Libraries before Alexandria

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Third Century ◽  
The Public ◽  
Archaeological Material ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Greek Tradition ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation

The creation of the Library of Alexandria is widely regarded as one of the great achievements in the history of humankind—a giant endeavour to amass all known literature and scholarly texts in one central location, so as to preserve it and make it available for the public. In turn, this event has been viewed as a historical turning point that separates the ancient world from classical antiquity. Standard works on the library continue to present the idea behind the institution as novel and, at least implicitly, as a product of Greek thought. Yet, although the scale of the collection in Alexandria seems to have been unprecedented, the notion of creating central repositories of knowledge, while perhaps new to Greek tradition, was age-old in the Near East where the building was erected. Here the existence of libraries can be traced back another two millennia, from the twenty-seventh century BCE to the third century CE, and so the creation of the Library in Alexandria was not as much the beginning of an intellectual adventure as the impressive culmination of a very long tradition. This volume presents the first comprehensive study of these ancient libraries across the ‘cradle of civilization’ and traces their institutional and scholarly roots back to the early cities and states and the advent of writing itself. Leading specialists in the intellectual history of each individual period and region covered in the volume present and discuss the enormous textual and archaeological material available on the early collections, offering a uniquely readable account intended for a broad audience on the libraries in Egypt and Western Asia as centres of knowledge prior to the famous Library of Alexandria.

History of Recording Demotic Epigraphy

2020 ◽  
pp. 491-507
Author(s):  
Jan Moje
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Period ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Rosetta Stone ◽  
Roman Egypt ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter gives an overview of the history of recording and publishing epigraphic sources in Demotic language and script from the Late Period to Greco-Roman Egypt (seventh century bce to third century ce), for example, on stelae, offering tables, coffins, or votive gifts. The history of editing such texts and objects spans over two hundred years. Here, the important steps and pioneering publications on Demotic epigraphy are examined. They start from the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt found the Rosetta stone, until the twenty-first century.

The Creation of a Fourth-Century Witness to the Andreas Text Type: A Misreading in the Apocalypse's Textual History

2013 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 106-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Hernández
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Type A ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Text Type ◽  
Close Resemblance ◽  
Textual History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Codex Sinaiticus

The publication of Josef Schmid's landmark work on the textual history of the Apocalypse seemingly established the Andreas Text Type as a fourth-century product. The primary evidence for Schmid's claim came from the fourth-century corrections of the Apocalypse in Codex Sinaiticus, corrections which bore a close resemblance to the Andreas text of the Apocalypse. Schmid's reconstruction, however, is flawed. The fourth-century corrections he identified are actually from the seventh century. The data supporting a fourth-century Andreas text type does not exist. Schmid's widely influential error appears to have been based on a misreading of Milne and Skeat'sScribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus.

Theodor Adorno, Paul Lazarsfeld, and the Public Interest Mandate of Early Communications Research, 1935–1941

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Josh Shepperd
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Communication Theory ◽  
Rockefeller Foundation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Educational Broadcasting ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Noncommercial Media

Abstract Through detailed archival analysis of personal letters, this article examines how the “public interest” mandate of the Communications Act of 1934 inspired the formation of the Princeton Radio Research Project (PRRP), and influenced Paul Lazarsfeld’s development of two-step flows and media effects research. Buried in federal records, a post-Act Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Pursuant that mandated analysis of educational broadcasting additionally turns out to be the causative reason that Theodor Adorno was brought to America by the Rockefeller Foundation. Crucial to the intellectual history of media and communication theory, Lazarsfeld invited Adorno not only to develop techniques to inform educational music study, but to strategically formulate advocacy language for the media reform movement to help noncommercial media obtain frequency licenses. The limits and pressures exerted by the FCC Pursuant influenced the trajectory of the PRRP research, and consequently, the methodological investments of Communication Studies.

Michael Vincent Levey 1927–2008

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher White
Keyword(s):  
Professional Education ◽  
National Gallery ◽  
Education Department ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
The Public ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Year’S Eve ◽  
The Creation

Michael Vincent Levey (1927–2008), a Fellow of the British Academy, devoted his professional career to the National Gallery, becoming one of its most distinguished and effective directors. During his time in office (1973–1987), he was substantially responsible for modernising the Gallery in both its attitudes and services to the public. New programmes were introduced and new galleries were built, and, most important of all, a number of masterpieces were added to the collection. At a New Year's Eve party in 1953, Levey met Brigid Brophy, an up-and-coming novelist, the daughter of the writer John Brophy. Love was instantaneous and in six months they were married. His most wide-ranging innovation in the administration of the National Gallery was the creation of a fully professional Education Department. At his death, Levey was engaged in writing a biography of Ellen Terry, which met both his great interest in the history of the theatre and his fascination with a magnetic personality who had long intrigued him.

The Empires of Western Asia and the Assyrian World Empire

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-110
Author(s):  
Gojko Barjamovic
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Fragmentation ◽  
The Third ◽  
Western Asia ◽  
Third Millennium Bce ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Empire

The history of empire begins in Western Asia. This chapter tracks developments in the second and first millennia BCE as imperial control in the region became increasingly common and progressively more pervasive. Oscillations between political fragmentation and imperial unification swung gradually toward the latter, from just a few documented examples in the third millennium BCE to the more-or-less permanent partition of Western Asia into successive imperial states from the seventh century BCE until the end of World War I. The chapter covers about a dozen empires and empire-like states, tracing developments of territoriality and notions of imperial universality using Assyria ca. 2004–605 BCE as a case study for how large and loose hegemonies became the normative political formation in the region.

Brief aus der Schweiz

2019 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-299
Author(s):  
Markus Wild
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Recent History ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Consciousness ◽  
History Of ◽  
Academic Philosophy ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The University

Abstract This letter focuses on both the recent history of academic philosophy in Switzerland and its present status. Historically, institutional self-consciousness of philosophy came to life during World War II as a reaction to the isolation of international academic life in Switzerland; moreover, the divide between philosophy in the French part and the German part of the country had to be bridged. One important instrument to achieve this end was the creation of the “Schweizerische Philosophische Gesellschaft” and its “Jahrbuch” (today: “Studia philosophica”) in 1940. At the same time the creation of the journal “Dialectica” (1947), the influence of Joseph Maria Bochensky at the University of Fribourg and Henri Lauener at the University of Berne prepared the ground for the flourishing of analytic philosophy in Switzerland. Today analytic philosophy has established a very successful academic enterprise in Switzerland without suppressing other philosophical traditions. Despite the fact that academic philosophy is somewhat present in the public, there is much more potential for actual philosophical research to enter into public consciousness. The outline sketched in this letter is, of course, a limited account of the recent history and present state of philosophy in Switzerland. There is only very little research on this topic.

Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832-90) and the Creation of a Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the 19th century

2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seema Alavi
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Spatial Connectivity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Temporal Moment ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The 19Th Century

AbstractThe essay highlights the role of one individual, Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832-90), in writing the cultural and intellectual history of imperialisms. It brings his biography, journeys and intellectual forays together to show how he used the temporal moment of the mid 19th century ‘age of revolts’, and the spatial connectivity offered by British and Ottoman imperialisms and re-configured them to his own particular interests. Locating Siddiq Hasan in the connected histories of the British and Ottoman Empires, it views his in-house cosmopolitanism as a form of public conduct that was shaped by Islamic learning that cultivated urbane civility as Muslim universalist virtuous conduct. This was a form of cosmopolitanism enabled by imperial networks, informed by pre-colonial webs of interaction between India and West Asia, and deeply rooted in the scriptures.

Ennius

Classics ◽  
2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandro La Barbera
Keyword(s):  
The Public ◽  
Roman Literature ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
Second Punic War ◽  
Greek Tradition ◽  
Latin Epic ◽  
History Of ◽  
Contemporary Reality ◽  
Punic Wars ◽  
Scholarly Production

Quintus Ennius was an author of Latin poetry and prose who lived and wrote between the second half of the 3rd century and the first half of the 2nd century bce (apparently 239–169 bce). He was born in the trilingual Messapian city of Rudiae, where Latin, Greek, and Oscan were spoken concurrently (as apparently did Ennius himself: cf. Gellius, Attic Nights 17.17). Tradition has Ennius follow Cato the Elder to Rome in 204 bce, after meeting him in Sardinia while serving in the army during the Second Punic War. In Rome, Ennius distinguished himself for his literary and scholarly production in Latin, in which he mastered a cultural and linguistic fusion between the Greek tradition and the fledgling Roman literature. All of Ennius’s works have been lost and only fragments of them have been preserved, all indirectly transmitted within the corpora of other authors’ works; we also have references by other authors to works of which we do not have any fragments at all. His first major achievements seem to have come with the public staging of his tragedies, mostly set in Greece and having original Greek tragedies as models (these were called fabulae cothurnatae). He also wrote praetextae, that is, tragedies of Roman setting and subject, but we have fewer fragments for these than we have for the cothurnatae, and only two titles—Ambracia and Sabinae. Even less is known about his comedies, which do not seem to have been held in high consideration (cf. Volcacius Sedigitus’s canon of comedy), and about whose titles and contents very little information has been preserved. Most of the information we still possess regards Ennius’s last and longest work, the Annals, an eighteen-book epic poem that covered the national history of Rome and its wars from the mythological founding of the city until the contemporary reality of the Punic Wars, with the title Annals (Lat. Annales) possibly alluding to the year-by-year approach of the ancient tradition of Roman annalists. Ennius was the first author to choose hexameter, the Greek meter of epic, to compose a Latin epic poem (the former traditional meter being Saturnian), and for this reason was considered the “father” of Latin epic poetry, thus influencing all following authors (Lucretius, Cicero, Virgil, etc.) by whom he was either praised and taken as a model, or more or less fiercely rejected for his “archaic” language and taste in favor of a more modern style. Apart from plays and epic, Ennius also cultivated many other genres in works that are traditionally referred to as Minor Works.

scholarly journals Public Histories of Australian and British Women's Suffrage: Some Comparative Issues

2007 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilda Kean
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Women's Suffrage ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The Public ◽  
Suffrage Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Women’S Suffrage

In this article I consider the ways in which activists in the British suffrage movement became the public historians of their own pasts. I analyse the different forms in which the history of suffrage feminism was created and the ways in which it both drew upon former traditions of the labour movement and conventions of public memorialisation. I consider the ways in which the Australian suffrage campaign has been memorialised and differences between this and the British position. I raise a number of questions about ways in which public historians might explore the creation of collective histories and the role of individuals within that process arising from this initial comparative analysis.

VENUS ON THE SOFA: WOMEN, NEOCLASSICISM, AND THE EARLY AMERICAN REPUBLIC

2005 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
CAROLINE WINTERER
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
The Self ◽  
Classical Antiquity ◽  
Early American Republic ◽  
Early American ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Modern Politics ◽  
Early National ◽  
Mercy Otis Warren ◽  
History Of

What did early national Americans mean when they articulated fears of “luxury and effeminacy,” those twin sins of a republic that idolized the classical virtues of manly self-restraint? This essay argues that the fear of luxury and effeminacy circulated not just as airy metaphor but as palpable reality, specifically in the figure of the female recumbent on the sofa. The article traces separately the careers of Enlightenment Venus, who especially in her recumbent form embodied fears of passion in a republic built on reasoned consent, and the sofa, a piece of neoclassical furniture that rose to great popularity at this time and was envisioned as both effeminate and luxurious in fictional and nonfiction writing. The essay then joins the two figures of recumbent Venus and the sofa, showing how they were mutually enabling, and how they entered into early national conversations about labor and race. It concludes by examining how two educated American women, the self-described Roman matrons Mercy Otis Warren and Martha Bayard Smith, incorporated the image of the supine woman and her implied sofa into fictional writings about classical polities in danger. By knitting political ideologies, imaginative worlds, and neoclassical objects, the essay suggests a way for historians to flesh out the intellectual history of early national women, showing how they could participate in a conversation about modern politics and classical antiquity from which we have assumed they were largely disbarred.

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