The Temporality of Festivals

The Temporality of Festivals PDF

Author: Anke Walter

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2024-04

Total Pages: 100

ISBN-13: 3111366871

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

How can time become festive? How do festivals manage to make time 'special', to mark out a certain day or days, to distinguish them from 'normal', everyday time, and to fill them with meaning? And how can we reconstruct what festive time looked like in the past and what people thought about it? While a lot of research has been done on festivals from the point of view of several scholarly disciplines, the specific temporality of festivals has not yet attracted sufficient attention. In this volume, scholars from different fields provide answers to the questions raised above, based on a fresh analysis of astronomical documents, calendars, and literary texts. Cultures as diverse as ancient Babylon, Greece and Rome, and medieval China all share a sense of calendrically recurring festive time as something special that needs to be carefully mapped out and preserved, often with great sophistication, and that gives us precious insights into the broader religious, political, and social dimensions of time within past cultures.

Akkadian Royal Letters in Later Mesopotamian Tradition

Akkadian Royal Letters in Later Mesopotamian Tradition PDF

Author: Mary Frazer

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-06-20

Total Pages: 593

ISBN-13: 9004685944

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Akkadian Royal Letters in Later Mespotamian Tradition reconsiders the question of the authenticity of the letters attributed to earlier royal correspondents that were studied in Assyrian and Babylonian scribal centres ca. 700–100 BCE. By scrutinizing the letters’ contents, language, possible transmission histories ca. 1400–100 BCE and the epistemic limitations of authenticity criticism, the book grounds scepticism about the letters’ authenticity in previously undiscussed features of the texts. It also provides a new foundation for research into the related questions of when and why these beguiling texts were composed in the first place.

Naming and Mapping the Gods in the Ancient Mediterranean

Naming and Mapping the Gods in the Ancient Mediterranean PDF

Author: Thomas Galoppin

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-12-31

Total Pages: 1274

ISBN-13: 311079845X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Ancient religions are definitely complex systems of gods, which resist our understanding. Divine names provide fundamental keys to gain access to the multiples ways gods were conceived, characterized, and organized. Among the names given to the gods many of them refer to spaces: cities, landscapes, sanctuaries, houses, cosmic elements. They reflect mental maps which need to be explored in order to gain new knowledge on both the structure of the pantheons and the human agency in the cultic dimension. By considering the intersection between naming and mapping, this book opens up new perspectives on how tradition and innovation, appropriation and creation play a role in the making of polytheistic and monotheistic religions. Far from being confined to sanctuaries, in fact, gods dwell in human environments in multiple ways. They move into imaginary spaces and explore the cosmos. By proposing a new and interdiciplinary angle of approach, which involves texts, images, spatial and archeaeological data, this book sheds light on ritual practices and representations of gods in the whole Mediterranean, from Italy to Mesopotamia, from Greece to North Africa and Egypt. Names and spaces enable to better define, differentiate, and connect gods.

Ezekiel's Visionary Temple in Babylonian Context

Ezekiel's Visionary Temple in Babylonian Context PDF

Author: Tova Ganzel

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 3110740842

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In der Reihe Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft (BZAW) erscheinen Arbeiten zu sämtlichen Gebieten der alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft. Im Zentrum steht die Hebräische Bibel, ihr Vor- und Nachleben im antiken Judentum sowie ihre vielfache Verzweigung in die benachbarten Kulturen der altorientalischen und hellenistisch-römischen Welt. Die BZAW akzeptiert Manuskriptvorschläge, die einen innovativen und signifikanten Beitrag zu Erforschung des Alten Testaments und seiner Umwelt leisten, sich intensiv mit der bestehenden Forschungsliteratur auseinandersetzen, stringent aufgebaut und flüssig geschrieben sind.

The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East Volume V

The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East Volume V PDF

Author: Karen Radner

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-04-18

Total Pages: 1089

ISBN-13: 0190687665

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This groundbreaking, five-volume series offers a comprehensive, fully illustrated history of Egypt and Western Asia (the Levant, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and Iran), from the emergence of complex states to the conquest of Alexander the Great. Written by a diverse, international team of leading scholars whose expertise brings to life the people, places, and times of the remote past, the volumes in this series focus firmly on the political and social histories of the states and communities of the ancient Near East. Individual chapters present the key textual and material sources underpinning the historical reconstruction, paying particular attention to the most recent archaeological finds and their impact on our historical understanding of the periods surveyed. The fifth and final volume of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East covers the period from the second half of the 7th century BC until the campaigns of Alexander III of Macedon (336-323 BC) brought an end to the Achaemenid Dynasty and the Persian Empire. Tying together areas and political developments covered by previous volumes in the series, this title covers also the Persian Empire's immediate predecessor states: Saite Egypt, the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and Lydia, among other kingdoms and tribal alliances. The chapters in this volume feature a wide range of archaeological and textual sources, with contributors displaying a masterful treatment of the challenges and advantages of the available materials. Two chapters focus on areas that have not enjoyed prominence in any of the previous volumes of this series: eastern Iran and Central Asia. This volume is the necessary and complementary final component of this comprehensive series.

The Social World of the Babylonian Priest

The Social World of the Babylonian Priest PDF

Author: Bastian Still

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-06-24

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 9004399968

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In The Social World of the Babylonian Priest, Bastian Still offers an intimate account of the lives of Babylonian priests during the mid-first millennium BCE by reconstructing their social networks and exploring their daily interactions from an interdisciplinary perspective.

The Akit̄u Festival

The Akit̄u Festival PDF

Author: Julye Bidmead

Publisher: Gorgias Press LLC

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781931956345

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Using tools of social anthropology, this book describes the ancient Babylonian akntu, or New Year festival. It reconstructs the festival and its customs.