Innholdsfortegnelse for AH 44 i Ancient History Magazine

Not all Mycenaean animals were equal Animals feature prominently in the art of the Mycenaean civilization. To better understand how social complexity relates to human–animal interactions at Mycenae, a team conducted research on the animals that actually lived at the fortified settlement. In a first for the site, a team from the Universities of California Berkeley and Florida employed techniques normally used to study fossils and statistical analysis to study animal remains. They focused on a massive deposit recovered from a well in the so-called Petsas House. Petsas House was an industrial-residential complex used at least in part by ceramic artisans at the time of its destruction during the fourteenth century BC (1390/70–1330/15 BC). Abundant animal remains - pigs, sheep, goats, cattle, and dogs - were recovered from the excavated…

In 1958, American scholar Morton Smith (1915– 1991) visited a Palestinian monastery, where he studied a seventeenth-century book. On the final pages, an eighteenth-century scribe had copied the text of a Greek letter by the early third-century philosopher Clement of Alexandria to an otherwise unknown Theodore, who had asked if there was a gospel that contained the phrase “a naked man with a naked man”. In his response, Clement wrote that people in Alexandria indeed knew a Secret Gospel of Mark that contained these words. Smith took photos and published his find in 1973. So, we have a book from 1973 containing photos from 1958 of an eighteenth-century copy in a seventeenth-century book of a third-century letter with a quote from a very ancient gospel. We'd love to check the…

SPECIAL DISPLACED PERSONS IN THE ANCIENT WORLD The image is a familiar one: parents fearfully holding their children close. Adults huddled in disorganized lines, their only possessions being the contents of their pockets. These people are refugees – displaced persons – and often the decisions of where to go and what to take with them are made in an instant. What's in your bag? If suddenly faced with a need to flee your home, what would you take? Regardless of the moment in history, the two biggest factors that determine what can be brought when fleeing are how much time there is and how much carry space is available; most often, it is very little of both. Like modern displaced persons, ancients who were forced to flee their homes tended to…

THEME: Ancient Anatolia THEME TROY DURING THE LATE BRONZE AGE Archaeologists have traditionally divided the remains of human habitation in Troy into ten main architectural phases, each of which is then subdivided according to minor changes in the city's architecture, from the late fourth millennium BC to the Roman period. The phases of Troy in the Late Bronze Age are Troy VI (h) and Troy VII (a), spanning the late eighteenth century BC to the early twelfth century BC Though it is sometimes claimed that Troy VIIa was a culturally similar, but poorer, continuation of VIh, recent excavations have debunked such a notion. Instead, it is now considered that both VIh and VIIa represent the pinnacle of Trojan wealth and (presumably) power, and that changes in, for example, the city's layout may…

THEME: Ancient Anatolia THEME ANATOLIAN ENIGMATIC ENTITY The Hittites did not call themselves Hittite. The term is shorthand for one of three facets of the archaeology and ancient history of Late Bronze Age Anatolia. Hittite refers to a political phenomenon that emerged in the Land of Hatti in central Anatolia and ruled as one continuous dynasty from ca. 1650 to ca. 1180 BC. This political entity expanded from the Land of Hatti to subjugate neighbouring territories and peoples in the ‘Hittite empire’. ‘Hittite’ also identifies the mother tongue of this ruling dynasty, although the Hittites called this language Nesite. The Hittite language is recorded in tens of thousands of documents written in cuneiform script, mostly discovered in the Hittite capital Hattusa. Lastly, ‘Hittite’ is perhaps too casually used to describe a circumscribed…

ANCIENT COOKING THE MEN AND WOMEN BEHIND ROMAN FOOD Trimalchio's dinner party, a section of Petronius’ Satyricon, written in the first century AD, describes the most lavish dinner party in the Roman world, and it has contributed to the image of immensely decadent Roman dinners. Although it is a satire, it still reveals a lot about Roman cooks. After a few decadent courses, there is more spectacle to come when a huge pig is served at the dinner party. Trimalchio, the host, blames the cook for not removing the guts of the pig. It looks like the cook is going to be flogged, but then the whole thing turns out to be staged. When the belly of the animal is cut open by the cook, a wave of sausages and black…

The Athenian general Alcibiades made something of a career out of duplicity that defies any association of factional or even civic loyalty, except perhaps to Alcibiades himself. As a commander and political leader, Alcibiades alternately enlisted in the service of his native Athens before aligning himself with Sparta, then Persia, and finally Athens again as the winds of political fortune dictated. Banished from Athens in 415 BC, Alcibiades entered Spartan service and promptly betrayed his knowledge of a pro-Athenian conspiracy in the Sicilian city of Messana, resulting in the massacre of the plotters (Thucydides, 6.61, 6.74.1). Suspected by the Spartans of treachery in 412 BC, Alcibiades again defected, this time to the Persians, and became a confidant of the Persian satrap Tissaphernes. According to Thucydides, Alcibiades used his position not…

ISBN: 978-0198823513 Oxford University Press (2023) - £8.99 www.global.oup.com Anthony Verity's latest translation for Oxford University Press collects Xenophon's Estate Management, also known as Oeconomicus, and Symposium into a single volume, with an introduction from Dr Emily Baragwanath. The corpus of Xenophon's writings is far greater than those of many other ancient authors, and there are multiple ways in which one could collect them into different groups. For example, Xenophon's Estate Management, concerned with the managing of one's oikos, easily overlaps with his On Horsemanship and On Hunting as examining different aspects of the lifestyle of the elite. Similarly, the Symposium would sit well in a collection of Xenophon's works on Socrates, such as the Apology and Memorabilia. Together, Estate Management and Symposium, while seemingly only loosely connected, provide a…

The Trojan War of Homer's Iliad might be one of the most famous wars in history. Whatever their familiarity with ancient history, nearly everyone has heard of Achilles, Agamemnon, and Hector. Yet the Trojan War, at least, the one featuring in Homer's Iliad, never happened! The popularity of the Homeric epics has undoubtedly shaped perceptions of the history of western Anatolia, especially in the Late Bronze Age. Heinrich Schliemann's excavation of Hisarlik over 150 years ago was undertaken to find Homer's Troy, for example. Even today, Troy and the Trojan War provides a frame through which to examine the region. In this issue, we have done the same. It is simply too satisfying a framing device to miss, especially considering the neat coincidence of Herodotus’ dating of the Trojan War…

Due to the availability of nineteenth-century books and the unavailability of modern studies, often locked behind paywalls, the theory that Jesus never existed has returned. Among the arguments for this so-called ‘mythicism’ is the observation that the manuscripts of the gospels are quite late. So, it was highly significant news when American researcher Daniel Wallace announced in February 2012 that he possessed a fragment of the Gospel of Mark from the last quarter of the first century AD. Such an ancient copy of this text, written around the year AD 70, proved that the gospel was indeed as old as scholars had always assumed. There were no questions about the authenticity of this fragment, since it was said to have come from the papier-mâché part of a mummy, a cartonnage, which…

THEME: Ancient Anatolia THEME WAR, DIPLOMACY, AND TREASON Western Anatolia in the Late Bronze Age was a patchwork of states, from regional powers to confederations of smaller states. Sandwiched between the hegemonic power of the Hittites to the east and the sea to the west, the rulers of these small states would have had to play a delicate political game to maintain their positions. Madduwatta's Anatolia The Hittite Old Kingdom had already tried to bring this part of Anatolia under its rule, and it seems that the task was a difficult one. The most important challenger to Hittite control appears to have been a federation of kingdoms called Assuwa. The Hittites finally managed to defeat Assuwa in 1400 BC and took their king and his son as prisoners. During the Hittites’ conflict…

Troy's location at the mouth of the Hellespont, with a sheltered harbour, makes it seem likely that the site was a centre of trade. Later history attests to the desirability of this site to control the shipping lanes between the Aegean and the Black Sea. For example, Sigeum, a Greek polis that was founded on the promontory that sheltered the bay, was repeatedly fought over by Athens and Mytilene in the Archaic Greek period. The so-called ‘Treasure of Priam’, allegedly found in the Troy II layer, although possibly from later periods, attests to the wealth of Trojans from some of its earliest periods of habitation. By the Late Bronze Age, there is a significant body of evidence to suggest that Troy, if not a trade centre, was certainly a part…

Roman cooks knew very well that chicken is a versatile meat. The Apicius cookbook contains all kinds of recipes with chicken: boiled, roasted, stuffed, served with spicy sauces, lacquered with marinade, and enriched with a hazelnut crust. But the range of poultry was much larger. Pigeons, ducks, geese, peacocks, pheasants, partridges, cranes, flamingos, thrushes, fig peckers, and ostriches: just give them to a Roman cook. He will make it into a Michelin-star dish, with which you can shine for your guests. Ingredients » 1 (organic) chicken » salt and pepper » 125 g hazelnuts » 2 sprigs of fresh thyme » 2 sprigs of fresh celery » 6 sprigs of fresh parsley » small pinch of saffron » 2 tsp dried mint » 2 tsp dried lovage » 100 ml…

LIVING LIKE AN ANCIENT FERUS BUELLERIS’ DAY OFF The ancient Romans would have found the concept of a five-day work week puzzling. From the Roman viewpoint, if one had to have a job, the whole point of that job was to pay for otium – leisure time and recreation. Unsurprisingly, Rome offered all manner of diversions upon which the populace could spend their free time, from tawdry brothels to odeons offering highbrow readings from Homer and Virgil. A morning's work Generally speaking, Romans had quite a bit of free time – if one did not mind an early start. The Romans were emphatically morning people, and most would be up shortly before dawn. Women would lean right into the morning tasks – dealing with the children, preparing meals, and fetching water…

A recent study examining the genetic material of several Xiongnu burials suggests that the Inner Asian empire was a diverse place. The Xiongnu, also known as the Hsiung-nu, was a nomadic empire centred on the modern territory of Mongolia. It is thought the empire initially formed as a tribal confederation to oppose the military expansion of the Qin, and, after the ancient Chinese were troubled with internal strife, they began conquering neighbouring nations, expanding into the first historically documented empire of Inner Asia. Previous genetic studies have found that the Xiongnu empire was composed of people from places as far-flung as the steppe around the Black Sea and China. However, this study, involving an international team, focused on the nature of local diversity in the empire, studying eighteen graves from…

Vaulted construction can be found all over Roman-era cities. Yet arches, vaults, and domes are seemingly absent from the urban landscape of the Classical Greek polis; it was a time when temples and other public buildings were still relying on the age-old post-andlintel building method. However, this initial impression may deceive. While the traditional system remained dominant until the Roman conquest, a quiet architectural revolution had started by the mid-fourth century BC that laid the basis for the later Roman development. Origin This technological process originated not in the Greek heartland, but at its northern periphery. In the context of the rapid rise of the Macedonian kingdom under Philip II and Alexander the Great, we see the emergence of the stone barrel vault in sepulchral architecture. Among the Macedonian elite,…

THEME: Ancient Anatolia THEME MINOANS AND MYCENAEANS IN ANATOLIA The eastern Mediterranean was an interconnected world. Trade routes crisscrossed the sea from Greece to Egypt and beyond. Western Anatolia, just across the Aegean Sea from the main Bronze Age Greek sites, is a natural place for Cretan and Greek interaction and expansion. There are plenty of finds in western Anatolia, particularly at the site of Miletus – Millawanda in Hittite texts – which may have begun as a Minoan colony. Minoan presence in Miletus Although today it is unfashionable to use the words ‘colony’ or ‘colonization’ because of modern connotations related to slavery, exploitation, destruction of native cultures, and Eurocentrism, a colony established by the Minoans of Crete for trading purposes seems to be exactly what Bronze Age Miletus was. In the…

It is impossible to know which gods were worshipped at Bronze Age Troy. The Hittite deity Appaliunas, the Hittite rendering of Apollo, is attested as one of the divine witnesses in a treaty between the Hittite Great King and his vassal ruler Alaksandu, king of Wilusa – the Hittite rendering of Alexander, one of the names of Paris in the Iliad. It is possible that Apollo was one of the gods worshipped at Troy, just as Apollo was an important deity in Troy in Homer's Iliad – perhaps in front of one of the stelae found near the south gate.…

SPECIAL PUBLIC RELATIONS IN THE AGE OF THE FLAVIANS While avoiding usurpation, betrayal, and murder, the Roman emperors commanded power over a vast expanse of territory, ranging in the first century AD from Britain to Persia, from Africa to Northern Europe. When it comes to understanding the mechanics of that power, it is important to remember that the Romans governed a world that predated the printing press, the cell phone, and the internet. With these simple truisms in mind, a number of questions arise surrounding communication. The Roman emperors of the late first century were masterly communicators and influencers who used a vast array of media including coins, architecture, and literature to clearly communicate messages about their power, authority, piety, and place in history. The Flavian dynasty, which lasted from AD…

SPECIAL POLITICAL BETRAYAL IN THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR The social fabric of Greek antiquity was predominantly rural and agrarian, and the maintenance of their fragile socio-political order depended on at least some measure of internal peace and stability. In the absence of centralized political institutions, obedience to time-honoured customs could provide some measure of security in an otherwise uncertain and unpredictable world. The various poleis that evolved from the communities of Homer and Hesiod may have developed more elaborate political institutions for the maintenance of civic order and the formation of alliances, yet their continued stability was attributed to their adherence to divinely-sanctioned customs and their civic laws; lawless deviation could produce only civic ruin, particularly when it was the product of both internal political strife and external military forces. When faced…

BOOK REVIEWS ISBN: 978-0190059040 Oxford University Press (2023) - £26.99 www.global.oup.com Books that cover large swathes of history tend to favour narratives examining the political and cultural developments of whatever period is under study, such as military conflicts, regime changes, and cultural innovations, as well as the people seemingly responsible for significant events or changes, such as kings, generals, and other leading members of societies. Indeed, “ever since the Early Dynastic period, kings had used the first-person singular to take credit for actions that, in truth, had been organized and implemented by hordes of officials and workers” (p. 426). However, in Weavers, Scribes, and Kings, Amanda Podany has instead chosen to primarily study the lives of the “hordes of officials and workers” who lived in the ancient Near East ca.…

HITTITE DIPLOMATIC TEXTS By Gary Beckman The Society of Biblical Literature, 1999 ISBN: 978-0788505515 A compilation of texts from the Hittite world that deal with matters of diplomacy. From the names of political actors, such as kings, queens, and warlords, to the names of otherwise lost locations, the many treaties, letters, and edicts reveal the world of Late Bronze Age Anatolia in intricate detail, in the words of the people who were active in that period. WARRIORS OF ANATOLIA: A CONCISE HISTORY OF THE HITTITES By Trevor Bryce I.B. Tauris, 2019 ISBN: 978-1788312370 The Hittites are intricately connected to western Anatolia – we know most of what we do about the region from Hittite sources. Warriors of Anatolia provides a thorough overview of Anatolia and the people who dominated it,…