The fall of Seleucids and the Raise of Parthia - Nikolaus Overtoom's dissertation

 Salvete Omnes,

I enjoy reading, studying and drawing about the ancient Parthia and their history in the context of the  equestrian history of Eurasia - so a short entry today

  - the entire dissertation of dr Nikolaus Overtoom is available on the LSU website - Challenging Roman Domination: The End of Hellenistic Rule and the Rise of the Parthian State from the Third to the First Centuries BCE (2016)

You could also listen to several Parthian history presentations by dr Overtoom on Yt eg the Lecture on   Parthia,.  On the Parthian Empire.

enjoy 

Enjoy

Pinterest and my Parthian sketches

 Salvete Omnes,

I was surfing for iconography of the ancient nomads and to my astonishment  I encountered these two images on Pinterest

one -

two -

the whole description and changes made to both of my sketches are ridiculous and atrocious 
I had never given any permission to the person who took them for their own design and purpose. 
..

in 2016 I published my two Parthian  sketches on this blog

The sketches are attached above

..simple cases of  intellectual theft  and plagiarism 

Note, I have no issue with people taking my sketches from my blog and 'hanging' them up in the Pinterest galleries. But this type of  'taking' is odious and maliciously evil. 

Valete

Huntsman or hunter from Palmyra

 Salvete Omnes,

let us canter to Academia platform and Palmyra of the Parthian, Sassanian & Roman empires world. 

more than 2000 years ago camel and horse-riding Palmyrene traders with their caravans traversed the ocean of sand and rock deserts and dry steppes of eastern Syria and Arabian Peninsula -

The Archaeological Museum at Palmyra (Tadmor)  contains this stone relief showing a leopard hunt from horseback - a horse archer is shooting his arrows, carried in a saddle strapped gorytus, at the snarling feline.

Prof. Michal Gawlikowski uploaded his article titled Hunter (published in 2009) on this hunter from Palmyra - it can be had from academia.-  you can read it there or download it too.
 more sculptures showing trousers and leggings in the ancient Palmyrene art

 more about the ancient camel riders from the Syrian desert in the future, God willing.

ps

 

 some Arabic proverbs about camels - here

Valete

NG list of looted, damaged and destroyed sites in the Middle East

Salve,
a sad list here - the National Geographic published a tentative list of the damaged, looted and destroyed
I always wonder if without the invasion of Iraq and the Arab Spring/Syrian Civil War these places would have survived and been preserved like before the war.

The ancient city of Palmyra tops the list, I wrote about the site and dr Khaled Asaad,the archaeologist who died, AD 2015, defending the integrity of this place on my blog in the past since they recaptured the town and site from the Syrian government troops, and recently they lost it again to ISIS.
there are many places on this list:
Dura Europos - wrote about the horsemen from this ancient fortress.
St. Elian Monastery - desecrated and destroyed , also another monastery Mar Behnam fell prey to the barbarians - in short the ISIS is waging a very successful war against the oldest Christian communities in the world ( aside from Turkish Anatolia and Armenia).
Apamea - in photos from 2015,
Khorsabad
Hatra - very important in the Parthian and pre-Islamic Arabia
Niniveh et al
eh... time of the barbarians - but we should not overlook that looting is done for profit, to be passed to some clients, and some of these objects might be eventually sold to our own Western universities, museums and collectors.
Interesting article here 

I do have hope -  the new American leadership,(the former being a total failure, including the gender politics played within the Armed Forces and allowing the Putin's  Russia annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine) - I am thus optimistic especially since the new team includes the new secretary of defense, James Mattis  (I wonder if he is of Polish descent - from the immigrants arriving in the late XIX century) - look at his reading list for the Marine Corps from 2007.

Sun Tzu wrote -  "Know the enemy, know yourself, and victory is never in doubt, not in a hundred battles," (The Art of War.")
ps
some of my quick watercolor sketches on the Parthian (Tang-e-Sarvak) and Hatrene theme of the armored warriors.

a little forced break ...

Salve,
I have been moving, or rather I have moved long distance and been sort of suspended in my move, therefore should resume regular blogging in November, or so I do hope.

I should be receiving shortly a new, for me at least, book by prof. Marek J. Olbrycht on the history of Parthian state during the turmoil of the  I century BC.

Also, Long Riders Guild gave a green light for a new Polish translation of Aime Tschiffely's book on his historic ride across South and North America. I am to receive this book and should be an interesting reading, since I have not read the first translation by Mieczyslaw Jaroslawski from the 1935 - info here.

So my blogging will have continue irregular until mid November.

 a little imagery - Juliusz Kossak's illustration showing the XIX century horse market in Krakow.

Enjoy the colorful Fall if you can