Xenophon Ten Thousand - Week 5

[CianColgan]

Progress Report Little bit of a rough week for progress, not going to lie. I've run into tons of problems with the mapping that I think would be best to talk through it in person in the meeting, but I'll outline them down below.

• Fixed some inaccuracies with Books 3 and 4 data

• Finished a first draft mapping of Book 3

• Began a first draft mapping of Book 4

  • Realized there were some deep-rooted, cannot-be-ignored errors with the projection system, measurements, and all of the previous work that had cumulated, so much so that I thought it'd be better to just restart mapping from a concrete starting point

• Started and finished a second draft of the 2nd half of Book 2 starting from Opis (2.4.25)

• Started and almost finished a second draft of all of Book 3

  • In the final maybe 1/8th of the text, there are suddenly an abundance of measurements that push the boundaries of what geography allows without contradicting the text, so much so that I'm nervous about how to move on

• Updated the mapping commentary document in the Xenophon folder with the remaining first draft and all current second draft comments. They are delineated and separated as necessary.

• If you know of any road data for the Achaemenid Empire/Babylon/Eastern Anatolia c. 400 BCE, that would be immensely helpful in plotting a course. The AWMC repo only has data from the Barrington Atlas, which does not cover this region. Otherwise, I'll do my best to follow geographicregions and mountain passes, and occasionally some modern roads (I compared the AWMC's road data with modern roads, and many of them coincide nearly 1:1, so I'd bet a lot of modern roads are built on ancient ones).

Basically, my biggest problem is this back section of Book 3:

• For context, he is on the east bank of the Tigris River, just leaving Mespila (modern day Nimrud), near the modern day border junction of Syria, Iraq, and Turkey.
  • I do not think at any point he crosses the Tigris, because the entire plot of Book 3 and the first half of Book 4 is that they're trying to find a spot to cross.
  • However, he is trying to go a distance of about 200km (by the best scholarly estimations of ancient measurements, which are laid out in the mapping commentary doc.) in a space that geographically cannot support more than ~130km at shortest route
  • There's some (thought really not much, and nothing recent) scholarly work I found in other confusing areas of the Anabasis, but nothing for guidance here.
• I'm having trouble ignoring it to revise later because there isn't a concrete starting point that I can use to continue mapping in Book 4; all of it is cumulative from where he ends book 3, including the errors. So I'm just of stuck, and I want to hear your thoughts before I commit to anything

Additionally, ignore the ArcGIS group I mentioned in the last progress report. The data is out of date with my current work, yet I can't share my current work because ArcGIS Online is an extreme and unfailing pain obstacle in displaying my work with the proper projections, measurements, etc. I'll do my best to share some screenshots with what I'm talking about, or failing that share another layer with some hefty disclaimers.

[ChiaraPalladino]

@CianColgan okay, some things we definitely need to talk about in meeting. Some others:

• Available road data: I do not personally know about any, but I posted a message in an Ancient World GIS group to see if anyone can help us. We are at the stage of the project where a collaboration may be nice.
• Current sharing status - no worries. I'll have a look during our meeting. Would it help to share the work from data exports? I am not familiar with ArcGIS sharing mechanisms, but I can (re)-install it on a virtual machine if it helps.
• More generally about the distances in Book 4: we'll need to talk about this, but I think we'll end up making some difficult choices. Remember that you are trying to reconcile an unreliable personal account with a map, and that is bound to some issues. It is a very important and complicated process that will give you plenty to write about...

[CianColgan]

Thank you, that's all very much appreciated. This section is particularly unreliable, even for Xenophon, but I've been doing as deep of cross-references as I am able to, and regardless keeping detailed notes so we have it all on the record.

• For sharing: I could send you (file is 669,599KB, so might need to file share) a zipped folder of the entire project file, and that way if you have ArcGIS you could import it and it'd have everything interactable.
• Normally, ArcGIS work can be shared via ArcGIS Online, but for some reason it's been an absolute pain. I'm using a projected coordinate system of Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and surrounding regions that protects distances from distortion so that all of my measurements are as accurate as possible, and this is likely the cause of the issue. I'm hesitant to convert it right now though into a different projection system because it would seriously distort the measurements and figures, and that doesn't seem as helpful for a work in progress report.