scholarly journals Eurasia and Ancient Egypt in the Fourth Millennium BCE

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 271-294
Author(s):  
Svend Hansen

Abstract This article focuses on technical innovations, new interregional networks, and social upheavals in the fourth millennium BCE. Similar trends in the iconography of the lion, the heraldic animal of power, can be observed in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus. This indicates that a process of concentration of power in the hands of strong rulers or kings took place relatively synchronously in these regions. The exchange of coveted raw materials such as copper and silver was connected with the transfer of knowledge between these regions, which can be seen in metal objects such as daggers and knives.

2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pearce Paul Creasman

AbstractReuse of materials in ancient Egypt is neither a new nor novel concept. The ancient Egyptians reused a variety of materials and certainly any resource that had spiritual, ideological, or economic value that was available to them. Yet, reuse of certain raw materials has not been thoroughly examined, notably timber. This manuscript explores the modes, preferences and implications of wood use, specifically reuse, in Egypt’s Pharaonic Period, using ship timber as the illustrative example. This synthesis suggests specific preferences for commodity consumption and conservation existed, revealing cultural and behavioral trends.


1954 ◽  
Vol 142 (908) ◽  
pp. 289-305

Before I describe the Research Department of Courtaulds Ltd, I must first give a brief description of the activities and organization of the Company as a whole. Broadly speaking, Courtaulds Ltd is engaged in all aspects of the man-made fibre industry, including primary raw materials at one end and garments at the other, though the industrial effort is far from uniformly spread between these limits, the major strength of the Company being concentrated in the production of the cellulosic-based fibres known as viscose and cellulose acetate rayon. In addition, the Company has large investments in subsidiary and associated rayon producing companies in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.S.A., while in England the manufacture of Cellophane is carried out by the subsidiary company of British Cellophane Ltd, and that of nylon by the associated company British Nylon Spinners Ltd, so that the parent company is partly a manufacturing organization and partly a holding company. All the subsidiary and associated companies have their own research departments of varying sizes and complexities but I shall not attempt to describe these, and I shall confine my remarks to the research department of the parent company. As I have already mentioned, the major industrial activity of Courtaulds Ltd in the United Kingdom is the production of cellulosic-based fibres. The rayon factories run 168 hours a week, there being four shifts. The number of hourly-paid operatives is at present about 15000 and the sales are of the order of £50000000 per annum. The value to be placed upon the fixed assets is largely a matter of opinion, but in considering the effect of technical innovations upon the operations of the Company the fixed assets can be assumed to be worth something of the order of £80000000.The number of operatives is therefore small; the capital investment is high and the turnover is relatively low.


2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gökhan Özkan

The Nabucco Project is a project, which aims to transport rich natural gas resources of the Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East to the European market via Turkey. In this study, the Nabucco Project was evaluated within context of the energy supply security concept and international politics. Firstly, interdependence between national power and energy supply security was investigated. How oil and natural gas became strategic raw materials of world politics beyond being primary energy resources of the global economy was examined. It was found that discovery of rich oil and natural gas resources in the Central Asia and the Caucasus after the Cold War turned the region into a focus of interest of the global and regional actors. In this connection, perspectives of the global and regional actors about the Nabucco Project were examined. As a result of analyses and evaluations, it was concluded that the Nabucco Project is a project that can significantly enhance Turkey’s geopolitical importance and make Turkey one of the key countries of the east-west energy corridor.


ORGANON ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Iwona Arabas

Cataloguing of the natural world was started by the 16th–century scholar Ulisses Aldrovandi, who was inspired by overseas expeditions. Collectors of specimens, among whom were many doctors of medicine and pharmacists, noticed the possibilities for using exotic plants and animals in medicine. The first pharmacopoeias, however, contained very few of the previously unknown raw materials and they did not have a great impact on the contemporary therapeutic possibilities. In the Polish territories, the raw materials from the New World had already been recorded in Jan Woyna’s Krakow Pharmacopoeia of 1683, in which five American species were identified. By contrast, in the 18th–century Jesuit pharmacies, 30 such materials were already used, although they were not pharmacopoeial. In the 18th century, in the Polish lands, an important role was played by duchess Anna Jabłonowska (1728–1800), who gathered one of the richest natural history collections in Europe in Siemiatycze in Podlasie. Thanks to her support, the Polish nature literature was enriched with numerous works that were of importance for the development of the natural sciences.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 101-126
Author(s):  
Monica L. Smith

Abstract States in archaeological and historical parlance generally are large and dynamic entities with continually fluctuating borders and boundaries across large land masses. States also are characterized by multiple nodes of settlement and multiple regions of resource availability within those large land masses, including agricultural fields, animal pastures, raw materials, and labor power. The northeastern African continent however provides a rather different spatial configuration for states’ prerequisites of agricultural intensification and social integration: the ancient Egyptian state—and all subsequent political entities called “Egypt”—have been framed by the valley of the Nile as a long and narrow corridor of human viability. Using “flow” as a phenomenological concept in which experiences are heightened by restraint conditions, this article examines the characteristics of political and social cohesion given geographic limitations on communication, migration and territorial expansion. The constraints of a viable landmass surrounded by uninhabitable desert parallel the conditions experienced by island states, enabling the productive application of island and archipelagic models to the analysis of the ancient Egyptian state.


Author(s):  
Marcello Benegiamo ◽  
Paola Nardone

<p>Uscito a pezzi dalla pesante crisi finanziaria e industriale del 1907, che aveva messo a nudo i limiti della struttura economica del Paese, il capitalismo industriale italiano elaborò un programma, portato avanti fino al primo dopoguerra, che prevedeva l’instaurazione di un governo di tecnocrati. Questo avrebbe dovuto trainare il Paese fuori dalla crisi, pianificarne l’economia e trasformarlo in una grande potenza industriale, con forti connotazioni imperialistiche. Segnali in tale direzione si erano registrati anche nei decenni precedenti, tra fine Ottocento e inizi Novecento, quando ebbe inizio un processo di concentrazione nel settore siderurgico e meccanico. Un percorso peraltro stimolato dalle commesse statali sempre più consistenti (Galli Della Loggia, 1970; Battilossi, 1999; Amatori e Colli, 1999; Bolchini, 2002). La crisi industriale e finanziaria del 1907 e la recessione a livello mondiale che ne seguì, accelerarono la soluzione tecnocratica, che prevedeva un’alleanza, più o meno stretta, con una parte della classe politica e l’entrata in guerra. Negli anni immediatamente seguenti il conflitto, il potere dei tecnocrati sulla scena politica italiana sembrò accrescersi notevolmente, soprattutto quando il governo progettò un programma di espansione economica nelle regioni del Caucaso, nei Balcani e nel Levante ex ottomano, territori in grado di fornire materie prime e di assorbire la produzione italiana in eccesso rispetto alle richieste di un mercato interno asfittico. La collaborazione tra mondo imprenditoriale, bancario e politico non produsse il risultato sperato. La caduta del governo Nitti e il ruolo destabilizzante e filotedesco della Banca Commerciale Italiana nell’Est europeo e nel Caucaso furono tra le cause principali che impedirono il decollo del progetto tecnocratico,<strong> </strong>provocando una dura reazione da parte dei fratelli Perrone alla guida del gruppo Ansaldo.</p><p>Heavily Weakened by the financial and industrial crisis of 1907, which showed all the limits of the economic structure of Italy, the Italian industrial capitalism developed a program that continued until the early after World War, which was taking into account the establishment of a government of technocrats.</p><p>This should had to take the country out of crisis, establish an economical plan and turn it into a major industrial power, with strong imperialist characteristics.  Signals in this direction were also recorded in the previous decades, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when a process of concentration of the main groups of entrepreneurs and capitalists began in the steel and mechanical industry. A path anyway enhanced by more and more orders from the government (Galli Della Loggia, 1970; Battilossi, 1999; Amatori and Colli, 1999; Boldrini, 2002). The industrial and financial crisis of 1907 and the global recession that followed, accelerated the technocratic solution, which were looking for a more or less closer alliance, with a part of the political class and going into war. Soon after the war, the political power of the technocrats in Italy seemed to grow significantly, especially when the Government developed a program of economic expansion in the regions of the Caucasus, Balkans and on the countries of the ex East Ottoman, these territories could provide raw materials and, with respect of an internal market completely saturated, to absorb the exceeding Italian production. The collaboration within the world of business, banking and politics did not produce the desired result. The fall of the Nitti´s Government and the pro German and destabilizing role of the Italian Commercial Bank in Eastern Europe and on the Caucasus were the major drivers against the launch of the technocratic project, inducing a though reaction by the Perrone brothers leading the group Ansaldo.</p>


Author(s):  
Salima Ikram

In addition to providing food, companionship, and raw materials for clothing, furniture, tools, and ornaments, animals also played a key role in religious practices in ancient Egypt. Apart from serving as sacrifices, each god had one or more animal as a totem. Certain specially marked exemplars of these species were revered as manifestations of that god that enjoyed all the privileges of being a deity during their lifetime and which were mummified and buried with pomp upon their death. Other animals, which did not bear the distinguishing marks, were mummified and offered to the gods, transmitting the prayers of devotees directly to their divinities. These number in the millions and were a significant feature of Egyptian religious belief and self-identity in the later periods of Egyptian history.


Author(s):  
Annette Imhausen

This chapter discusses the invention of writing and number notation in ancient Egypt. Writing is believed to have been invented in Egypt at the end of the fourth millennium BCE. Among the predynastic elite tombs, tomb U-j (assigned to King Scorpion around 3200 BCE) holds a significant place. Within the twelve rooms of the structure, the earliest evidence of hieroglyphic writing from ancient Egypt was discovered. Two types of objects with inscriptions were found in tomb U-j. On the one hand, almost 200 labels made from bone, ivory, or stone and on the other hand, ceramic vessels. If we presume that some basic assumptions about the earliest written objects from tomb U-j are correct, that is, if the abstract signs were indeed the representation of numbers or quantities and the labels were attached to some goods about which they held information (e.g., the indication of their quantities or their origin or owner) then, like in Mesopotamia, the earliest writing is linked to administrative needs, and the invention of a quantity/numerical notation along with the invention of script is almost a necessary consequence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Radmila Balaban

The focus of this text is twofold. The first task is to reconsider the mode of interpretation of various small (4 to 10 cm) objects (axes, chisels, finger-rings, pendants), made of green minerals – jadeite and/or nephrite. These objects are registered on 15 sites in the territory of present-day Serbia, dated into the Neolithic period (6200/6000–4600/4500 cal BC). The second task is to lay out a short history of the green colour. As stated by Michel Pastoureau (Pasturo 2015), the production of a green pigment was almost impossible in the past, especially in praehistory. The first recorded attempts are linked to Ancient Egypt, and the oldest successful production of the green pigment is dated to Ancient Rome. Therefore, the text examines the symbolic role of these small green objects during the Neolithic. The beds of green minerals jadeite and nephrite are not recorded in the territory of Serbia. Jadeite may be found south of Skopje (Mt. Solunska glava), in the Cyclades in Greece, as well as in the Piedmont Alps. Nephrite is registered in the mountain Ogražden (SW Bulgaria), in Poland, Sweden, and Italy. The absence of mineral layers in the region surely suggests the existence of long-distance exchange. This raises the issue of the role and symbolic function of these objects – what was their appeal for the past communities and what was the role of their colour in their manufacture? In archaeology, the studies in symbolics of various colours are rare. Authors have mainly focused upon the origin of the colour and the dating of the objects, but the role of the colour itself as the criterion in choosing various raw materials has largely been neglected. Notable is the exception of the thematic collection “Colouring the Past: The Significance of Colour in Archaeological Research” (2002), where attempts have been made to explain the symbolic importance of various colours in the past. However, the colour green is not mentioned. This paper does not aim to offer final solutions, but to investigate the usage and importance of the colour green on the grounds of the usage of the objects themselves.


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