The Date of the Kapara Period at Gozan (Tell Halaf)

1956 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 75-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. F. Albright

Ever since the discovery of the Palace of Kapara by Max von Oppenheim in 1911, there has been a debate—often acrimonious—with respect to its date. As late as 1934 there was a variation of some two millennia among active discussants. With the death of Ernst Herzfeld, who stood out until the end for a date in the third millennium, the debate seems to have closed, at least for the time being. In 1954 the late H. Frankfort came out explicitly for a date during the ninth century, preferably in its second half, for the age of Kapara. The same date, though with a higher upper limit, was maintained by A. Moortgat in the official publication of the sculpture of Gozan which appeared the following year. K. Galling had all along favoured such a dating, which he now espouses without reservation. The present writer has also maintained a date between 1100 and 900, concentrating for the past fifteen years on the tenth century.

2003 ◽  
Vol 20 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 208-210
Author(s):  
Zaineb Lstrabadi

Dorothy Drummond's book was born at the dawn of the third millennium,when the author was in Jerusalem. She had taken notes throughout hertravels in the Holy Land, which she defines not only as the land of historicPalestine, but also the lands of present-day Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Iraq,and Egypt (i.e., where the Patriarchs, Prophets, and the Holy Familyroamed). Rather than write a travelogue, she decided to write a book aboutthe Arab-Israeli conflict while interspersing her personal comments (initalics) about her journeys. Her intent is not to "answer the question posedin the title of this book. Rather, by shedding light on dark corners, itattempts to bring understanding," as she explains in the prologue.The book is divided into three parts: a discussion of the IsraeliPalestinianconflict in the present, a discussion of the roots of the conflicttraveling 4,000 years into the past, and a brief discussion of how negotiationis the only way to resolve the conflict. There are maps and pho tographsthroughout the book, as well as a 40-page glossary of the HolyLand's people and places. Drummond has written the work in the presenttense, because of the immediacy of all that has happened in the MiddleEast, but the discussion ultimately centers on the area between theMediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.Her book promises to be a good, balanced account written in a wonwonderfullyaccessible style. However, early on it runs into problems. Forexample, when she talks about the 1956 Israeli attack on Egypt, she fails ...


Since taking power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party has consistently tried to enforce a monopoly on the writing and interpretation of history. However, since 1998 individual initiatives have increased in the field of memory. Confronting official amnesia, victims of Maoist movements have decided to write their versions of history before it is too late. This chapter presents a typology of these endeavours. Annals of the Yellow Emperor (Yanhuang chunqiu), an official publication, enjoyed some freedom to publish dissenting historical accounts but was suppressed in 2016. With the rise of the internet, unofficial journals appeared that were often dedicated to a specific period: Tie Liu’s Small traces of the Past (Wangshi weihen) published accounts of victims of the Anti-Rightist movement for almost a decade before the editor was arrested; Wu Di’s Remembrance (Jiyi) founded by former Red Guards and rusticated youth circulates on line. The third type is the samizdat: targets of repression during Mao’s reign recount their experience in books that are published at their own expense and circulated privately. Most of these “entrepreneurs of memory” are convinced that restoring historical truth is a pre-requisite to China’s democratization. Since Xi Jinping came to power, they have suffered repression.


1929 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-159
Author(s):  
H. L. Lorimer

Of the sources of Homer in the literary sense we can know nothing. There is no antecedent, no contemporary literature extant; and no analysis of later works will yield anything that can be proved to represent a literary tradition earlier than Homer. Archaeology, however, which has made the origins of Hellenic culture in some degree intelligible, has at least furnished a solid stage and a veritable background for the action of the Iliad. How much did Homer know of the past? A systematic examination of the archaeological data which the poems offer suggests that he knew a great deal; knew it with a precision which cannot be explained away as fortuitous, and about so remote a past that we must postulate a stream of tradition traceable much further back than the siege of Troy. For the purposes of this paper Homer means the author of the Iliad in substantially its present form, whose floruit the present writer would not put earlier than the ninth century, and the term is used, without prejudice, for the author of the Odyssey also. Eratosthenes' date of 1184 for the fall of Troy is assumed less because it came to be accepted as the standard date in antiquity than because it fits so well into what we know of the history of the Mediterranean world at that time.


Horizons ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-151
Author(s):  
Bernard P. Prusak

AbstractThis article analyzes the International Theological Commission's Memory and Reconciliation: The Church and the Faults of the Past (MR). The document offers methodological reflections about how to proceed in implementing Pope John Paul II's call for the church to ask for forgiveness for past offenses at the dawn of the third millennium of Christianity. MR thus seeks to clarify “the reasons, the conditions, and the exact form of the requests for forgiveness for the faults of the past.” The article raises some specific concerns regarding the three operative distinctions that MR proposes to be applied: between the holiness of the church emphatically differentiated from holiness (and sinfulness) in the church; between church and social context in making historical and theological judgments; and between magisterium and authority in the church (that allows MR to explain how behavior contrary to the Gospel by persons vested with authority in the church need not imply involvement of the magisterial charism).


2009 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 142-148
Author(s):  
Rita P. Wright

Shannon Dawdy has presented us with a provocative dialogue on the question ‘is archaeology useful?’ In it, she forecasts a rather bleak future for our field, raising doubts about whether archaeology should be useful and whether it is ‘threatened with its own end-time’. Woven throughout her paper are major concerns about the use of archaeology for nationalistic ends and heritage projects which she deems fulfil the needs of archaeologists rather than those of the public they serve. In the final section of her paper, when she asks, ‘can archaeology save the world?’, Dawdy recommends that we reorient our research ‘away from reconstructions of the past and towards problems of the present’ (p. 140). In my contribution to this dialogue, I introduce an issue that reflects on cultural heritage, antiquities and artefact preservation, which, though they may seem antithetical, are closely aligned with Dawdy's concerns. As a prehistorian with a focus on the third millennium B.C. in the Near East and South Asia, I consider these issues to be the ‘big stories’ that have emerged in the early years of this third millennium, and those that speak directly to the usefulness of archaeology. Of course, it is not the only thing we do, but it is ‘useful’.


Arabica ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-59
Author(s):  
Erez Naaman

Abstract When a classical Arabic poem lacked a noticeable degree of thematic coherence and formal structure, it was at risk of foreign intervention aiming to improve it. Who was recognized in such a case as the author of the poem and on which grounds? This article looks at the interrelated questions of the poem’s unity and its authorship through the lens of collaborative poetry that was practiced by completing verse composed in the past. It presents an analysis of poetic collaboration cases from the second/eighth century to the Ayyubid era, and discusses different practical approaches of poets to authorship questions related to the earlier source poem and their own later completion. In the third/ninth century, as an expansive reservoir of ancient and modern poems became increasingly available, we occasionally notice the marks of plagiary, rather than forgery, on collaborative poems of this type. At the same time, and based on this very expansion, kinds of legitimate poetic influence can be detected in the completions of the later poets. Remarkably, poetic intervention did not cease and the poem conceptually did not achieve an inviolable status, when the scholars replaced the transmitters as the authorities on poetry around the third/ninth century and throughout the period under study. Nevertheless, the cultural domain for reshaping earlier verse changed, and the repertoire of poetry considered as “fair game” for this practice was narrowed down based on quality considerations.


Author(s):  
Giuseppe Lippi ◽  
Gianfranco Cervellin

AbstractThe diagnosis of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) has challenged the minds of cardiologists, emergency physicians and laboratorists for decades. A major breakthrough has, however, occurred at the dawn of the third millennium, with development, commercialization and introduction into clinical practice of troponin immunoassays. A novel generation of these methods, conventionally defined as “high-sensitivity” (HS), has more recently emerged. These latest generation assays are characterized by improved analytical sensitivity, which would theoretically allow earlier and more efficient diagnosis of ACS. Despite the considerable amount of information gathered over the past few years about the clinical use of conventional and HS immunoassays, several doubts persist and – according to our personal perspective – the evidence that the latest generation methods would represent a real breakthrough in management of patients in short-stay units such as the emergency department is still an unresolved issue. Beside the mystifying nomenclature that characterizes several commercial tests, recent evidence suggests that the diagnostic performance of some contemporary sensitive methods would equal those of HS immunoassays for early diagnosis, serial assessment and even prognostication of patients. Conversely, the better diagnostic specificity of conventional methods may represent an advantage for triaging patients in overcrowded emergency departments. There is hence a tangible threat that the measurement of troponin with HS methods would become more or less an “expensive cholesterol of the third millennium”, and this risk must be carefully considered in a world of limited resources. So, our answer to the question if we do really need HS troponin immunoassays in the emergency department is “maybe not”.


1970 ◽  
pp. 13-61
Author(s):  
Tamima Bayhom-Daou

This paper questions the suggestion of our sources that gnostic currents had already appeared among Šīʿites by the early second/eighth century. It contends that gnosticism did not surface in Šīʿism until the third/ninth century and that our information on its existence among second-century Šīʿites is the result of retrospective ascription to groups and individuals who, on account of their (real or alleged) messianic beliefs, had already been identified by moderate Imāmīs as ġulāt. That information would have served to distance Imāmism and its imāms from gnostic teachings by associating those teachings with repudiated figures from the past. The paper examines evidence showing that in his work on firaq Hišām b. al-Ḥakam (d. 179/795) was not aware of the existence of gnostic ideas in Šīʿism. Other examined evidence also shows that references to gnostic ġuluww are conspicuous by their absence from sources on Šīʿism that are datable to before the third/ ninth century.


1998 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nurit Tsafir

AbstractThis essay, based mainly on two early Iṣfahānī biographical dictionaries, describes the introduction of the ḥanafī school to Iṣfahān. I argue that although schools of ḥadīth had a long history in Iṣfahān, the ḥanafī law school was also represented there from an early date. The ḥanafī legal method was practiced in the town around the middle of the second/eighth century, and ḥadīth on the authority of Abū ḥanīfa, transmitted to Iṣfahānī scholars through Abū ḥanīfa's pupil Zufar b. al-Hudhayl, started to circulate there around the same time. By the beginning of the third/ninth century a significant ḥanafī community had developed in Iṣfahān, and although schools of ḥadīth continued to be influential there, the Iṣfahānī ḥanafī community survived into the fourth/tenth century and was strengthened by the Saljūqs in the fifth/eleventh century and thereafter.


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