The Ancient World : Africa & Asia
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Sumer and the Sea
Deltas, Shoreline, and Urban Water Management in 3rd Millennium Mesopotamia. Proceedings of the 1st ARWA International Research Workshop (Rome, 2–4 June 2021)
From the Chalcolithic onwards the culture and society of Sumer flourished along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers with communities living close to the ancient shoreline in an environment that was closely linked to the exploitation of fluvial systems the sea and the unique marshlands of the area. This volume gathers together research first presented as part of a workshop entitled Sumer and the Sea: Deltas Shoreline and Urban Water Management in 3rd Millennium Mesopotamia to explore the interaction between Sumerians and their water-dominated environment. The chapters gathered here offer updates on methodologies and the most recent research from the field to provide new understanding and fresh insights into how the Sumerians adapted to the world in which they lived.
Clashing Religions in Ancient Egypt
Exploring Different Layers of Religious Beliefs
What did ‘religion’ mean for the Ancient Egyptians? Was the state involved in acting as a unifying and founding force for Egyptian religion or can we still identify some clashes between different religious practices? To what extent did different rituals practices and beliefs intersect and merge across time and space? Such questions have long preoccupied scholars working in the field but they have often only been considered through the lens of official ‘centralized’ texts. Yet increasingly there is an acknowledgement that such texts require calibration from archaeological data in order to offer a more nuanced understanding of how people must have lived and worshipped.
The chapters gathered in the volume aim to offer a thorough exploration of Egyptian cultural and religious beliefs and to explore how these impacted on other areas of daily life. Contributors explore the connection between religion and central power the paradigms around burial and access to the afterlife the interconnections between religion demonology magic and medicine and the impact of multicultural interaction on the religious landscape. What emerges from this discussion is an understanding that the only truly identifiable clash is that between modern Eurocentric perspectives and the views of the ancient Egyptians themselves.
Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire, Part 2: Ptolemy V through Cleopatra VII
Volume 1: Historical Introduction, Volume 2: Catalogue of Precious-Metal Coins, Volume 3: Catalogue of Bronze Coins
Thirty years in the making Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire Part II by Catharine C. Lorber is the long-anticipated second half of the Coins of the Ptolemaic Empire (CPE) project featuring the coins struck by Ptolemy V–Cleopatra VII. As with Part 1 Lorber essentially rewrites the sections on these rulers in J. N. Svoronos’ classic but now much out-of-date Ta Nomismata tou Kratous ton Ptolemaion (1904). The body of coinage catalogued by Svoronos is enlarged by hundreds of additional emissions in precious metal and bronze recorded from subsequent scholarship from hoards from commercial sources and from private collections. Lorber’s attributions dates and interpretations rest on numismatic research conducted after Svoronos or on the latest archaeological and hoard information. She also provides extensive historical and numismatic introductions that give the coins deeper context and meaning.
Hathor la Menit dans les temples de Dendara et d’Edfou
Une étude philologique, iconographique et sémiologique
Cette recherche se positionne dans la continuité d’une première étude portant sur le collier-menit dans les temples ptolémaïques et publiée dans la collection Monographies Reine Élisabeth. Ce collier qui est un des objets sacrés d’Hathor porte également le nom de l’entité divine du même nom forme d’Hathor de Dendara et d’Edfou dont cette étude fait l’objet. En tant que forme d’Hathor quels sont les termes les parures les actions la gestuelle qui pouvaient la différencier de la grande Hathor si toutefois cela est envisageable ces deux divinités étant intimement associées ?
Une partie de cette recherche porte sur l’étude de la chapelle du collier-menit. Les textes et les épithètes de la déesse ont été ici analysés d’un point de vue stylistique afin d’essayer de comprendre la démarche des hiérogrammates et la raison d’être d’une telle chapelle dédiée à Hathor la Menit sachant que pour les deux autres formes secondaires d’Hathor : « Hathor-chef-du-grand-siège » et « Hathor-uraeus » il n’en existe point.
Hathor la Menit est la récipiendaire de nombreuses offrandes qui ont été étudiées et contextualisées afin de comprendre son implication dans chacune de ces scènes et de cerner au mieux la personnalité de cette déesse. Son étude dans le temple d’Edfou s’imposait afin de comprendre comment elle était perçue dans ce temple apollonopolitain.
Resourcescape and Human Impact in Southwest Asia
Landscape archaeology has in recent years expanded as a discipline to include various aspects of human-environment interactions in the past. In line with this trend this volume offers a comprehensive perspective on three topics: theoretical and textual approaches to landscape which provides an important framework for interdisciplinary research; the use of land and resources which while a popular topic in Southwest Asian archaeology remains relatively understudied in connection to ancient technologies; and human impact on the highlands. The contributions gathered in this volume cover topics as diverse as agricultural practices metallurgy trade and environmental research and draw together evidence from both textual and material evidence to shed light on different places and periods from the Bronze Age through to the Roman era. Together these varied case studies offer new insights into how different methods can be utilized to assess unique patterns in human-environment interactions in Southwest Asia.
Jerash, the Decapolis, and the Earthquake of ad 749
The Fallout of a Disaster
Gerasa/Jerash and the Decapolis are located along the seismically active area of the Dead Sea Rift a point where four tectonic plates meet to create the 110 km-long fault known as the Dead Sea Transform. It was activity along this fault that led in ad 749 to a famously devastating earthquake in the region. Measuring at least 7.0 on the Richter scale this quake not only had a profound physical impact on the Decapolis Galilee Caesarea and Jerusalem causing widespread destruction and reshaping urban landscapes but also led to a clear shift in socio-economic dynamics through a combination of economic decline and population displacement. It thus stands as a clear watershed moment in Late Antiquity. In its aftermath some cities struggled to regain prominence while others declined and were abandoned. Taking the ad 749 earthquake as its starting point this volume aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the quake’s effects questioning its role as a sole watershed moment and exploring the various other factors at play that influenced urban change. The contributions gathered here which clearly recognize earthquakes as non-human actors in this process clearly highlight the diverse impacts that this seismic event had on the city life in the southern Levant and the fallout in the decades that followed.
Rituals, Memory, and Societal Dynamics: Contributions to Social Archaeology
A Collection of Essays in Memory of Sharon Zuckerman
Thanks largely to the introduction of new methods of recovery and analysis archaeology is increasingly treated as a science. Yet it should continue to ask questions that are founded in the humanities. This is especially true of social archaeology which forms the core of this volume. Being based on the notion that ‘the social’ permeates all areas of life the chapters gathered here give priority to archaeological data and contexts which in turn form the prerequisite for analyzing how at particular times and places people negotiated or reaffirmed the society around them. Case studies from the Levant and the Eastern Mediterranean sit alongside selected comparative cases from other parts of the world and assess issues such as the development of cultural characteristics of societies societal continuity and collapse religious beliefs and rituals and the role of social memory as well as interactions within and between societies. The volume is dedicated to the memory of our colleague and friend Dr. Sharon Zuckerman who embraced the quest for ‘the social’ throughout her career.
Dura-Europos: Past, Present, Future
This volume brings together an international and interdisciplinary host of scholars to reflect on the complicated legacies of exploration at the archaeological site of Dura-Europos situated on the western bank of the Euphrates River near modern Salihiyeh (Syria). A chance discovery after World War I kicked off a series of excavations that would span the next century and whose finds are today housed in collections worldwide including the Yale University Art Gallery the Louvre and the National Museum in Damascus. Dura-Europos exemplifies a multiethnic frontier town at the crossroads of major trade routes. Its textual remains and remarkably-preserved Christian Jewish and polytheist religious sanctuaries provide key resources for the study of antiquity and attest to the cross-cultural interconnectivity that was demonstrably central to the ancient world but which has been too often obscured by Eurocentric historiographic traditions and siloed disciplinary divisions.
Foreign-run large-scale archaeological campaigns of the early twentieth century like those at Dura-Europos have created narratives of power and privilege that often exclude local communities. The significance of these imbalances is entangled with the destruction the site has experienced since the 2011 outbreak of conflict in Syria. As a step toward making knowledge descendant of early excavations more accessible this volume includes Arabic summaries of each paper following up on the simultaneous Arabic interpretation provided at the 2022 hybrid conference whose proceedings form the core of this publication. The papers address topics connected to essential themes in relation to Dura-Europos: long-distance trade relations and cross-border interactions in antiquity including the exchange of technologies people and materials; Christianity Judaism and other religious practices and their relations to one another; contemporary trafficking of looted artifacts; cultural heritage and the Islamic State; and the evolving role of museum collections technologies and archival materials for research.
Glass Finds from the Peristyle Building
Alexander the Great and the Campaign of Gaugamela
New Research on Topography and Chronology IAMNI 1 (Italian Archaeological Mission to Northern Iraq)
The Battle of Gaugamela in which Alexander the Great’s army faced the Persian army of King Darius III in 331 bce remains a famous date in history the last battle that led to Alexander’s conquest of the Achaemenid Empire. However the topography and chronology of the campaign have up to now remained little studied. Taking these two elements as its starting point this volume draws both on the latest archaeological research in the region and on recent advances in science (in particular GIS) to offer a completely new reconstruction of the Gaugamela campaign arguing for a much shorter campaign than has hitherto been understood. By turning the spotlight for the first time onto the geographical and topographical context of the campaign the author here also provides a new understanding of both the scale of Alexander’s military achievement and the long-term effects of the military reforms introduced by his father Philip II.
The Pal.M.A.I.S. Syro-Italian Joint Project
Selected Essays on the Southwest Quarter and the Peristyle Building of Palmyra in Memory of Prof. Maria Teresa Grassi
The Pal.M.A.I.S. Syro-Italian joint project at Palmyra established in 2007 aimed to shed light on private housing in the Roman East. Through excavations in Palmyra’s southwest quarter the remains of a residential complex the ‘Peristyle Building’ were uncovered; this site was built in the Roman period but was inhabited up to the eighth century ad.
This volume dedicated to Prof. Maria Teresa Grassi (Università degli Studi di Milano) who co-directed the project together with Dr Waleed al-As‘ad (Museum of Palmyra) presents selected studies stemming from the Pal.M.A.I.S. project. It draws together contributions dedicated to the topography of the southwest quarter the excavation of the Peristyle Building and selected classes of material. Through detailed analysis and the presentation of fresh data this volume sheds new light on a relatively unexplored sector of a threatened UNESCO World Heritage site.