Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Jane Grogan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
European Engagement ◽  
The Many

The Introduction maps out the ambitions and challenges for the collection of essays as a whole in foregrounding the many and varied significances of the ancient near east in early modern European classicism, across a range of disciplines. It describes the context of renewed European engagement—commercial, diplomatic, cultural—and exchange with the eastern Mediterranean, and the continued appeal of a host of classical works and authors describing that world in ancient times. It studies European familiarity with the material traces of that history—archaeological as well as textual—as well as the complex, often mediated routes of reception that texts of and about the ancient near east took. It highlights four key concepts or approaches to early modern studies that would benefit from closer attention to early modern familiarity with the ancient near east, and concludes by summarizing the key contributions of each essay in the collection.

Zoanne Pencaro, an Early Modern Italian Reader of the Ancient Near East in Herodotus

2020 ◽  
pp. 53-69
Author(s):  
Dennis Looney
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Italian Peninsula ◽  
Mediterranean World ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Manuscript Copy

Early modern readers of Herodotus, especially those in the Italian peninsula, on occasion established an analogy between their situation in relation to the expanding Turkish empire in the sixteenth century and that of the eastern Mediterranean world, especially the Greek world, in relation to the Persian empire as outlined in Herodotus’ Histories. Readers used their encounter with the Herodotean text as a filter through which to comment on and make sense of what at times must have appeared to them to be the beginning of the end of western culture as they knew it. In 1491, not long after the Este court in Ferrara sponsored Matteo Maria Boiardo’s translation of Herodotus into Italian, Zoanne Pencaro, a minor figure in the court, commissioned the production of a manuscript copy in which he made a remarkable set of annotations in the vernacular (nearly 2500 words) that show a growing awareness of the ancient near east.

scholarly journals Prophetic Intermediation in the Ancient Near East

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martti Nissinen
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Near East ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
Divine Knowledge ◽  
Historical Phenomenon ◽  
The Many

The chapter serves as an introduction to the written evidence of the historical phenomenon of prophecy in the ancient Near East. Prophecy is understood as intermediation of divine knowledge by non-technical means, constituting one of the many modes of divination. The documents of ancient Near Eastern prophecy are scarce and their chronological or geographical distribution is uneven, the majority of texts deriving from Mari (seventeenth century B.C.E.) and Assyria (seventh century B.C.E.). Nevertheless, the phenomenon can be observed across the Near East, allowing a historical and phenomenological comparison with the later evidence of Greek oracles. The chapter surveys the prophetic phenomenon from the perspectives of writing and literary interpretation, spirit possession, gender, and the relationships of prophets with religious and political institutions. Enough commonalities are found in the Near Eastern, Greek, and biblical texts to warrant the assumption of the existence of a common ancient Eastern Mediterranean prophetic phenomenon.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Judith Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Near East ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Modern Period

The Introduction situates the myth of the descent to the underworld (catabasis) in a broad historical context beginning with Ancient Near East traditions, including the Sumerian poem preserved in cuneiform, “The Descent of Inanna,” and extending to medieval treatments such as “The Visions of the Knight Tondal”, and those of the early modern period. It includes a survey of other scholarly treatments of the underworld theme in recent literature. A brief overview of the volume explains how it fills a gap in the scholarship by focusing on the adaptation of the theme of a visit to Hades in postmodern, feminist, and postcolonial fiction.

scholarly journals The Storm-Gods of the Ancient Near East: Summary, Synthesis, Recent Studies Part I

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Schwemer
Keyword(s):  
Present Author ◽  
Near East ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
Near Eastern ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Many ◽  
Equal Space ◽  
First Time

AbstractIn many regions of the ancient Near East, not least in Upper Mesopotamia, Syria and Anatolia where agriculture relied mainly on rainfall, storm-gods ranked among the most prominent gods in the local panthea or were even regarded as divine kings, ruling over the gods and bestowing kingship on the human ruler. While the Babylonian and Assyrian storm-god never held the highest position among the gods, he too belongs to the group of 'great gods' through most periods of Mesopotamian history. Given the many cultural contacts and the longevity of traditions in the ancient Near East only a study that takes into account all relevant periods, regions and text-groups can further our understanding of the different ancient Near Eastern storm-gods. The study Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und Nordsyriens by the present author (2001) tried to tackle the problems involved, basing itself primarily on the textual record and excluding the genuinely Anatolian storm-gods from the study. Given the lack of handbooks, concordances and thesauri in our field, the book is necessarily heavily burdened with materials collected for the first time. Despite comprehensive indices, the long lists and footnotes as well as the lack of an overall synthesis make the study not easily accessible, especially outside the German-speaking community. In 2003 Alberto Green published a comprehensive monograph entitled The Storm-God in the Ancient Near East whose aims are more ambitious than those of Wettergottgestalten: All regions of the ancient Near East—including a chapter on Yahwe as a storm-god—are taken into account, and both textual and iconographic sources are given equal space. Unfortunately this book, which was apparently finished and submitted to the publisher before Wettergottgestalten came to its author's attention, suffers from some serious flaws with regard to methodology, philology and the interpretation of texts and images. In presenting the following succinct overview I take the opportunity to make up for the missing synthesis in Wettergottgestalten and to provide some additions and corrections where necessary. It is hoped that this synthesis can also serve as a response to the history of ancient Near Eastern storm-gods as outlined by A. Green.

Reading Ancient Fables from the East

2020 ◽  
pp. 93-112
Author(s):  
Su Fang Ng
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Near East ◽  
The Other ◽  
Ancient Near East ◽  
The West ◽  
Modern Novel

In his treatise on romance, Traitté de l’origine des romans (1670), Pierre-Daniel Huet’s argument that the genre originated in the ancient Near East seems to reconfirm the idea of a western translatio studii. However, Huet also argues for a second origin of romance in the West. Examining Huet in conjunction with two of his representative romances—Heliodorus’ Aethiopika, and the fables of Bidpai, or Indian Panchatantra—this chapter considers how early modern translatio offers a choice of two paths to western relations to the East: the first imagined as the ancient ideal of a cosmopolis of universal brotherhood while the other led to modern Orientalism. Straddling the historical boundary between antique romance and modern novel, Huet occupies a critical transitional position. Despite his apparent cosmopolitanism, in the end, Huet’s polygenetic theory of romance suggests the beginnings of the divergence of classicism from Orientalism with a nascent imperial mentality.

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