Language Use and Literacy in Late Antique and Medieval Nubia

2021 ◽  
pp. 786-805
Author(s):  
Adam Łajtar ◽  
Grzegorz Ochała
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Nile Valley ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Medieval Nubia

This chapter is an overview of the current knowledge about the linguistic situation in the Middle Nile valley in Late Antiquity and Middle Ages. Throughout this long period as many as five languages were employed in this region as a means of written communication: Meroitic, Greek, Sahidic Coptic, Old Nubian, and Arabic. In the first part of the paper, we discuss the use of all these languages from chronological, both diachronic and synchronic, as well as functional perspectives. Such an approach is crucial for the proper understanding of their social significance, which we attempt to analyze in the second part. A special attention is devoted to the interaction between the languages, with a focus on such phenomena as code-switching and linguistic borrowing.

Ildar Garipzanov, Caroline Goodson, and Henry Maguire, ed., Graphic Signs of Identity, Faith, and Power in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Cursor Mundi, 27, Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, xviii, 392 p., 141 ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 377-379
Author(s):  
Kriszta Kotsis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Visual Communication ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cursor Mundi ◽  
Definition Of

Late antique and early medieval graphic signs have traditionally been studied by narrowly focused specialists leading to the fragmentation and decontextualization of this important body of material. Therefore, the volume aims “to deepen interdisciplinary research on graphic signs” (7) of the third through tenth centuries, with contributions from archaeologists, historians, art historians, a philologist, and a paleographer. Ildar Garipzanov’s introduction defines the central terms (sign, symbol, graphicacy), calls for supplanting the text-image binary with “the concept of the visual-written continuum” (15), and argues that graphicacy was central to visual communication in this period. He emphasizes the agency of graphic signs and notes that their study can amplify our understanding of the definition of personal and group identity, the articulation of power, authority, and religious affiliation, and communication with the supernatural sphere.

COLLECTION OF IRON TOOLS FROM THE BURIALS OF ROURAN PERIOD OF THE CHOBURAK-I COMPLEX (NORTHERN ALTAI)

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 287-295
Author(s):  
Seregin N. ◽  
◽  
Tishkin A. ◽  
Matrenin S. ◽  
Parshikova T. ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Life Support ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Morphological Description ◽  
State University ◽  
Life Support System ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Cattle Breeders ◽  
Functional Purpose

The article presents a collection of iron tools from the burials of the Rouran period, studied at the Choburak-I funeral complex. The published materials come from eleven undisturbed burials excavated by the expedition of the Altai State University. The article provides information about twelve knives, four awls, and products with an unidentified functional purpose. The authors provided information on the peculiarities of the location of these items in the graves, made a morphological description of the recorded specimens, compared them with already known items from other sites of the Bulan-Koby archaeological culture of Altai, and from complexes excavated in adjacent territories. It was established that the analyzed objects had a rather long period of existence within the framework of the Xianbei-Rouran period (2nd - 5th centuries AD). The published materials expand the source base for studying the life support system of the Altai population at the turn of the late antiquity and the Middle Ages. The presented findings actualize the continuation of research in the field of a comprehensive analysis of tools and household items of cattle breeders in the region in the indicated period. Keywords: altai, Bulan-Koby culture, tools, knife, Awl, chronology

THE POETICS OF LATER GREEK ECPHRASIS: CHRISTODORUS COPTUS, THE PALATINE ANTHOLOGY AND THE PERIOCHAE OF NONNUS’ DIONYSIACA

Ramus ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 216-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fran Middleton
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Latin Poetry ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Greek Poetry ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The Middle Ages

There is increasing interest in what might be thought ‘special’ about late antique poetry. Two volumes of recent years have focused on Latin poetry of this time, Classics Renewed: Reception and Innovation in the Latin Poetry of Late Antiquity edited by Scott McGill and Joseph Pucci (2016) as well as The Poetics of Late Latin Literature edited by Jaś Elsner and Jesús Hernández Lobato (2017), while it has become increasingly acceptable to remark on late antiquity as a cultural period in its own right, rather than a point of transition between high antiquity and the middle ages. Greek poetry of late antiquity has yet to receive the level of attention offered to Latin literature of this time, and so it is to help answer the question of what may be thought special about late antique Greek poetry that I here discuss the poetics of later Greek ecphrasis.

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 TO THE QUESTION OF SPACE ORGANIZATION OF BOOK ILLUMINATION OF LATE ANTIQUITY AND EARLY MIDDLE AGES (IV – VII CENTURY)

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 29-48
Author(s):  
Mikhail S. Bankov
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Spatial Organization ◽  
Continuous Process ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Early Medieval ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Space Organization ◽  
Miniature Painting

The article focuses on peculiarities of spatial organization of book miniature paintings of late antique and early medieval manuscripts (IV – VII centuries). The author analyses the problem of conveying illusion of depth in illustration in context of gradual transmission from roll to codex, which took place in antique book culture between the II and the V centuries. By analyzing survived fragments of illuminated rolls author displays characteristic features of their spatial organization and observes influence which had tradition of roll illustration on the development of codex. Nevertheless, precisely the miniatures of the codices that have come down to our time are in focus of the author’s attention. The stages of development of the text page, the peculiarities of interaction of text and images in codices are compared with the principles of space organization in miniatures. The article makes an attempt, relying on the monuments that have survived to our time, to consider the development of spatial constructions in the period of late Antiquity and early Middle Ages as a continuous process of evolution of the language of book painting. The author assumes that the development of spatial constructions in miniature painting does not imply sharp breaks or regression. Each new stage of the evolution arises from the previous one and makes it possible to expand the arsenal of artistic means which are necessary for solving artistic problems of the time. In accordance with this approach, the article concentrates not only on compositions in which a spatial illusion is created, but also miniatures that are in character more plane. As a result, the author reveals the main types of spatial constructions, considering all surviving monuments of miniature painting of that time. For each type of space organization, the author identifies the basic principles and artistic techniques that allow the artist to convey a sense of depth on the plane of page. The author pays special attention to the comparison of illusionistic tendencies in the late antique book miniature and “reverse perspective”, features of which are present in the monuments of the era. The author casts doubt on the need for a sharp contrast between these two approaches to space organization in the monuments of book miniatures of the era. He analyzes the reasons for the appearance of such features of space organization in miniature paintings of late antique and early medieval manuscripts, which are so important for the formation of artistic language of medieval book illumination.

scholarly journals Intercultural Dialogue and Humanities from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-22
Author(s):  
Enrico Maria Di Palma
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Intercultural Dialogue ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Peter Abelard ◽  
The Middle Ages

The aim of this articole is to discover traces of humanitas in late antique and mediaval literature. Starting from the classic meaning of this notion, the paper finds three meaningful episodes: the controversy between Ambrosius and Symmachus about the Altar of Victory, the Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian by Peter Abelard and the spread of the Life of Balaam and Josaphat. Through these examples, the article builds a new idea of humanitas, free from historical restricion, a blend of literary passion, acceptance of diversity and multiculturalism.

Voices and Bodies: The Afterlife of the Unborn

Numen ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 56 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 326-365 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danuta Shanzer
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Human Embryo ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Special Class ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Pelagian Controversy ◽  
The Status ◽  
Visible Body ◽  
The Middle Ages ◽  
Mizuko Kuyo

This article discuses the fate of a special class of child, the unborn, in the afterlife, as well as the gradual criminalization of abortion in Antiquity. Particular attention is paid to a possible prohibition of abortion in Orphism that may underpin the nekyiai in P. Bon. 4. and Vergil Aen . 6. Then it turns to depictions of the aborted in the Apocalypse of Peter and its late antique off spring to show how the aborted fetus gradually acquires a visible body and an articulate voice. At the same time, the theology of sentiment works out its solutions to mitigate the problem of the innocent in hell. The fate of the almost bodiless fetus in the Resurrection became a bone of contention by the early 5th C. The satirical questions posed Christians about the resurrection of the unborn may first have been raised by Porphyry. His interest in the embryo and its ensoulment in the Pros Gauron are adduced as evidence. Attention is drawn to Augustine's doubts about the status and fate of the human embryo, and some reasons are suggested about why he hesitated to adopt an unambiguous “human from conception” position. In the 5th C., after the Pelagian controversy, attention began to shift from the unborn to the unbaptized, who dominate the nekyiai of the Middle Ages. The rise of the Mizuko kuyō cult in Japan shows astonishing parallels to what happened in Late Antiquity.

Setting the Scene for an Environmental History of Late Antiquity

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Adam Izdebski
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Environmental History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Actual Experience ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era ◽  
New Framework

Abstract Environmental history is a well-established discipline that until recently focused mainly on the modern era and was dominated by historians. Numerous scholars agree today that this needs to change: a focus on Late Antiquity can help this happen. To make it possible, we should concentrate our efforts on three parallel projects. First, make late antique studies more interdisciplinary, i.e. joining the efforts of historians, archaeologists and natural scientists. Second, look at Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages as a source of case studies that are relevant to the central themes of environmental history. Third, use environmental history as a new framework that has the potential to modify our vision of the 1st millennium AD, by getting us closer to the actual experience of the people who lived this past.

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