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For over a millennium and a half, Egypt was home to at least two
commonly used languages of communication. Although this situation
is by no means exceptional in the ancient and medieval worlds, the
wealth of documentary sources preserved by Egypt's papyri makes the
country a privileged observation ground for the study of ancient
multilingualism. One of the greatest contributions of papyri to
this subject is that they capture more linguistic registers than
other ancient and medieval sources, since they range from very
private documents not meant by their author to be read by future
generations, to official documents produced by the administration,
which are preserved in their original form. This collection of
essays aims to make this wealth better known, as well as to give a
diachronic view of multilingual practices in Egypt from the arrival
of the Greeks as a political force in the country with Alexander
the Great, to the beginnings of Abbasid rule when Greek, and slowly
also Coptic, receded from the documentary record. The first section
of the book gives an overview of the documentary sources for this
subject, which for ancient history standards are very rich and as
yet under-exploited. The second part contains several case studies
from different periods that deal with language use in contexts of
varying breadth and scope, from its the ritual use in magic or the
liturgy to private letters and state administration.
For over a millennium and a half, Egypt was home to at least two
commonly used languages of communication. Although this situation
is by no means exceptional in the ancient and medieval worlds, the
wealth of documentary sources preserved by Egypt's papyri makes the
country a privileged observation ground for the study of ancient
multilingualism. One of the greatest contributions of papyri to
this subject is that they capture more linguistic registers than
other ancient and medieval sources, since they range from very
private documents not meant by their author to be read by future
generations, to official documents produced by the administration,
which are preserved in their original form. This collection of
essays aims to make this wealth better known, as well as to give a
diachronic view of multilingual practices in Egypt from the arrival
of the Greeks as a political force in the country with Alexander
the Great, to the beginnings of Abbasid rule when Greek, and slowly
also Coptic, receded from the documentary record. The first section
of the book gives an overview of the documentary sources for this
subject, which for ancient history standards are very rich and as
yet under-exploited. The second part contains several case studies
from different periods that deal with language use in contexts of
varying breadth and scope, from its the ritual use in magic or the
liturgy to private letters and state administration.
The papers in this volume were presented at a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar
held at the University of Oxford in 2009-2010, which sought to
investigate side by side the two important movements of conversion
that frame late antiquity: to Christianity at its start, and to
Islam at the other end. Challenging the opposition between the two
stereotypes of Islamic conversion as an intrinsically violent
process, and Christian conversion as a fundamentally spiritual one,
the papers seek to isolate the behaviours and circumstances that
made conversion both such a common and such a contested phenomenon.
The spread of Buddhism in Asia in broadly the same period serves as
an external comparator that was not caught in the net of the
Abrahamic religions. The volume is organised around several themes,
reflecting the concerns of the initial project with the
articulation between norm and practice, the role of authorities and
institutions, and the social and individual fluidity on the ground.
Debates, discussions, and the expression of norms and principles
about conversion conversion are not rare in societies experiencing
religious change, and the first section of the book examines some
of the main issues brought up by surviving sources. This is
followed by three sections examining different aspects of how those
principles were - or were not - put into practice: how conversion
was handled by the state, how it was continuously redefined by
individual ambivalence and cultural fluidity, and how it was
enshrined through different forms of institutionalization. Finally,
a topographical coda examines the effects of religious change on
the iconic holy city of Jerusalem.
The papers in this volume were presented at a Mellon-Sawyer Seminar
held at the University of Oxford in 2009-2010, which sought to
investigate side by side the two important movements of conversion
that frame late antiquity: to Christianity at its start, and to
Islam at the other end. Challenging the opposition between the two
stereotypes of Islamic conversion as an intrinsically violent
process, and Christian conversion as a fundamentally spiritual one,
the papers seek to isolate the behaviours and circumstances that
made conversion both such a common and such a contested phenomenon.
The spread of Buddhism in Asia in broadly the same period serves as
an external comparator that was not caught in the net of the
Abrahamic religions. The volume is organised around several themes,
reflecting the concerns of the initial project with the
articulation between norm and practice, the role of authorities and
institutions, and the social and individual fluidity on the ground.
Debates, discussions, and the expression of norms and principles
about conversion conversion are not rare in societies experiencing
religious change, and the first section of the book examines some
of the main issues brought up by surviving sources. This is
followed by three sections examining different aspects of how those
principles were - or were not - put into practice: how conversion
was handled by the state, how it was continuously redefined by
individual ambivalence and cultural fluidity, and how it was
enshrined through different forms of institutionalization. Finally,
a topographical coda examines the effects of religious change on
the iconic holy city of Jerusalem.
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The Web of Athenaeus (Paperback)
Christian Jacob; Translated by Arietta Papaconstantinou; Edited by Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
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R453
Discovery Miles 4 530
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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In The Web of Athenaeus, Christian Jacob produces a completely
fresh and unique reading of Athenaeus’s Sophists at Dinner (ca.
200 ce). Jacob provides the reader with a map and a compass to
navigate the unfathomable number of intersecting paths in this
enormous work: the books, the quotations, the diners, the dishes
served, and—above all—the wordplay, all within the simulacrum
of an ancient Greek library. A text long mined merely for its
testimonies to lost classical poets, the Sophists at Dinner has now
received a full literary re-imagining by Jacob, who connects the
world of Hellenistic erudition with its legacy among Hellenized
Romans. The Web of Athenaeus simultaneously offers a literary
history of the rarest and finest of Greek culture along with a
creative anthropology of a Roman imperial world obsessed with the
Greek past.
Eight articles from a 2006 conference are included in this volume
which covers issues related to childhood during the Byzantine
Empire. Topics covered include law, procreation, death, patterns of
breastfeeding, & material culture.
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