Download or read book Down to the Hour Short Time in the Ancient Mediterranean and Near East written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-02 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Clock time", with all its benefits and anxieties, is often viewed as a "modern" phenomenon, but ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern cultures also had tools for marking and measuring time within the day and wrestled with challenges of daily time management. This book brings together for the first time perspectives on the interplay between short-term timekeeping technologies and their social contexts in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Rome. Its contributions denaturalize modern-day concepts of clocks, hours, and temporal frameworks; describe some of the timekeeping solutions used in antiquity; and illuminate the diverse factors that affected how individuals and communities structured their time.

Download or read book Magic and Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World written by Radcliffe G. Edmonds III and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-15 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores aspects of ancient magic and religion in the ancient Mediterranean, specifically ways in which religious and mythical ideas, including the knowledge and practice of magic, were transmitted and adapted through time and across Greco-Roman, Near Eastern, and Egyptian cultures. Offering an original and innovative combination of case studies on the material aspects and cross-cultural transfers of magic and religion, this book brings together a range of contributions that cross and connect sub-fields with a pan-Mediterranean, comparative scope. Section I investigates the material aspects of magical practices, including first editions and original studies on papyri, gems, lamellae containing binding curses and protective texts, and other textual media in ancient book culture. Several chapters feature the Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri, the compilation of magical recipes in the formularies, and the role of physical book-forms in the transmission of magical knowledge. Section II explores magic and religion as nodes of cultural exchange in the ancient Mediterranean. Case studies range from Egypt to Anatolia and from Syria-Phoenicia to Sicily, with Greco-Roman religion and myth integrated in a diverse and interconnected Mediterranean landscape. Readers encounter studies featuring charismatic figures of Magi and itinerant begging priests, the multiple understandings of deities such as Hekate, Herakles, or Aphrodite, or the perceived exotic origin of cult statues, mummies, amulets, and cursing formulae, which bring to light the rich intercultural networks of the ancient Mediterranean, and the crucial role of magic and religion in the process of cross-cultural adaptation and innovation. Magic and Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World appeals to both specialized and non-specialized audiences, with expert contributions written in an accessible way. This is a fascinating resource for students and scholars working on magic, religion, and mythology in the ancient Mediterranean.

Download or read book Time and Ancient Medicine written by Kassandra J. Miller and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-10-05 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time and Ancient Medicine is the first monograph to explore, on the one hand, how the introduction of new timekeeping technologies (namely, sundials and water clocks) affected the practice, rhetoric, and philosophy of ancient medicine and, on the other hand, how medical timekeeping practices affected engagement with time elsewhere in society. The study seeks, first, to offer a chronological narrative of how timekeeping technologies and medical practices evolved and influenced one another in ancient Greece and Rome, with consideration of relevant Pharaonic Egyptian and Assyro-Babylonian precedents. Kassandra J. Miller turns to a series of case studies, drawn from the Roman Imperial period, to investigate thematic questions, asking how debates over medical timekeeping interacted with debates over proper scientific methodology, the status of medicine as a formal art, and the relationships between medicine and other disciplines like mathematics, astronomy, and astrology. Throughout, this study places epigraphic, artistic, and other material evidence for hourly timekeeping in dialogue with selections from medical literature, some of which has not previously been published in modern-language translation. Ultimately, this study reveals that time and timekeeping played fundamental roles in ancient medical debates and practices and challenges the traditional narrative that the social history of "clock time" only begins with the invention of the mechanical clock in the Medieval period. It offers new insights into the specific ways that physicians of the ancient Mediterranean engaged with their evolving temporal landscapes and raises questions about the relationships between time and medicine in the modern day.

Download or read book The Temporality of Festivals written by Anke Walter and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2024-04 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can time become festive? How do festivals manage to make time 'special', to mark out a certain day or days, to distinguish them from 'normal', everyday time, and to fill them with meaning? And how can we reconstruct what festive time looked like in the past and what people thought about it? While a lot of research has been done on festivals from the point of view of several scholarly disciplines, the specific temporality of festivals has not yet attracted sufficient attention. In this volume, scholars from different fields provide answers to the questions raised above, based on a fresh analysis of astronomical documents, calendars, and literary texts. Cultures as diverse as ancient Babylon, Greece and Rome, and medieval China all share a sense of calendrically recurring festive time as something special that needs to be carefully mapped out and preserved, often with great sophistication, and that gives us precious insights into the broader religious, political, and social dimensions of time within past cultures.

Download or read book World and Hour in Roman Minds written by Richard J. A. Talbert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- (Part I: World and Empire in the Mind's Eye) -- Oswald Dilke's Greek and Roman maps (1985) -- China and Rome: the awareness of space -- Grasp of geography in Caesar's war narratives -- Trevor Murphy's Pliny the Elder's natural history: the empire in the Encyclopedia (2004) -- An English translation of Pliny's geographical books for the twenty-first century -- Boundaries Within the Roman Empire -- Rome's provinces as framework for worldview -- Worldview reflected in Roman military diplomas -- Author, audience and the Roman Empire in the Antonine itinerary -- John Matthews' The Journey of Theophanes: travel, business, and daily life in the Roman East (2006) -- (Part II: Maps for Whom and Why) -- The unfinished state of the Artemidorus Map: what is missing, and why? -- Claudius' use of a map in the Roman Senate -- Cartography and taste in Peutinger's Roman map -- Peutinger's map: the physical landscape framework -- Copyists' engagement with the Peutinger map -- (Part III: From Space to Time) -- Roads not featured: a Roman failure to communicate? -- Roads in the Roman world: strategy for the way forward -- Communicating through maps: the Roman case -- Roman concern to know the hour in broader historical context -- Bibliography -- Ancient texts and maps -- Modern scholarship -- Index.

Download or read book The Ordered Day written by James Ker and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2023-03-21 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traces how the day has served as a key organizing concept in Roman culture—and beyond. How did ancient Romans keep track of time? What constituted a day in ancient Rome was not the same twenty-four hours we know today. In The Ordered Day, James Ker traces how the day served as a key organizing concept, both in antiquity and in modern receptions of ancient Rome. Romans used the story of how the day emerged as a unit of sociocultural time to give order to their own civic and imperial history. Ancient literary descriptions of people's daily routines articulated distinctive forms of life within the social order. And in the imperial period and beyond, outsiders—such as early Christians in their monastic rules and modern antiquarians in books on daily life—ordered their knowledge of Roman life through reworking the day as a heuristic framework. Scholarly interest in Roman time has recently moved from the larger unit of the year and calendar to smaller units of time, especially in the study of sundials and other timekeeping technologies of the ancient Mediterranean. Through extensive analysis of ancient literary texts and material culture as well as modern daily life handbooks, Ker demonstrates the privileged role that "small time" played, and continues to play, in Roman literary and cultural history. Ker argues that the ordering of the day provided the basis for the organizing of history, society, and modern knowledge about ancient Rome. For readers curious about daily life in ancient Rome as well as for students and scholars of Roman history and Latin literature, The Ordered Day provides an accessible and fascinating account of the makings of the Roman day and its relationship to modern time structures.

Download or read book The Prosciutto Sundial written by Christopher Charles Parslow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Prosciutto Sundial is the first comprehensive study of the sundial in the shape of a miniature prosciutto from the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum from its rediscovery in 1755 to modern times. Drawing on contemporary correspondence and manuscripts, early philological and scientific assessments, and later published accounts, it catalogs the many attempts by scholars and lay people alike to understand how it functioned. It explains the significance of its context in the Villa and, through the results of empirical analysis using a 3D model, highlights the remarkable accuracy of this unique ancient timepiece.

Download or read book Eratosthenes and the Measurement of the Earth s Circumference c 230 BC written by Christopher A. Matthew and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-06-20 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eratosthenes and the Measurement of the Earth's Circumference (c.230 BC) is an innovative and thought-provoking examination of one of the pivotal moments in the history of science. This text analyses a debate that has been going on for more than 2,300 years over the accuracy of Eratosthenes' experiment and calculations and puts to rest all prior theories that have come before. This work engages with this long running debate by applying innovative and multi-disciplinary methods such as linguistic analysis, mathematical modelling, satellite mapping, archaeological investigation and historical examination that creates the first ever combined exploration of this important event in the history of astronomy.

Download or read book Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism written by Sarit Kattan Gribetz and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the rabbis of late antiquity used time to define the boundaries of Jewish identity The rabbinic corpus begins with a question–“when?”—and is brimming with discussions about time and the relationship between people, God, and the hour. Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism explores the rhythms of time that animated the rabbinic world of late antiquity, revealing how rabbis conceptualized time as a way of constructing difference between themselves and imperial Rome, Jews and Christians, men and women, and human and divine. In each chapter, Sarit Kattan Gribetz explores a unique aspect of rabbinic discourse on time. She shows how the ancient rabbinic texts artfully subvert Roman imperialism by offering "rabbinic time" as an alternative to "Roman time." She examines rabbinic discourse about the Sabbath, demonstrating how the weekly day of rest marked "Jewish time" from "Christian time." Gribetz looks at gendered daily rituals, showing how rabbis created "men's time" and "women's time" by mandating certain rituals for men and others for women. She delves into rabbinic writings that reflect on how God spends time and how God's use of time relates to human beings, merging "divine time" with "human time." Finally, she traces the legacies of rabbinic constructions of time in the medieval and modern periods. Time and Difference in Rabbinic Judaism sheds new light on the central role that time played in the construction of Jewish identity, subjectivity, and theology during this transformative period in the history of Judaism.

Download or read book Making Time for Greek and Roman Literature written by Kate Gilhuly and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this collection explore various various models of representing temporality in ancient Greek and Roman literature to elucidate how structures of time communicate meaning, as well as the way that the cultural impact of measured time is reflected in ancient texts. This collection serves as a meditation on the different ways that cosmological and experiential time are construed, measured, and manipulated in Greek and Latin literature. It explores both the kinds of time deemed worthy of measurement, as well as time that escapes notice. Likewise, it interrogates how linear time and its representation become politicized and leveraged in the service of emerging and dominant power structures. These essays showcase various contemporary theoretical approaches to temporality in order to build bridges and expose chasms between ancient and modern ideologies of time. Some of the areas explored include the philosophical and social implications of time that is not measured, the insights and limitations provided by queer theory for an investigation of the way sex and gender relate to time, the relationship of time to power, the extent to which temporal discourses intersect with spatial constructs, and finally an exploration of experiences that exceed the boundaries of time. Making Time for Greek and Roman Literature is of interest to scholars of time and temporality in the ancient world, as well as those working on time and temporality in English literature, comparative literature, history, sociology, and gender and sexuality. It is also suitable for those working on Greek and Roman literature and culture more broadly.

Download or read book The Concept of Motion in Ancient Greek Thought written by Barbara M. Sattler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-08 with total page 830 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the birth of the scientific understanding of motion. It investigates which logical tools and methodological principles had to be in place to give a consistent account of motion, and which mathematical notions were introduced to gain control over conceptual problems of motion. It shows how the idea of motion raised two fundamental problems in the 5th and 4th century BCE: bringing together being and non-being, and bringing together time and space. The first problem leads to the exclusion of motion from the realm of rational investigation in Parmenides, the second to Zeno's paradoxes of motion. Methodological and logical developments reacting to these puzzles are shown to be present implicitly in the atomists, and explicitly in Plato who also employs mathematical structures to make motion intelligible. With Aristotle we finally see the first outline of the fundamental framework with which we conceptualise motion today.

Download or read book Ancient Egypt and Nubia Fully Explained A New History of the Nile Valley Civilizations of Kemet and Kush written by Adam Muksawa and published by Muksawa. This book was released on 101-01-01 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of Egypt and Nubia — like never told before. This delightfully written book begins thousands of years before the Great Pyramids. And it ends with the rise of the Kushite kings. It details who exactly the pharaohs were, and their special relationship with the Nubians. Of course, this special relationship was very much based on the Nile — a geographic asset like no other. As a side note, plenty of images and maps can be found in this jargon-free book. So do enjoy!

Download or read book Celestial Inclinations written by Anne-Marie Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Celestial Inclinations: A Life of Augustus provides a new perspective on the life and career of the first Roman emperor Augustus (63 B.C.-A.D. 14) and presents the case that Augustus used his knowledge of the celestial sphere in various ways to confirm for himself and convey to others that the heavens supported his activities on earth and his inevitable greatness. The book is based on fresh assessments of relevant ancient historical, literary, astronomical, astrological, and artistic sources for the years prior to and during the life of Augustus. The book combines these sources with astronomical sky maps and astrological diagrams to offer fresh interpretations of critical events in the life of Augustus at a time when the celestial sphere had come to play an important cultural and political role. Topics include the identification of the celestial object that appeared at the ludi in honor of Caesar in 44 B.C.; the Battle of Actium; the iconography of the Tellus Relief Panel on the Ara Pacis Augustae; the Ludi Saeculares; Augustus' major building projects in Rome; and Augustus' interactions with major figures of the period such as Cicero, Caesar, Agrippa, and Antonius"--

Download or read book The Christian Invention of Time written by Simon Goldhill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-03 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time is integral to human culture. Over the last two centuries people's relationship with time has been transformed through industrialisation, trade and technology. But the first such life-changing transformation – under Christianity's influence – happened in late antiquity. It was then that time began to be conceptualised in new ways, with discussion of eternity, life after death and the end of days. Individuals also began to experience time differently: from the seven-day week to the order of daily prayer and the festal calendar of Christmas and Easter. With trademark flair and versatility, world-renowned classicist Simon Goldhill uncovers this change in thinking. He explores how it took shape in the literary writing of late antiquity and how it resonates even today. His bold new cultural history will appeal to scholars and students of classics, cultural history, literary studies, and early Christianity alike.

Download or read book Calendars in the Making The Origins of Calendars from the Roman Empire to the Later Middle Ages written by Sacha Stern and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-04-26 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Calendars in the Making investigates the Roman and medieval origins of several calendars we are most familiar with today, including the Christian liturgical calendar, the Islamic calendar, and the week as a standard method of dating and time reckoning.

Download or read book Spiritual Direction As a Medical Art in Early Christian Monasticism written by JONATHAN L. ZECHER and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-06 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What expectations did the women and men living in early monastic communities carry into relationships of obedience and advice? What did they hope to achieve through confession and discipline? To explore these questions, this study shows how several early Christian writers applied the logic, knowledge, and practices of Galenic medicine to develop their own practices of spiritual direction. Evagrius reads dream images as diagnostic indicators of the soul's state. John Cassian crafts a nosology of the soul using lists of passions while diagnosing the causes of wet dreams. Basil of Caesarea pits the spiritual director against the physician in a competition over diagnostic expertise. John Climacus crafts pathologies of passions through demonic family trees, while equipping his spiritual director with a physician's toolkit and imagining the monastic space as a vast clinic. These different appropriations of medical logic and metaphors not only show us the thought-world of late antique monasticism, but they would also have decisive consequences for generations of Christian subjects who would learn to see themselves as sick or well, patients or healers, within monastic communities.

Download or read book Temporalities Texts Ideologies written by Bobby Xinyue and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-01-11 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Temporalities, Texts, Ideologies provides a new analysis of the significance of time in Classical and early modern literature, demonstrating that literary temporality continually intervenes in questions of ontology, hierarchy and politics. Examining a diverse range of texts from Homeric epic to eighteenth-century poems on the Last Judgement, this collection of essays contends that temporality in literature sits at the heart of how authors from antiquity through to the early modern period understood and negotiated the structures that shaped their lives and may shape lives to come. Approaching the topic through four themes, the essays in this volume highlight the ways in which time is construed as relational, contestable and politically inflected. The authors show that variations in temporalities enable texts to critique the interactions or tensions between tradition and change, agency and determinism, social system and individual experience. The result is a refreshing approach to literary figurations of time that responds to the recent 'temporal turn' in the humanities, engages with current critical trends (such as ontological analysis and ecological criticism), and opens up an exciting new direction for future research on the connection between time, text, and context.