Argon?
Harris, p. 17:
I'm sure that nobody cares but me, but there are two mistakes in this sentence.
1. The ruler in question was Sargon, not "Argon" -- actually Sharrukin in the original Akkadian (I believe that "Sargon" is a Hellenization).
2. His empire was not the Babylonian Empire -- which would of course be ruled from Babylon -- but the Akkadian Empire, which was fairly short-lived. The Babylonian Empire, the empire of Hammurabi, was a successor state.
"Argon" could be a typo, or a spellcheck or copyediting error, but there's no ready excuse for the latter. It's a fairly minor point, but this is supposed to be a history, and obvious mistakes like this make me wonder what's wrong with the history of subjects which I don't know. There's a related point on Babylonian history in Manguel which I plan to discuss later.
About 2250 B.C., a Semitic leader, Argon I, united the whole [Tigris-Euphrates] valley into the old Babylonian Empire and built a powerful state that extended from the Persian Gulf to the Meditteranean.
I'm sure that nobody cares but me, but there are two mistakes in this sentence.
1. The ruler in question was Sargon, not "Argon" -- actually Sharrukin in the original Akkadian (I believe that "Sargon" is a Hellenization).
2. His empire was not the Babylonian Empire -- which would of course be ruled from Babylon -- but the Akkadian Empire, which was fairly short-lived. The Babylonian Empire, the empire of Hammurabi, was a successor state.
"Argon" could be a typo, or a spellcheck or copyediting error, but there's no ready excuse for the latter. It's a fairly minor point, but this is supposed to be a history, and obvious mistakes like this make me wonder what's wrong with the history of subjects which I don't know. There's a related point on Babylonian history in Manguel which I plan to discuss later.
posted by Mac | 9:28 AM
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