scholarly journals Hermēneis in the Documentary Record from Hellenistic and Roman Egypt: interpreters, translators and mediators in a bilingual society

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-102
Author(s):  
Rachel Mairs
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Roman Egypt ◽  
Monastic Communities

AbstractEgypt of the Hellenistic and Roman periods remains the most thoroughly documented multilingual society in the ancient world, because of the wealth of texts preserved on papyrus in Egyptian, Greek, Latin and other languages. This makes the scarcity of interpreters in the papyrological record all the more curious. This study reviews all instances in the papyri of individuals referred to as hermēneus in Greek, or references to the process of translation/interpreting. It discusses the terminological ambiguity of hermēneus, which can also mean a commercial mediator; the position of language mediators in legal cases in Egyptian, Greek and Latin; the role of gender in language mediation; and concludes with a survey of interpreting in Egyptian monastic communities in Late Antiquity.

Reuse of Statuary and the Recycling Habit of Late Antiquity: An Economic Perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 105-190
Author(s):  
Simon J. Barker
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Economic Importance ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
New Materials ◽  
Economic Perspective ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Cultural Choice

This chapter examines questions about the role of statue reuse and recycling in the building and sculptural economies of Late Antiquity, leading to an increased understanding of the cultural changes that characterized this practice during this period. It addresses various approaches to the economic importance of and rationale behind the reuse and recycling of statuary and other sculpted material in Late Antiquity. The basic economic premise that materials were reused and recycled because they were available more economically than new materials seems clear, but we should be careful though not to reduce reuse-recycling solely to economics. Reuse-recycling was also a cultural choice rather than a purely pragmatic practice, and one that expressed a late antique mentality. Sculpted stone was a recognizable commodity in the ancient world and its recycling and reuse have both social and economic implications for the artistic and ideological changes that defined the recycling habit of Late Antiquity.

A glimpse from the ancient world: What a gold necklace from Tillya-tepe reveals about opium in Afghanistan

Afghanistan ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-173
Author(s):  
Sara Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Opium Poppy ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Cultural Importance ◽  
Large Seed ◽  
Potent Drug ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Societal Role

Among the six excavated burials at Tillya-tepe, in northern Afghanistan, was one occupied by an elite woman wearing a substantial necklace consisting of large gold beads shaped as seed-heads. The scale and fine workmanship of this necklace suggest that it was one of her most important possessions. It can be demonstrated that these large seed-heads are representations of poppy capsules, whose significance lies in the fact that they are the source of the potent drug opium. This necklace is the most outstanding object within a group of items decorated with poppy imagery, all of which were discovered in female burials. The opium poppy has long been a culturally important plant, and the implication of this identification is investigated in several contexts. Firstly, the proliferation of poppy imagery in the female burials at Tillya-tepe is examined, and then there is a discussion of material evidence for opium among relevant peoples along the Eurasian steppes. The particular cultural importance of opium is reviewed, leading finally to a proposal for the societal role of these women.

Conclusion

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ildar Garipzanov
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Periods

The concluding chapter highlights how the cultural history of graphic signs of authority in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages encapsulated the profound transformation of political culture in the Mediterranean and Europe from approximately the fourth to ninth centuries. It also reflects on the transcendent sources of authority in these historical periods, and the role of graphic signs in highlighting this connection. Finally, it warns that, despite the apparent dominant role of the sign of the cross and cruciform graphic devices in providing access to transcendent protection and support in ninth-century Western Europe, some people could still employ alternative graphic signs deriving from older occult traditions in their recourse to transcendent powers.

The Role of the City in Merovingian Francia

2020 ◽  
pp. 581-610
Author(s):  
S. T. Loseby
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Urban Network ◽  
City Councils ◽  
Royal Courts ◽  
Range Of Functions ◽  
Fierce Competition

The Merovingians inherited an urban network from the Roman Empire that remained substantially intact. Although Gallic cities had long been declining in extent and sophistication, during late antiquity their landscapes were adapted to contemporary priorities through the provision of walls and churches, and their politics was transformed by the emergence of bishops as leaders of urban communities. When the upper tiers of imperial administration disappeared, this equipped the vast majority of cities to survive as the basic building blocks of Merovingian kingdoms that were initially conceived as aggregations of city–territories. In ruling through their cities, the Merovingians expanded upon existing mechanisms for the extraction of taxes and services, while relying on centrally appointed bishops and counts rather than city councils for the projection of their authority. This generated fierce competition between kings for control of cities and among local elites for positions of power within them. In the later Merovingian period, however, the significance of cities diminished as stable territorial kingdoms emerged, political practice was centralized around the royal courts, and the Roman administrative legacy finally disintegrated. But the cities remained preeminent religious centers, and, with the beginnings of economic revival, continued to perform a range of functions unmatched by other categories of settlement.

Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Imperial Rome ◽  
The Past ◽  
Roman World ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Close Relationship

This volume approaches three key concepts in Roman history — gender, memory and identity — and demonstrates the significance of their interaction in all social levels and during all periods of Imperial Rome. When societies, as well as individuals, form their identities, remembrance and references to the past play a significant role. The aim of Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World is to cast light on the constructing and the maintaining of both public and private identities in the Roman Empire through memory, and to highlight, in particular, the role of gender in that process. While approaching this subject, the contributors to this volume scrutinise both the literature and material sources, pointing out how widespread the close relationship between gender, memory and identity was. A major aim of Gender, Memory, and Identity in the Roman World as a whole is to point out the significance of the interaction between these three concepts in both the upper and lower levels of Roman society, and how it remained an important question through the period from Augustus right into Late Antiquity.

scholarly journals Managerial Judicial Conflict Resolution (JCR) of Plea Bargaining

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 494-541 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sari Luz Kanner ◽  
Dana Rosen ◽  
Yosef Zohar ◽  
Michal Alberstein
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Alternative Dispute Resolution ◽  
Average Duration ◽  
Plea Bargaining ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
Judicial Process ◽  
Legal Cases ◽  
Client Relations

This article examines the role of the criminal judge in light of the vanishing trial phenomenon and the emergent reality of many doors to process legal conflicts in both the civil and criminal domains. It focuses on judicial conflict resolution (JCR), which is any activity conducted by judges in order to promote consensual disposition of legal cases, in “Plea Bargains Facilitating Days” (moqed) in Tel-Aviv Magistrate’s Court. We conducted quantitative and qualitative analyses of data collected from observations of 717 hearings in 704 criminal cases and found that, on average, 5.55 (SD = 3.62) hearings were required for disposing of a case, and the average duration of a legal proceeding from indictment to closure was 548.55 (SD = 323.17) days. In most of the hearings the judges’ role was confined to managerial-bureaucratic decisions intended to enable the negotiation between the parties. JCR activities occurred in only 16.9 percent of the hearings, and we identified six types of JCR practices in the promotion of plea bargains: narrow and broad facilitation of negotiations between the parties, forecasting the legal outcome, negatively presenting the judicial process, using lawyer-client relations to promote agreement, and using Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) techniques. These findings are compared to previous findings on the roles of judges in civil pretrial proceedings, and the more active role of the civil judge in promoting settlements is discussed. We further discuss the possibility of expanding a therapeutic and rehabilitative approach in the framework of criminal JCR during preliminary hearing days, which become today the main door of criminal justice.

Time

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Garth Fowden
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Architectural History ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Catalytic Role

This chapter examines the role that late antique scholarship has occasionally assigned to Islam, with particular emphasis on the work of Alois Riegl, Josef Strzygowski, Henri Pirenne, and Peter Brown. It begins with an overview of the roots of late antique studies on Islam, citing the impetus given by theological and philosophical concerns to interest in late Antiquity up to and including the nineteenth century. It also considers the catalytic role of art, architectural history, and archaeology in the “slow transformations” of the late antique world. It shows that questions about Islam were already present at the very birth of modern late antique studies.

Central Italian Elite Groups as Aristocratic Houses in the Ninth to Sixth Centuries BCE

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
Matthew C Naglak ◽  
Nicola Terrenato
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Textual Evidence ◽  
New Models ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Theoretical Overview ◽  
House Society

This chapter demonstrates the applicability of C. Lévi-Strauss’s “House Society” model for considering the role of kinship in the early moments of state formation and urbanization in Iron Age Latium and Etruria. After a brief theoretical overview of the model, the discussion focuses on two main axioms which are often overlooked in the model’s application to the ancient world: (1) a physical house does not make a social House, and (2) a single House does not make a Society. This is followed by an overview of how material evidence from sites ranging from Vetulonia to Osteria dell’Osa and textual evidence from the Twelves Tables can be interpreted through the lens of a “House Society” to create new models for the development of complex social systems in central Italy.

The Association of State Farmers and Its Role in Village Administration in Roman Egypt

2020 ◽  
pp. 82-93
Author(s):  
Thomas Kruse
Keyword(s):  
Rural Population ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Land ◽  
Natural Consequence ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
Roman Egypt

This paper examines the role of the state farmers, their organisation and changes as a village institution in Roman Egypt. Since the cultivation of public land in Roman Egypt constituted one of the major sources of the income for the province, it is not surprising that the state farmers, usually called demosioi georgoi (public farmers), were one of the most important groups of the rural population. As public land was usually cultivated through a hereditary lease, the rural population saw the plots which were attached to their villages as their own property. It was, therefore, a natural consequence that the state farmers became involved in the management of their village’s affairs and in doing so cooperated with the local administrative officials.

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