Stolen Fragments

Stolen Fragments

Author: Roberta Mazza

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2024-09-17

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1503640329

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In 2012, Steve Green, billionaire and president of the Hobby Lobby chain of craft stores, announced a recent purchase of a Biblical artefact—a fragment of papyrus, just discovered, carrying lines from Paul's letter to the Romans, and dated to the second century CE. Noted scholar Roberta Mazza was stunned. When was this piece discovered, and how could Green acquire such a rare item? The answers, which Mazza spent the next ten years uncovering, came as a shock: the fragment had come from a famous collection held at Oxford University, and its rightful owners had no idea it had been sold. The letter to the Romans was not the only extraordinary piece in the Green collection. They soon announced newly recovered fragments from the Gospels and writings of Sappho. Mazza's quest to confirm the provenance of these priceless fragments revealed shadowy global networks that make big business of ancient manuscripts, from the Greens' Museum of the Bible and world-famous auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's, to antique shops in Jerusalem and Istanbul, dealers on eBay, and into the collections of renowned museums and universities. Mazza's investigation forces us to ask what happens when the supposed custodians of our ancient heritage act in ways that threaten to destroy it. Stolen Fragments illuminates how these recent dealings are not isolated events, but the inevitable result of longstanding colonial practices and the outcome of generations of scholars who have profited from extracting the cultural heritage of places they claim they wish to preserve. Where is the boundary between protection and exploitation, between scholarship and larceny?


The Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls

Author: Charlotte Hempel

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2010-07-26

Total Pages: 568

ISBN-13: 9004190767

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This volume presents the proceedings of an international conference of the same title held at the University of Birmingham in 2007. The contributors are drawn from the ranks of leading international specialists in the field writing alongside promising younger scholars. The volume includes studies on the contribution of the Scrolls to Second Temple Jewish history, the archaeological context, the role of the temple and its priesthood, as well as treatments on selected texts and issues. These proceedings offer a timely and up to date assessment of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the material remains unearthed at Qumran in their wider context and not infrequently challenge prevailing lines of interpretation. Helen Jacobus has won the Sean Dever Memorial Prize with her contribution to this volume. Commenting on the Dever prize, Professor Carol Meyers of Duke University, North Carolina, said: “The judges thought highly of Helen’s meticulous scholarship and careful presentation of the data in her discussion of the zodiac and its role in Jewish calendars.”


The Rustle of Language

The Rustle of Language

Author: Roland Barthes

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1989-01-18

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9780520066298

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The Rustle of Language is a collection of forty-five essays, written between 1967 and 1980, on language, literature, and teaching—the pleasure of the text—in an authoritative translation by Richard Howard.


A Poetry of Things

A Poetry of Things

Author: Mary E. Barnard

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 1487509189

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A Poetry of Things considers how cultural objects were used by poets in the years around 1600 - a time of social and economic crisis, but also of remarkable artistic and literary production.


Art as Demonstration

Art as Demonstration

Author: Sven Spieker

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2024-02-06

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 026204871X

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How artists wield demonstration to question the status quo both aesthetically and politically, marshaling art and education as powerful agents of change. Demonstration, in short, says: See here. It is the practice of pointing to something in order to explain or contest it. As such, Sven Spieker argues that demonstration has helped reshape art from the height of the Cold War to the late twentieth century, reformatting our understanding of how art and political engagement relate to each other. Focusing on Western Europe (especially Germany), Eastern Europe, and the United States, Art as Demonstration expands on contemporary discussions of art-as-protest, activism, and resistance. Spieker shows how a closer, more historical look at art’s connection with demonstration reconnects us with earlier efforts, notably by the early twentieth-century avant-garde, to marshal art for the purpose of instruction and engagement. Art as Demonstration reconceives the history of postwar art in Eastern and Western Europe from the perspective of demonstration, understood formally (as a technique for showing and pointing) as well as politically (as protest, resistance, etc.). Close analyses of individual artworks reveal how the deployment of demonstration has changed over time. Spieker shows how “protest” and “resistance” organize art and artists not only politically but also and especially formally and aesthetically—a development of particular importance in the Cold War art and politics of Eastern Europe. The book illustrates how from the 1960s onward demonstration radically changed the way artists thought about art: no longer as an object but as a form of education.


Sistina

Sistina

Author: Brian Kenneth Swain

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2014-11-12

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1491747099

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Come and look upon these things, so that you may understand and believe. Sistina, Brian Kenneth Swain's gripping and thought-provoking new novel, is a story two thousand years in the making. The events set in motion following Christ's crucifixion build to a crescendo during the Italian High Renaissance and will test the faith of the story's historical and modern-day characters, as well as that of readers. When a violent earthquake damages Michelangelo's magnificent frescoes, a team of experts undertakes the Vatican's most important restoration in centuries, only to discover a perplexing secret hidden for five hundred years beneath the chapel's plaster ceiling. The message, both cryptic and incomplete due to the rash actions of a tourist at the time of the quake, baffles the team and awakens the attention of a small group of powerful men?men who have waited centuries in the shadows, hoping for the elusive clue that will lead them to Christendom's ultimate artifact. It is a tale of murder, revenge, ecclesiastical connivance, and ancient secrets?all constructed on an elaborate foundation of religious history, political intrigue, and technological wizardry. Sistina, Swain's most controversial novel to date, will leave you breathless.


Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest

Rabbi Gabrielle Ignites a Tempest

Author: Roger Herst

Publisher: Diversion Books

Published: 2011-05-08

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 0983839549

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Rabbi Gabrielle takes leave from her rabbinical duties to pursue a doctorate in biblical studies at the University of Chicago. She is summoned to Israel by the Director of Antiquities in Jerusalem when her scholarly live-in boyfriend cannot be found to help investigate the robbery of a newly discovered cave at Qumran, site of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls. In the search to find him, Gabrielle becomes aware of her friend's involvement in this robbery and while attempting to shield him, gets swept into a cloak and dagger intrigue involving the Catholic Church and the Government of Israel.


Persepolis

Persepolis

Author: Ali Mousavi

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2012-04-19

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1614510334

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Persepolis: Discovery and Afterlife of a World Wonder presents the first full study of the history of archaeological exploration at Persepolis after its destruction in 330 BC. Based in part on archival evidence, anecdotal information, and unpublished documents, this book describes in detail the history of archaeological exploration, visual documentation, and excavations at one of the most celebrated sites of the ancient world. The book addresses a broad audience of readers ranging from students of the archaeology, history, and art history of ancient, medieval, and modern Iran to scholars in Classical Studies and Ancient Near Eastern Studies.


Egyptian Archaeology and the Twenty-First Century Museum

Egyptian Archaeology and the Twenty-First Century Museum

Author: Alice Stevenson

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-09-08

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 100908111X

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This Element addresses the cultural production of ancient Egypt in the museum as a mixture of multiple pasts and presents that cohere around collections; their artefacts, documentation, storage, research, and display. Its four sections examine how ideas about the past are formed by museum assemblages: how their histories of acquisition and documentation shape interpretation, the range of materials that comprise them, the influence of their geographical framing, and the moments of remaking that might be possible. Throughout, the importance of critical approaches to interpretation is underscored, reasserting the museum as a site of active research and experiment, rather than only exhibitionary product or communicative media. It argues for a multi-directional approach to museum work that seeks to reveal the inter-relations of collection histories and which has implications not just for museum representation and documentation, but also for archaeological practice more broadly.