The Babylonian World

The Babylonian World

Author: Gwendolyn Leick

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2009-06-02

Total Pages: 601

ISBN-13: 1134261284

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Exploring all key aspects of the development of this ancient culture, The Babylonian World presents an extensive, up-to-date and lavishly illustrated history of the ancient state Babylonia and its 'holy city', Babylon.


La necropole hellenistique de Plinthine

La necropole hellenistique de Plinthine

Author: Marie-Francoise Boussac

Publisher: IFAO

Published: 2023-12-31

Total Pages: 639

ISBN-13: 272470987X

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The Hellenistic necropolis of Plinthine, located about 800 m west of the urban settlement of Kom el Nogus/Plinthine, on the western margins of the Alexandrian chora, was built on and in the calcarenite ridge or taenia that separates the Mediterranean from Lake Mariut. It has been celebrated as a miniature version of the great Alexandrian necropolises since the first excavations by Achille Adriani in 1937, followed by various unpublished explorations. Nevertheless, it had not been the subject of a comprehensive study combining architectural analysis and investigation of funerary practices. The policy followed by the French expedition (MFTMP)-systematic architectural survey of a necropolis too often previously analyzed through the prism of a few hypogeas, emphasis on phasing, anthropological studies-made it possible to give a more global vision of the Plinthine necropolis than that provided by earlier studies: the dead are no longer absent and the necropolis reveals a history parallel to that of the Plinthine Hellenistic town.


Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East

Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East

Author: Roger S. Bagnall

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2012-04-23

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 0520275799

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"This is the most important and original study of literacy and the function of writing in ancient society to have appeared in the last twenty years. In a masterly and detailed survey of evidence from across the ancient Mediterranean world, Bagnall shows how and why 'routine' writing was essential to social and administrative infrastructures from the Hellenistic to the Byzantine periods. Essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the role and function of the written text in human social behaviour." —Alan Bowman, Camden Professor of Ancient History, Oxford University "This richly illustrated and annotated book takes the reader on an extended tour from North Africa to Afghanistan. Bagnall’s theme is the ubiquity and pervasiveness of writing in the long millennium from Alexander to the Arab conquests and beyond. Briskly challenging the currently fashionable low estimates on the extent of literacy and the prevalence of writing in the ancient world, Bagnall surveys and explains what has survived and what has been lost—and why. This is a book both for specialists and for the general reader, sure to inspire admiration and reaction." —James G. Keenan, Professor of Classical Studies, Loyola University Chicago “Bagnall's book is not only a study of everyday writing in the Graeco-Roman East, but also an investigation into how our documentation has been distorted by patterns of conservation and discovery and the choices made by modern editors. The sound reflections of an historian on the sources of history.” —Jean-Luc Fournet, Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris


State Correspondence in the Ancient World

State Correspondence in the Ancient World

Author: Karen Radner

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0199354774

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This collection's central thesis is straightforward: long-distance communication plays a key role in the cohesion and stability of early states and in turn, these states invest heavily in long-term communication strategies and networks. As reliable and fast long-distance communication facilitates the successful delegation of power from the centre to the local administrations, the creation and maintenance of the necessary infrastructure to support this is a key strategy of the central state.


The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology

The Oxford Handbook of Papyrology

Author: Roger S. Bagnall

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-12

Total Pages: 711

ISBN-13: 0199843694

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Thousands of documentary and literary texts written on papyri and potsherds, in Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Persian, have transformed our knowledge of many aspects of life in the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. Here experts provide a comprehensive guide to understanding this ancient documentary evidence.


New Perspectives on Ancient Warfare[electronic Resource]

New Perspectives on Ancient Warfare[electronic Resource]

Author: Garrett G. Fagan

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 9004185984

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"New Perspectives on Ancient Warfare" explores the armies of antiquity from Assyria and Persia, to classical Greece and Rome. The studies illustrate the ways in which technology, innovation, cultural exchange, and tactical developments transformed ancient warfare by land and sea.


Aseneth of Egypt

Aseneth of Egypt

Author: Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll

Publisher: SBL Press

Published: 2020-10-15

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0884144585

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An exploration of Aseneth's beginnings In Aseneth of Egypt: The Composition of a Jewish Narrative, Patricia D. Ahearne-Kroll challenges reliance on reconstructed texts in previous scholarship on the book of Joseph and Aseneth. After outlining the problems with previous prototypes of the Hellenistic narrative, she proposes a way to talk about the story in its initial setting without ignoring the manuscript evidence. Her thorough analysis of the evidence reveals how Joseph and Aseneth reflects the literary impulse of Greek-speaking Jewish writers to redescribe their identity in Egypt and Judean connections to the land of Egypt, while incorporating Ptolemaic strategies of legitimation of power. In the end, Ahearne-Kroll concludes that the base storyline preserved in all the copies of this story demonstrates that it was written for Jewish communities living in Hellenistic Egypt. Features: A focus on Hellenistic stories of heroic ancestors A discussion of the possible lives of Jews in Hellenistic Egypt drawn from the narrative of Aseneth An examination of the complexities involved in dating the composition of literary texts


Digital Papyrology I

Digital Papyrology I

Author: Nicola Reggiani

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-09-11

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 3110547600

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Since the very beginnings of the digital humanities, Papyrology has been in the vanguard of the application of information technologies to its own scientific purposes, for both theoretical and practical reasons (the strong awareness towards the problems of human memory and the material ways of preserving it; the need to work with a multifarious and overwhelming amount of different data). After more than thirty years of development, we have now at our disposal the most advanced tools to make papyrological studies more and more effective, and even to create a new conception of "papyrology" and a new model of "edition" of the ancient documents. At this turining point, it is important to build an epistemological framework including all the different expressions of Digital Papyrology, to trace a historical sketch setting the background of the contemporary tools, and to provide a clear overview of the current theoretical and technological trends, so that all the possibilities currently available can be exploited following uniform pathways. The volume represents an innovative attempt to deal with such topics, usually relegated into very quick and general treatments within journal articles or papyrological handbooks.


Ancient Greek Letter Writing

Ancient Greek Letter Writing

Author: Paola Ceccarelli

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2013-10-24

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 0191663077

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In this volume, Ceccarelli offers a history of the development of letter writing in ancient Greece from the archaic to the early Hellenistic period. Highlighting the specificity of letter-writing, as opposed to other forms of communication and writing, the volume looks at documentary letters, but also traces the role of embedded letters in the texts of the ancient historians, in drama, and in the speeches of the orators. While a letter is in itself the transcription of an oral message and, as such, can be either truthful or deceitful, letters acquired negative connotations in the fifth century, especially when used for transactions concerning the public and not the private sphere. Viewed as the instrument of tyrants or near eastern kings, these negative connotations were evident especially in Athens where comedy and tragedy testified to an underlying concern with epistolary communication. In other areas of the Greek world, such as Sparta or Crete, the letter may have been seen as an unproblematic instrument for managing public policies, with inscriptions documenting the official use of letters not only by the Hellenistic kings, but also by some poleis.