Ari Juels's Blog

• The Vase That Speaks

  October 15, 2009

  • A so-called “bilingual” Attic vase speaks two visual languages. One side is painted in the older "black-figure" style, the other side with the newer—and for us, more familiar—"red-figure" style. Tetraktys mentions such a vase in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It depicts the Homeric heroes Achilles and Ajax taking a break from slaughtering Trojans to play a board game. ...
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• Double Tetraktys Symbol on the Dollar Bill?

  October 8, 2009

  • There are some who perceive a double Tetraktys in the thirteen stars of the Great Seal of the United States. Here it is, on the reverse side of the dollar bill. Each triangle (my overlay) frames the symbol’s ten points. Detail of the Great Seal on the reverse side of the U.S. dollar bill Given the  absence of this notion from the official annotation of ...
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• A Forgotten Food: Ginger

  October 6, 2009

  • Cultural amnesia is a leitmotif of my novel Tetraktys. Blog posts are ill-suited to breathe life into forgotten cities, religions, and heroes. But they are the perfect place to spotlight bits of lost history under our noses–in the kitchen. In the West today, most people know ginger as a substance vaguely commemorated in the names of sweet beverages and ...
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