This volume explores the various strategies by which appropriate pasts were construed in scholarship, literature, art, and architecture in order to create “national”, regional, or local identities in late medieval and early modern Europe. Because authority was based on lineage, political and territorial claims were underpinned by historical arguments, either true or otherwise. Literature, scholarship, art, and architecture were pivotal media that were used to give evidence of the impressive old lineage of states, regions, or families. These claims were related not only to classical antiquity but also to other periods that were regarded as antiquities, such as the Middle Ages, especially the chivalric age. The authors of this volume analyse these intriguing early modern constructions of “antiquity” and investigate the ways in which they were applied in political, intellectual and artistic contexts in the period of 1400–1700. Contributors include: Barbara Arciszewska, Bianca De Divitiis, Karl Enenkel, Hubertus Günther, Thomas Haye, Harald Hendrix, Stephan Hoppe, Marc Laureys, Frédérique Lemerle, Coen Maas, Anne-Françoise Morel, Kristoffer Neville, Konrad Ottenheym, Yves Pauwels, Christian Peters, Christoph Pieper, David Rijser, Bernd Roling, Nuno Senos, Paul Smith, Pieter Vlaardingerbroek, and Matthew Walker.
We will discuss the history of the "Lost Tribes of Israel" and follow their ancient migrations into every corner of the Earth. The wandering of the Israelite tribe of Dan from ancient Greece to Central Asia and their subsequent migration to Europe will be discussed, based on the Old and New Testaments, Icelandic Sagas, scientific and DNA data, Jewish Torah and secular writings. Many other sources will be brought to light for your consideration. You will certainly learn many new things contrary to your current understanding of the ancestral and cultural identity of many different nations of the World. You will also discover that modern historians and academia have either intentionally or mistakenly omitted certain historical information from the contemporary academic education curriculum. This has resulted in a completely different perspective of ancient history. This has resulted in the belief that the ancient Israelites are either "Lost" in history and/or the assertion that the modern Israeli's are the last remnant of the descendants of the Israelite descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - both of which are not true. The Word of Bible is historically accurate, although subject to the prejudices and distortions of numerous translations by different cultures and linguistic imperfections. The Israelites were scattered throughout all corners of the Earth into every nation and kingdom, just as the Most High God AHAYAH (I AM that I AM, Exodus 3:13-15) said that they would be. We will discover part of the history of the ancient Israelites and their associations with the Scythians and Aryans of secular history. The Israelites became known as the Scythians and in Persia as the Parthians, after their assimilation with these peoples. They also became rulers of many of the foreign lands they migrated or were once enslaved in and founded many ancient empires because of their warrior prowess. The ancient origins of European nations and Scandinavians began with this massive migration of populations, even before the Diaspora in 722 B.C.
This analysis of Irish antiquarian writings and activities in the late 18th century shows the extent to which views of the pre-colonial Irish past were shaped by contemporary political debates, particularly the Catholic Question, but also the debate as to the relative civility or barbarity of the native Irish.
Modern Orientalism is not a brainchild of nineteenth-century European imperialists and colonialists, but, as Urs App demonstrates, was born in the eighteenth century after a very long gestation period defined less by economic or political motives than by religious ideology. Based on sources from a dozen languages, many unavailable in English, The Birth of Orientalism presents a completely new picture of this protracted genesis, its underlying dynamics, and the Western discovery of Asian religions from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. App documents the immense influence of Japan and China and describes how the Near Eastern cradle of civilization moved toward mother India. Moreover, he shows that some of India's purportedly oldest texts were products of eighteenth-century European authors. Though Western engagement with non-Abrahamic Asian religions reaches back to antiquity and can without exaggeration be called the largest-scale religiocultural encounter in history, it has so far received surprisingly little attention—which is why some of its major features and their role in the birth of modern Orientalism are described here for the first time. The study of Asian documents had a profound impact on Europe's intellectual makeup. Suddenly the Bible had much older competitors from China and India, Sanskrit threatened to replace Hebrew as the world's oldest language, and Judeo-Christianity appeared as a local phenomenon on a dramatically expanded, worldwide canvas of religions and mythologies. Orientalists were called upon as arbiters in a clash that involved neither gold and spices nor colonialism and imperialism but, rather, such fundamental questions as where we come from and who we are: questions of identity that demanded new answers as biblical authority dramatically waned.
Though the 'Scythian period' in the history of Eastern Europe lasted little more than 400 years, the impression these horsemen made upon the history of their times was such that a thousand years after they had ceased to exist as a sovereign people, their heartland and the territories which they dominated far beyond it continued to be known as 'greater Scythia'. From the very beginnings of their emergence on the world scene the Scythians took part in the greatest campaigns of their times, defeating such mighty contemporaries as Assyria, Urartu, Babylonia, Media and Persia. This highly illustrated book details their costume, weapons and the way they waged war.