scholarly journals Revisiting Epigraphic Evidence of the Oldest Synagogue in Morocco in Volubilis

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Sofia Andreeva ◽  
Artem Fedorchuk ◽  
Michael Nosonovsky
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Remote Region ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Hebrew Language ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
The City

Volubilis was a Roman city located at the southwest extremity of the Roman Empire in modern-day Morocco. Several Jewish gravestone inscriptions in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, likely from the 3rd century CE, have been found there. One of them belongs to “Protopolites Kaikilianos, the head of a Jewish congregation (synagogue)”, and it indicates the presence of a relatively big Jewish community in the city. The Hebrew inscription of “Matrona, daughter of Rabbi Yehuda” is unique occurrence of using the Hebrew language in such a remote region. The Latin inscription belongs to “Antonii Sabbatrai”, likely a Jew. In addition, two lamps decorated with menorahs, one from bronze and one from clay, were found in Volubilis. In nearby Chellah, a Jewish inscription in Greek was also discovered. We revisit these inscriptions including their language, spelling mistakes, and their interpretations. We relate epigraphic sources to archaeological evidence and discuss a possible location of the synagogue in this remote city, which was the first synagogue in Morocco.

Urban Infrastructure and Euergetism Outside the City of Rome

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marietta Horster
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Urban Infrastructure ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
Local Resources ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
The City

This chapter explores the connection between the monumentalization of cities, the use of local resources, and the involvement of benefactors in civic building operations. At its peak the Roman Empire comprised a mosaic of some two thousand flourishing cities. For the establishment and maintenance of their infrastructure, they benefited in large part from the contributions of wealthy citizens and, in some situations, of outside sponsors. This chapter uses epigraphic evidence to explain what financial resources cities had at their disposal and who was responsible for benefactions that benefited the communities and their inhabitants. It also discusses the nature of the benefactions and what such munificence meant for the cities.

Carians in Sardis

1974 ◽  
Vol 94 ◽  
pp. 96-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Griffiths Pedley
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
The South ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence ◽  
The City ◽  
The Temple

Ten years ago an article in these pages stressed the importance of detailed analysis of the traditions involving the Carians, and archaeological evidence was used to check the assertions of the literary record. In that instance the extremer version of the tradition in question was shown to be largely inexact, while the less extreme preserved the probable truth of the Carians' habitual use of certain military devices. That the ghost of pan-Carianism should be well and truly laid is all to the good; yet I hope to show here that the literary record, such as it is, of the presence of Carians in the Lydian capital is reasonably substantiated by the archaeological and epigraphic material.Herodotos' Carian source pointed to an old relationship between the Lydians and Carians, symbolised by the temple of Carian Zeus at Mylasa and by the kinship of the eponymous heroes Car and Lydus. According to this source linguistic affinities existed between Lydians and Carians. In Strabo's time Lydians and Carians together inhabited the plain of the Maeander, though the Carians evidently exercised sole possession of the land to the south of the river. In the late seventh and sixth centuries, however, Lydians and Carians lived cheek by jowl in Aphrodisias, and there is good archaeological and epigraphic evidence for a Lydian community in the city. Whether this means that we must attempt to redraw the boundary between Lydian- and Carian-speakers (if such a boundary is logically acceptable) or whether the Lydians represented a trading community in a foreign (if friendly) city, remains to be seen. There is some evidence to suggest that Carians were present in archaic Smyrna, and epigraphic documentation for their presence, if not in Ephesos, at any rate at Belevi. They had a natural interest in their northern neighbours.

THE ROLE OF ACCOUNTING IN PUBLIC EXPENDITURE AND MONETARY POLICY IN THE FIRST CENTURY AD ROMAN EMPIRE

1995 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Oldroyd
Keyword(s):  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Financial Planning ◽  
Public Expenditure ◽  
First Century ◽  
Financial Control ◽  
The Public ◽  
Monetary System ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

Previous authors have argued that Roman coinage was used as an instrument of financial control rather than simply as a means for the state to make payments, without assessing the accounting implications. The article reviews the literary and epigraphic evidence of the public expenditure accounts surrounding the Roman monetary system in the first century AD. This area has been neglected by accounting historians. Although the scope of the accounts supports the proposition that they were used for financial control, the impetus for keeping those accounts originally came from the emperor's public expenditure commitments. This suggests that financial control may have been encouraged by the financial planning that arose out of the exigencies of funding public expenditure. In this way these two aspects of monetary policy can be reconciled.

Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The State ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
External Trade ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Legal Structures ◽  
The City ◽  
Political Character ◽  
Different Sources

This interdisciplinary volume presents nineteen chapters by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing trade in the Roman Empire in the period c.100 BC to AD 350, and in particular the role of the Roman state, in shaping the institutional framework for trade within and outside the Empire, in taxing that trade, and in intervening in the markets to ensure the supply of particular commodities, especially for the city of Rome and for the army. The chapters in this volume address facets of the subject on the basis of widely different sources of evidence—historical, papyrological, and archaeological—and are grouped in three sections: institutional factors (taxation, legal structures, market regulation, financial institutions); evidence for long-distance trade within the Empire, in wood, stone, glass, and pottery; and trade beyond the frontiers, with the East (as far as China), India, Arabia, and the Red Sea, and the Sahara. Rome’s external trade with realms to the east emerges as being of particular significance to the fisc. But in the eastern part of the Empire at least, the state appears, in collaboration with the elite holders of wealth, to have adapted the mechanisms of taxation, both direct and indirect, to support its need for revenue. On the other hand, the price of that collaboration, which was in effect a fiscal partnership, in slightly different forms in East and West, in the longer term fundamentally changed the political character of the Empire.

Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos Machado
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Social ◽  
Traditional Elite ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

This book analyses the physical, social, and cultural history of Rome in late antiquity. Between AD 270 and 535, the former capital of the Roman empire experienced a series of dramatic transformations in its size, appearance, political standing, and identity, as emperors moved to other cities and the Christian church slowly became its dominating institution. Urban Space and Aristocratic Power in Late Antique Rome provides a new picture of these developments, focusing on the extraordinary role played by members of the traditional elite, the senatorial aristocracy, in the redefinition of the city, its institutions, and spaces. During this period, Roman senators and their families became increasingly involved in the management of the city and its population, in building works, and in the performance of secular and religious ceremonies and rituals. As this study shows, for approximately three hundred years the houses of the Roman elite competed with imperial palaces and churches in shaping the political map and the social life of the city. Making use of modern theories of urban space, the book considers a vast array of archaeological, literary, and epigraphic documents to show how the former centre of the Mediterranean world was progressively redefined and controlled by its own elite.

Hebrew School in Nineteenth-Century Bombay: Protestant Missionaries, Cochin Jews, and the Hebraization of India's Bene Israel Community

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 1764-1808 ◽  
Author(s):  
MITCH NUMARK
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Language Instruction ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
American Missionaries ◽  
Hebrew School ◽  
Hebrew Language ◽  
Bene Israel ◽  
Jewish Liturgy

AbstractThis paper is a study of cultural interaction and diffusion in colonial Bombay. Focusing on Hebrew language instruction, it examines the encounter between India's little-known Bene Israel Jewish community and Protestant missionaries. Whilst eighteenth and nineteenth-century Cochin Jews were responsible for teaching the Bene Israel Jewish liturgy and forms of worship, the Bene Israel acquired Hebrew and Biblical knowledge primarily from nineteenth-century Protestant missionaries. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Bene Israel community was a Konkan jati with limited knowledge of Judaism. However, by the end of the century the community had become an Indian-Jewish community roughly analogous to other Jewish communities. This paper explores how this transformation occurred, detailing the content, motivation, and means by which British and American missionaries and, to a lesser extent, Cochin Jews instructed the Bene Israel in Jewish knowledge. Through a critical examination of neglected English and Marathi sources, it reconstructs the Bene Israel perspective in these encounters and their attitude towards the Christian missionaries who laboured amongst them. It demonstrates that the Bene Israel were active participants and selective consumers in their interaction with the missionaries, taking what they wanted most from the encounter: knowledge of the Old Testament and the Hebrew language. Ultimately, the instruction the Bene Israel received from Protestant missionaries did not convert them to Christianity but strengthened and transformed their Judaism.

Calakmul: New Data from an Ancient Maya Capital in Campeche, Mexico

1995 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 310-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
William J. Folan ◽  
Joyce Marcus ◽  
Sophia Pincemin ◽  
María del Rosario Domínguez Carrasco ◽  
Laraine Fletcher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Maya ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Interdisciplinary Work ◽  
Chipped Stone ◽  
The City ◽  
Activity Areas

In this paper we summarize more than a decade of interdisciplinary work at Calakmul, including (1) the mapping project, which has covered more than 30 km2; (2) the excavation project, which has uncovered major structures and tombs in the center of the city; (3) the epigraphic project, whose goal is to study the hieroglyphic texts and relate them to the archaeological evidence; (4) the analysis of the architecture, ceramics, and chipped stone to define sacred and secular activity areas and chronological stages; and (5) a focus on the ecology, hydrology, and paleoclimatology of Calakmul and its environs with the aim of understanding more fully its periods of development and decline.

The Jewish Community of Late Byzantine Thessalonica: the Problem of Determining Its Status

Istoriya ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7 (105)) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Natalia Zhigalova
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Financial Resources ◽  
The Status ◽  
Byzantine Period ◽  
Byzantine Era ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

In this article, the author turns to an examination of the status of the Jewish community in Thessalonica in the late Byzantine period. The author concludes that both in the Byzantine era and during the Venetian rule in Thessalonica, the Jewish community of the city was subjected to numerous restrictions and prohibitions on the part of the official authorities. The reason for this was the initial isolation of the community, as well as the fact that the Jews, in contrast to the rest of the townspeople, owned vast financial resources and rented trading floors, ousting local entrepreneurs from there. The Jewish community in Thessalonica, quite numerous by the standards of contemporaries, in the XIV and XV centuries was in a state of permanent conflict with the church authorities of the city and, probably, had some influence on the communities of Judaizing Christians.

scholarly journals Ritualizing the Use of Coins in Ancient Greek Sanctuaries

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Lykke
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Related Material ◽  
Epigraphic Evidence

AbstractThe article explores aspects of the monetization of the Greek sanctuaries, more specifically how space was created to accommodate coins as objects and their use within the sacred sphere. Except in a limited number of cases, our understanding is still quite fragmented. Where most research has focused on analyzing the coin material or the epigraphic evidence, the intention here is to look more widely at the archaeological evidence connected with coins and coin-related material. This is done in an attempt to appreciate the significance of the progressing monetization and ritualization of the use of coins and in extension to develop an understanding of the possible changes in human behavior in the sanctuaries based on this evidence.

Caligula, the Church of Antioch and the Gentile Mission

2000 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Nicholas H Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Christian Church ◽  
Christian Community ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Church

AbstractThis study examines such data as are available regarding the impact of the crisis which confronted Jewish communities in many parts of the Roman Empire during the reign ofGaius Caligula (3 7-41 CE). Particular attention is given to Antioch on the Orontes, and to the Christian community which emerged there and was to become a major force both in the spread of Christianity and in the conversion of Gentiles to a hitherto Jewish movement. It is argued that the crisis was a major catalyst in changing the character of the Christian church in Antioch, so that it acquired an identity distinct from that of the Jewish community. The reappraisal of eschatological expectations occasioned by the crisis led to the conviction that Gentiles must be included in the Church before the parousia of Christ.

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