Archaeology and history of eighth-century Judah

2019 ◽  
Vol 151 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 271-273
Author(s):  
C. A. Strine
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Arezou Azad

Covering the period from 709 to 871, this chapter traces the initial conversion of Afghanistan from Zoroastrianism and Buddhism to Islam. Highlighting the differential developments in four regions of Afghanistan, it discusses the very earliest history of Afghan Islam both as a religion and as a political system in the form of a caliphate.  The chapter draws on under-utilized sources, such as fourth to eighth century Bactrian documents from Tukharistan and medieval Arabic and Persian histories of Balkh, Herat and Sistan. In so doing, it offers a paradigm shift in the way early Islam is understood by arguing that it did not arrive in Afghanistan as a finished product, but instead grew out of Afghanistan’s multi-religious context. Through fusions with Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, early Abrahamic traditions, and local cult practices, the Islam that resulted was less an Arab Islam that was imported wholesale than a patchwork of various cultural practices.


Author(s):  
Bill T. Arnold

Deuteronomy appears to share numerous thematic and phraseological connections with the book of Hosea from the eighth century bce. Investigation of these connections during the early twentieth century settled upon a scholarly consensus, which has broken down in more recent work. Related to this question is the possibility of northern origins of Deuteronomy—as a whole, or more likely, in an early proto-Deuteronomy legal core. This chapter surveys the history of the investigation leading up to the current impasse and offers a reexamination of the problem from the standpoint of one passage in Hosea.


Traditio ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyril Toumanoff

The are several reasons why the problem of early-Georgian, and particularly early-Iberian (East Georgian), chronology has been a vexing one. In the first place, the early-Georgian historical works contain almost no direct chronological indications, i.e., dates, but rather offer quite numerous relative indications, i.e., synchronisms, lengths of reigns and lives, regnal years, the distance between events, etc. Secondly, in these historical works, hard facts of history often lie buried under a superimposition of myth, legend, and epos, or are occasionally fused with the picture of other historical facts, occurring at different epochs, that is projected on them. And, thirdly, the attempts at establishing such a chronology, which have not been wanting, have tended to be somewhat vitiated by misconceptions upon which they were based. Thus, early in this century, the imaginative attempt of S. Gorgadze was ruined by the fact that he preferred the evidence of the king-lists (Royal List, I, II, III), which form a later addition to the seventh-century Conversion of Iberia, to that of the more authoritative and older (eighth-century) History of the Kings of Iberia by Leontius of Ruisi, which contains a still older historical tradition. Gorgadze, accordingly, tended to neglect what chronological indications are found in Leontius. And in our own days, another such attempt was made by P. Ingoroqva, which cannot be described as entirely successful.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Shengyu Wang

This article explores the use of gold in the elite tombs of Han dynasty China, the popular use of which originated outside the Chinese cultural milieu, and its integration into the Han portfolio of materials representing people's expectations for the afterlife, such as immortality and well-being. In contrast to jade, which had a long history of use in China, gold was in itself a ‘new’ element of Chinese culture. This article outlines the introduction of gold objects from Europe and Central Asia via the Eurasian Steppe and borderland of China from around the eighth century bce. The unprecedented use of gold in the Han-specific jade suits, and the process by which foreign types of zoomorphic motifs were adopted and connected with local motifs, are explored. In light of the political change from multiple competing states before the first unification in Chinese history in the third century bce, and the development in ideology and concept of an ideal and eternal afterlife, this article explains the reasons and meanings of the new use of gold in Han dynasty China and the composite system of motifs, materials and objects.


Author(s):  
Hans Van Wees

This chapter critiques the grand narrative of Hanson's The Other Greeks and argues that it is wrong in important respects. The chapter presents the social and economic changes in the eighth century that took place with the rise of the independent yeoman farmer and his culture of agrarianism as the driving force behind the political and military history of Greece. From the middle of the eighth century there was a class of elite leisured landowners that did not work the land themselves but supervised the toil of a large lower class of hired laborers and slaves. This era of gentlemen farmers who comprised the top 15–20 percent of society and competed with each other for status lasted for about two centuries. When the yeomen farmers emerged after the mid-sixth century, they joined the leisure class in the hoplite militia.


Author(s):  
Lin Foxhall

This chapter considers what a site survey might reveal about the appearance of a new class of small farmers in archaic Greece. It gives a brief history of the discipline and explains the strengths and limitations of using its findings for historical analysis. This study of eight survey projects across Greece, including Boeotia, the Argolid, Laconia, and Pylos, focuses on data for the Geometric through the Hellenistic periods. The chapter suggests that the archaeology tells us a different story than the historical record of citizens, soldiers, and property owners. The survey data show the rise of a densely populated countryside of small-scale farmers neither in the eighth century nor, universally, in the sixth century.


Author(s):  
David Abulafia

Recovery from the disasters of the twelfth century was slow. It is unclear how deep the recession in the Aegean lands was, but much was lost: the art of writing disappeared, except among the Greek refugees in Cyprus; the distinctive swirling styles of Minoan and Mycenaean pottery vanished, except, again, in Cyprus; trade withered; the palaces decayed. The Dark Age was not simply an Aegean phenomenon. There are signs of disorder as far west as the Lipari islands, for in Sicily the old order came to an end in the thirteenth century amid a wave of destruction, and the inhabitants of Lipari were able to preserve some measure of prosperity only by building strong defences. The power of the Pharaohs weakened; what saved the land of the Nile from further destruction was the falling away of raids from outside, as the raiders settled in new lands, rather than any internal strength. By the eighth century new networks of trade emerged, bringing the culture of the East to lands as far west as Etruria and southern Spain. What is astonishing about these new networks is that they were created not by a grand process of imperial expansion (as was happening in western Asia, under the formidable leadership of the Assyrians), but by communities of merchants: Greeks heading towards Sicily and Italy, consciously or unconsciously following in the wake of their Mycenaean predecessors; Etruscan pirates and traders, emerging from a land where cities were only now appearing for the first time; and, most precociously, the Canaanite merchants of Lebanon, known to the Greeks as Phoinikes, ‘Phoenicians’, and resented by Homer for their love of business and profit. So begins the long history of contempt for those engaged in ‘trade’. They took their name from the purple dye extracted from the murex shellfish, which was the most prized product of the Canaanite shores. Yet the Greeks also recognized the Phoenicians as the source of the alphabet which became the basis of their new writing system; and Phoenicia was the source of artistic models which transformed the art of archaic Greece and Italy in an age of great creative ferment.


Author(s):  
Paul J. du Plessis

This chapter provides a historical sketch of Rome. It has been written to provide a contextual basis for the study of Roman private law. The history of Rome is traditionally divided into three main periods based on the dominant constitutional structure in Roman society during these three periods. These are the Monarchy (eighth century bc–510 bc), Republic (509–27 bc), and Empire (27 bc–ad 565). Scholars of Roman law tend to refine this division even further. Thus, to the scholar of Roman law, the period from the founding of Rome in the eighth century bc–c. 250 bc is regarded as the ‘archaic’ period of Roman law. The period thereafter, from c. 250 bc–27 bc, is generally described as the ‘pre-classical period’ of Roman law.For scholars of Roman law, the ‘classical’ period, c. first three centuries AD, and the Justinianic period, c. sixth century AD, are the most important, owing to the compilation of ‘classical’ Roman law by order the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian, in the sixth century.


2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 88-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana Edelman

AbstractIn spite of the important information contained in the various accounts of Sennacherib's third campaign and the reliefs of his conquest of Lachish, their absence would have little effect upon the recreation of the events of the reign of Hezekiah by historians of Judah. The results of excavations at Tell ed-Duweir/ Lachish and Tel Miqne/Ekron suggest that sometime in the last decades of the eighth century or in the opening decades of the seventh century bce, there was an Assyrian military presence in the Judean shephelah and a ceding of control over the olive yield in the shephelah and highlands of Judah to the Philistines to fuel a newly established regional olive oil industry. When information about the kings who ruled Judah in the period in question is considered, Hezekiah remains the most logical candidate under whom the ceding of territorial control, which would have required Assyrian consent and agency, can be plausibly posited. The main outlines of the history of the period can nevertheless be posited; only the specific nature of the interregional conflict between Judah and Philistia and the specific Assyrian resolution of the conflict cannot be established.


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