Some Observations on Name Rings: towards a Typology

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-135
Author(s):  
Laura Peirce
Keyword(s):  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Eighteenth Dynasty ◽  
Singular Component ◽  
Military Campaigns

Abstract Research to date on name rings, which form a singular component of topographical lists, has primarily focused on the toponyms enclosed in the rings and their subsequent relevance to military campaigns. This article aims to explore another valuable facet of this phenomenon. It details the results of an investigation into the development of the iconography of the personages attached to these name rings during the Eighteenth Dynasty and early Nineteenth Dynasty on Egyptian royal monuments. Clear trends were discernible, from accoutrements to coiffures, that may be able to assist in the dating of royal monuments within sacred spaces.

A Sacred Space Is Never Empty

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Smolkin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
Soviet Leadership ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Ideology ◽  
History Of ◽  
Soviet Experiment

When the Bolsheviks set out to build a new world in the wake of the Russian Revolution, they expected religion to die off. Soviet power used a variety of tools—from education to propaganda to terror—to turn its vision of a Communist world without religion into reality. Yet even with its monopoly on ideology and power, the Soviet Communist Party never succeeded in overcoming religion and creating an atheist society. This book presents the first history of Soviet atheism from the 1917 revolution to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The book argues that to understand the Soviet experiment, we must make sense of Soviet atheism. It shows how atheism was reimagined as an alternative cosmology with its own set of positive beliefs, practices, and spiritual commitments. Through its engagements with religion, the Soviet leadership realized that removing religion from the “sacred spaces” of Soviet life was not enough. Then, in the final years of the Soviet experiment, Mikhail Gorbachev—in a stunning and unexpected reversal—abandoned atheism and reintroduced religion into Soviet public life. The book explores the meaning of atheism for religious life, for Communist ideology, and for Soviet politics.

المعتقدات والافكار الدينية في بلاد الرافدين من خلال المسلات الملكية

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (29) ◽  
pp. 148-165
Author(s):  
طالب منعم حبيب الشمري ◽  
عبد الرزاق حسين حاجم
Keyword(s):  
Lower Section ◽  
Public Places ◽  
The Public ◽  
Large Stone ◽  
Stone Block ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
Peace And War

  The obelisk is a large stone block with a height ranging from 50 cm to 3 m. It varies in width from one obelisk to another. It is sculptured from one side or two or four sides with prominent picture inscriptions, often accompanied by cuneiform texts for immortalising kings and their military campaigns. This obelisk is constructed in a rectangular or square, and some of them a dome convex or semi-circular or pyramid. The lower section of the obelisks is wide, similar to the base of the base, and another section is sculpted on a slightly sloping end, so that it can easily be attached to the ground or placed on a special base. The rulers and kings of Mesopotamia established and displayed the obelisk in public places in order to be seen by the public.  It also was placed in the yards of temples or public squares and squares and the streets of cities. It used to celebrate their religious, military and historical achievements in order to immortalise their actions. These obelisks are held to commemorate the deeds of kings and their achievements in peace and war as confirmed by the cuneiform texts and the artistic scenes implemented on them.

Rome’s Loca Sancta

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galit Noga-Banai
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Local Bonding ◽  
The Creation

This chapter focuses on the creation of holy sites in Rome that are comparable in their significance to those in Jerusalem—that is, touched by past sacred events and/or sacred bodies. It maps the reasons for the change of attitude toward Jerusalem in Rome, and makes the argument that once the locally connected holy sites projected into the urban space, especially the local bonding of the sites related to Peter and Paul, it was possible to include Jerusalem in the Roman decorative programs. The discussion concentrates on the dynamic involved in the commemoration of sacred spaces in Rome, from the architecture of the holy sites (Basilica Apostolorum, S. Paolo fuori le mura) to portable objects related to them.

The Ethics of Unwinnable War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Tierney
Keyword(s):  
High Probability ◽  
Just War ◽  
Just War Theory ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Probability Of Success ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
Military Campaign

According to just war theory, military campaigns should only be fought as a last resort, with the goal of correcting a grave evil, and where there is a high probability of success. But what happens when a military campaign unravels and becomes unwinnable? How can a leader reconcile just war theory with the need to extricate the country from a quagmire? In recent decades, US presidents have repeatedly faced such moral dilemmas, as campaigns in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq all became unwinnable. When victory is no longer achievable, leaders should dial down the goals of the war, resist the pressure to embrace barbarism, negotiate with the adversary, and seek the best possible peace from the range of plausible alternatives.

Climate of Conquest

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pratyay Nath
Keyword(s):  
Vantage Point ◽  
North India ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Military Logistics ◽  
Empire Building ◽  
Efficient Management ◽  
Military Tactics ◽  
Cultural Climate ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
The Military

What can war tell us about empire? Climate of Conquest is built around this question. Pratyay Nath eschews the conventional way of writing about warfare primarily in terms of battles and technologies. Instead, he unravels the deep connections that Mughal war-making shared with the broader dynamics of society, culture, and politics. In the process, he offers a new analysis of the Mughal empire from the vantage point of war. Climate of Conquest closely studies the dynamics of the military campaigns that helped the Mughals conquer North India and project their power beyond it. In the first part, Nath argues that these campaigns unfolded in constant negotiation with the diverse natural environment of South Asia. The empire sought to discipline the environment and harness its resources to satisfy its own military needs. At the same time, environmental factors like climate, terrain, and ecology profoundly influenced Mughal military tactics, strategy, and deployment of technology. In the second part, Nath makes three main points. Firstly, he argues that Mughal military success owed a lot to the efficient management of military logistics and the labour of an enormous non-elite, non-combatant workforce. Secondly, he explores the making of imperial frontiers and highlights the roles of forts, routes, and local alliances in the process. Finally, he maps the cultural climate of war at the Mughal court and discusses how the empire legitimized war and conquest. In the process, what emerges is a fresh interpretation of Mughal empire-building as a highly adaptive, flexible, and accommodative process.

Big Business and the ‘Blitzkriegswirtschaft’: Daimler–Benz AG and the Mobilisation of the German War Economy 1939–42

1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-208
Author(s):  
Neil Gregor
Keyword(s):  
German Economy ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Economy ◽  
War Of Attrition ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
Aircraft Production ◽  
Second World ◽  
Male Labour

Since the end of the war itself, research on the German economy during the Second World War has focused – explicitly or implicitly – on the search for an explanation of the disparities in armaments and output between the first and second halves of the war. In the first half of the war, up until the winter of 1941–2, the development of armaments production was characterised by more or less stable levels of output against the background of the series of swift and successful military campaigns in Poland and in the West. This stands in stark contrast to the second half, which witnessed a radical increase in aggregate armaments output which lasted well into the summer of 1944, and which saw tank production reach 589 per cent of the level at which it had stood in January 1942, weapons production reach 382 per cent of its January 1942 level, and aircraft production 367 per cent of its January 1942 level over the same period, to name some of the most obvious successes. These increases were all the more astonishing for the fact that they were achieved against the background of a massive war of attrition on the Eastern Front which placed demands on German resources and drew male labour from German factories into the Wehrmacht on a scale out of all proportion to that experienced in the first half of the war.

scholarly journals A Maximal Understanding of Sacrifice: Bataille, Richard Wagner, Pilgrimage and the Bayreuth Festival

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 48
Author(s):  
Philip Smith ◽  
Florian Stoll
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Experience ◽  
The Body ◽  
Richard Wagner ◽  
Mixed Methods Study ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Paradigm Case ◽  
Comparative Sociology ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Classical Work

This paper calls for a broad conception of sacrifice to be developed as a resource for cultural sociology. It argues the term was framed too narrowly in the classical work of Hubert and Mauss. The later approach of Bataille permits a maximal understanding of sacrifice as non-utilitarian expenditures of money, energy, passion and effort directed towards the experience of transcendence. From this perspective, pilgrimage can be understood as a specific modality of sacrificial activity. This paper applies this understanding of sacrifice and pilgrimage to the annual Bayreuth “Wagner” Festival in Germany. Drawing on a multi-year mixed-methods study involving ethnography, semi-structured interviews and historical research, the article traces sacrificial expenditures at the level of individual festival attendees. These include financial costs, arduous travel, dedicated research of the artworks, and disciplines of the body. Some are lucky enough to experience transcendence in the form of deep emotional experience, and a sense of contact with sacred spaces and forces. Our study is intended as an exemplary paradigm case that can be drawn upon analogically by scholars. We suggest that other aspects of social experience, including many that are more ‘everyday’, can be understood through a maximal model of sacrifice and that a rigorous, wider comparative sociology could be developed using this tool.

scholarly journals National, Regional, or Just Catholic?—Dilemmas of Church Art in a German–Polish Borderland. Upper Silesia, 1903–1953

Arts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Jerzy Gorzelik
Keyword(s):  
Imagined Communities ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Sacred Art ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
God's Will ◽  
National Community ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Art Works ◽  
National Ideology ◽  
Church Art

The rise of nationalism threatened the integrity of the Catholic milieu in borderlands such as Prussian Upper Silesia. Facing this challenge, the ecclesiastical elite developed various strategies. This article presents interpretations of sacred art works from the first half of the 20th century, which reveal different approaches to national discourses expressed in iconographic programs. The spectrum of attitudes includes indifference, active counteraction to the progress of nationalism by promoting a different paradigm of building temporal imagined communities, acceptance of nationalistic metaphysics, which assumes the division of humanity into nations endowed with a unique personality, and a synthesis of Catholicism and nationalism, in which national loyalties are considered a Christian duty. The last position proved particularly expansive. Based on the primordialist concept of the nation and the historiosophical concept of Poland as a bulwark of Christianity, the Catholic-national ideology gained popularity among the pro-Polish clergy in the inter-war period. This was reflected in Church art works, which were to present Catholicism as the unchanging essence of the nation and the destiny of the latter resulting from God’s will. This strategy was designed to incorporate Catholic Slavophones into the national community. The adoption of a different concept of the nation by the pro-German priests associated with the Centre Party—with a stronger emphasis on the subjective criteria of national belonging—resulted in greater restraint in expressing national contents in sacred spaces.

What is military labour? War, logistics, and the Mughals in early modern South Asia

2021 ◽  
pp. 096834452091861
Author(s):  
Pratyay Nath
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asia ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Imperial Expansion ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
Early Modern South Asia

The category of ‘military labour’ has traditionally been used to designate ‘combat labour’ – the labour of soldiers. Focusing on the case of early modern South Asia, the present essay argues that this equivalence is misplaced and that it is a product of a distorted view of war defined primarily in terms of combat. The essay discusses the roles played by the logistical workforce of Mughal armies in conducting military campaigns and facilitating imperial expansion. It calls for broadening the category of ‘military labour’ to include all types of labour rendered consciously towards the fulfilment of military objectives.

Overburdened Gauls: the case of Florus and Sacrovir’s revolt of 21 CE

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared Kreiner
Keyword(s):  
Interest Rates ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Cumulative Effect ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Local Economies ◽  
Scale Resistance ◽  
Military Campaigns ◽  
The Impact

Abstract In 21 CE, a series of localized movements broke out in Gallia Comata due to heavy debts among provincials according to Tacitus. Modern scholars have long argued that the indebtedness occurred because of rising interest rates, resulting from dwindling currency in circulation after decades of free-spending following Augustus’ victory at Actium, and that Gallic communities were subjected to an additional tribute to support the wars of Germanicus (14–16 CE), which continued unabated after the wars and pushed Gauls beyond their means. These claims are misguided, however, in that there is no certain evidence of a special tax to support Germanicus’ wars and that the argument for a dwindling circulation of currency in Gaul falters under closer inspection. Rather, the pressing statal and military needs imposed on communities in Gallia Comata after 9 CE on top of routine exactions could significantly increase burden levels levied on provincial populations, thus contributing to rising debts. Through examining how Roman logistics and conscription operated in this period, it is possible to trace how populations were impacted by such demands and which communities were most heavily affected by them, too. Individually, the impact of each factor is unlikely to have been burdensome enough to have caused large-scale resistance, it is only the cumulative effect that these explanations had on top of routine Roman extraction schemes that could create the conditions for this revolt. This paper argues that in extraordinary circumstances, such as the period after the Varian Disaster for Gallia Comata, the costs of supporting military campaigns places real short-term strains on local economies, which creates the conditions for revolt. The benefit of this approach is that it may explain other episodes of anti-fiscal resistance that broke out during or within a decade of wars in neighboring regions.

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