INTRODUCTION

2007 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
William R. Fowler

This is the twenty-fifth Special Section published in Ancient Mesoamerica, and therefore it represents something of a milestone in the history of the journal. The goal has been to present in each special section a collection of related papers from a single project or region or on a selected topic to provide readers a tightly integrated summary of current research and interpretations. Certainly one of the most compelling and provocative special sections we have published was “Urban Archaeology at Teotihuacan” which appeared in vol. 2, no. 1 (1991). This collection of papers featured two stunning articles on the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, then often referred to as the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. Constructed in the early third century A.D., the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, along with the Sun Pyramid and the Moon Pyramid, was one of the three most powerful monuments in the sacred urban landscape of Teotihuacan. Rubén Cabrera Castro, Saburo Sugiyama, and George L. Cowgill (1991) reported on excavations in the 1980s of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid and the investigation of more than 137 sacrificial burials, including more than 70 males identified as soldiers because of associated offerings, discovered at the base of and underneath the pyramid. In the second article, Alfredo López Austin, Leonardo López Luján, and Saburo Sugiyama (1991) presented their brilliant iconographic analysis of the sculptural facades of the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, arguing that the monumental structure was dedicated to the myth of the origin of time and calendric succession, a tangible cosmogonic proclamation that Teotihuacan was “the place where time began.”

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Daniel R. Altschuler ◽  
Fernando J. Ballesteros

The Moon is no longer the “in” thing. We see it as often as the Sun and give it little thought—we’ve become indifferent. However, the Moon does reflect more than just sunlight. The nomenclature of lunar craters holds up a mirror to an important aspect of human history. Of the 1586 lunar craters that have been named honoring philosophers and scientists, only 28 honor a woman. These 28 women of the Moon present us with an opportunity to meditate about this gap, but perhaps more significantly, they offer us an opportunity to talk about their lives, mostly unknown today. The women of the moon tell us stories of love, sorrow, and courage, of remarkable scientific achievements realized through perseverance, and of tragedies triggered by circumstances.


2021 ◽  
pp. 313-325
Author(s):  
Dominic Perring

This chapter explores further manifestations of wealth and power in and around early third-century London, particularly evident in the rise of mystery cults and new burial practices. It starts by reviewing evidence of the expansion of the presumed suburban villa and building of a bathhouse at Shadwell c. AD 228. This was perhaps occupied by an important government official linked to the coastal supply routes later developed into the forts of the Saxon shore. Several other villas and townhouses were refurbished at this time, when the temple of Mithras was built. These and other finds reported on here attest to the popularity of a diverse range of mystery and salvation cults, with a particularly wide repertoire of Bacchic motifs. London’s later Roman cemeteries expanded as inhumation gained in popularity, and cremation became a rarer rite. The chapter describes the archaeological evidence for these changed burial practices which can also be linked to the rise of soteriological belief systems that encouraged ideas of physical resurrection. The reasons for these changed mentalities are considered in the context of the history of the period.


2004 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 273
Author(s):  
Marcos R. NUNES COSTA

Founded in Asia, in the third century, by Mani, manicheism constituted, by itself, in a doctrinal viewpoint, in a gnosis that mixed oriental principles of sects/religions, specially from Zoroastrism and Budism, Greek-Roman Philosophy and Christianism. His basic thesis consisted of statement of two ontological principles: Good or Light, presented by the sun, and Evil or Darkness, personified in matter. From this ontological Dualism arose a cosmology/soteriology that presented the salvation history of world in three moments: the first-one, initial, embodies the two principles cosmic origins and their first conflicts. The second-one, medial, is the mixture time is characterized by the downfall of one the Light parts in the matter, as well as it is the universe being creation time. At last, the third-one, final, marks the liberation of all Light particles, imbricated in the matter, meaning the Light return to Father's kingdom and the matter's definitive downfall into the hell.


Author(s):  
Maurizio Paga

Abstract: According to the interpretation of Hegel, Egyptian religious buildings, and among them especially the temples, represent the beginning of the history of architecture, and so the beginning of the entire history of art.The Egyptian religious architecture has a symbolic character, because its configuration tries to represent the spiritual content without being fully adequate to it. So the Egyptian temple alludes to the divine through its entire structure, but does not have a proper internal space, dedicated to the worship of the image of God.On this point, contemporary Egyptology corrected Hegel’s view, because broadly speaking the Egyptian temple had an interior where the image of the deity was safeguarded. However, Hegel’s thesis paradoxically remains suitable for a particular case of the Egyptian experience that he could not know at that time: in the monotheistic religion of Amarna, the temple of the sun-god Aton has no images and does not have a center, because the Divine is present everywhere, like the sunlight that illuminates equally all over the temple.Key words: Egypt; architecture; temple; symbol; image.


Author(s):  
Pam Gordon

The chapter investigates the evolving doctrines of Epicureanism in the Roman period. Reverence for Epicurus and close adherence to his teachings were essential aspects of Epicurean identity throughout the history of the school. But despite their desire to be faithful, later Epicureans made their own contributions as they recontextualized Hellenistic philosophy, responded to later developments and current controversies, or presented Epicureanism in new genres. In addition to surveying the later Epicurean sources, this chapter outlines aspects of Epicurean scientific theory that first emerge between the first century bce and the second or third century ce. The authors explored are Lucretius, Philodemus, Diogenes of Oenoanda, and Diogenes Laërtius. The doctrines highlighted include: the healing balm of philosophy, the atomic basis of human psychology, the nature of scientific inference as induction, the visual size of the sun, and the swerve.


1961 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 52-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. B. Ward-Perkins

‘O Veii veteres, et vos tum regna fuistisEt vestro posita est aurea sella foro:Nunc intra muros pastoris bucina lentiCantat, et in vestris ossibus arva metunt.’(Propertius IV, 10, 27–30.)So the Roman poet Propertius, writing in the closing years of the first century B.C., only a very short time before the establishment of the Augustan municipality on the site of the ancient town; and it is the conventional reading of the history of Veii that the four hundred odd years intervening between the sack of the town in 396 B.C. and the foundation of the Municipium Augustum Veiens were years of abandonment and desolation. This view has been challenged recently by Dr. Maria Santangelo in her publication of two small jugs of the third century B.C. with archaic latin dedicatory inscriptions, the one from the Portonaccio cemetery, inscribed L(ucius) Tolonio(s) ded(et) Menerva(e), the other from the Campetti votive deposit Caere (or Crere) L(ucius) Tolonio(s) d(edet). These two dedications are evidence not only of the survival of at least two of the sanctuaries, but also of the continuing residence at or near Veii of a descendent of the Velthur Tulumne who dedicated a bucchero cup in the same Portonaccio sanctuary three centuries earlier (Not. Scav., 1930, pp. 341–343), and of the Lars Tolumnius who was killed in battle and whose armour hung, for all to see, in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius (Prop. loc. cit.).


2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-20
Author(s):  
Fahmi Fatwa Rosyadi Satria Hamdani ◽  
Encep Abdul Rojak

Calendar is one of the human's masterpiece in studying the regularity of the movement of celestial bodies such as the Sun, Earth and Moon. In Indonesia, generally found the Gregorian calendar that based on the movement of the sun and the Islamic calendar / Hijra with the motion of the Moon. Therefore, in an effort to introduce Islamic calendar to the society, researchers held a thematic learning about the Islamic calendar to children, in the activities of Ramadan Stars Camp (RSC) Imah Noong. The aim is to provide an introduction and understanding to the children about the Islamic calendar in the concept called “eduwisata”. This is done by the researchers so that children do not feel bored when presented materials related to the Islamic calendar. The method used in this research is descriptive analysis which researchers take the data in the form of a questionnaire to participants, then processed, classified, and conclusions. The results of this study are mostly children who participated in the RSC can find out about the history of Islamic calendar, the legal basis, the calculation system, and the names of the months in Islamic calendar system.


1974 ◽  
Vol 94 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. J. Coulton

In the standard handbooks on the techniques of Greek architecture, the problem of lifting heavy architectural members is considered mainly in terms of the various cranes and hoists based on compound pulley systems which are described by Vitruvius and Hero of Alexandria. It is assumed that the same basic method was employed also in the Archaic period, and that the use of an earth ramp by Chersiphron to raise the architraves of the temple of Artemis at Ephesos in the mid-sixth century was exceptional. If this is true, it is a matter of some interest in the history of technology. The simple pulley, used not to gain mechanical advantage but just to change the direction of pull, is first known from an Assyrian relief of the ninth century B.C., and may well have been known to the Greeks before they began to build in megalithic masonry in the late seventh century B.C.; but the earliest indisputable evidence for a knowledge of compound pulley systems is in the Mechanical Problems attributed to Aristotle, but more probably written by a member of his school in the early third century B.C. This is a theoretical discussion of a system which was already used by builders, but it is not so certain that practice preceded theory by three centuries or more. It is therefore worth looking again at the evidence for the use of cranes, hoists and pulleys in early Greek building.


2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 377
Author(s):  
Norma Camilla Baratta ◽  
Giulio Magli ◽  
Arianna Picotti

The Kofun period of the history of Japan—between the 3rd and the 7th century AD—bears its name from the construction of huge, earth mound tombs called Kofun. Among them, the largest have a keyhole shape and are attributed to the first, semi-legendary emperors. The study of the orientation of ancient tombs is usually a powerful tool to better understand the cognitive aspects of religion and power in ancient societies. This study has never been carried out in Japan due to the very large number of Kofun and to the fact that access to the perimeter is usually forbidden. For these reasons, to investigate Kofun orientations, simple tools of satellite imagery are used here. Our results strongly point to a connection of all Kofun entrance corridors with the arc of the sky where the Sun and the Moon are visible every day of the year; additionally, these show an orientation of the keyhole Kofun to the arc of the rising/shining Sun, the goddess that the Japanese emperors put at the mythical origin of their dynasty.


2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (4) ◽  
pp. 269
Author(s):  
Joanna Nowińska

The Biblical writers notice history as the space of God’s rule. He is the director, who comes into contact with human being through signs – events and words, and also He is the history’s perpetuum mobile. Rev 12 specifically reflect nowadays and the previous in the context of the whole world’s vision and mix the reference to facts (lack of the temple, ark, faithful people, horrible experiences, the death danger), places (the temple, a desert), persons (the Child-Ruler, Michael) with the Old Testament figurative exposing, a typical one for such a book (the Woman with Child, the heaven, the dragon), enriched with a lot of symbols (a crown, a horn, the moon under feet). God’s interference into World history is presented through lightning, voices, thunder, an earthquake and great hail, that stress His power and supremacy. The biblical writer refers to events, which make place whole the time in the natural- and supernatural space, like: the war between God and evil, persecutions, hiding, God’s care of men. The specific literary structure of Rev 12, contrary to the other parts of that book, seem to help to put an accent for the fundamental truths for transcendental theology of history of which the most important is the eternal rule of God and only accidental, finished in the time perspective of Satan’s position.


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