During the Graeco-Roman period, the Fayum became one of the most productive agricultural regions of Egypt and was the focus of a systematic settlement and cultivation program. This volume contains the conferences given at the third international symposion for Fayum studies held at Freudenstadt/ Schwarzwald from May 29 to June 1, 2007. Egyptologists, papyrologists and archaeologists from all over the world joined in order to report their current research and to contribute with their special point of view in enhancing and completing our picture of the Fayum in the Graeco-Roman period. Das Fayum entwickelte sich in der griechisch-romischen Zeit zu einer der landwirtschaftlich produktivsten Regionen Agyptens und stand im Mittelpunkt einer gezielten Besiedlungs- und Bewirtschaftungspolitik. Der Band beinhaltet die Vortrage des mittlerweile 3. internationalen Fayum-Symposions, das vom 29. Mai bis 1. Juni 2007 in Freudenstadt im Schwarzwald stattfand. Agyptologen, Papyrologen und Archaologen aus aller Welt kamen zusammen, um aus ihrer aktuellen Forschung zu berichten und durch Beitrage aus dem Blickwinkel ihrer verschiedenen Disziplinen dazu beizutragen, unser Bild des Fayum in der griechisch-romischen Zeit weiter zu vervollstandigen.
This Companion volume offers fifteen original essays on the Hellenistic world and is intended to complement and supplement general histories of the period from Alexander the Great to Kleopatra VII of Egypt. Each chapter treats a different aspect of the Hellenistic world - religion, philosophy, family, economy, material culture, and military campaigns, among other topics. The essays address key questions about this period: To what extent were Alexander's conquests responsible for the creation of this new 'Hellenistic' age? What is the essence of this world and how does it differ from its Classical predecessor? What continuities and discontinuities can be identified? Collectively, the essays provide an in-depth view of a complex world. The volume also provides a bibliography on the topics along with recommendations for further reading.
Empires of the Sea brings together studies of maritime empires from the Bronze Age to the Eighteenth Century. The volume aims to establish maritime empires as a category for the (comparative) study of premodern empires, and from a partly ‘non-western’ perspective. The book includes contributions on Mycenaean sea power, Classical Athens, the ancient Thebans, Ptolemaic Egypt, The Genoese Empire, power networks of the Vikings, the medieval Danish Empire, the Baltic empire of Ancien Régime Sweden, the early modern Indian Ocean, the Melaka Empire, the (non-European aspects of the) Portuguese Empire and Dutch East India Company, and the Pirates of Caribbean.
Study of papyri and ostraca in the Oriental Institute Museum, Chicago, which includes Demotic, Greek, and bilingual tax receipts from early Ptolemaic Thebes.
This book collects twenty two previously published essays and one new one by Erich S. Gruen who has written extensively on the literature and history of early Judaism and the experience of the Jews in the Greco-Roman world. His many articles on this subject have, however, appeared mostly in conference volumes and Festschriften, and have therefore not had wide circulation. By putting them together in a single work, this will bring the essays to the attention of a much broader scholarly readership and make them more readily available to students in the fields of ancient history and early Judaism. The pieces are quite varied, but develop a number of connected and related themes: Jewish identity in the pagan world, the literary representations by Jews and pagans of one another, the interconnections of Hellenism and Judaism, and the Jewish experience under Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman empire.
This book traces the roots of modern notions of celebrity, fame, and infamy back to the Hellenistic period of classical antiquity, when sensational personages like Cleopatra of Egypt and Alexander the Great became famous world-wide.
A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.