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This book deals with political propoganda in classical antiquity, exploring the contexts, strategies, and parameters of a fascinating phenomenon that has often been approached with anachronistic models (such as the centrally organized 'propaganda machines' of the 20th-century totalitarian regimes) or completely ignored. It offers case studies on the archaic period, classical Athens, the Hellenistic kingdoms, the Augustan age and the late Roman empire, and emphasizes concepts such as interaction, integration, and horizontal orientation.
Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Rome have yielded hundreds of wall paintings from domestic buildings. Greek myths and tragedies, especial by Euripides were visually represented. Balch presents an interdisciplinary study inquiring what earliest Jews and Christian in such houses might have been seeing as they read and interpreted scripture and performed core rituals, especially the Eucharist. This recent study of Roman domestic architecture suggests new perspectives on the social history of early Christianity.--Publisher.
The thirty-nine articles in this volume, One Who Loves Knowledge, have been contributed by colleagues, students, friends, and family in honor of Richard Jasnow, professor of Egyptology at Johns Hopkins University. Despite his claiming to be just a demoticist, Richard Jasnow's research interests and specialties are broad, spanning religious and historical topics, along with new editions of demotic texts, including most particularly the Book of Thoth. A number of the authors demonstrate their appreciation for Jasnow's contributions to the understanding of this difficult text. The volume also includes other studies on literature, Ptolemaic history, and even the god Thoth himself, and features detailed images and abundant hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic, Coptic, and Greek texts.
Cultural identity in the classical world is explored from a variety of angles.
Traces visual themes throughout key periods of art history, Written by leading scholars actively shaping the study of Roman imagery and iconography, Utilizes a broad interdisciplinary approach that incorporates archaeology, anthropology, sociology, and religious studies Book jacket.
Explores how rhetorical techniques helped to produce innovations in art of the Hellenistic courts at Pergamon and Alexandria.
Materia Magica approaches magic as a material endeavor, in which spoken spells, ritual actions, and physical objects all played vital roles in the performance of a rite. Through case studies drawing on objects excavated or discovered in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century at three Mediterranean sites, Andrew T. Wilburn identifies previously unknown forms of magic. He discovers evidence of the practice of magic in objects of ancient daily life, suggesting that individuals frequently turned to magic, particularly in times of crises. Studying the remains of spells enacted by practitioners, Wilburn examines the material remains of magical practice by identifying and placing them within their archaeological contexts. His method of connecting an analysis of the texts and inscriptions found on artifacts of magic with a close consideration of the physical form of these objects illuminates an exciting path toward new discoveries in the field.
Focusing on travel narratives as a setting for spelling out both cultural exchanges and identity building, the present volume maps a variety of strategies employed in travelogues by Christians and Jews in the late antique Roman East. The first part sheds light on the shared cultural background – folkloric or mythic – reflected in late antique Jewish and Christian sea-travel stories, and the various attempts to adapt it to a specific religious agenda. While the comparative analysis of the sources from two textual communities emphasizes their different religious agendas, it also allows for restoring patterns of the broader background with which they converse. The second part highlights Christian perceptions of the Land of Israel in missionary enterprises and in the eschatological visions. The travelogues offer a window on the interplay between shared inheritance and new agendas within the dialectical development of religious traditions in Late Antiquity.
Preliminary material /Margreet de Boer and T. A. Edridge -- SARAPIACA I /WILHELM HORNBOSTEL -- A NEW INTERPRETATION OF THE BULL-SLAYING MOTIF /S. INSLER -- ISIS OU LA TYCHÉ D'ALEXANDRIE ? /MARIE-ODILE JENTEL -- LA GRENOUILLE D'ÉTERNITÉ DES PAYS DU NIL AU MONDE MÉDITERRANÉEN /JEAN LECLANT -- UN «PIED DE SARAPIS» À TIMGAD, EN NUMIDIE /MARCEL LE GLAY -- EIN GNOMON AUS EINEM SÜDWEST-DEUTSCHEN MITHRÄUM /WOLFGANG LENTZ and WOLFHARD SCHLOSSER -- STRABO AND THE MEMPHITE TAUROMACHY /ALAN B. LLOYD -- DOCUMENTS NOUVEAUX ET POINTS DE VUE RÉCENTS SUR LES CULTES ISIAQUES EN ITALIE /MICHEL MALAISE -- LES CULTES ORIENTAUX À MICIA (DACIA SVPERIOR) /LIVIU MĂRGHITAN and CONSTANTIN C. PETOLESCU -- ...
Ritual happens in distinct places – in temples, in caves, along pilgrimage routes – and religious activities there incorporate a diverse set of objects such as holy water, cult statues, and sacred texts. Understanding religious ritual requires viewing it not as a disembodied event, but as emplaced, grounded in both built and natural surroundings, and integrated with its associated material objects. Here authors examine various religious practices in the Greco-Roman world and pilgrimage routes in contemporary Israel. Other contributions focus on the East, on domestic religion in prehistoric Taiwan, and the palimpsest of ritual activity in Buddhist China. One author considers not just ritu...