Ancient Setting Research Articles

Félicien David's Grand Opera Herculanum (1859): Rome, Early Christianity, Multiple Exoticisms, Great Tunes – and Satan

The longstanding practice of building opera librettos on stories from classical antiquity (especially Greece and Rome, and, to a lesser extent, Egypt, Persia and Babylonia) waned in the early 1800s, as impresarios began to favour plots with more obvious current-day resonance (though sometimes set a few centuries in the past, to skirt objections from government censors and, in some lands, church authorities). Still, imaginative librettists and composers found ways of rejuvenating an ancient setting and producing an opera that spoke to the day's audiences instead of feeling stuffy or academic. One of the biggest successes in French serious opera of the 1850s was Félicien David's Herculanum, set to a text primarily by the renowned playwright and poet Joseph Méry. Widely hailed, not least by composer-critics Hector Berlioz and Ernest Reyer, the work freshened the ‘ancient Rome’ conventions by locating the action far to the south, near what is today Naples, and by including, as the main characters, two powerful aristocrats from the Euphrates valley, and two young adepts of the nascent Christian movement – and a fifth character, Satan himself, come to wreak havoc in the world. All of this would seem a stewpot of a librettist's wild imaginings were it not for the quality and impressive variety of David's music – and the opportunities that libretto and music together give to imaginative performers, as has been demonstrated in the work's three major revivals beginning in 2014 (in Belgium/France, Ireland and Hungary).

Household sorting in an ancient setting

We use archaeological data from ancient settlements of three different historical eras on a Greek island to construct novel measures of consumption. Using these, we show that the shares of high-quality consumption goods were relatively more concentrated closer to the center of nucleated settlements as compared to low-quality consumption goods. There is no such pattern in a placebo settlement. In this unique setting, these quality gradients may reflect differences in household consumption baskets across these settlements. We argue that some alternative, trade or production based hypotheses for such gradients can be weakly ruled out based on our data and archaeological sources.

Darian R. Lockett. Letters for the Church: Reading James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, and Jude as Canon

Darian R. Lockett. <i>Letters for the Church: Reading James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, and Jude as Canon</i>

The Letter to the Ephesians

Lynn Cohick’s anticipated NICNT commentary on Ephesians deservedly takes its place in what is widely regarded as one of the most rigorous, thorough, historically and socio-culturally informed, and theologically insightful and balanced series available. Overall, the commentary reflects the scholarship and style we have come to expect from Cohick: well- researched, judicious, expert, and pastorally sensitive and wise.Especially valuable are the fifteen excursuses scattered throughout the work, covering topics from (for example) “The Meaning of Kephalē” (pp. 130–34) and “Supersessionism” (pp. 189–95) to “Household Codes in the Ancient World” (pp. 342–48) and “Slavery in the Ancient World” (pp. 391–407). Throughout, Cohick shows herself to be not only a sharp historical critic but also a sensitive expositor of these volatile issues for our troubled times.Any commentary on Ephesians, of course, must start with the contested question of authorship (pp. 3–25). Particularly valuable in this connection is the discussion of the role of an amanuensis and of the potential role of the co-senders of Paul’s letters (pp. 23–24). After a careful discussion, Cohick concludes that Ephesians is Pauline. She then turns her attention to the question of the letter’s original recipients, a question complicated by the fact that “in Ephesus” (1:1) is missed out in some early and important witnesses. In any event, Cohick decides on an Ephesian address (pp. 25–30). This decision then prompts a helpful, concise survey of the Artemis and imperial cults (pp. 34–40). From here, Cohick turns to the contested question of the letter’s provenance, some scholars advocating an Ephesian provenance and others a Roman one. Having carefully weighed the evidence, she concludes that Paul wrote Ephesians from Rome (pp. 45–47). Moreover, beyond these fundamental matters of the text’s historical exigencies, Cohick also provides valuable introductory material on a number of topics, prominent among which is a lengthy discussion of the text’s Christology and proto-trinitarianism (pp. 57–70).All relevant matters text-critical, linguistic, rhetorical, historical, socio-cultural, and theological are handled with thoroughness and care. But a few features of the volume deserve special mention.A thorough and yet succinct discussion of the so-called Haustafeln (“household codes”) can be found on pp. 342–48. A couple of Cohick’s summary remarks with respect to Ephesians 5:21–6:9 are worth quoting at length.Cohick then helpfully locates Paul’s vision of the household, and of its constituent members and relationships, in relation to the visions of the ancient philosophical tradition (pp. 342–50, 385–401).For Paul, she argues, unlike (for example) for Plato, “there is no ontological difference between the slave and the master.” And Paul, moreover, unlike (for example) Aristotle, shows no strong interest in “maintaining class distinctions or [in] isolating virtues to specific groups on a sliding scale of social worth” (345). Finally, Paul, unlike (for example) Plutarch, “seems unconcerned about the wife working to make her husband happy. Instead, Paul emphasizes a husband’s sacrificial, self-giving love that is more in keeping with Plutarch’s description of a wife” (p. 347).Moreover, although she acknowledges, here quoting Margaret Y. MacDonald, Colossians and Ephesians, Sacra Pagina 17 (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2000), 341, that “it is important to acknowledge that the text presents a vision of household relationships, rooted in an ancient setting, that is considered unjust today (and, in the case of slavery, completely immoral),” she also concludes the following: “Paul eliminates the power of the superordinate—husband and (male or female) slave master—and elevates the importance and worth of the subordinate. By so doing, he effectively cuts the bottom out of the institutions of patriarchy and slavery” (p. 388).Cohick also appreciates throughout that—though I am putting this in my words and not hers—unless we are to have a docetic bibliology and consequently a docetic view of scriptural inspiration, we ought to expect the authors of scripture to be, as we often wrongly say with no small amount of chronological snobbery, “people of their time.” The point of inspiration is not that the authors of scripture attained to a point of view that was timeless, somehow completely detached from the (broken) context within which alone they understood God, themselves, and everything else. Rather, the point is that they said precisely what God wanted them to say from within and in relation to this broken context.We owe Cohick a debt: this is now one of the best Ephesians commentaries we have.

A Cenozoic Great Barrier Reef on Australia's North West shelf

Abstract The Great Barrier Reef of Australia is the largest modern coral reef system on Earth. However, a similar-sized barrier reef (~2000 km long) existed on Australia's north-western margin in the middle Miocene and to some extent, still exists today. Seismic profiles reveal that this reef system was first initiated in the late Paleogene (~34–28 Ma) and reached its zenith as a prograding barrier reef during the middle Miocene (16–15 Ma). This giant reef system backstepped in the late Miocene (~10 Ma), forming a series of isolated atolls and pinnacle reefs. These remaining reefs were gradually extinguished, leaving only a few surviving isolated atolls today (Rowley Shoals, Scott Reef, Seringapatam Reef and Ashmore Reef). The distribution of these extant reefs therefore outlines the former presence of the mid-Miocene Great Barrier Reef of the Australian North West Shelf. This middle Miocene shallow-water rimmed-reefal shelf grew contemporaneously on a deeper-water heterozoan ramp, producing an unusual mixed heterozoan/photozoan carbonate system for most of its length. The initiation of reef growth appears related to Australia's northward drift into lower latitudes, combined with warm mid-Miocene climatic optimum conditions. However, the sudden and simultaneous initiation of reef growth in the mid-Miocene across the North West Shelf was probably also related to changes in paleoceanography (increased aragonite saturation and/or nutrient-depletion) perhaps influenced by changing climatic conditions (increased aridity). From the late Miocene (~10 Ma) to Holocene, high rates of subsidence across the North West Shelf probably set the scene for ultimate demise of this giant barrier reef system and led to widespread backstepping with the development of a series of isolated atolls and pinnacle reefs. It is likely that other paleoceanographic and climatic events (like nutrient supply, carbonate saturation, eustasy etc) combined with continued high subsidence rates acted to gradually extinguish the reef system in a series of steps over a period of 10 million years. The onset (~1 Ma) of a strong Leeuwin Current (with the delivery of warm and nutrient depleted water from the north) and its effect on the Quaternary reefs of the Western Australian coast is a good example of a paleoceanographic process that would be difficult to recognize in an ancient setting. It is likely that similar paleoceanographic events have controlled the rich and complex history of reef growth and drowning since the mid-Miocene on the North West Shelf.

Co-Creation Tourism in an Ancient Chinese Town

ABSTRACTThis study examines and presents co-creation as a possible action to prevent the ongoing decline of the Naxi ethnic minority due to mass tourism and commercialization in their ancient hometown of Lijiang. A co-creation theoretical model was developed to examine the antecedents and outcomes of co-creation experiences. A questionnaire survey of visitors to the Old Town showed that should co-creation tourism experiences be presented with the involvement of greater interaction, involvement, and the ability to share experiences, this could significantly influence visitor satisfaction, visit intensity, and desire to return. Perceived authenticity would not positively affect co-creation experiences though, revealing a lack of understanding of what Naxi culture was. The study advances cultural tourism understanding revealing co-creation, with visitors engaged in the co-production of their experiences as a viable elucidation to secure sustainable tourism development at this ancient setting.

National Identities, Personal Crises: Amnesia in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant

Abstract This article considers how Ishiguro’s 2015 novel about mass forgetting in post-Arthurian Britain adds to debates about what it means to be a human living within a society. There are four areas of enquiry linked by their emphasis on the interdependence of remembering and forgetting: ideas of memory in nationhood; the depiction of the British landscape; the cognitive process of recognition; and the emotional aspects of remembering. Interdisciplinary in scope, this article uses evidence from psychological studies of memory alongside detailed close readings of the text, allowing a more precise analysis of the role of the narrator and the effect of Ishiguro’s text on the reader. By keeping his previous corpus in view throughout, it evaluates Ishiguro’s continued use of memory and nationality as themes, while demonstrating the new departures offered by the conjunction of an ancient setting and a contemporary reading audience. One of the first sustained critical efforts on The Buried Giant, this article puts the novel firmly on the agenda of literary, cultural and memory studies respectively.

Walter Map and the Matter of Britain by Joshua Byron Smith

Reviewed by: Walter Map and the Matter of Britain by Joshua Byron Smith Brooke Kennel Joshua Byron Smith, Walter Map and the Matter of Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2017) 174 pp. Joshua Byron Smith's book Walter Map and the Matter of Britain starts with a mystery: why would medieval audiences attribute one of the grandest and most sprawling works of Arthurian literature, the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, to an author whom most modern scholars deem scatterbrained, flighty, and incapable of staying on topic? This author is, of course, Walter Map, whose splintered book De nugis curialium appears so disorganized and incoherent that it has been taken as evidence of his supposedly cluttered and chaotic mind. Smith, however, seeks to restore some dignity to the much-maligned cleric and argues that it was not so unreasonable for medieval readers to think that Map had been involved in the creation of one of the most celebrated works of their day. In doing so, he also makes bold claims about the way in which the Matter of Britain was transmitted from its original Welsh milieu to English and French audiences. Smith begins his project by situating Walter Map within the context of twelfth-century geopolitics. He believes that Map's presumed Welsh identity has been overemphasized in the past and instead argues for an English Map who hailed from the Welsh Marches, where English and Welsh culture met and overlapped. This backdrop of cultural liminality gave Map the authority he needed to present himself as an expert on the Welsh to the Anglo-Norman court of Henry II. Most of the middle chapters of the book are dedicated to rescuing [End Page 277] Map's reputation by arguing that the De nugis curialium was never intended to be a single harmonious work. Rather, it consists of rough drafts for several different works in various stages of completion and revision. Smith makes a thorough analysis of the individual distinctiones, demonstrating how Map was in the process of revising his works stylistically while also "Britonicizing" (to use a word Smith coins himself) them to create a more fashionable ancient setting. Much of this analysis is rather technical and intended primarily for specialists, but Smith's discussion of the expansion of the Herlething story to the longer Herla version should be fascinating to anyone interested in the otherworldly in medieval literature. The remaining chapters tie the discussion of Walter Map's interest in the Matter of Britain to the larger question of how such literature was transmitted from Welsh audiences to the wider medieval world. Smith points out that the role of Latin literature and clerical networks has too often been ignored in favor of more fanciful notions of traveling Breton minstrels transmitting stories orally. He also notes that by placing the primary emphasis on the figure of Arthur himself, scholars have ignored the general interest in ancient Britain, which provides the context for the king's introduction into English and French literature. Smith ends with a clarion call for scholars to engage in more interdisciplinary work and treat medieval Britain as a complex, multilingual, and multicultural landscape deserving of a wider perspective. While some of Smith's claims may be controversial, his careful analysis of the De nugis curialium is quite convincing and does much to explain why an author whose work was highly regarded by medieval readers seems so slipshod to scholars today. Moreover, as Smith himself points out, it appeals to the common experience of all writers, who rarely complete a work from beginning to end in an orderly fashion and almost never without needing to edit and revise through several drafts. He also makes a convincing case for the need for more communication between Celticists and medievalists at large. Implicit in his work is the cogent suggestion that Welsh—like French, Middle English, and Latin—should be considered a relevant language of study for scholars of medieval Britain. There were some issues with Smith's presentation, though not with his arguments. For a book with such high ambitions, both the introduction and conclusion felt rather short and rushed. Moreover, a subject such as Walter Map really deserves an engaging introduction...

Online-Only Content

Previous articleNext article FreeOPEN ACCESS ON AJA ONLINE (www.ajaonline.org)Online-Only ContentPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreOnline-only content accompanying American Journal of Archaeology Volume 121, Number 3 (July 2017)BOOK REVIEWSKeeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums… and Why They Should Stay There, by Tiffany Jenkins. Reviewed by Guy D. MiddletonThe Ancient Egyptian Economy 3000–30 BCE, by Brian Muhs. Reviewed by David WarburtonBronze Age Bureaucracy: Writing and the Practice of Government in Assyria, by Nicholas Postgate. Reviewed by Karen RadnerCitadel and Cemetery in Early Bronze Age Anatolia, by Christoph Bachhuber. Reviewed by Laura K. HarrisonPlace, Memory and Healing: An Archaeology of Anatolian Rock Monuments, by Ömür Harmanşah. Reviewed by Christoph BachhuberCypriot Cultural Details: Proceedings of the 10th Post Graduate Cypriot Archaeology Conference, edited by Iosif Hadjikyriakos and Mia Gaia Trentin. Reviewed by Craig BarkerHagios Charalambos: A Minoan Burial Cave in Crete I. Excavation and Portable Objects, by Philip P. Betancourt. Reviewed by Ilse SchoepHouses of Ill Repute: The Archaeology of Brothels, Houses and Taverns in the Greek World, edited by Allison Glazebrook and Barbara Tsakirgis. Reviewed by Peter S. AllenAphrodite’s Kephali: An Early Minoan I Defensive Site in Eastern Crete, by Philip P. Betancourt. Reviewed by P. TomkinsThe Isthmus of Corinth: Crossroads of the Mediterranean World, by David K. Pettegrew. Reviewed by Daniel StewartThe Bioarchaeology of Classical Kamarina: Life and Death in Greek Sicily, by Carrie L. Sulosky Weaver. Reviewed by Kristina KillgroveThe Archaeology of Malta: From the Neolithic Through the Roman Period, by Claudia Sagona. Reviewed by Caroline MaloneSocial Networks and Regional Identity in Bronze Age Italy, by Emma Blake. Reviewed by Mark PearceThe Horologium of Augustus: Debate and Context, edited by Lothar Haselberger. Reviewed by Jörg RüpkeThe Moving City: Processions, Passages and Promenades in Ancient Rome, edited by Ida Östenberg, Simon Malmberg, and Jonas Bjørnebye. Reviewed by Jeremy HartnettOplontis: Villa A (“of Poppaea”) at Torre Annunziata, Italy. Vol. 1, The Ancient Setting and Modern Rediscovery, edited by John R. Clarke and Nayla K. Muntasser. Reviewed by Mantha ZarmakoupiAncient Antioch: From the Seleucid Era to the Islamic Conquest, by Andrea U. De Giorgi. Reviewed by Emanuele E. IntagliataRoman Crete: New Perspectives, edited by Jane E. Francis and Anna Kouremenos. Reviewed by Rebecca J. SweetmanDougga: Études d’architecture religieuse 2. Les sanctuaires du forum, du centre de l’agglomération et de la Grande rue courbe, edited by S. Aounallah and J.-C. Golvin. Reviewed by Niccolò MugnaiList of Books Received Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Archaeology Volume 121, Number 3July 2017 The journal of the Archaeological Institute of America Views: 33Total views on this site Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.3764/aja.121.3.online Copyright © 2017 by the Archaeological Institute of America. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Book Review of Oplontis: Villa A (“of Poppaea”) at Torre Annunziata, Italy. Vol. 1, The Ancient Setting and Modern Rediscovery, edited by John R. Clarke and Nayla K. Muntasser

Book Review of Oplontis: Villa A (“of Poppaea”) at Torre Annunziata, Italy. Vol. 1, The Ancient Setting and Modern Rediscovery, edited by John R. Clarke and Nayla K. Muntasser

Did Jehu Destroy Baal from Israel? A Contextual Reading of Jehu's Revolt

Abstract2 Kings 10:28 says unequivocally, “and so Jehu destroyed Baal from Israel.” This declaration has factored significantly into several reconstructions of Israelite religion in the 9th-8th centuries BCE. Some scholars argue that an established Baal cult was wholly absent from Israel following Jehu's purge. These scholars must then reinterpret the Baal polemics of Hos 2 as indicating something other than religious defection. This approach, however, misses important contextual data when considered within a broader ancient Near Eastern setting. This article argues that the Jehu narrative employs several stereotyped motifs present in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions (divine election, characterization of the enemy, chaos vs. order, exaggerated rhetoric and violence) as an understood means of legitimizing Jehu's reign. When these factors are identified, the rhetorical nature of the biblical author's language comes into focus. Thus, a face-value reading misses important textual indicators. Though Jehu dealt a major blow to the established Baal cult in the 9th century BCE, the language of the text accounts for its continuation.

Review: Oplontis: Villa A (“of Poppaea”) at Torre Annunziata, Italy, vol. 1, The Ancient Setting and Modern Rediscovery, edited by John R. Clarke and Nayla K. Muntasser

John R. Clarke and Nayla K. Muntasser, eds. Oplontis: Villa A (“of Poppaea”) at Torre Annunziata, Italy, vol. 1, The Ancient Setting and Modern Rediscovery New York: American Council of Learned Societies, 2014, 1,250 paras. + appendix, notes, bibliography, color and b/w illus. This open access publication is found at ACLS Humanities E-Book (http://www.humanitiesebook.org). HEB No. HEB90048, ISBN 9781597409322 This is the first of three volumes to be produced by the Oplontis Project (http://www.oplontisproject.org), which documents the famous Villa A at Torre Annunziata and its gardens together with the Oplontine built and geological environment. Volume 2 will incorporate the wall paintings, molded stuccoes, pavements, and sculptures of Villa A as well as social themes (slaves, graffiti) and other topics; volume 3 will present the villa's architecture of more than ninety rooms as well as the Oplontis Project's excavations and materials from 2006 to the present. The lesser-known Villa B, a mixed-use commercial, warehouse, and residential building nearby, will also be presented. John R. Clarke and Nayla K. Muntasser prove to be adroit editors; their structuring of the multidisciplinary project gives both detailed views and a “big picture” of the material, enabling readers to apprehend the architectural, artistic, cultural, social, and technical history of the villa in its entirety rather than only its isolated beauties. Happily, the American Council of Learned Societies has provided the publication with a venue in its Humanities E-Book series. The e-book is the natural form for the Oplontis Project, and the way for its digital publication was paved long ago. When Jeffrey M. Hurwit's 2004 The Acropolis in the Age of Pericles was published with a CD-ROM of extended illustrations tucked into its back cover, it was a revelation: the expansion of the visual material enhanced readers' ability to participate in the author's text.1 The same, multiplied by many factors, can be said of this Oplontis volume. Its audiences get supple and immediate text/image coordination, quick access to scholarly apparatus (notes, bibliography), and easy navigation. As the project is a joint venture of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei and the Department of Art and Art History at the …

Medieval Wildernesses and King Lear: Heath, Forest, Desert

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the impact of the storm on the heath on Lear is best explained in light of two obsolescent medieval cultural traditions that found positive value in wild nature, in contrast to the negative views common in early modern England. The forest laws help us understand the heath as a place, as well as the monarch’s relationship to that place. But for understanding the inner change in Lear, which is like that of the knight-hermits in medieval romance, we must turn to the cultural roots of the eremitical tradition in monastic spirituality, which, as Jacques Le Goff has argued, were transplanted from the deserts of Egypt to the forests of France and England. These two medieval cultural traditions, transposed into the play’s ancient pagan setting, provide essential help in understanding why a violent storm in a bleak landscape has such a strong presence in Shakespeare’s great tragedy.

Cursing in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas

One of the most notable features of the so-called Infancy Gospel of Thomas is its depiction of several punitive miracles, or curses, performed by the child Jesus. Previous scholarly treatments of the text have often dismissed these curses as merely another type of miracle, rather than as a special feature of IGT deserving of further study. This article examines the curses with an eye toward their distinctive qualities, and then seeks to find a match for the resulting paradigm in other literature, both Christian and non-Christian, from the ancient Mediterranean setting. A possible match is found in the cursing stories told of the ascetics of fourth-century Syria, as related by Theodoret of Cyrrhus in his Religious History.

What These Ithakas Really Mean

While Constantine Cavafy's Ithaka may be his most famous poem today, it was written relatively early in his poetic career and treats subject matter that Cavafy eventually abandoned. (1) True, much of Cavafy's work bridges temporal gaps between his own time and an earlier Hellenistic universe, but a fair bit of that subset and almost all of his work subsequent to Ithaka overlooks familiar classical subjects. In fact, Cavafy seems drawn to lesser-known periods in history throughout his work because they are less familiar. The Ptolemeys, the Seleucids, and the fictional voices of those who lived under such lesser-known rulers represent a post-Alexandrian world that provided Cavafy an inroad for his own unique vision of a Hellenism not entirely mainstream: a romantic Greece, a fringe Greece, a Greece in exile. (2) But this was not always the case. Cavafy did compose several poems early in his career on topics within the well-known classical canon and, for whatever reasons, decided to abandon such topics as his poetic voice matured. The later obsolete or esoteric classical themes serve Cavafy in two distinct ways, neither mutually exclusive of the other. Little-known subject matter alienates readers from the antiquity with which they feel comfortable and these choices allow the ancient setting to become secondary to Cavafy's own poetic vision. With unfamiliar ancient references, Cavafy can project freely onto what is now a historical blank slate, devoid of readers' preconceptions that may originate from a background steeped in the canonical literary tradition. (3) On the other hand, when Cavafy addresses a well-known Greek subject in his earlier poems, he anticipates the reader's recognition and their initial reaction. He does so as a skilled reader of the Homeric corpus, imagining at least one hypothetical audience member (by no means, the only possible audience member) able to engage with the poem as part of a deeper conversation between fellow intellectuals. As each poem progresses, Cavafy manipulates this readerly foreknowledge to provoke responses of alienation and uncertainty not unlike those evoked in his later poems. In the earlier poems, however, the audience's familiarity with the canon aids Cavafy in bringing about this reaction. Whenever he selects a well-known myth, he immediately creates a bond with the prospective reader over their common heritage and knowledge of the classical canon, thus lulling the reader into a false sense of recognition and comfort. Then Cavafy swiftly overturns expectations. A familiar reference suddenly becomes unfamiliar and strange, exiling the audience from their pre-existing ideas and thus encouraging them to see something they once thought they understood in a completely new light via Cavafy's poetic craft. In this respect Cavafy is almost Euripidean in his approach. Like the fifth century BCE tragic poet, Cavafy's retelling of traditional ancient myths is anything but canonical. (4) Within these early poems, the more knowledgeable one is of the Elellenic tradition in which Cavafy is writing, the more one can see how and why he sways from it. His most original thoughts, then, can emerge through a close study of the poems together with the canonical originals and by noting their differences. The more initiated the reader, the more potential there is to experience Cavafy's original, and often ironic, take on his source material. For the purposes of this article, I shall only address Cavafy's published works that allude to the Trojan cycle, surely one of the most commonly known periods within the classical canon both in Cavafy's day and our own. (5) Primarily this means I will be discussing Cavafy's ongoing conversation with the two Homeric poems (the Iliad and the Odyssey). As part of this conversation, however, I will also briefly touch upon Cavafy's interactions with the later tragic poets who treat the Homeric stories with their own spin, as well as the philosopher Plato who, like Cavafy, thought deeply about the significance of working within an inherited, yet constantly changing, literary tradition. …

Les lieux de métier: Boutiques et ateliers d'Herculanum (Book Review)

How should scholars think about studying ancient shops? Were all shops the same? Was there really much “shopping” in classical antiquity? Shopping is so deeply embedded in the popular imagination as a modern preoccupation that it is not easy to reframe shops in an ancient setting without seeming either to be frankly anachronistic at one extreme or totally lacking in imagination at the other. Monteix is well aware of the historiographical problem facing any scholar who wants to make a serious and systematic study of Roman shops.

Sacred Trees in the Garden of Eden and Their Ancient Near Eastern Precursors

Interpretations of the trees in the Garden of Eden misunderstand their significance by focusing on sin or a theological “fall.” A tradition-historical approach to the motif of trees in ancient Near Eastern literature and imagery reveals their multivalent quality. Trees are connected with fertility and goddess devotion but also with the power and divine sanction given to kings and dynasties, and with the potency of sacred space, on which humans and the divine come together and meet. As cross-temporal motifs, trees are regularly associated with life-giving and blessing (a plant of rejuvenation; a tree of life); a connection of trees to knowledge and meaning appears as well, in wisdom literature, and in the book of 1 Enoch. Language of a world tree or cosmic tree, though useful conceptually, is a modern imposition on the ancient evidence. More evident from the ancient setting is the image of felling trees, which indicates the downfall of human leaders, especially kings, because of their hubris. Ultimately, sacred trees have an ambivalent value, as a source of both contestation and progress.

Using the Ancient Method of False Position to Find Solutions

During my twenty-four years as a middle school and high school teacher, I observed that students were often fascinated by vignettes from the history of mathematics. When the vignette had an ancient Egyptian setting, that background added a certain mystique.

Nobody, Somebody, and King Lear

The approximately contemporary Jacobean plays, King Lear and Nobody and Somebody, share an ancient British setting, a preoccupation with instability in the state, and an unsettling interest in negation. Peter Womack here suggests that by reading them together we can retrieve some of the theatrical strangeness which the more famous of the two has lost through familiarity and naturalization. The dramatic mode of existence of the character called ‘Nobody’ is paradoxical, denaturing – an early modern visual and verbal Verfremdungseffekt, at once philosophical and clownish. His negativity, which is articulated in dialogue with the companion figure of ‘Somebody’, is matched in King Lear, above all in the role of Edgar, but also by a more diffused state of being (withdrawal, effacement, folly) which the play generates in reaction to its positive events. Ultimately the negation in both plays is social in character: ‘Nobody’ is the dramatic face of the poor and oppressed. Peter Womack teaches literature at the University of East Anglia. His most recent book is English Renaissance Drama (2006), in the Blackwell Guides to Literature series.

An Abecedary of the Mid-Tenth Century B.C.E. from the Judaean Shephelah

Near the conclusion of the 2005 excavation season at Tel Zayit, Israel, the Zeitah Excavations recovered a large stone bearing an incised, two-line inscription. The special importance of the stone derives not only from its archaic alphabetic text (a 22-letter abecedary), but also from its well-defined archaeological context in a structure dating securely to the tenth century B.C.E. The borderland site of Tel Zayit lies in the lowlands district of Judah, and in the early Iron Age IIA period it maintained its principal affiliations with the highland culture to the east, in the direction of Jerusalem. After locating the site in its ancient physical setting, this article presents a detailed description of the archaeological context that yielded the inscribed stone, the comparative evidence for studying the inscription, and a palaeographical analysis of each letter of the abecedary itself. The Tel Zayit Abecedary represents the linear alphabetic script of central and southern Canaan at the beginning of the first millennium B.C.E., a transitional script that developed from the Phoenician tradition of the early Iron Age and anticipated the distinctive features of the mature Hebrew national script. The early appearance of literacy at Tel Zayit will play a pivotal role in the current discussion of the archaeology and history of Judah in the tenth century B.C.E.