Acts of the Seventh International Conference of Demotic Studies


Book Description

This book contains contributions from K.T. Zauzich, H.S. Smith, B. Porten, U. Kaplony-Heckel, R.K. Ritner, S. Allam, M. Chauveau, and D. Devauchelle.







Wisdom in Loose Form


Book Description

This book examines Ancient Egyptian and Greek proverbs, as they are found in wisdom collections, circulating in Egypt and Greece of the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Its examination compares the proverbs’ grammar, structure, style, theme and usage within the collections. This multi-leveled comparison results in the indentification of a great number of similarities and differences that are interpreted in cultural terms, that is, through their association with the cultural context of production and usage of the proverbs. Hence this study offers an original insight into the literary production in Ancient Egypt and Greece, comparing the manner Egyptian and Greek authors conveyed timeless wisdom and reconsidering the status of cultural contact between these two ancient Mediterranean civilizations.




The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology


Book Description

In The Daimon in Hellenistic Astrology: Origins and Influence, Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum investigates for the first time the concept of the daimon (daemon, demon), normally confined to religion and philosophy, within the theory and practice of ancient western astrology (2nd century BCE – 7th century CE). This multi-disciplinary study covers the daimon within astrology proper as well as the daimon and astrology in wider cultural practices including divination, Gnosticism, Mithraism and Neo-Platonism. It explores relationships between the daimon and fate and Daimon and Tyche (fortune or chance), and the doctrine of lots as exemplified in Plato’s Myth of Er. In finding the impact of Egyptian and Mesopotamian ideas of fate on Hellenistic astrology, it critically examines astrology’s perception as propounding an unalterable destiny.




Judah and the Judeans in the Achaemenid Period


Book Description

In April, 2008, an international colloquium was held at the University of Heidelberg—the fourth convocation of a group of scholars (with some rotating members) who gathered to discuss the status of Judah and the Judeans in the exilic and postexilic periods. The goal of this gathering was specifically to address the question of national identity in the period when many now believe this very issue was in significant foment and development, the era of the Persian/Achaemenid domination of the ancient Near East. This volume contains most of the papers delivered at the Heidelberg conference, considering the matter under two rubrics: (1) the biblical evidence (and the diversity of data from the Bible); and (2) the cultural, historical, social, and environmental factors affecting the formation of national identity. Contributors: K. Schmid, J. Schaper, A. C. Hagedorn, C. Nihan, J. Middlemas, D. Rom-Shiloni, J. Wöhrle, Y. Dor, K. Southwood, D. N. Fulton, P.-A. Beaulieu, L. E. Pearce, D. Redford, A. Lemaire, J. F. Quack, B. Becking, R. G. Kratz, O. Tal, J. Blenkinsopp, R. Albertz, J. L. Wright, D. S. Vanderhooft, M. Oeming, and A. Kloner. Earlier volumes in the series of conferences are: Judah and the Judeans in the Neo-Babylonian Period, Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period, and Judah and the Judeans in the in the Fourth Century B.C.E.




Ancient Fiction


Book Description

The essays in this volume examine the relationship between ancient fiction in the Greco-Roman world and early Jewish and Christian narratives. They consider how those narratives imitated or exploited conventions of fiction to produce forms of literature that expressed new ideas or shaped community identity within the shifting social and political climates of their own societies. Major authors and texts surveyed include Chariton, Shakespeare, Homer, Vergil, Plato, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Daniel, 3 Maccabees, the Testament of Abraham, rabbinic midrash, the Apocryphal Acts, Ezekiel the Tragedian, and the Sophist Aelian. This diverse collection reveals and examines prevalent issues and syntheses in the making: the pervasive use and subversive power of imitation, the distinction between fiction and history, and the use of history in the expression of identity.




Illuminating Osiris


Book Description

Illuminating Osiris comprises twenty-seven articles by students, friends, and colleagues in honor of Mark Smith, Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford. Smith is especially renowned as a Demoticist and specialist in ancient Egyptian religion. His numerous Demotic text editions and translations of Egyptian funerary and religious compositions have been enormously influential in the field. The contributions in Illuminating Osiris naturally reflect Smith's particular interests in the religion and literature of Graeco-Roman period Egypt, dealing with cult, rituals, astronomy, and divination, among other subjects. The book includes many editions or reeditions of texts written in Demotic, Hieratic, and Ptolemaic Hieroglyphs. It is profusely illustrated and supplied with detailed indices.




New Directions in the Study of Women in the Greco-Roman World


Book Description

"Through a set of original essays, this volume showcases new directions in the well-established field of the study of women in Greco-Roman antiquity. Sarah Pomeroy's groundbreaking Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves (1975) introduced scholars, students, and general readers to a new area of inquiry. Building upon and moving beyond that seminal work, the contributions to this volume together represent a next step in this interdisciplinary field. Contributors, all of whom have been influenced directly or indirectly by Pomeroy's Goddesses and other work, include scholars with training in the study of history, literature, law, art, medicine, epigraphy, papyrology, and archaeology. Covering a wide range of time periods and utilizing a variety of approaches, the essays will help readers to see women in antiquity with new eyes and to view anew issues related to women today"--




The Petese Stories II (P. Petese II)


Book Description

This volume six of the Carlsberg Papyri series contains the edition of a new manuscript with Petese Stories from the Tebtunis temple library, dating to the period around 100 AD. The Petese Stories is a compilation of seventy stories about the virtues and vices of women. The numerous stories were compiled on the orders of the prophet Petese of Heliopolis that they may serve as a literary testament by which he would be remembered. Petese was, according to literary tradition, Plato's Egyptian instructor in astrology. The composition seems to have been modeled on the fundamental Myth of the Sun's Eye. The overall structural pattern of the text is very similar to the Arabian Nights; a frame story forms the introduction as well as the fabric into which the long series of shorter tales are woven. Among the stories preserved in the new manuscript one is particularly remarkable in that it is known from a translation by Herodotus, the so-called Pheros Story.




Aramaic Documents from Egypt


Book Description

This work is a KWIC (key-word-in-context) concordance and prosopography of the Aramaic documents from ancient Egypt as published in the four-volume edition edited by B. Porten and A. Yardeni: Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt. Most of the documents indexed here are from the Persian period; they are legal, epistolary, and administrative. This comprehensive concordance will prove very useful to students of Aramaic who wish to have access to the collocations presented, students of the society and history of Persian-era Egypt, as well as those interested in personal names and their contribution to our understanding of both history and language. Published by Eisenbrauns for the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon project.




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