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This is a study of the history, archaeology, and numismatics of Central Asia, an area of great significance for our understanding of the ancient and early medieval world. This vast, land-locked region, with its extreme continental climate, was a centre of civilization with great metropolises. Its cosmopolitan population followed different religions (Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Buddhism), and traded extensively with China, India, the Middle East, and Europe. The millennium from the overthrow of the first world empire of Achaemenian Persians by Alexander the Great to the arrival of the Arabs and Islam was a period of considerable change and conflict. The book focuses on investigations in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, providing a complex analysis of the symbiosis between the city life based on oases, and the nomadic peoples grazing their animals in the surrounding semi-deserts. Other topics include the influence of the Greek colonists on military architecture, and the major impact of the Great Kushans on the spread of Buddhism and on the development of the Central Asian metropolis. Although written documents rarely survive, coinage has provided essential evidence for the political and cultural history of the region.

This book reviews the numerous developments in the theoretical framework of interpretation that have taken place over recent years. The application of more theoretically informed approaches to the ancient literary corpus, and a more detailed analysis of context, form, and reception, have fundamentally challenged the interpretative paradigms that formerly held sway. No consensus on interpretative stance has yet emerged, and in this volume many of the foremost researchers in the field examine the overall state of work on the subject. The chapters in the present volume are intended to contribute to this development of different approaches in their application to real Egyptian texts. No single overarching theoretical framework underlies these contributions; instead they represent a multiplicity of perspectives. The range of chapters includes textual criticism; literary criticism; the social role of literature; reception theory; and the treatment of newly discovered literary texts. All contributions centre on the problems and potentials of studying Egyptian literature in a theoretically informed manner. Although major difficulties remain in interpreting a literature preserved only fragmentarily, this volume demonstrates the ongoing vitality of current Egyptological approaches to this problem. This volume also incorporates a broader cross-cultural and comparative element, providing overviews of connections and discontinuities with biblical, Classical, and Mesopotamian literatures, in order to address the comparative contexts of Ancient Egyptian literature.

The Andes are of unquestioned significance to the human story: a cradle of agriculture and of ‘pristine’ civilisation with a pedigree of millennia. The Incas were but the culmination of a succession of civilisations that rose and fell to leave one of the richest archaeological records on Earth. By no coincidence, the Andes are home also to our greatest surviving link to the speech of the New World before European conquest: the Quechua language family. For linguists, the native tongues of the Andes make for another rich seam of data on origins, expansions, and reversals throughout prehistory. Historians and anthropologists, meanwhile, negotiate many pitfalls to interpret the conflicting mytho-histories of the Andes, recorded for us only through the distorting prism of the conquistadors' world-view. Each of these disciplines opens up its own partial window on the past: very different perspectives, to be sure, but all the more complementary for it. Frustratingly though, specialists in each field have all too long proceeded largely in ignorance of great strides being taken in the others. This book brings together a cast of scholars from each discipline, converging their disparate perspectives into a true cross-disciplinary focus, to weave together a coherent account of what was, after all, one and the same prehistory. The result, instructive also far beyond the Andes, is a case-study in the pursuit of a more holistic vision of the human past.

The volume assesses the changing impact on English culture over 500 years of Ariosto’s poem, the Orlando Furioso, first published in Italy in 1516, and subsequently in an expanded version in 1532. Individual chapters address the recurring presence of Ariosto’s poem in English literature, but also the multimedial nature of the transmission of the Furioso into English culture: through the visual arts, theatre, music and spectacle to video games and the internet, as well as through often heated critical debates. The introduction provides an overview of the history of criticism and interpretation of the Furioso in England. Within the four main sections – entitled: Before reading – the image; From the Elizabethans to the Enlightenment; Gothic and Romantic Ariosto; Text and translation in the modern era – individual studies explore key moments in the reception of the poem into English culture: the adaptation and translation of the poem among the Elizabethans; Milton’s detailed appreciation of the work; and the ambivalent attitudes of eighteenth-century writers and critics; the influence of illustrations to the poem; and its transformation into opera for the English stage. Emphasis is also placed on: the dynamic responses of Romantic writers to Ariosto; the crucial work of editors and translators in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the stimulating adaptations and rewritings by modern authors. The volume concludes with a comprehensive bibliography.

Twenty chapters from two often-dissociated areas of Latin studies, classical and medieval Latin, examine continuities and developments in the language of Latin prose from its emergence to the twelfth century. Language is not understood in a narrowly philological or linguistic sense, but as encompassing the literary exploitation of linguistic effects and the influence of formal rhetoric on prose. Key themes explored throughout this book are the use of poetic diction in prose, archaism, sentence structure, and bilingualism. Chapters cover a comprehensive range of material including studies of individual works, groups of authors such as the Republican historians, prose genres such as the ancient novel or medieval biography, and linguistic topics such as the use of connectives in archaic Latin or prose rhythm in medieval Latin.

Changing Names investigates, in relation to the ancient Greek world, the ways in which preferences in personal name-giving change: through shifts in population, cultural contact and imperialism, the popularity of new gods, celebrity status of individuals, increased openness to external influence, and shifts in local fashion. Several major kinds of change due to cultural contact occurred: Greek names spread in regions outside Greece that were subject to Greek cultural influence (and later conquest), while conversely the Roman conquest of the Greek world led to various degrees of adoption of the Roman naming system; late in antiquity, Christianisation led to a profound but rather gradual transformation of the name stock. Individuals in culturally mixed societies sometimes bore two names, one for public or official use, one more domestic; but women of non-Greek origin were more likely to stick with indigenous names. 'Structural' changes (such as the emergence of the English surname) did not occur, though in late antiquity an indication of profession tended to replace the father's name as a secondary identifier; in some regions 'second' names became popular, perhaps in imitation of the longer Roman naming formulae. The volume is arranged partly thematically, partly through regional case studies (from within and beyond old Greece). Individuals who change their names (typically slaves after manumission) are also considered, as is the possibility that a name might change its 'meaning'.

The study of Olbia has always been set apart through the outstanding results of its excavations and the splendour of individual finds there. This volume focuses on the interaction of the city of Olbia and the population around it, embracing both the Scythian and the classical worlds. Chapters consider the progress of archaeology at Olbia, Herodotus' account of Olbia and its environs, interaction between Greeks and non-Greeks, and Olbia's situation under the early Roman Empire.

The study of Greco-Roman civilisation is as exciting and innovative today as it has ever been. This intriguing collection by contemporary classicists reveals new discoveries, new interpretations and new ways of exploring the experiences of the ancient world. Through one and a half millennia of literature, politics, philosophy, law, religion and art, the classical world formed the origin of western culture and thought. This book emphasises the many ways in which it continues to engage with contemporary life. Offering a wide variety of authorial style, the chapters range in subject matter from contemporary poets' exploitation of Greek and Latin authors, via newly discovered literary texts and art works, to modern arguments about ancient democracy and slavery, and close readings of the great poets and philosophers of antiquity. This book reflects the current rejuvenation of classical studies.

This volume publishes all but three of the plenary lectures that were delivered during the XIIIth International Congress of Greek and Roman Epigraphy, held at Oxford in September 2007. Its format differs from traditional Congress Proceedings, but this is not the only innovation. The aim of the Oxford Congress, reflected in the title of the volume, was to present epigraphy as a specialism to a wider readership, both academic and other, and in that way to embed it more firmly within the wider discourse of ancient world studies in general. So to this end, a number of scholars were invited to give plenary lectures of two kinds. Some reported on the various ways in which epigraphic information is helping to reshape and extend our knowledge of the religious life, the languages, the populations, the governmental systems and the economies of the Graeco-Roman world. Others reported on the ways in which new techniques and technologies are helping to make epigraphically based information more accessible, whether in terms of public display or in terms of the ever-widening possibilities of information technology. In addition, the more wide-ranging addresses that opened and closed the Congress showed how the act of looking at the Graeco-Roman world through the window provided by the epigraphic record offers a distinctive gaze of unique and exceptional value. The Congress thereby gave the impression of a discipline that knew what it wanted to do, have the tools with which to move forward and in general was in very good shape. The volume is intended to communicate that zest and impetus to as wide a readership as possible. To that end, all contributions that were originally delivered in other languages have been translated into English, and translations have also been inserted for all but the briefest citations of Greek and Latin.

This volume is a contribution to the study of the ancient Greek vocabulary used to describe the local origins of individuals. It sheds light on ancient grammarians, and other ancient writers (many of them ‘lost’ in the sense that they survive only in quotations in later sources). At the heart of the volume is a study of the sources that lie behind an enigmatic treatise, which survives only in epitome: the Ethnika of the grammarian Stephanus of Byzantium. This supplement to the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names is the final work of its founding editor (d. 2007).

From major seminal works such as the Mishnah or the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds, to Biblical commentaries, translations of Biblical books into Aramaic or relatively little-known mystical, liturgical, or apocalyptic writings, this book is a complete guide to the rich tradition of Jewish literature in the second to seventh centuries of the Common Era. Each work is described in a way that covers its contents, dating, language, and accessibility (or otherwise) in print or online. The aim throughout is to cover all of this literature and to answer the following questions: What Jewish literature, written either in Hebrew or Aramaic, has survived? What different genres of such literature are there? What printed texts or translations into any modern language, or commentaries (either in Hebrew or a European language) are there? And, for those who want to enquire further, what are the manuscripts on which modern editions are based?

The recent developments in our understanding of the history of the Indo-Iranian languages and their speakers are surveyed and assessed in this book by a group of linguists and archaeologists. In the last few years, the materials available for the study of the older Indo-Iranian languages have increased dramatically: there have been discoveries of birch-bark scrolls bearing Buddhist texts in the Gandhari language of north-west India, and of leather documents in Bactrian, the ancient language of northern Afghanistan. Previously known data has been exploited in new ways using innovative techniques for compiling, manipulating, and disseminating electronic text and digital images. And archaeological finds in India, Pakistan, and Central Asia, including the ‘Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex’, have given rise to new hypotheses concerning the history and pre-history of the Indo-Iranian peoples. The volume also pays tribute to the pioneering work of the philologist Sir Harold Bailey (1899–1996).

This book provides an interpretative guide to using a fundamental resource for the study of the ancient Greek world. Personal names are a statement of identity, a personal choice by parents for their child, reflecting their own ancestry and family traditions, and the religious and political values of the society to which they belong. The names of the ancient Greeks, surviving in their tens of thousands in manuscripts and documents, offer a valuable insight into ancient Greek society. The chapters collected here examine how the Greeks responded to new environments. They draw out issues of identity as expressed through the choice, formation, and adaptation of personal names, not only by Greeks when they came into contact with non-Greeks, but of others in relation to Greeks, for example Egyptians, Persians, Thracians, and Semitic peoples, including the Jewish communities in the diaspora. Grounded in the ‘old’ world of Greece (in particular, Euboia and Thessaly), the book also reaches out to the many parts of the ancient world where Greeks travelled, traded, and settled, and where the dominant culture before the arrival of the Greeks was not Greek. Reflecting upon the progress of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names project, which has already published the names of over a quarter of a million ancient Greeks, it will be of interest to scholars and students of the language, literature, history, religion, and archaeology of the ancient Greek world.

The manner in which government practices and personnel survive the violent disruption of regime change is an issue of current relevance, yet it is a subject that has largely been ignored by modern scholarship. These chapters, covering more than 4,000 years of history, discuss the continuity of administration and royal iconography in successful changes of regime in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Iran. Recurring patterns are identified in ten case studies, ranging from late third millennium Mesopotamia to early Islamic Egypt. A summary of the recent history of Iraq suggests that these regularities have lessons for modern geopolitics.

This book covers the whole of the period in which Rome dominated the Mediterranean world. The belief shared by all the contributors is that the Roman empire is best understood from the standpoint of the Mediterranean world looking in to Rome, rather than from Rome looking out. The chapters focus on the development of political institutions in Rome itself and in her empire, and on the nature of the relationship between Rome and her provincial subjects. They also discuss historiographical approaches to different kinds of source material, literary and documentary — including the major Roman historians, the evidence for the pre-Roman near east, and the Christian writers of later antiquity. The book reflects the immense complexity of the political and cultural history of the ancient Mediterranean, from the late Republic to the age of Augustine.

This book provides a significant insight into the changes that occurred in the late Roman period and which shaped the emergence of early medieval Europe. The book provides detail regarding the changes in the character of urbanism, military organization and the rural landscape which separate the Roman Empire from Late Antiquity (first to early seventh centuries AD). Some chapters focus on the lower Danube, others provide comparative studies which range from northern Italy and Pannonia to Greece, western Asia Minor and as far east as the Euphrates. These chapters compare the results of different international research teams but also contrast approaches and methodology in order to assess the extent to which these differences might account for apparently contradictory conclusions. The volume also demonstrates the uses and pitfalls encountered in attempts to combine evidence provided by ancient historians and archaeologists — a theme which has wider implications beyond this text.

The discovery and decryption of Ugaritic cuneiform tablets in the 1920s has given scholars an insight into the development of alphabetic writing and the origins of biblical poetry. This book, based on the author's Schweich Lectures given in 2007, describes the origins of the cuneiform alphabetic writing system developed in Ugarit some time before 1250 bc, and the use of alphabetic writing at Ugarit, and gives a comparison of Ugaritic and Hebrew literatures.

The Dialogue of Ipuwer and the Lord of All is one of the major works from the golden age of Egyptian literature, the Middle Kingdom (c. 1980–1630 bc). The poem provides one of the most searching explorations of human motivation and divine justice to survive from ancient Egypt, and its stark pessimism questions many of the core ideologies that underpinned the Egyptian state and monarchy. It begins with a series of laments portraying an Egypt overwhelmed by chaos and destruction, and develops into an examination of why these disasters should happen, and who bears responsibility for them: the gods, the king, or humanity. This volume provides the first full literary analysis of this poem for a century. It provides a detailed study of questions such as: its date of composition; its historicity; the identity of its protagonists and setting; its reception history within Egyptian culture; and whether it really is a unified literary composition, or a redacted collection of texts of heterogenous origin.