Geometric painting in late-antique Egypt: the ceiling of a 4th-c. church at Amheida (Dakhla Oasis)

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 449-466
Author(s):  
Nicola Aravecchia
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Western Desert ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Geometrical Shapes ◽  
Dakhla Oasis ◽  
Flat Roof

As part of an investigation of the use of geometric painting on ceilings in late-antique Egypt, this article will focus on the evidence found in a 4th-c. A.D. church at the polis of Trimithis (Amheida), located in the Dakhla Oasis of Egypt‘s Western Desert. Excavation in 2012-13 as part of a project directed by R. S. Bagnall highlighted the church‘s rôle for both cult and burials. Thousands of fragments of painted plaster, part of the church‘s collapsed flat ceiling, revealed a wide array of interlocked geometrical shapes in vivid colors, creating a visually dramatic contrast with the church‘s seemingly white walls. The polychrome decoration was probably meant to replicate the effect of a coffered ceiling. Similar geometric schemes are found elsewhere in the Western Desert in both domestic and funerary contexts, and there is evidence of other Egyptian Early Christian churches that had flat ceilings, but a flat roof with painted geometric decoration in the context of an Early Christian church is thus far unattested elsewhere in Egypt. This article will highlight the popularity and longevity of this decorative style in Egypt throughout the Roman period and well into late antiquity and will point to similarities between this type of ceiling decoration and Alexandrian models of the Ptolemaic period, as well as mosaic designs found throughout Mediterranean lands.

Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Erotic Love ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
The Relationship

Civilizations of the Supernatural: Witchcraft, Ritual, and Religious Experience in Late Antique, Medieval, and Renaissance Traditions brings together thirteen scholars of late-antique, medieval, and renaissance traditions who discuss magic, religious experience, ritual, and witch-beliefs with the aim of reflecting on the relationship between man and the supernatural. The content of the volume is intriguingly diverse and includes late antique traditions covering erotic love magic, Hellenistic-Egyptian astrology, apotropaic rituals, early Christian amulets, and astrological amulets; medieval traditions focusing on the relationships between magic and disbelief, pagan magic and Christian culture, as well as witchcraft and magic in Britain, Scandinavian sympathetic graphophagy, superstition in sermon literature; and finally Renaissance traditions revolving around Agrippan magic, witchcraft in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and a Biblical toponym related to the Friulan Benandanti’s visionary experiences. These varied topics reflect the multifaceted ways through which men aimed to establish relationships with the supernatural in diverse cultural traditions, and for different purposes, between Late Antiquity and the Renaissance. These ways eventually contributed to shaping the civilizations of the supernatural or those peculiar patterns which helped men look at themselves through the mirror of their own amazement of being in this world.

Livestock plagues in late antiquity, with a disassembling of the bovine panzootic of A.D. 376-386

2017 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 490-508
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Newfield
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Animal Health ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Livestock Disease ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Roman Period ◽  
Material Evidence

The history of late-antique animal plagues requires a fresh start. Over the last 30 years, scholars have amassed copious quantities of written and material evidence for major shifts in the natural world experienced, or reported, as disasters in late antiquity. They have read textual passages more critically and interwoven written with physical data more meticulously than researchers before them. As a result, much more is known now about human plagues, climatic downturns and tectonic perturbations in the Late Roman period. Yet knowledge of late-antique livestock disease remains pretty much where animal health specialists left it in the 18th and 19th c. There are, to be sure, histories of late-antique animal plagues, but they are long out of date, unreliable and altogether of poor quality.

The Comparative Study of “Scholasticism” in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Rabbis and East Syrians

AJS Review ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam H. Becker
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Great Distance ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Rabbinic Judaism ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Transmission Of Knowledge ◽  
History Of

Now is an appropriate time to reconsider the historiographical benefit that a comparative study of the East Syrian (“Nestorian”) schools and the Babylonian rabbinic academies may offer. This is attributable both to the recent, rapid increase in scholarship on Jewish–Christian relations in the Roman Empire and late antiquity more broadly, and to the return by some scholars of rabbinic Judaism to the issues of a scholarly exchange of the late 1970s and early 1980s about the nature of rabbinic academic institutionalization. Furthermore, over the past twenty years, scholars of classics, Greek and Roman history, and late antiquity have significantly added to the bibliography on the transmission of knowledge—in lay person's terms, education—in the Greco-Roman and early Christian worlds. Schools continue to be an intense topic of conversation, and my own recent work on the School of Nisibis and the East Syrian schools in general suggests that the transformations and innovations of late antiquity also occurred in the Sasanian Empire, at a great distance from the centers of classical learning, such as Athens, Alexandria, and Antioch. The recently reexamined East Syrian sources may help push the conversation about rabbinic academic institutionalization forward. However, the significance of this issue is not simply attributable to its bearing on the social and institutional history of rabbinic institutions. Such inquiry may also reflect on how we understand the Babylonian Talmud and on the difficult redaction history of its constituent parts. Furthermore, I hope that the discussion offered herein will contribute to the ongoing analysis of the late antique creation and formalization of cultures of learning, which were transmitted, in turn, into the Eastern (i.e., Islamic and “Oriental” Christian and Jewish) and Western Middle Ages within their corresponding communities.

scholarly journals Fra huskult til basilika

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per Bilde
Keyword(s):  
Lecture Hall ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Dwelling House ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
Church Building ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dining Room

It is still an astonishing fact that no material remains of early Christian churches have been found antedating the building in Dura-Europos at the Euphrat River in present day Iraq. It was a usual private dwelling house that in 241 was rebuilt and transformed into a Christian cult place. This building, however, in no way resembled the magnificent Christian basilicas that were built from the time of Constantine the Great (ruling 306/324-337), and only the baptistery in the rebuilt houses proves that it actually was a Christian building. In the present article I briefly scetch the history of the development of the Christian cult building from the private meeting places at the time of the New Testament to the Constantinian basilicas. The main purpose, however, is to discuss the character of the Christian cult house in relation to a number of related earlier and contemporary types of buildings such as the classical Hellenistic-Roman temples, the Jewish synagogue and a number of Graeco-Roman buildings that can be reagrded as historical forerunners of the Christian church building: the Greek counsel hall (bouleutêrion), the hall of initiation (e.g. Eleusis), the lecture hall (such as gymnasium and stoa), the Greek and Near Eastern cult theatres, the roman basilica and the Roman mithraeum. From the beginning, obviously, the Christian cult building  was a meeting house like the Greek counsel hall, the roman basilica and the Jewish synagogue. But it was also a dining room, and, at least from 241, with thebatistery in Dura-Europos, it also became a hall of initiation. Thus, the Christian cult building developed by uniting a number of eatlier types of buildings, secular and sacred, and from the time of Constantine, the Christian basilica united the secular Greek meeting house, which was continued and further developed in the Jewish synagogue, the Greek hall of initiation, and the classical Graeco-Roman Temple.

Early Christian Art

Art History ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Marsengill
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Art History ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Near East ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Byzantine Art ◽  
Christian Art ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Art And Architecture

Early Christian art history encompasses a range of material loosely dated from the first known appearances of Christian art in the late 2nd or early 3rd century and continuing through the 6th, 7th, and sometimes even into the early 8th centuries. Early Christian art history, however, has proven to be an inchoate term, often overlapping with, or including, Early Byzantine art history. In previous divisions of the field, Early Byzantine art tended to be too politically confining when one considers cities such as Ravenna before and after its inclusion in the Eastern Byzantine Empire. On the other hand, Early Christian art implied only the earliest centuries, usually through the 4th or mid-5th centuries, and usually centered on Roman art. Thus, many scholars today favor the term Late Antique in order to integrate the study of art and architecture of the Eastern Roman Empire and Western Roman Empire as well as to understand Christian art in dialogue with Jewish and pagan art. In terms of dating, scholars generally acknowledge the genesis of Christian art and architecture around 200 ce, although some pursue theories that Christians participated in visual culture in the early 2nd century, if they had not yet developed a distinctly Christian visual language. In terms of geography, the eastern and western Mediterranean, Palestine and the Near East, and sometimes even northern Europe and Britain are all included. One result of this large geographical span has been the separation of Early Christian art in Rome, the Eastern Mediterranean, Egypt, the Near East, and so on. In the last decade or so, however, scholars have generally recognized a more cohesive Mediterranean world and a more fluid transition from Late Antiquity to medieval art and culture. Questions of continuity between these periods have ultimately made dating the end of “Early Christian” or “Late Antique” difficult, if not impossible. Most scholars see the end of Late Antiquity as coinciding with the death of Justinian I or, for the convenience of a rounded date, the year 600. Others argue the end of the period occurred at the beginning of the 7th century with the spread of Islam in the Near East and across North Africa. Byzantinists sometimes recognize the beginning of the iconoclastic controversy in 730 as the end of Late Antiquity. Accordingly, “true” Byzantine-era art begins after iconoclasm in the 9th century, what some refer to as the Middle Byzantine period, which marks the beginning of a distinguishable Byzantine state and extends until the Latin conquest of Constantinople in 1204, then followed by the Late Byzantine period (until 1453). Those who assert the continuity of Late Antique traditions in early Islamic art have recently broached the year 800 as the cut-off point.

Preliminary report on the 2012 and 2013 excavation seasons at Jiyeh (Porphyreon): work in sector D (residential Quarter)

2016 ◽  
Vol XXIV (1) ◽  
pp. 453-474
Author(s):  
Tomasz Waliszewski ◽  
Magdalena Antos ◽  
Piotr Jaworski ◽  
Piotr Makowski ◽  
Marcin Romaniuk ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Preliminary Report ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Domestic Architecture ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Important Data ◽  
Iron Age Ii ◽  
History Of ◽  
Residential Quarter

Archeological work in the 2012 and 2013 seasons in Jiyeh (Porphyreon), which lies on the Phoenician coast north of ancient Sidon, was focused on reconstructing the history of settlement on the site. At least three phases were identified and dated to the Iron Age II, the Persian– Hellenistic–Roman period and late antiquity. The early dating of the functioning of the Christian basilica to the 4th–5th century AD was also confirmed in trial pits. The complex and unusual sewage installation discharging rainwater from the roofs and streets of the 5th-century settlement contributed important data for studies of late antique domestic architecture in the region.

scholarly journals Community, Church, and Conversion in the Prefecture of Illyricum and the Cyclades

2019 ◽  
pp. 513-536
Author(s):  
Rebecca Sweetman
Keyword(s):  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Religious Conversion ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Network Connections ◽  
Rural Environments ◽  
Community Church

This chapter surveys, through a series of case studies, the material aspects of early Christianity in provinces in the dioceses of Macedonia and Asia (Achaea, Thessalia, Macedonia Prima, Macedonia Secunda, Creta, and the Cyclades now in modern Greece). While many of the urban spaces see some topographic changes in the fourth and fifth centuries, the biggest impact on both urban and rural environments is the construction of a diverse range of Late Antique churches. Church construction begins earlier in Macedonia and the islands than in the rest of mainland Greece, which reflects more diverse network connections in these areas. Within specific topographic regions (e.g., Crete, the Peloponnese), network connections play a role in the choice of church location, but the analysis of the spread of churches clearly indicates a steady process of religious conversion. The archaeology and topography of early Christian churches therefore provides a significant contribution to understanding processes of Christianization.

scholarly journals Erindring og glemsel. Seminar i København 12. marts 2008

1970 ◽  
pp. 183
Author(s):  
Line Suhr Marschner
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Cultural Transition ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Christian Culture ◽  
Late Renaissance ◽  
With Memory

The concepts of memory and oblivion and their historical changeability were in focus at a seminar that took place in Copenhagen in March 2008. Through seven different presentations of this theme, it was shown how the acts of remembering and forgetting are active in the formation of new norms and of new cultural identities in periods of cultural transition such as late Antiquity and in the Reformation period. The four keynote speakers were Paul Connerton, who spoke on three types of forgetting; James M. Bradburne, who dealt with memory in action in Italian late- Renaissance gardens; Charles Hedrick Jr., whose presentation was on transformations of the damnatio memoriae practice between late Antique and early Christian culture; and finally Andrew Spicer, who considered the process of erasing the Catholic past in post-Reformation Scotland. 

History, Eschatology, and the Development of the Six Ages of the World

Augustinianum ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-206
Author(s):  
John Joseph Gallagher ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Church Fathers ◽  
Augustine Of Hippo ◽  
Salvation History ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
The Church

The sex aetates mundi constituted the defining framework for understanding biblical and salvation history in the Early Christian and Late Antique worlds. The origins of the idea that history can be divided into six epochs, each lasting roughly a thousand years, are commonly attributed to Augustine of Hippo. Although Augustine’s engagement with this notion significantly influenced its later popularity due to the prolific circulation of his works, he was by no means the sole progenitor of this concept. This bipartite study undertakes the first conspectus in English-speaking scholarship to date of the origins and evolution of the sex aetates mundi. Part I of this study traces the early origins of historiographical periodisation in writings from classical and biblical antiquity, taking account in particular of the role of numerology and notions of historical eras that are present in biblical texts. Expressions of the world ages in the writings of the Church Fathers are then traced in detail. Due consideration is afforded to attendant issues that influenced the six ages, including calendrical debates concerning the age of the world and the evolution of eschatological, apocalyptic, and millenarian thought. Overall, this article surveys the myriad intellectual and exegetical currents that converged in Early Christianity and Late Antiquity to create this sixfold historiographical and theological framework. The first instalment of this study lays the groundwork for understanding Augustine’s engagement with this motif in his writings, which is treated in Part II.

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