracles, and for men who are under the bonds of their polities and laws, to cleave fondly to that state in which they happen to dwell, it is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom, to consider all Greece your fatherland, as did the founder of your race, and to be as ready to brave perils for her sake as for the things about which you are personally most concerned."

Even the Persians considerd Macedonia a part of Greece! The Persian king Mardonius says : (From the Histories of Herodotus Book 7, Paragraph 9.1-2).

"We know the manner of their battle- we know how weak their power is; already have we subdued their children who dwell in our country, the Ionians, Aeolians, and Dorians. I myself have had experience of these men when I marched against them by the orders of thy father; and though I went as far as Macedonia, and came but a little short of reaching Athens itself, yet not a soul ventured to come out against me to battle. [...] Yet the Greeks are accustomed to wage wars, as I learn, and they do it most senselessly in their wrongheadedness and folly [...]. Since they speak the same language, they should end their disputes by means of heralds or messengers, or by any way rather than fighting; if they must make war upon each other, they should each discover where they are in the strongest position and make the attempt there. The Greek custom, then, is not good; and when I marched as far as the land of Macedonia, it had not come into their minds to fight."

Mardonius marched against the Greeks and he "went as far as Macedonia, and came but a little short of reaching Athens itself". Obviously he considers Macedonia a part of Greece!

Last but not least, the perspective of contemporary scholars on the ethnicity of Macedonians..

From "A History of Macedonia"
by Malcom Errington (Philipps-Universitat in Marburg, Germany)
University of California Press, 1993

Page 3
"That the Macedonians and their kings did in fact speak a dialect of Greek and bore Greek names may be regarded nowadays as certain."

From "The tutorial history of Greece, to 323 B.C. : from the earliest times to the death of Demosthenes"
by W. J. Woodhouse (Universiy of Sydney, Australia)
University Tutorial Press, 1904, (reprinted 1944)

Page 216
" This was Macedonia in the strict sense, the land where settled immigrands of Greek stock later to be called Macedonians"

From "The Western Experience"
by Mortimer Chambers (University of California),
Raymond Grew (University of Michigan),
David Herlihy (Harvard University),
Theodore Rabb (Princeton University)
and Isser Woloch (Columbia University)
Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2nd edition , 1997

Page 79
"THE MONARCHS OF MACEDONIA:
Macedonia (or Macedon) was an ancient, somewhat backward kingdom in northen Greece. Its emergence as a Hellenic power was due to a resourceful king, Philip II (359-336), whose career has been unjustly overshadowed by the deeds of his son, Alexander the Great".

And many more. Get thee to a library, and research on your own. I'm sure there are English translations of all the historiography I mentioned. The notion that Macedonians were not Greeks is not considered serious anywhere amongst history scholars today. Caesar might want to have a say in this, too, as I understand he studies the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean..

Macedonians were "not Greek", yet they only knew how to speak and write in the Greek language, and nothing else but the Greek language? Where on earth are their "non-Greek Macedonian" enscriptions and tombs? Why is every piece of written language recovered everywhere in ancient Macedonia Greek?

[lupus]

Well, there are many... "well-meaning" persons in our days, saying (and twisting ancient scripts) that Macedonians WERE NOT a Greek faction!

This is totaly untrue, inaccurated & stupid...

They "establising" their theory on the OTHER Ancient Greek factions' repulsion for the Macedonians (they've called them "barbarians" and such - "Barbarian" werb comes from their perception of "foreign" languages, not DORIC or IONIC, that they sound like... "Bar-bar" much)...

Macedonians WERE Greeks like the rest and present Macedonia (MOST part of the ancient one) is a Greek State's county...

The ONLY problem that these "well-meaning" persons "bracing" their theory, is that Ancient Macedonians were a VERY brash/rough/rusty/countrified folk, mostly cattle/sheep breeders, living mostly on mountains in villages, with no serious culture...
That was BEFORE PHILLIP II (the most GREAT person that Macedonia born!) and his son OF COURSE, Alexander The GREAT (the second GREAT person that Macedonia born!)...

Phillip II "took" his folk from the mountains and made them live in CITIES, in plains! They've start making their own culture, as Macedonia was one of the RICHER nations (with the gold-mines of Chalkidike & Thrace) and Phillip II was able to INVITE MANY philosophers/poets/scientists/etc. to live in Macedonia and "UPGRATE" the Macedonia's culture...

Macedonic Greek language (yes, they spoken GREEKS!), was a Greek language with many different dialect elements, LIKE ALL GREEK factions had - and STILL HAVING in modern Greece!... The rest Greeks were spoken IONIC dialect (after the Athenians' domination in Greece's era) and OF COURSE there was the DORIC dialect, spoken from DORIC Greek factions, like Spartans for example (Macedonic dialect "looked" like DORIC, had DORIC elements, but ALSO "macedonic" local elements)...

Also... take note that ALL GREEKS (moderns too!), don't like "new-comers" on their shoulders. Macedonia was the "new-born" order/power and they were... bumpkins, for Zeus' shake!!!

That's why the rest Greeks didn't like them much...

...

This discription looking authentic, though... "Hellenistic" to me, studing the shapes/look of some letters...

Regards...

[Anonymous]

Khaire, Mayan King.

You have not posted your real name, as is customary.

Netzahualcoyotl

[mayan king]

sure ...where do i post my name?.....in my signature?

[Comerus Gallus]

sure ...where do i post my name?.....in my signature?

Netzahualcoyotl


UUUh! that is a cool Name & a real Indian American one! 8)

I had meet one fela with long hair of spanish speaking but true indian!

Yes Mayan King on your signature

[Praefectusclassis]

Yes please!