Pretty accurate 😅

Unfortunately no 🥲

Agreed! No ram use so far.

Gonna need a lot of ancient magic!! Must have stuffed in a few mast step coins and lead curse tablets in between the deck planks. Maybe sacrificed a few sacred chickens. Even added a few little statues of Priapus for extra luck as well

You can buy a trireme…without oars and towers….and it can not engage in battle but still has a ram. So it’s not a trireme 😅

Makes no sense!!

Naval ram looks better on this trireme but adding oars to it costs extra money….huh!?

Yes, a beautiful but very depressing site. I had no idea that “official” excavations and preservation of the site did not start until the 1980s and some artifacts are still being returned to this day. My Chinese colleagues like to remind me that Chinese archaeology is still “young”.

All the translation issues aside it seems that some sort of ramming vessel likely developed in ancient China around the late 500s BCE, but only according to later Eastern Han sources and later Song sources citing Han ones….typical ancient text issues 😅.

Yes! I wrote an intro piece for the SCS blog, idk if it will come out or not. Also working on a paper with my Chinese colleagues, lots of bad interpretations & translation errors from ancient Chinese - modern Chinese - English which is the first problem in understanding these early Chinese vessels.

Exactly! Also it’s in line with the upper wale timers which kinda supports that argument. But I have seen good arguments for and against. In any case, a beautiful piece and I wonder how much of it originally had color? One of the few depictions of a prow castle or ship siege tower as well.

Trying to make it interesting for the students and maybe inspire one or two to study the topics further!

I handle the Greek and Roman sources, my colleague selects the Chinese ones, and we do each part separately and then we compare & reflect together with the class on various “ancient lessons” or “issues” like why ramming?! I’m also learning a great deal about ancient China through this collaboration.

This is my first co-taught course. My colleague specializes in ancient Chinese history and archaeology, while I focus on Greek and Roman studies. We explore broad themes like seafaring and trade in the Roman and Han empires, and warfare in the Warring States period and the Peloponnesian War.

I have! When it was in the Vatican museum a few years ago. I always took the crocodile as a *very* stylistic proembolion (upper ram) like other stag, wolf, etc examples.

The easiest answer is we see the first “rams” in Greece during the mid Archaic period in the style of a boar’s head. However, and some scholars disagree, I believe the earliest rams sometimes referred to as “proto-rams” are seen in the Levant in the early Archaic period.