Download or read book Contextualizing the Sacred in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East written by Rubina Raja and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The study of religion and religious identities in the Hellenistic and Roman Near East has been a focus within archaeology and ancient history for centuries. Yet the transition between the Hellenistic and Roman period remains difficult to grasp from the archaeological and epigraphic evidence. This volume brings together contributions by leading scholars working on religious identity and religion in the Hellenistic and Roman periods in the Roman Near East. For this volume they have been asked to address a variety of questions concerning religion, religious development, and religious identities from the Hellenistic period to Late Antiquity. These research questions have resulted in a suite of contributions which draw upon a wide range of empirical evidence, from epigraphical material to literary and archaeological sources. In the ancient Near East we cannot speak of a common religion, nor of a common literary tradition, but when seen through the lens of contextualization, the material and textual evidence brings forward new narratives about the great variations in worship, myths, and identities, as well as the different religious systems of the region and of the people inhabiting it. The contributions offer concretized ideas about and research on various aspects of religion within a framework of very different settings, of local, regional, or imperial character. This volume is a must for any scholar or student of the Hellenistic, Roman, and Late Roman Near East, and the contributions provide new insights into the ways in which we may approach this region, offering complex but plentiful material to be studied.
Download or read book A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East written by Ted Kaizer and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2022-01-06 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discover a comprehensive and cross-disciplinary handbook exploring several sub-regions and key themes perfect for a new generation of students A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East delivers the first complete handbook in the area of Hellenistic and Roman Near Eastern history. The book is divided into sections dealing with interdisciplinary source material, each with a great deal of regional variety and engaging with several key themes. It integrates discussions of the classical Near East with the typical undergraduate teaching syllabus in the Anglo-Saxon world. All contributors in this edited volume are leading scholars in their field, with a combination of established researchers and academics, and emerging voices. Contributors hail from countries across several continents, and work in various disciplines, including Ancient History, Archaeology, Art History, Epigraphy, Numismatics, and Oriental Studies. In addition to furthering the integration of the Levantine lands in the classical periods into the teaching canon, the book offers readers: The first comprehensively structured Companion and edited handbook on the Hellenistic and Roman Near East Extensive regional and sub-regional variety in the cross-disciplinary source material A way to compensate for the recent destruction of monuments in the region and the new generation of researchers’ inability to examine these historical stages in person An integration of the study of the Hellenistic and Roman Near East with traditional undergraduate teaching syllabi in the Anglo-Saxon world Perfect for undergraduate history and classics students studying the Near East, A Companion to the Hellenistic and Roman Near East will also earn a place in the libraries of graduate students and scholars working within Near Eastern studies, as well as interested members of the public with a passion for history.
Download or read book The Variety of Local Religious Life in the Near East written by Ted Kaizer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2008 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary collection of articles brings out the variety of local and regional patterns of worship in the Near East, and in this manner contributes to our quest for understanding the polytheistic cults of the region as a whole.
Download or read book Religion in the Roman Empire written by Jörg Rüpke and published by Kohlhammer Verlag. This book was released on 2021-10-06 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Roman Empire was home to a fascinating variety of different cults and religions. Its enormous extent, the absence of a precisely definable state religion and constant exchanges with the religions and cults of conquered peoples and of neighbouring cultures resulted in a multifaceted diversity of religious convictions and practices. This volume provides a compelling view of central aspects of cult and religion in the Roman Empire, among them the distinction between public and private cult, the complex interrelations between different religious traditions, their mutually entangled developments and expansions, and the diversity of regional differences, rituals, religious texts and artefacts.
Download or read book Roman Architecture written by Janet DeLaine and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-24 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roman Architecture casts new light not only on many familiar monuments of the city of Rome, but also on less well-known examples from across the Roman empire. Rome and its empire were fundamental to the development of western architecture, and its forms and motifs remain significant elements of our own built environments. Roman Architecture places the varied architecture of ancient Rome, from its humble apartment blocks to its grand public structures, within the broader context of Roman society. It takes as its starting point the writings of the Roman architect Vitruvius, as one voice in a broader contemporary debate about the nature and value of architecture. What did the Romans themselves think architecture was for? What was built, by whom and why? How was architecture represented in text and image? The interplay of type and variation that are the hallmark Roman architecture are here traced back to the human actions and choices from which they originated. Janet DeLaine explores how the desires of patrons for novelty and individuality were met by architects and builders working within the practical constraints of available materials and the moral prescriptions of religious and social norms to create new forms. Ranging from early Rome to the late empire, this volume casts new light on many familiar monuments of the city of Rome, but also on less well-known examples from across the empire. Through an examination of the key types of buildings at the heart of Roman society and their decoration, it reveals the symbolic meaning of architecture in terms of competitive power displays and commemoration, and it explores how architecture helped to define being 'Roman' at different times and in different places of the empire.
Download or read book Pearl of the Desert written by Rubina Raja and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Palmyra has long attracted the attention of the world. Even before its rediscovery in the eighteenth century it had gained legendary status because of its third-century CE Queen Zenobia, who had rebelled against the Romans and expanded Palmyra's territory into that of an Empire, stretchingfrom what is modern eastern Turkey into Egypt. The city and its queen featured in European art and literature already in the century. Zenobia's Palmyra already existed as a mirage in the minds of the educated Europeans. Even though Zenobia's reign and extensive power was a fairly short interlude andthe Romans struck hard against the Palmyrenes devastating the city, this path to imperial power was one which tells us an immense amount about Palmyrene identity in the period before the devastation. While Zenobia has gained renewed interest among both scholars and the press, and while she hasserved as a political symbol for Syria's president As'ad (a statue of her was recently erected in Damascus), the time leading up to her reign still remains underexplored.With the current situation in Syria, a researched-based narrative is urgently needed to communicate the importance of this site to the general public. Palmyra has over the last years been used as a symbol of the resistance of the rebels, the power of ISIS over the region, as well as the supremacy ofthe Syrian state. UNESCO and the Russians have together with the Syrian state taken a particular interest in Palmyra and in monopolizing the potential rebuilding of the site after the destruction and looting of the past several years have subsided. We are, so to speak, standing at yet anotherturning point in Palmyra's long history, where history is being reinvented actively by several parties. There can be no doubt that the time is ripe for a book on the archaeology and history of Palmyra, as well as an analysis of the current situation, including the destruction and illicit traffickingof material remains from Palmyra. These three main topics will together highlight the ways in which this fascinating site has again and again captured the world's focus.Organized in nine chapters, this compact book will set out to provide an introduction for students and general readers. Following two overview chapters, the next six will give a chronological narrative of Palmyra from the late Hellenistic period through to Rome's destruction in 273 CE and itssurvival in the Byzantine and medieval Islamic periods. The book ends with a shorter conclusion chapter, which will summarize the most important findings and conclusions of the chapters of the book and will set out a number of lines of enquiry which could be taken up in research and culturalheritage management over the coming years. The result will be the best and most up-to-date account of Palmyra in English.
Download or read book Time and Its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire written by Paul J. Kosmin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-12-03 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Under Seleucid rule, time no longer restarted with each new monarch. Instead, progressively numbered years, identical to the system we use today, became the measure of historical duration. Paul Kosmin shows how this invention of a new kind of time—and resistance to it—transformed the way we organize our thoughts about the past, present, and future.
Download or read book Processions and the Construction of Communities in Antiquity written by Elena Muñiz-Grijalvo and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-30 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume elucidates how processions, from antiquity to the present, contribute to creating consensus with regards to both political power and communitarian experiences. Many classical sources often only tangentially allude to processions, focusing instead on other ritual moments, such as sacrifice. This book adopts a comparative approach, bringing together historians of antiquity and later periods as well as social anthropologists working on contemporary societies, analysing both ancient and modern examples of how rituals, symbols, actors, and spectators interact in the construction of communities. The different examples explored in this study illustrate the performative capacity of processions to construct reality: the protagonism of image and movement, the design of cultic itineraries, and the active participation of members of the public. In studying these examples, readers develop an understanding of how power is exercised and perceived, the extent of its legitimacy, and the limits of community in a variety of case studies. Processions and the Construction of Communities in Antiquity is of interest to students and scholars of the classical and early Christian worlds, especially those working on cult, religion, and community formation. The volume also appeals to social anthropologists interested in these issues across a broader chronology.
Download or read book A Short History of Babylon written by Karen Radner and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of our perception of Babylon in the West is filtered through the poignant echoes of loss and longing that resonate in the Hebrew Bible. The lamenting exiles of Judah craved a return to their lost homeland after the sack of Jerusalem in 587 BC and their forcible removal by Nebuchadnezzar to the alien floodlands of the Euphrates. But to see Babylon only as an adjunct to Old Testament history is misleading. A Short History of Babylon explores the ever-changing city that shaped world history for two millennia.
Download or read book Class and Power in Roman Palestine written by Anthony Keddie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-03 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how socioeconomic relations between Judaean elites and non-elites changed as Palestine became part of the Roman Empire.
Download or read book Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association written by Geoffrey D. Dunn and published by The Australian Early Medieval Association Inc.. This book was released on 2018-11-01 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The journal welcomes papers on historical, literary, archaeological, cultural, and artistic themes, particularly interdisciplinary papers and those that make an innovative and significant contribution to the understanding of the early medieval world and stimulate further discussion. For submission details please see the association website: www.aema.net.au. Submissions then may be sent to [email protected].
Download or read book And God Saw That It Was Good Gen 1 12 written by Ilse Capek and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2021-01-25 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, the concept of quality is discussed both in the Bible and in the scholarship that evolved around the Bible. Scholars of various backgrounds analyse the Bible and its narrative and enumerative (or legal) way of qualifying the world around. According to the intrinsic theological view of the Bible, it is God himself who is the touchstone of any qualitative judgement. From literary and historical point of view though, we can - and we often do - judge Bible and things around us differently. The volume presents an intersection of biblical theology, biblical criticism and biblical archaeology in their quest for (their respective renditions of) quality.
Download or read book Polis written by John Ma and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-04 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A definitive new history of the origins, evolution, and scope of the ancient Greek city-state The Greek polis, or city-state, was a resilient and adaptable political institution founded on the principles of citizenship, freedom, and equality. Emerging around 650 BCE and enduring to 350 CE, it offered a means for collaboration among fellow city-states and social bargaining between a community and its elites—but at what cost? Polis proposes a panoramic account of the ancient Greek city-state, its diverse forms, and enduring characteristics over the span of a millennium. In this landmark book, John Ma provides a new history of the polis, charting its spread and development into a common denominator for hundreds of communities from the Black Sea to North Africa and from the Near East to Italy. He explores its remarkable achievements as a political form offering community, autonomy, prosperity, public goods, and spaces of social justice for its members. He also reminds us that behind the successes of civic ideology and institutions lie entanglements with domination, empire, and enslavement. Ma’s sweeping and multifaceted narrative draws widely on a rich store of historical evidence while weighing in on lively scholarly debates and offering new readings of Aristotle as the great theoretician of the polis. A monumental work of scholarship, Polis transforms our understanding of antiquity while challenging us to grapple with the moral legacy of an idea whose very success centered on the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others.
Download or read book Roman Imperial Portrait Practice in the Second Century AD written by Christian Niederhuber and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been thought that imperial portrait types were officially commissioned to commemorate specific historical moments and that they were made available to both the mint and the marble workshops in Rome, assuming a close correspondence between portraits on coins and in the round. All of this, however, has never been clearly proven, nor has it been disproven by a close systematic examination of the evidence on a broad material basis by those scholars who have questioned it. Through systematic case studies of Faustina the Younger's and Marcus Aurelius' portraits on coins and in sculpture, this book provides new insights into the functioning of the imperial image in Rome in the second century AD that move a difficult, much-discussed subject forward decisively. The new evidence presented here has made it necessary to adjust the established model; more flexibility is needed to describe the processes and practices behind the phenomenon of 'repeated' imperial portraits and how the imperial portrait worked in the mint of Rome and in the metropolitan marble workshops.
Download or read book Economy of the Sacred in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor written by Beate Dignas and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2002-12-12 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This original study challenges the idea that sanctuaries in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor were fully institutionalized within the poleis that hosted them. Examining the forms of interaction between rulers, cities, and sanctuaries, the book proposes a triangular relationship in which the rulers often acted as mediators between differing interests of city and cult. A close analysis of the epigraphical evidence illustrates that neither the Hellenistic kings nor the representatives of Roman rule appropriated the property of the gods but actively supported the functioning of the sanctuaries and their revenues. The powerful role of the sanctuaries was to a large extent based on economic features, which the sanctuaries possessed precisely because of their religious character. Nevertheless, a study of the finances of the cults reveals frequent problems concerning the upkeep of cults and a particular need to guard the privileges and property of the gods. Their situation oscillated between glut and dearth. When the harmonious identity between city and cult was disturbed, those closely attached to the cult acted on behalf of their domain.
Download or read book Redefining the Sacred written by Elizabeth Frood and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This launch volume of the series Contextualising the Sacred explores the changing social, religious, and political meanings of sacred space in the ancient Near East through bringing together the work of leading scholars of ancient history, Assyriology, classical archaeology, Egyptology and philology. Redefining the Sacred originates in an international European Science Foundation Exploratory Workshop of the same name held at the University of Oxford in 2009, and is the launch volume for the series Contextualising the Sacred. It comprises eight studies written by leading scholars, each of whom investigates aspects of the diverse and changing meanings of sacred environments in the Near East and Egypt from c. 1000 BC to AD 300. This was a time of dramatic social, political, and religious transformation in the region, and religious architecture, which was central to ancient environments, is a productive interpretive lens through which implications of these changes can be examined across cultural borders. Analysis of the development of urban, sub-urban, and extra-urban sanctuaries, as well as the written sources associated with them, shows how the religious identities of individuals, groups, and societies were shaped, transformed, and interconnected. By bringing together ancient historians, Assyriologists, Egyptologists, archaeologists, and philologists, the volume highlights the immense potential of diachronic studies of sacred space, which the series will take forward.
Download or read book From Concept to Monument Time and Costs of Construction in the Ancient World written by Simon J. Barker and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2023-07-13 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 21 papers focus on modelling the costs of construction over the course of 2,500 years, from Bronze Age Greece to the early Middle Ages. They discuss both broader issues of methodology and particular case studies, with particular attention to the exploitation of raw materials (e.g. quarries), transport, and construction processes on building sites.
