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This collaborative volume examines revolts and resistance to the successor states, formed after Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian empire, as a transregional phenomenon. The editors have assembled an array of specialists in the study of the various regions and cultures of the Hellenistic world - Judea, Egypt, Babylonia, Central Asia, and Asia Minor - in an effort to trace comparisons and connections between episodes and modes of resistance. The volume seeks to unite the currently dominant social-scientific orientation to ancient resistance and revolt with perspectives, often coming from religious studies, that are more attentive to local cultural, religious, and moral frameworks. ...
Classicisms in the Black Atlantic explores how black authors and artists in the Atlantic world have shaped and reshaped the cultural legacies of classical antiquity from the aftermath of slavery up to the present day to represent black voices and experiences, often revealing in the process effaced black presences in classical antiquity.
Offering unparalleled scope, A Companion to Hellenistic Literature in 30 newly commissioned essays explores the social and intellectual contexts of literature production in the Hellenistic period, and examines the relationship between Hellenistic and earlier literature. Provides a wide ranging critical examination of Hellenistic literature, including the works of well-respected poets alongside lesser-known historical, philosophical, and scientific prose of the period Explores how the indigenous literatures of Hellenized lands influenced Greek literature and how Greek literature influenced Jewish, Near Eastern, Egyptian, and Roman literary works
The Oxford Handbook of Egyptology offers a comprehensive survey of the entire study of ancient Egypt, from prehistory through to the end of the Roman period. Transcending conventional boundaries between archaeological and ancient textual analysis and bringing together 63 chapters that range widely across the various archaeological, philological, and cultural sub-disciplines, authored by recognized experts in their respective fields, it highlights theextent to which the discipline has diversified and stresses the need for it to seek multidisciplinary methods and broader collaborations if it is to remain contemporary and relevant. Authoritative yet accessible,it is an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and general readers alike.
In a series of studies, Ian Moyer explores the ancient history and modern historiography of relations between Egypt and Greece from the fifth century BCE to the early Roman empire. Beginning with Herodotus, he analyzes key encounters between Greeks and Egyptian priests, the bearers of Egypt's ancient traditions. Four moments unfold as rich micro-histories of cross-cultural interaction: Herodotus' interviews with priests at Thebes; Manetho's composition of an Egyptian history in Greek; the struggles of Egyptian priests on Delos; and a Greek physician's quest for magic in Egypt. In writing these histories, the author moves beyond Orientalizing representations of the Other and colonial metanarratives of the civilizing process to reveal interactions between Greeks and Egyptians as transactional processes in which the traditions, discourses and pragmatic interests of both sides shaped the outcome. The result is a dialogical history of cultural and intellectual exchanges between the great civilizations of Greece and Egypt.
First comparative analysis of the role of local elites and populations in the formation of the two main Hellenistic empires.
Contact and interaction between Greek and Egyptian culture can be traced in different forms over more than a millennium: from the sixth century BC, when Greeks visited Egypt for the sake of tourism or trade, through to the Hellenistic period, when Egypt was ruled by the Macedonian-Greek Ptolemaic dynasty who encouraged a mixed Greek and Egyptian culture, and even more intensely in the Roman Empire, when Egypt came to be increasingly seen as a place of wonder and a source of magic and mystery. This volume addresses the historical interaction between the ancient Greek and Egyptian civilizations in these periods, focusing in particular on literature and textual culture. Comprising fourteen chapters written by experts in the field, each contribution examines such cultural interaction in some form, whether influence between the two cultures, or the emergence of bicultural and mixed phenomena within Egypt. A number of the chapters draw on newly discovered Egyptian texts, such as the Book of Thoth and the Book of the Temple, and among the wide range of topics covered are religion (such as prophecy, hymns, and magic), philosophy, historiography, romance, and translation.
Our understanding of science, mathematics, and medicine today can be deeply enriched by studying the historical roots of these areas of inquiry in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean. The fields of ancient science and mathematics have in recent years witnessed remarkable growth. The present volume brings together contributions from more than thirty of the most important scholars working in these fields in the United States and Europe in honor of the eminent historian of ancient science and medicine Heinrich von Staden, Professor Emeritus of Classics and History of Science at the Institute of Advanced Study and William Lampson Professor Emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at Yale University. The papers range widely from Mesopotamia to Ancient Greece and Rome, from the first millennium B.C. to the early medieval period, and from mathematics to philosophy, mechanics to medicine, representing both a wide diversity of national traditions and the cutting edge of the international scholarly community.
Scholars of classical history and literature have for more than a century accepted `initiation' as a tool for understanding a variety of obscure rituals and myths, ranging from the ancient Greek wedding and adolescent haircutting rituals to initiatory motifs or structures in Greek myth, comedy and tragedy. In this books an international group of experts including Gloria Ferrari, Fritz Graf and Bruce Lincoln, critique many of these past studies, and challenge strongly the tradition of privileging the concept of initiation as a tool for studying social performances and literary texts, in which changes in status or group membership occur in unusual ways. These new modes of research mark an important turning point in the modern study of the religion and myths of ancient Greece and Rome, making this a valuable collection across a number of classical subjects.
In the religious systems of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Mediterranean, gods and demigods were neither abstract nor distant, but communicated with mankind through signs and active intervention. Men and women were thus eager to interpret, appeal to, and even control the gods and their agents. In Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, a distinguished array of scholars explores the many ways in which people in the ancient world sought to gain access to--or, in some cases, to bind or escape from--the divine powers of heaven and earth. Grounded in a variety of disciplines, including Assyriology, Classics, and early Islamic history, the fifteen essays in this vo...