Sixth BCE Research Articles

The Phrygian inscription W-03 on the Arslan Kaya monument

Abstract This article presents a corrected reading of the traces of the Old Phrygian inscription on the Arslan Kaya monument in the Phrygian Highlands, attesting to the name of the goddess, Materan, and providing notice of stylistic details that confirm the dating of this monument to the first half or middle of the sixth century BCE.

The Distinct Linguistic Reality of the Jews in Late Antique Palestine and Babylonia as Reflected in the Lexicosyntax of ‮אפשר‬‎ ʾpšr

Abstract Aramaic influence on Hebrew among Jews in the Land of Israel is well established, especially from the Persian period (from the sixth century BCE) until it completely replaced Hebrew as the natively spoken vernacular sometime before the Arab conquest (seventh century CE). Scholars have paid little attention to the Jews of that period as a distinct speech community, the uniqueness of their dialect or dialects of Aramaic, and the possibility that their ancestral language, Hebrew, had influenced their unique dialects of Aramaic. The present article aims to illuminate these understudied questions by analyzing the syntax of the lexeme ‮אפשר‬‎ ʾpšr, unique to Rabbinic Hebrew and the Jewish dialects of Qumran, Targumic, and Talmudic Aramaic from Palestine and Babylonia. This lexeme, and its shared syntax among those languages and dialects, points to an early use of language to maintain ethnic and religious distinctness among Jews in antiquity.

The Status of Gaza in the Persian Period: Imperial Dynamics, Local Agency, and Long-Distance Trade

Abstract Although Gaza was among the largest and most important cities of the southern Levant, it has played a relatively minor role in recent reassessments of the reoccupation of the Palestinian coast and its administration in the Persian period. The widely-held scholarly view that Gaza fell outside of direct Achaemenid control, in a coastal zone conceded to a confederation of Arabian tribes ruled by the king of Qedar, is a primary factor in according it a separate status from the other cities of Philistia. This article argues that the sources do not support the notion that Gaza and its environs belonged to an Arabian district. Rather, Gaza, like the other coastal cities of Philistia, seems to have been redeveloped in the late sixth century BCE by Phoenician agents, likely from Tyre. While Gaza held a distinct position as the main outlet of Arabian and Egyptian trade, it was culturally and economically oriented around the wider Phoenician maritime network and integrated into a dense network of Achaemenid military and administrative infrastructure in the region. In the early fourth century BCE, however, the loss of Egypt and the eclipse of the Qedarites fundamentally transformed the nature of Achaemenid authority in the region. Gaza may have been lost during much or all of this period, and the Achaemenid response is visible across this border region. Nevertheless, Gaza retained its central commercial position across these disturbances.

The location of Tartessos: a fresh case for the reliability of Avienus’ Ora Maritima

Recent geomorphological, paleoenvironmental, and chronological evidence allows for a reconstruction of the coasts of southwest Iberia during the first millennium BCE that accords with descriptions of the region offered by authors of antiquity, most notably the description by the fourth-century CE Roman writer R. F. Avienus in his poem Ora Maritima. This poem contains information that appears to date from the sixth century BCE regarding, for instance, the pre-Roman polity of Tartessos. The reliability of this work as a historical source has been questioned for decades. Critics argue that the information is pertinent to our understanding of the literary, rather than historiographical, context of the Late Roman Empire. However, philological as well as historical analyses reveal no clear cause to doubt the documentary value of the Ora Maritima. Furthermore, geomorphological research makes it possible to identify most place-names in the poem; for example, the city embraced by the river Tartessos, apparently the political and trade center of the realm, may likely have stood on the present-day spit of La Algaida, which was an isle in the first millennium BCE. While this hypothesis has been advanced elsewhere, this article offers an entirely new set of evidences to support it.1

The Coastal Landscape of West Samos in the Seventh and Sixth Centuries BCE: Possible landing points and routes

This article uses a combination of archaeological, environmental and historical evidence to consider where the most plausible shipping routes and landing points were around the west part of the Aegean island of Samos during the period 700–500 BCE, a time known for significant maritime activity in the region. Emerging evidence suggests that the west part of Samos, although subject year-round to strong and dangerous winds and lacking in safe anchorages along its coastline, connected itself in antiquity to a range of regional and supra-regional maritime networks. This article provides an important discussion for considering the practicalities of how those networks operated. Taking into account the size and capacity of ships sailing the Aegean in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, this article considers how small ships would have fared in this region, in light of annual wind forecast, coastal topography and offshore bathymetry. Although there is a dearth of primary historical evidence from this period, comparative written accounts from the early modern period provide an opportunity for reflecting on how this area of the Aegean could have been navigated in small craft. This article closes by presenting a synthesis of possible year-round and seasonal routes usable around the island.

Violent Raiding, Systematic Slaving, and Sweeping Depopulation? Re-Evaluating the Scythian Impact on Central Europe through the Lens of the Witaszkowo/Vettersfelde Hoard

In 1882, the lavishly decorated golden regalia of a steppe nomad warrior prince, which was crafted in the late sixth century BCE in a “bilingual” Scythian–Milesian workshop on the Black Sea coast, was found on the edge of a Lusatian swamp 120 km southeast of Berlin. Its discovery and the ongoing findings of steppe nomad armaments—arrows, battle axes, and swords—in central Europe have led to a lively debate about the nature of Scythian–Indigenous interaction in the Early Iron Age, ranging from benign visions of long-term acculturation to violent scenarios of short-term raiding. In this article, I argue that an analysis of the iconography of the Witaszkowo hoard and new information from excavations at its find spot make it likely that it was sent as a diplomatic gift by Scythian elites to an indigenous leader and deposited by the local community as a votive hoard. An affirmation of the compact chronological range of Scythian artefacts found in the west, growing evidence for the destruction of indigenous strongholds by horse-borne archers, and concurrent evidence for the drastic depopulation of vast landscapes in the second half of the sixth century BCE allow us to envisage the gifting of this hoard as an episode of a fierce and destructive altercation. It is posited that this onslaught was a facet of the western thrust of the Lydian and Persian Empires, and that its extirpative impact was the result of systematic, commercially driven slaving triggered by the concurrent monetisation of the economies of the Black Sea coast. The effects of these raids on Eastern Central Europe’s later prehistoric communities are made manifest by analogies to the disastrous ramifications of the transatlantic slave trade on societies of 16th-to-18th-century West Africa.

ARCHAIC KNOSSOS, ARCHAEOLOGICAL NARRATIVES, AND CONSERVATISM IN CRETAN MATERIAL CULTURE

This study addresses a longstanding historical and archaeological problem at the central Cretan urban centre of Knossos. This is the so-called ‘Archaic gap’, an apparent dearth of evidence for sixth-century BCE material culture across the extensively excavated city. The concept of a pronounced Knossian decline or recession at this time has been reaffirmed in recent years, with widespread repercussions for Cretan archaeology. By reconsidering ceramics from the Royal Road North and Unexplored Mansion excavations, as well as situating these deposits within their urban and regional contexts, I question the epistemological foundations of the Knossian gap and provide new directions for identifying sixth-century Knossian material culture. I propose that the apparent ‘gap’ is a product of several factors: (1) a relative disinterest in imports in sixth-century Knossos, (2) a dispersed, rather than densely nucleated, urban settlement pattern, and (3) a previously unrecognised conservatism in Knossian ceramics, where some of the ‘Orientalising’ styles traditionally dated to the seventh century were retained into the sixth. This phenomenon of conservatism differs in important ways from the ‘restraint’ or ‘austerity’ that has been previously proposed as characteristic of Archaic and Classical Crete.

Microhistory, Conjectural Reasoning, and Prehistory: The Treasure of Aliseda (Spain)

Abstract This contribution delves into the ways of archaeological reasoning based on material remains, tackled as minute physical traces or signs capable of shedding light on underlying and otherwise unapproachable past phenomena. This is indeed the basis of Microhistory or the conjectural paradigm in History. This article identifies key characteristics regarding this way of inductive or “bottom-up” inference and demonstrates its prospects when applied to prehistoric contexts. To illustrate this point, the article draws on a case study from the protohistory of Iberia: The treasure of Aliseda (seventh–sixth centuries BCE). This one-off assemblage – a true anomaly in its time, past, and present – was accidentally found in 1920 and has thenceforth been subject to assorted interpretations – mainly as individual burial goods from a feminine tomb – using deductive reasoning constrained by strong prejudices. A recent and comprehensive revision of this issue from an inductive and multi-stranded approach – mobilising several independent lines of evidence – has led to a fresh, sounder, and finer-grained micro-narrative. This case exemplifies a successful microhistorical enquiry, which has tracked retrospectively an array of inadvertent observations – from legacy dataset, new fieldwork, and science-based analyses – to illuminate the deviant circumstances framing this occurrence.

Beyond the Buddhist heartland: Magadha’s Himalayan and trans-Himalayan networks (fifth to fifteenth century CE)

The Buddhist landscape of ancient Magadha, modern south Bihar in eastern India, constituted the religion’s heartland because the Buddha had lived and taught here for a substantial period of time in the sixth century BCE. Within a few centuries after the Buddha’s death, Magadha started developing strong trans-regional connections, attracting pilgrims from within and beyond the subcontinent to the many shrines and monasteries that came to define the region. While Magadha’s robust translocal networks have been well established, a long-term history of its interface with the Himalayan and trans-Himalayan regions in the premodern period has yet to be charted. In this paper, I explore Magadha’s connections with parts of Nepal, Tibet and China in the course of a millennium (fifth to fifteenth century CE), using a combination of texts, inscriptions, sculptures and other artefacts. Within Magadha, I focus on Mahābodhi, the place of the Buddha’s enlightenment, and on Nālandā, the site of a renowned mega-monastery (mahāvihāra), since they had the most enduring transcultural links. Such an exercise highlights the evolving character of the Buddhist heartland and the perception of it in the Asian Buddhist world. It also demonstrates how cross-cultural influences contributed to shaping Buddhist practices both within and beyond the heartland.

“God Is One” or “the One Is God” in Hellenistic Jewish and Greco-Roman Theology

Abstract “God is one” is the theological foundation of many of the world’s religions. The Greek version of this expression, heis theos, was especially significant to ancient religious development. Past scholarship has tended to place its emergence early, among the sixth century BCE Presocratic philosophers. In this article, I argue that the expression “God is one” in Greek likely develops later, in Jewish writings of the Hellenistic period. My work supports a minority opinion in the scholarship that attributions in second century Christian apologetics of this expression to Presocratics such as Xenophanes should not be relied upon. Rather, I suggest that the expression heis theos emerged in the context of second to first century BCE Alexandrian Jewish theology in conversation with ideas from Greek philosophy.

Khenpo Kalsang Dhondup’s “Incomparable Guide,” Translated by Khenpo Kalsang Dhondup and Patrick Dowd

In his poem "Incomparable Guide" (ston pa mtshungs med), Khenpo Kalsang Dhondup brings a modern, almost scientific, perspective to the traditional Indo-Tibetan genre of "hymns of praise" (Skt. stotra, Tib. bstod pa), a thematically-oriented verse form that may date as far back as the sixth century BCE. The poem offers us an intriguing glimpse at the poetry of a learned Khenpo who writes beautifully, but whose humility has previously prevented him from sharing his work more widely with others.

Architecture and Afterlife: Small Portable Shrines and Ritual Activities from Tyre to Ibiza

ABSTRACT The miniaturization of architecture in past and modern societies is a cross-cultural phenomenon, which has received enormous attention in scholarship, particularly in works relating to the Bronze and Iron Age eastern Mediterranean. This article focuses on some small-scale terracotta buildings known from Phoenicia around the seventh to the sixth centuries BCE, argues for their identification as portable shrines, compares them to similar examples from Cyprus, and includes finds from Carthage, Malta, and Ibiza in the discussion. All of this evidence reflects a time when small chapels were increasingly adopted in Phoenician architecture, reproduced at different scales in multiple media, and used in a variety of contexts. Finally, Tyre al-Bass Tomb 8 and other funerary assemblages yielding portable shrines support the idea that they were the focus of ritual activities at burial sites, and their deposition may have followed their use in practices involving storytelling, the libation of scented liquids, and/or the burning of aromatic substances.

In the Shadow of Empire: Israel and Judah in the Long Sixth Century BCE ed. by Pamela Barmash and Mark W. Hamilton (review)

In the Shadow of Empire: Israel and Judah in the Long Sixth Century BCE ed. by Pamela Barmash and Mark W. Hamilton (review)

Notes on Phrygian Architecture: A Sixth-Century BCE Date for the Midas Monument at Midas City

This article considers evidence for the form and materials used in monumental Phrygian architecture in Central Anatolia during the Middle Iron Age (eighth–sixth centuries BCE) to argue for a later (sixth-century BCE) date for the Midas Monument. Examination of this monument and other rock-cut architectural facades in the Phrygian Highlands leads to the conclusion that all of the monumental facades in the Phrygian Highlands represent buildings with low, double-pitched, tiled roofs and architectural terracotta revetment tiles that should be dated to the first half of the sixth century. This conclusion has significant implications for the history of Midas City itself and the nature of Lydian rule in Central Anatolia.1

Origins of the Spherical Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology

Diogenes Laertius ascribes the first concept of spherical Earth to both Pythagoras and Parmenides. Indeed, a major shift in cosmologies—emergence of the spherical conception of the Earth and the surrounding heaven—took place between the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. Given the poor state of preservation of early Pythagorean tradition, it is argued that primacy in formulating the notion of spherical Earth should be ascribed to Parmenides.

Mourning for Tammuz: Prophecy and Projection in Ezekiel 8:14

Abstract While many commentators take Ezek 8:14 at face value, ancient Near Eastern parallels call this understanding into question. Both East and West Semitic sources indicate that mourning rituals for a goddess’s dead consort were carried out in state-sponsored temples that symbolized the goddess. Since this does not accord with what is known about the Jerusalem temple in the early sixth century BCE, it is probable that the visionary writer of verse 14 has projected onto the temple observances for the dying god that did not belong to it. There are indications, however, that his mourning rites were also observed in less formal settings. Women were prominent participants in these popular rituals (as they were in funeral observances in general). It is likely, therefore, that the author of verse 14 knew of mourning rites for a dead god observed in Judah outside of the temple context. Since Ezekiel indicted illegitimate cultic activities that took place throughout the nation for defiling the central sanctuary, the vision of ritual mourning for Tammuz buttressed the prophet’s claim that YHWH had decided to abandon the temple. As it is uncertain that women in Judah called the dead god “Tammuz,” the use of that divine name may come from Ezekiel.

:Etruscan Literacy in Its Social Context

:<i>Etruscan Literacy in Its Social Context</i>

Political theories of money and the politics of contextualisation

AbstractThis essay engages with Stephan Eich’s The Currency of Politics. It finds that the book pursues two goals at once: a minimalist goal of bringing money as a subject of inquiry back into the fold of political theory and a maximalist goal consisting in the stated ambition to ‘articulate more democratic visions of the future of money’. It interrogates Eich’s effort to harnesses a historical perspective to normative claims from the standpoint of a historian of pre-modern Europe. More specifically, it asks what role close reading, intertextuality and contextualisation play in Eich’s approach; why he recognises certain episodes from the (distant) past rather than others as relevant to current predicaments and potential future scenarios; and why he singles out the English financial revolution of the 1690s as the first relevant moment of crisis after the monetary reforms undertaken in Athens in the sixth century BCE.

The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity, Yahweh before Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name and Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God

The Origin and Character of God: Ancient Israelite Religion through the Lens of Divinity, Yahweh before Israel: Glimpses of History in a Divine Name and Yahweh: Origin of a Desert God

Reexamining Nebuchadnezzar II’s ‘Thirteen-Year’ Siege of Tyre in Phoenician Historiography

AbstractThis study reexamines a lynchpin of Neo-Babylonian Levantine Phoenician historiography: Nebuchadnezzar II’s purported thirteen-year siege of Tyre in the early sixth centurybce. This detail about the length of the siege can be found only in Josephus’ (first centuryce) writings, but this study’s new assessment of the (sixth-fifteenth centuryce) manuscript evidence shows that the more commonly transmitted length of the siege was “three years and ten months.” Other manuscript variations further illustrate that there was little continuous cultural memory of the length of the event. When coupled with (a) other chronological problems in Josephus’ works, (b) a review of the complex Biblical, Mesopotamian, and Classical relevant literary sources, and (c) the lack of current evidence for any destruction levels or siegeworks at the site of Tyre, the case for insisting other sources be synchronized with this thirteen-year framework weakens. Shorter sieges or raids, blockades of the island or inland ports, and periodic Babylonian military presence to extract personnel and resources are all likely scenarios for Tyre and other Levantine sites during Nebuchadnezzar’s 43-year reign. Discarding a single “thirteen-year siege” as a reliable historical detail allows scholars of the Neo-Babylonian period in the central coastal Levant to shift their attention to more interesting questions, including exploring the causes and impacts of the evident changes in Tyre’s seaward and inland trading patterns in the sixth-fifth centuries.