Freedom as a value is older than Greece, as evidence from the Ancient Near East shows us through this book. Snell first looks at words for freedom in the Ancient Near East. Then he examines archival texts to see how runaways expressed their interest in freedom in Mesopotamian history. He next examines what elites said about flight and freedom in edicts, legal collections, and treaties. He devotes a chapter to flight in literature and story. He studies freedom in Israel by looking at Biblical terminology and then practice in narratives and legal collections. In a final chapter Snell traces the descent of ideas about freedom among Jews, Greeks and Christians, and Muslims, concluding that the devotion to freedom may be nearly a human universal.
On Human Bondage—a critical reexamination of Orlando Patterson’s groundbreaking Slavery and Social Death—assesses how his theories have stood the test of time and applies them to new case studies. Discusses the novel ideas of social death and natal alienation, as Patterson first presented them 35 years ago and as they are understood today Brings together exciting new work by a group of esteemed historians of slavery, as well as a final chapter by Patterson himself that responds to and expands upon the other contributions Provides insights into slave societies around the world and across time, from classical Greece and Rome to modern Brazil and the Caribbean, and from Han China and pre-colonial South Asia to early modern Europe and the New World Delves into a wide range of topics, including the reformation of social identity after slavery, the new historicist approach to slavery, rituals of enslavement and servitude, questions of honor and dishonor, and symbolic imagery of slavery
For almost a century scholars have been perplexed by Cypro-Phoenician (or Black-on-Red) pottery. In this major study, Dr. Schreiber’s research, coupled with her own work in the field, resolves the pottery’s origin and provides a fresh assessment of the chronology of the region. Transporting perfumed oil around the Mediterranean and Near East, the pottery offers valuable clues to Iron Age trade - shipping, cargoes, and trading entrepots. Dr Schreiber investigates the sources of perfumed oil and the relative roles of Cyprus and Phoenicia in trade to the Aegean islands. The book provides archaeologists and historians with a work of key significance in unravelling the human narrative of the early centuries of the 1st millennium BC.
The Babylonian World presents an extensive, up-to-date and lavishly illustrated history of the ancient state Babylonia and its 'holy city', Babylon. Historicized by the New Testament as a centre of decadence and corruption, Babylon and its surrounding region was in fact a rich and complex civilization, responsible for the invention of the dictionary and laying the foundations of modern science. This book explores all key aspects of the development of this ancient culture, including the ecology of the region and its famously productive agriculture, its political and economic standing, its religious practices, and the achievements of its intelligentsia. Comprehensive and accessible, this book will be an indispensable resource for anyone studying the period.
Volume 1 in the new Cambridge World History of Slavery surveys the history of slavery in the ancient Mediterranean world. Although chapters are devoted to the ancient Near East and the Jews, its principal concern is with the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. These are often considered as the first examples in world history of genuine slave societies because of the widespread prevalence of chattel slavery, which is argued to have been a cultural manifestation of the ubiquitous violence in societies typified by incessant warfare. There was never any sustained opposition to slavery, and the new religion of Christianity probably reinforced rather than challenged its existence. In twenty-two chapters, leading scholars explore the centrality of slavery in ancient Mediterranean life using a wide range of textual and material evidence. Non-specialist readers in particular will find the volume an accessible account of the early history of this crucial phenomenon.
Life at the Bottom of Babylonian Society is a study of the population dynamics, family structure, and legal status of publicly-controlled servile workers in Kassite Babylonia. It compares some of the demographic aspects proper to this group with other intensively studied past populations, such as Roman Egypt, Medieval Tuscany, and American slave plantations. It suggests that families, especially those headed by single mothers, acted as a counter measure against population reduction (flight and death) and as a means for the state to control this labor force. The work marks a step forward in the use of quantitative measures in conjunction with cuneiform sources to achieve a better understanding of the social and economic forces that affected ancient Near Eastern populations.
The orthodox view of slavery in the ancient Mediterranean holds that Greece and Rome were its only 'genuine slave societies', that is, societies in which slave labour contributed significantly to the economy and underpinned the wealth of elites. Other societies, traditionally labelled 'societies with slaves', are thought to have made little use of slave labour and therefore have been largely ignored in recent scholarship. This volume presents a radically different view of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean world, showing that elite exploitation of slave labour in Greece and the Near East shared some fundamental similarities, although the degree of elite dependence on slaves varied from region to region. Whilst slavery was indeed particularly highly developed in Greece and Rome, it was also economically entrenched in Carthage, and played a not insignificant role in the affairs of elites in Israel, Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia. The differing degrees to which Eastern Mediterranean elites exploited slave labour represents the outcome of a complex interplay between cultural, economic, political, geographical, and demographic factors. Proceeding on a regional basis, this book tracks the ways in which local conditions shaped a wide variety of Greek and Near Eastern slave systems, and how the legal architecture of slavery in individual regions was altered and adapted to accommodate these needs. The result is a nuanced exploration of the economic underpinnings of Greek elite culture that sets its reliance on slavery within a broader historical context and sheds light on the complex circumstances from which it emerged.
This volume brings together studies which relate to the interpenetration of Semitic and Greco-Roman traditions of papyrus writing in the antique Middle East.
This book argues that, within the Priestly tradition, human creation marks the replacement of God's divine community, signifying the moment when God takes control over that community, separates himself, and institutes monotheism.
This collection of papers is primarily concerned with transport by wheeled vehicle in antiquity. They shed much light on the construction of the vehicles, the ways their draught animals were harnessed and controlled, and the uses to which the equipages were put. The evidence discussed includes actual remains of vehicles and bridles, as well as figured and textual documents. Ridden animals and their gear also feature in this collection of papers. The Selected Writings of Mary B. Littauer and Joost H. Crouwel are important for all those interested in the cultures of the ancient Near East, Egypt and Cyprus and of Bronze Age Greece.
