Byzantine Research Articles

The Existential Prophecy of Fyodor Tyutchev's Historiosophical Thought

The article examines the historiosophical reflections of F. I. Tyutchev, presented in his treatises, letters, poems, and substantiates the idea that Tyutchev does not proclaim slogans of either Slavophil or Westernist doctrines, but creates an original imperial ideology. Tyutchev views Russia as an equal and integral part of Europe, linking the existence of the empire with the development of the European spirit in Russia. The main criterion for the existence of the empire is unity. If it does not exist, then the state as an empire cannot exist. Tyutchev treated Orthodoxy as a historiosophical category. He bases his concept of the historical process on the traditions of Eastern Christianity and the legacy of the Byzantine Empire. In the idea of an empire based on Christian principles, Tyutchev sees the best system of statehood. For Tyutchev, the Russian people and Orthodoxy play a major role in the transformation of the world. In the concept of state and power, the categories of Christian ethics are especially important for Tyutchev, which, in his opinion, were not really relevant for the upper strata of society and representatives of the Russian government. The poet calls power "godless", claiming that it does not come from God, but is based on its material power, without recognizing a higher Divine authority over itself. The reason for the "godlessness" of the authorities was the separation from the Russian people and their national traditions and the departure from the historical past of "Holy Russia". This, from Tyutchev's point of view, is the main existential problem of Russia. Tyutchev's concept of empire was not a reproduction of the realities of the political life of Russia in the XIX century, but was an attempt to answer how the state should be built. Tyutchev's ideal of the Russian state is based on a society united by a single Christian faith.

Kılıçarslan I's Struggle with the Crusaders

In the light of the events that took place after the Qutalmışoğulları set foot in Anatolia, these lands, which were becoming a Turkish homeland day by day, were climbing to a very dangerous point for the Byzantine Empire. Especially the establishment of a new state centered on Iznik by Süleymanşah was a situation that required urgent measures for the Byzantine Empire. The empire, which wanted to get out of this situation with various defenses and attacks, was helpless in the face of the expansionist policy of the Turks. Believing that the Turks could only be expelled from Anatolia with external support, the empire found the solution in asking for help from its religious brothers. The emperor of the period, Alexios I Komnenos, who asked for help from his European religious brothers, thought to meet this need with paid soldiers. Considering the economic difficulties in Europe, this movement, which was planned to be carried out under the control of the Church, could have been used as an opportunity. As a matter of fact, the Church adapted this request to its own purposes and started to channel all the useless people in Europe to the east with various promises. This request for help, organized and mobilized by the Papacy, manifested itself in 1097 and Crusader armies began to cross into Anatolia via İstanbul. Byzantium, which achieved relative success with the crusader movements, was not so lucky against the brave and successful Seljuk sultan and Turkish beys like Kılıçarslan I. Because the ignition of the Turkish national consciousness under the leadership of Kılıçarslan I had frustrated the westerners. In the end, as a result of the struggles of Kılıçarslan I and other Turkish beys against the crusader armies, it was proved that Anatolia was once again a Turkish homeland.

The Greek Root of Byzantine Emperor: Constantine the Great, His Images and the Imperial Cult

In the time of Constantine the Great, the emperor consciously controlled his image to strengthen his presence within the empire to consolidate the imperial power and his rule. In the process, various visual art forms were utilised, with the emperor represented in the form of sculptures, mosaics/paintings, and coin emblems. The use of emperor portraits throughout the secular and sacred spaces reflects Constantine's important role in politics and religion. Constantine showed the element of "worship" in his images. He completed a "self-deification" with subjective initiative, which had important significance in Constantine's time and the political life after his age. In this process, images and ruler cult are two elements that cannot be ignored. In the Byzantine-centered discussion, both features can be traced back to ancient Greece. This paper will show that Constantine used his own image, with images as a tool, along with other means to promote his worship and successfully spread the perception of the concentration of imperial power to the whole society. The use of images and the ruler cult, in turn, is a profound reflection of the Greek roots of the early Byzantine Empire.

Ancient DNA from a lost Negev Highlands desert grape reveals a Late Antiquity wine lineage

Recent excavations of Late Antiquity settlements in the Negev Highlands of southern Israel uncovered a society that established commercial-scale viticulture in an arid environment [D. Fuks et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 117, 19780-19791 (2020)]. We applied target-enriched genome-wide sequencing and radiocarbon dating to examine grapevine pips that were excavated at three of these sites. Our analyses revealed centuries long and continuous grape cultivation in the Southern Levant. The genetically diverse pips also provided clues to ancient cultivation strategies aimed at improving agricultural productivity and ensuring food security. Applying genomic prediction analysis, a pip dated to the eighth century CE was determined to likely be from a white grape, to date the oldest to be identified. In a kinship analysis, another pip was found to be descendant from a modern Greek cultivar and was thus linked with several popular historic wines that were once traded across the Byzantine Empire. These findings shed light on historical Byzantine trading networks and on the genetic contribution of Levantine varieties to the classic Aegean landscape.

A Fountain of Fire: Idolatry, Alterity, and Ethnicity in Byzantine Book Illumination

This article examines the visual representation of pagan idols in Byzantine book illumination and investigates how such images were employed to convey a sense of geographical or ethnic distance. The main focus of this study is a group of illuminated manuscripts containing two of the most popular texts in the Byzantine world: Barlaam and Ioasaph and the Alexander Romance. These manuscripts include numerous representations of statuary that Byzantine readers would have easily recognized as being associated with the religious practices and superstitions of distant and foreign populations, thereby reinforcing their own self-identification with “civilized” characters. Through a comparative analysis of manuscripts such as Athon. Iviron 463 (Barlaam and Ioasaph) and Venice, Istituto Ellenico cod. 5 (Alexander Romance), this article explores the variety of iconographic solutions adopted by Byzantine artists to enhance the “ethnographic” function of idol images. A close examination of these solutions sheds new light on how visual narratives contributed to the construction of notions of identity, otherness, and ethnicity in Byzantium.

An Evaluation of the Laws on Slavery in Roman and Eastern Roman Law in Late Antiquity

Roma hukuku, dünya hukuk sistemleri içerisinde, etkisini günümüzde de hissettiren önemli bir hukuk ekolüdür. İlk Çağ halklarında var olan köleci sistem ilk devirlerden itibaren Roma ve Doğu Roma toplumlarında da kendine yer bulmuştur. Bu bağlamda Roma hukuku külliyatında kölelikle ilgili kanunlar epeyi bir yer tutmaktadır. Özellikle Codex Theodosianus, Corpus Iuris Civilis ve Ecloga’da Roma ve Doğu Roma’da köleci sistemin işleyişi hakkında bilgiler bulmak mümkündür. Hristiyanlığın kabulünden sonra bazı yeni azat etme yöntemleri Roma hukuk külliyatında yer bulsa da köleci sistemde bir değişiklik olmamıştır. Makalede kronolojik olarak Geç Antik Çağ’da, Roma ve Doğu Roma hukukunda kölelikle ilgili kanunların geçirdiği değişim ve dönüşüm üzerinde duracağız.

Gods, Goddesses, and Mortals for the 21st Century: The Reinstallation of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Collection of Ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art

Gods, Goddesses, and Mortals for the 21st Century: The Reinstallation of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Collection of Ancient Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art

Sepphoris: A Mosaic of Cultures by Zeev Weiss

Reviewed by: Sepphoris: A Mosaic of Cultures by Zeev Weiss Yitz Landes Zeev Weiss. Sepphoris: A Mosaic of Cultures. Treasures of the Past: The David and Jemima Jeselsohn Library. Jerusalem: Yad Ben-Zvi, 2021. 256 pp. [in Hebrew] Given Sepphoris’s importance in antiquity and the intensity of archeological study at the site over the past decades, an up-to-date presentation of the ancient history of the city has long been a desideratum. Zeev Weiss is, without a doubt, the best person for this task. Having worked at the site since the 1980s, most of that time as the head of the Hebrew University’s expedition, Weiss’s knowledge of Sepphoris is unparalleled, and his intimate familiarity with every one of its structures and with the plethora of relevant textual sources from antiquity is apparent on every page of his Sepphoris: A Mosaic of Cultures. [End Page 182] The book is organized into eight chapters. The first two chapters provide an overview of the general history of Sepphoris/Diocaesarea from the Hellenistic through the Byzantine periods. The following two chapters are dedicated to the material remains from the Roman and Byzantine periods; these two chapters form the heart of the book, amounting to one hundred of the book’s pages, and Weiss discusses dozens of buildings—large and small, public and private—as well as various aspects of the city’s infrastructure, such as sources of water and city streets. The fifth chapter is a detailed description of the mosaic art in Sepphoris, which Weiss argues “combines Eastern and Western artistic traditions,” that is, those of Antioch and North Africa (182). The sixth chapter deals with the evidence from the necropolis; Jewish burial has long interested Weiss, but unfortunately, the evidence for Sepphoris has only partially been uncovered due to limitations on excavating burial sites in the State of Israel. In chapter 7, Weiss seeks to characterize the religious character of the Jews of Sepphoris throughout the periods under discussion by utilizing the evidence gathered in prior chapters. The book ends with a chapter on the city’s gradual demise at the end of the Byzantine era, briefly discussing the history of the village that existed at the site until 1948 (skipping over how and why the village ceased to exist). Most of Weiss’s arguments pertain to interpreting the remains of specific edifices, but given their sheer number it is impossible to review them all here. Nevertheless, several broader conclusions, particularly regarding urban life, are of note. Based on the layout of the Roman city, Weiss establishes that “there is no sign of separation between houses of different sorts or even a division into neighborhoods or into areas of habitation by socioeconomic class nor religious or social affiliation” (96). (Unlike at most Galilean sites, it is possible to reconstruct the profile of the domestic types, as a significant portion of the city has been excavated.) Moreover, because urban culture and construction in fifth-century Sepphoris were so vibrant, Weiss argues against the scholarly claim, most prominently associated with Uzi Leibner, that there was a decline in rural settlement in Galilee and the surrounding regions in this general period (45).1 In light of the “pagan” nature of much of the urban environment and art in the city, Weiss also concludes that many of the Jews of Sepphoris, of various socioeconomic levels, “redefined their attitude toward Hellenistic-Roman culture” as they adopted “foreign customs” seemingly at odds with Judaism (218). Finally, Weiss argues that there was no specific traumatic event such as military conquest or natural disaster that led to Sepphoris’s demise, but rather that it was “a long and complicated process, one instigated by various causes—not necessarily related to one [End Page 183] another—that ultimately led to the contraction of Sepphoris, its decay, and the abandonment of entire sections of the city,” particularly during the latter decades of the sixth century (231). Given the book’s structure, the text can occasionally feel repetitive or out of order. “The House of Dionysius,” a large residence located in the upper city, so called due to its floor mosaics presenting Dionysian themes, makes its first appearance in the...

THE PERSPECTIVES OF NESSANA: NEW STUDIES OF THE “CARAVAN CITY” IN SOUTHERN ISRAEL

The article discusses a new project for the archaeological study of ancient Nessana, a small settlement of the Byzantine and early Islamic period (5th–7th centuries AD), located in Southern Israel, in the southwestern part of the Negev desert. The heyday of the settlement is connected with its location: in the Byzantine period, Nessana became an important caravan junction on the way of the Christian pilgrimage from the Holy Land to Sinai, to the monastery of St. Catherine. Using all the economic benefits of pilgrimage, Nessana was turning into a large urbanized settlement with a population of about five thousand people, with numerous churches and caravanserais. Pilgrimage undoubtedly played an important role in the life of the settlement, which is clearly reflected in the evidence of papyri of the 5th–7th centuries AD found there in the 1930s. The favorable location of the site on the very edge of the desert, many churches, papyri, building inscriptions and pilgrimage graffiti in several languages, as well as an arid climate conducive to the preservation of organic materials, make Nessana a unique object for studying the archaeological problems of the early Christian pilgrimage. Despite intensive work carried out in Nessana by two archaeological expeditions, the stratigraphy of the site and its layout are still unclear. The article presents the preliminary results of the first season of fieldwork of the new Nessana expedition and considers a number of issues related to the further study of the site.

Aramaic: A History of the First World Language by Holger Gzella

Reviewed by: Aramaic: A History of the First World Language by Holger Gzella Jessie Degrado holger gzella, Aramaic: A History of the First World Language (trans. Benjamin D. Suchard; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021). Pp. xii + 359. $70. Aramaic: A History of the First World Language is the recent translation with updated bibliography of a volume first published in Dutch in 2017. In the work, Gzella sets himself a monumental task: to present the history of Aramaic over three thousand years without presuming prior knowledge of any Semitic language. Since the work is a popularization of G.'s A Cultural Atlas of Aramaic (HdO 111; Leiden: Brill, 2015), readers with a background in Semitic languages may prefer to consult that volume and, especially, important reviews by Charles Häberl (JAOS 139 [2019] 714–17) and Steven Kaufman ("Notes on A Cultural History of Aramaic" [Aramaic Studies Today, 2017, https://blog.huc.edu/cal/a-culturalhistory-of-aramaic/]). Given the popular focus of the work, this review will focus primarily on its conceptual and historical claims. In chap. 1, G. provides an overview of the history of academic Aramaic studies and some basic features of early Aramaic. In this section, the difficulty of writing a popular history of Aramaic becomes clear: readers with no background in Aramaic will likely struggle to parse the technical details. On the other hand, more experienced readers may be frustrated by the lack of support for several claims, such as the assertion that the lowering of the short vowel i to e obtains in all Aramaic dialects. In fact, the Aramaic name Māti'-'il is consistently written as {ma-ti-' -dingir} (with ti rather than te) in a ninth-century treaty (SAA 2 2), indicating that this phonological process likely postdates Old Aramaic. The next two chapters trace the development and uses of Aramaic in the first millennium b.c.e. Chapter 2 covers the initial phases of the written language, Old Aramaic (OA)—first attested in monumental inscriptions from Syrian kingdoms in the ninth and eighth centuries b.c.e. Chapter 3 outlines the use of Aramaic by first-millennium empires, from its role as a lingua franca in the Neo-Assyrian and Babylonian periods to the development of Imperial Aramaic, a standardized dialect with its own orthographic conventions, employed as the administrative language of the Achaemenid empire. These two chapters highlight an important trend in the history of Aramaic, namely, processes that lead to standardization of dialects in writing. G. gives the impression that this was a highly organized and agentive process, attributable to the reign of a single ruler or even a specific year. For OA, G.'s reconstruction requires sidelining texts that do not adhere to the alleged standardization (Neirab stelae, Deir Alla, and Tell Fekheriye). In addition, Sam'alian, a dialect from Zincirli, is not considered Aramaic (cf. the more recent treatment in Federico Giusfredi and Valerio Pisaniello, "The Population, the Language and the History of Yadiya/Sam'al," in Beyond All Boundaries: Anatolia in the 1st Millennium BC [OBO 295; Leuven: Peeters, 2021] 189–223). In other words, OA appears homogeneous only when all texts attesting to its heterogeneity have been dismissed as anomalous or reclassified as not Aramaic. The next two chapters on Aramaic in late antiquity illustrate the reverse process of linguistic standardization, that is, the movement toward recording the diversity of vernacular speech. G. covers the use of Aramaic in the southern Levant (biblical texts and Qumran), and the development of distinct dialects including Palmyrene, Hatran, and Arascid Aramaic. A substantial portion of chap. 4 is devoted to the assertion that Hebrew was no longer spoken as a vernacular after 400 b.c.e. and had lost all communicative function by the second [End Page 337] century c.e. This requires special pleading, given corpora such as the Bar Kokhba letters and tomb inscriptions from Bet Shearim and Jaffa, which indicate that Hebrew was likely spoken through the second century and used in inscriptions through the fourth century (see Y. Elitzur, "Epigraphic Hebrew: Roman and Byzantine Period," in Encyclopedia of Hebrew Language and Linguistics [ed. Geoffrey Khan; 4 vols.; Leiden: Brill, 2003] 1:843–51). More significantly...

Metal prills in primary glass: A puzzling aspect of the production process

Primary glassmaking in the first millennium CE during Roman and post Roman periods was conducted in large heating installations, the so-called tank furnaces, in two main regions of the East Mediterranean, namely the Levant and Egypt. Especially in Israel, a large number of tank furnaces in various sites such as Apollonia, Bet Eli’ezer (Hadera) and Jalame have been discovered, giving new insights regarding the technology of glassmaking in the first millennium CE.In this paper, we investigate the existence of metal prills embedded in raw glass at the contact layer with a tank furnace floor. The glass chunks were found in a refuse pit at Umm ez-Zinat, southern Carmel, Israel, and are dated to the Late Roman-Early Byzantine periods (fourth-early fifth centuries CE) based on glass vessels found with the debris of primary and secondary production. Another three prills from Bet Eli’ezer, the massive glass industry dated to the seventh-early-eighth centuries CE, were also analysed to compare any similarities/differences between the prills from the two sites.Results show that the prills vary greatly in shape and composition. Their morphology ranges from rounded spheres to asymmetric ellipses, all showing inclusions indicating the source material was chemically heterogeneous. The prills from Umm ez-Zinat are mainly lead, with minor contribution of copper, tin, antimony and silver as inclusions. Two of the three prills from Bet Eli’ezer are copper alloyed with lead, and one has a lead matrix with various copper inclusions. We investigate possible scenarios to understand the nature of the metal in the glass, how and when it was added to the glass melt, and possible technological and ritual interpretations for its presence.

Daniel Caner. The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium.

In his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius recounted how in 250 Christians in Alexandria courageously cared for the victims of an epidemic. Without thinking of their safety, they embraced their loved ones as death approached. Their pagan neighbors, on the other hand, abandoned their family members in fear and left them to die alone in the streets. These Alexandrian Christians were practicing philanthropia, the virtue the apostle Paul called agape (love, charity), but they did not extend this philanthropy to pagans. In the next hundred years, however, Christians began to assist all men and women regardless of their religious beliefs. Scholars studying Christian philanthropy in the Early Byzantine period (323 to 642) attribute this expanding scope of Christian charity to Constantine’s conversion and the subsequent Christianization of the Roman state. In The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium, Daniel Caner has undertaken a far more thorough analysis of this shift in Christian philanthropy. By examining various terms that Christian writers chose to emphasize different aspects of Paul’s agape, Caner traces out more precisely how these shifts occurred.

Relatıons wıth Byzantıne Empıre Durıng The Prophet’s Tıme (Pbuh)

The period of Muhammad [pbuh] is the most important time period of whole 15-century Islamic history. It is because his sayings and habits had become a source of influence for later periods. As being the head of state of Islam based in Madina, his relations with the two super power states of the world at that time, Sasanids and Byzantines are substantial examples. The north side of the Arabian peninsula, at the time Muhammad [pbuh] was preaching Islam to the people of Macca, were hosting a power struggle between Sasanids and Byzantines. In this time, the polytheist heathen people of Macca were supporting the Zoroastrian Sasanids’ side, while Muslims who embrace the «tawhid» faith were having a sympathy for Byzantine empire, whom were Christians, the people of the book. In the seventh year of hijra towards Madina [AD 628], the prophet had sent letters to many prominent leaders of his time, inviting them to Islam. One of these prominent leaders were the Byzantine emperor, Heraclius, whom accepted the ambassador Dihya ibn Khalifa al-Kalbi during his visit at Jerusalem. The prophet also sent envoys to Byzantine governor of Egypt and emir of Ghassanids, a Byzantine alley, to invite them to Islam. The emir of Ghassanids’ killing the ambassador of Islamic state who was sent to Bosra governor, led to a new crisis. As the emir had called for Byzantines to help against troops that were sent by Islamic state, Muslims had faced up against the army of Byzantine empire for the first time, during Battle of Mu'tah [8/629]. At this battle, the Islamic army was forced to leave the war area due to Byzantine-Ghassanids’ numerical superiority. In the 9th year of Hijra [AD 630] following the reports of Byzantine empire preparing armies to attack to lands of Islam, Prophet went on an expedition as the head of 30.000 people large army. The army had reached towards Tabuk, however, as Byzantine army have had not seen anywhere, the army had returned. Meanwhile, military units were sent to some of the settlements near and the region was taken under control.

A New Season for the Study of Byzantine Theories of Vision

The article reviews in an extended and critical way Roland Betancourt, Sight, Touch, and Imagination in Byzantium, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2018. After putting the book in the context of contemporary scholarship on Byzantine theories of vision, the article sketches the structure and contents of the book (together with its methodology), before moving on to a critical discussion of the interpretation of some important Late Antique and Byzantine theories of vision advanced by Betancourt, especially that of Galen, together with its reception in Nemesios of Emesa and in the later Byzantine world (focusing on its relation with the Eucharistic theology and Christology of Nicholas Kabasilas). The article ends by stressing the value of Betancourt's book insofar as the wealth of material it collects will allow scholars to deepen and enrich the study of Byzantine theories of vision.

The Hesychast Movement And The Liturgy

"This article shows the influence of the Hesychast movement on the liturgy, which led to a major liturgical reform in the Byzantine world. The ideal of “praying without ceasing” as a fruit of baptism led the hesychasts to consider it as the aim of the life of all Christians, monks and lay people, and to consider the neo-Sabaite Typikon as the most adapted ordo to serve as a school of prayer and to foster vigil and fasting, regarded in the patristic tradition as the main weapons against sin and passions. Conscious that “life in Christ” was anchored in the sacramental life of the Church, the hesychasts encouraged frequent communion and regarded the sacraments not as acts of individual piety but rather underlined their ecclesial and eschatological dimensions. Keywords: hesychasm, liturgy, reform, neo-Sabaite Typikon, prayer, sacraments, vigil, fasting, Communion, Gregory of Sinai, Gregory Palamas, Philotheos Kokkinos, Kallistos and Ignatios Xanthopoulos, Nicholas Kabasilas, Symeon of Thessaloniki "

I monaci athoniti e l’Islam nel sec. XIV: le fonti agiografiche

"The article aims to approach the theme of the progress of the Turkish brigades into the Byzantine territories, in particular the Mount Athos, during the fourteenth century. It provides a new perspective for this topic. Indeed, it focuses on the hagiographical sources and how they describe the reaction of the Athonite monks in front of this phenomenon. The sources have been set according to a thematic order: 1) cases of escape from the Holy Mountain after the Turkish raids; 2) reports of or from captivity; 3) the consequences of the Turkish progress into the Asiatic and Western provinces of the Byzantine Empire; 4) the psychological impact on the monastic communities of Athos, and finally 5) the relationship between Athonite monks and Islamic communities in the Holy Land as favorite pilgrimage destination. The perception of the violence of the Turkish troops forces the Athonite communities to a general reconsideration of lifestyle and of ascetical practices. Moreover, it indirectly causes the propagation of the hesychast lifestyle out of the borders of the Holy Mountain during the late Byzantine period. Out of fear for the Islamic enemies the hagiographers take the opportunity to praise the ethical qualities of their monastic champions. On the other hand, in these sources they do not deal with Islamic morals; the violence of the enemies is the unique theme they consider as a priori distinguished feature of Muhammed’s followers. Keywords: Mount Athos, Byzantine monasticism, hesychasm, fourteenth century, Byzantine hagiography, Turkish conquest, Christian–Muslim relations, Kallistos I, Gregory Palamas, Philotheos Kokkinos "

Animal management in the fortified palace Felix Romuliana – Gamzigrad (Serbia) throughout the Late Antique and the Early Byzantine periods

This paper represents the first results of zooarchaeological analysis of animal remains from the fortified palace Felix Romuliana – Gamzigrad in eastern Serbia. The faunal material derives from the Late Antique (the second half of the 4th and the 5th centuries) and the Early Byzantine (the end of the 5th to the beginning of the 7th century) contexts investigated in the tower 15 of the later fortification which was built during the reign of Emperor Galerius (293–311) in the first decade of the 4th century CE. According to the results, some similarities and differences were noted between the periods in question. Namely, during both periods the most important animal was pig and the patterns of exploitation were similar. Cattle exploitation was oriented towards secondary products in both phases of the settlement, however, there is a slight decrease in cattle ratio and its size during the Early Byzantine period which could suggest the decline in the importance of this species though time. Regarding caprines, in the Late Antique period the local community mainly exploited secondary products, while in the Early Byzantine period the focus shifted to meat exploitation. Furthermore, the increase in numbers of indicated species was observed during the Early Byzantine period. The low amount of wild animal and fish remains suggests that hunting and fishing were periodically practised by the local population.

Byzantine heritage in contemporary Turkey: Research features and political significance

The article considers the politics of memory of the Turkish government in relation to the Byzantine heritage in the country and the reaction of the states whose historical narrative and identity are associated with the Byzantine Empire’s legacy. The article is based on a wide range of sources in Turkish, Greek, English and Russian. The authors believe that the Turkish policy of Islamization and the ideology of neo-Ottomanism, which are implemented by the ruling AK Party under the leadership of the President R.T. Erdogan, lead to the gradual dismantling of the remaining Byzantine heritage, which was proved by the transformation of the Monastery of the Choir and the Hagia Sophia into mosques. Turkish society, except for a few dissidents many of whom have already left the country, does not show interest in the history of Byzantium and perceives the policy of the ruling party quite pragmatically, according to the opinion polls. The international reaction to the decisions of the Turkish leadership was quite restrained and in general did not focus on Byzantium and its role in history. Thus, European politicians and researchers criticized mainly the anti-Western idea of Erdogan’s actions and rhetoric, while Greece fears mostly the revival of Ottoman imperialism and considers the Byzantine legacy as a part of Hellenism. The authors conclude that it was Russian society that defined the policy of Erdogan as the destruction of the Byzantine heritage of the Eastern Orthodox civilization (primarily due to the position of the Russian Orthodox Church), which made the Russian political leadership discuss this issue at the highest level. Moreover, in the international dimension, Ankara’s consistent policy to dismantle the Byzantine heritage affects the image and ideology of the Russian state to a greater extent than that of Greece, which is determined by the sustainable perception of Russia as the successor of the Byzantine tradition.

Dental paleopathologies in western Anatolian skeletons from the Late Eastern Roman Period (Attepe and Dereköy settlements).

The skeletons investigated herein were dated to the Late Eastern Roman Period, at the time of the golden age under the reign of the Macedonian dynasty ruled between 867 and 1056. In the Kütahya region, which acted as a border and frequently changed between the Eastern Roman and Seljuk states, the oral and dental health of the Attepe and Dereköy populations in this period was differed proportionally. A dam was constructed in Kütahya Province near Kureyşler Village for irrigation purposes. The Attepe settlement (AD 986-1050) and Dereköy necropolis (AD 966-1032) are located within the boundaries of the dam lake. To save the cultural assets in these areas, excavation studies were conducted by the Kütahya Museum in the region in 2014. This study investigated 447 permanent teeth from 34 adult individuals in the Attepe population, and 270 permanent teeth from 17 adult individuals in the Dereköy population dated to the Late Eastern Roman period. When the distribution of dental diseases in the Attepe population was examined, it was determined that 13.77% had caries, 0.81% had periapical lesions, 68.18% had periodontal disease, 13.07% had calculus, 17.98% had hypoplasia, and 22.33% had antemortem tooth loss (AMTL). In the Dereköy population, 12.88% had caries, 2.01% had periapical lesions, 80% had periodontal disease, 3.83% had calculus, 23.28% had hypoplasia, and 5.37% had AMTL. In both populations, the degree of tooth wear was determined as grade 3 and 4. The dental data showed that agricultural-dominated nutrition consumption was effective in the Attepe and Dereköy populations. In both populations, there were significant differences between the amount of caries and calculus (p = 0.00 < 0.05) as well as tooth wear and calculus (p = 0.00 < 0.05). When all these findings were assessed in an integrated fashion, it was possible to understand the features of a village population being involved in agriculture and dominant stock farming in a region in western Anatolia during the 10th-11th centuries, which coped, for the most part, with epidemics and infectious diseases, wars, and perhaps periodic famines.

Returning to Ancestral Soil. A Commentary on IJudOr II 193 (Hierapolis/Phrygia)

The vast and well-preserved necropolis areas in Hierapolis hold several tombs which belonged to members of the local Jewish community. Most of the 27 pertaining epitaphs are perfectly within the scope of local (i.e. pagan) traditions and habits. One text, however, clearly stands out: The sarcophagus inscription of Tatianus and Apphia, Ioudaioi, contains several remarkable features which call for closer consideration. Most of them pertain to the sphere of legal history in the Roman East or, more specifically, to rare peculiarities within the widespread system of tomb protection in Asia Minor: the concession of rights to a sarcophagus from husband to wife, an oddly phrased prohibition against unwarranted burials, the involvement of both a private individual and a public institution in a tomb’s protection, and a uniquely designed „clause of official recording“. The text’s most striking feature, however, deals with the couple’s transferral into „ancestral soil“ (patrōa gē)—with no further specification given on the stone. The article examines all these highly irregular features one by one in the context of Jewish and pagan epitaphs from Hierapolis and beyond. Special regard is given to the couple’s idea of „ancestral soil“, which, as is shown in detail, may well have been Judaea. The text, thus, may deliver early evidence for the wish of Diaspora Jews to be transferred there after death.