Innholdsfortegnelse for AH 48 i Ancient History Magazine

EDITORIAL - HOUNDS, HARES, AND HEADS Hunting, whether for subsistence or for sport, is a universal occupation. For much of human history, especially prior to the agricultural revolution, hunting was an important undertaking, often a primary source of high-calorie food for communities. While agricultural techniques improved, bringing ever-increasing yields, with grains eventually becoming the main staple of many diets, hunting retained its importance. How exactly hunting was important did change, however. The reliance on agricultural production and pastoralism largely negated the importance hunting as a source of food. Consequently, hunting became a leisure activity, typically one largely reserved for the elite, as only the elite were unburdened by the need to farm or work to survive. Thus, with this elite emphasis on hunting, the ability to hunt became a status…

A recurring problem in archaeology is accurately dating ancient objects. A new technique looks for signatures of the Earth’s magnetic field in archaeological items. Changes in the Earth’s magnetic field are imprinted on hot minerals sensitive to the field, such as iron oxide embedded within ancient clay bricks. The fields change over time, and scientists are able to reconstruct these changes. A team of scientists from University College London hopes that using this technique, archaeomagnetism, will improve the history of Earth’s magnetic field, and thus enable precise dating of artefacts that previously could not be. The scientists studied 32 clay bricks with inscriptions from twelve Mesopotamian kings. These helped provide information about the Earth’s magnetic field. The researchers were able to confirm the existence of the ‘Levantine Iron Age Geomagnetic…

SPECIAL HANDLING HOMICIDES IN ANCIENT ATHENS Religious pollution was a genuine fear for the Athenians. Murderers made themselves unclean by provoking a premature death. The only recompense for such a heinous deed was the punishment of the killer. No one could forgive the murderer, or legally protect him from prosecution or punishment, except the victim. The Athenian orator, Demosthenes, explained: “If the victim himself, before his death, releases the murderer from blood-guiltiness, it is not lawful for any of the remaining kinsmen to prosecute” (37.59). Justice was satisfied by this arrangement. However, neglecting to avenge the deceased could attract the wrath of the gods, and not just upon the murderer. Such ritual ‘pollution’ (Greek: miasma, literally ‘a stain’) was viewed as an easily transferable contagion, both to individuals who consorted with…

THEME: Hunting in antiquity WARFARE AND RITUAL IN IRON AGE GAUL The ancient Celts are hard to pin down precisely, since the term is a vague one that has been used in different ways by different people. For the Classical Greek and Roman authors, the Celts (or Gauls – the terms were often used interchangeably) comprised a broad grouping of peoples that occupied much of Central and Western Europe during the Iron Age (ca. 800–100 BC). Over such a wide geographical range there was clearly a great deal of cultural variation. Nonetheless, certain aspects of art, culture, and of course language, were shared across great tracts of Europe. The importance of the human head appears to have been one such common feature. The literary evidence Writing in the first century BC,…

THEME: Hunting in antiquity THEME HUNTING & WARFARE IN ANCIENT EGYPT The ancient Egyptians believed that the created world emerged from the dark, formless waters, which they called nun. The sun god fashioned the cosmos, heaven and earth, and all living beings, and each night descended into the Underworld. In the middle of the night, the sun came into contact with the nun-waters, which helped to refuel the solar cycle. Even though the chaos serpent Apep tried to stop the sun, divine magic defeated the evil snake. Building temples and carrying out daily rituals were ways for people to assist the sun god, to strengthen maat – order, cosmic balance, justice – and defeat isfet – disorder and chaos. Pharaohs mediated between mankind and the gods, and one requirement of their…

THEME: Hunting in antiquity THEME HOPLITES HUNTING AS TRAINING FOR WAR Hunting was a core activity in ancient Greek society. Stories of hunting fill Greek myth, whether it be the Calydonian Boar or Actaeon hunting and accidentally coming across the goddess Artemis only to be turned into a deer and killed by his own dogs. Even before Xenophon’s claim that hunting was how “men become good in war” and, indeed, in all things (On Hunting 1.18), there was, however, a connection between hunting and warfare. In the Homeric epics, many of the descriptions of the heroes’ conduct in battle are couched in hunting similes, and hunting was used as a metaphor for a multitude of other activities. These men were, however, already great warriors and the idea that hunting made them so…

Naturalistic art – a style that strives to accurately depict the natural world – is recognized as having the ability to tap into human neurobiology like no other art style. Naturalistic art offers vicarious experiences, emotional journeys experienced in our imaginations through viewing life-like representations. These figurative scenarios, in turn, teach us valuable lessons about ourselves and the universe. As Alexander created his empire, he established cities that blended Greco-Macedonian culture with that of the local population. Perhaps most illustratively, the city of Ai Khanoum exhibits the remnants of a tantalizing culture that melded local Bactrian, Persian, and Greek elements to form a strikingly unique culture. In Gandhara, after Alexander’s death and the eclipse of the Greco-Macedonian successor states by the Scythians, Parthians, and Kushans, the vestiges of this hybrid…

A Brief History of Ancient China By Edward L. Shaughnessy ISBN: 978-1350170377 Bloomsbury Publishing (2023) - £28.99 www.bloomsbury.com While a huge amount of literature exists on ancient China, from studies based on traditional histories to specific texts and archaeological discoveries, very little of it is geared towards a general audience. This book stands out as a broad-based study suitable for readers unfamiliar with Chinese history. ‘Ancient China’ here encompasses the historical period from the Shang kingdom (ca. 1600–1046 BC) to the fall of the Qin (206 BC), a period of diverse polities and cultural traditions evolving across the area now known as China. Prior to the publication of this book, general readers would have had to delve into substantially more academic works to obtain a good overview of this period,…

Pieces of the earliest known Ancient Chinese astronomical calendar in book form have been found in near perfect condition in a tomb in the Chongqing Municipality in southwest-central China. They represent a significant technical development in Chinese civilization. The cache comprises of 23 individual long, narrow strips of thin wood. Archaeologist Wang Meng told the Global Times: “We speculate that all those individual slips were all bound together.” Recognized as mudu, each slip bears handwritten characters painted in ink with a brush. Archaeologists were able to identify characters relating to the Chinese Tiangan Dizhi (‘Sexagenary Cycle’ or ‘Ten Heavenly Stems and Twelve Earthly Branches’). This ancient cyclical time-measuring system uses 22 characters: ten Chinese characters are used as ordinals and another twelve characters are used to divide a day into…

The exquisitely carved heads of Aphrodite and Dionysos have been recovered during recent excavations at Aizanoi in Turkey’s Kutahya province. The busts were likely parts of full statues. The head of Aphrodite wears her wavy hair cascading decorously down either side of her face. The head of Dionysos wears a wide band around his forehead with a knot tied at the back. Ongoing archaeological excavations in Aizanoi have revealed multiple statue fragments. Gokhan Coskun, leading the excavation team as an archaeology professor told told Anadolu: “In the excavation works we have conducted in the region so far, we have unearthed more than 100 statue pieces. Some of the heads found are from statues that are 2–3 meters long.” Since excavations began at the site near the modern village of Çavdarhisar…

Women in ancient Athens, while not restricted to the home, were kept separate from many elements of public life, such as the political assemblies and, importantly, the law courts. Yet women could be and were accused of murder in Athens. How, then, were women involved in homicide cases? Antiphon’s Against the Stepmother for Poisoning is the only surviving forensic speech that concerns a woman being accused of homicide in ancient Athens. According to the speech, a man called Philoneus and his friend had died in Philoneus’ house in the Piraeus. It was originally believed that Philoneus’ slave-concubine was responsible, and she had been executed. However, an illegitimate son of Philoneus’ friend, a boy at the time of the original case, later brought a charge against his stepmother, claiming it was…

THEME: Hunting in antiquity ANIMAL COMBAT IN THE ROMAN ARENA 'Bread and circuses’ are famously cited as the things needed to keep the people of the Roman empire happy – significant effort was put in to ensuring that they had a ready supply of both. Many shows were held in amphitheatres, over two hundred of which have been found across the Roman world, from northern Africa through the middle east and Europe, as far north as Trimontium in Scotland, as well as venues ranging from racing tracks to open spaces like settlement forums. In Rome, people could see the games in the Colosseum, the Circus Maximus, the Forum, and the Saepta Julia in the Campus Martius, to name but a few. From Rome to the further reaches of the empire, no…

The ancient Egyptians believed that the entire universe, both the natural world and the divine, was subject to a force called maat, which is often translated as ‘truth’, and personified by the goddess of the same name. But maat is much more – cosmic balance, equilibrium, and morality. In Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead, the heart of a deceased person is weighed against an ostrich feather, the hieroglyph that writes maat. If the heart balances with the feather, it means that he or she lived a moral life and could spend eternity with Osiris; an immoral person’s heart would be heavier than maat and eaten by a monstrous creature named ‘She Who Devours’. The chaos serpent Apep embodied the concept of isfet, and his daily attempts to…

SPECIAL REALLY BETWEEN FREE MEN AND SLAVES? There are at least two reasons why this debate matters. First, it has consequences for how we understand the ‘on the ground’ operation of Helotage. If one takes the serfdom view, then Helots, for all the ways in which they were oppressed, could at least enjoy a stable family life by being assigned to a single Spartan, living on his land in the secure knowledge that their families would not be broken up by gift or sale. If the Helots were slaves, then their prospect of an unbroken family life was not secure. Secondly, it matters for how historians of ancient Greece think about slavery. Was slavery in the Greek world basically like the system of slavery that existed in Athens, which relied on…

By the Hellenistic period, people were moving with ever greater frequency throughout the Mediterranean, such as athletes, ambassadors, and artists. Among these many travellers were guilds or associations of Dionysiac technitai (performing artists), attested to primarily through inscriptions, the earliest dated to ca. 279–277 BC, which travelled the Greek world to perform at festivals, of which there were ever more established in the Hellenistic period. These guilds could be defined by ethnicity, the games they attended, particularly Panhellenic games, and the regions within which they travelled. In addition to having Dionysus as their divine patron, the technitai sometimes also took Hellenistic kings as their secular patrons. This can already be seen during the reign of Alexander the Great, who had several actors and artists from throughout the Greek world in…

THE HUNT IN ANCIENT GREECE By Judith M. Barringer Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001 ISBN: 978-0801866562 This volume on ancient Greek hunting is the most comprehensive on the subject. Covering hunting’s relation to warfare, aristocratic values, love, myth, and funerals, every aspect of Greek hunting is discussed. Rather than the act of hunting, although this is discussed, this book is focused on the idea of the hunt and how it figured in ancient Greek social life. BATTLE ELEPHANTS AND FLAMING FOXES: ANIMALS IN THE ROMAN WORLD By Caroline Cuerden-Freeman The History Press, 2023 ISBN: 978-0750999618 Animals were an integral part of the Roman world, not just in hunting and in the arena. In this book, Caroline Cuerden-Freeman explores the Romans relationship with animals. Writing in an informal style and including…

A vividly coloured wall mosaic has been revealed by archaeologists working in central Rome. It adorned a room for banqueting in a lavish aristocratic house built around 2300 years ago on the Palatine Hill. The house (domus) with the seashell mosaic may have belonged to a military man. The intricate mosaic is crafted with seashells, Egyptian blue pigment, glass, and coloured marble. It is 4.8 m long and depicts vines, lotus leaves, pastoral scenes, and symbols potentially signifying the owner’s victories on land and sea. The room it decorated was designed as a specus aestivus to mimic a cave. It was equipped with lead pipes (fistulae) between the decorated walls to supply fresh spring water to fountains. Illuminated by oil lamps, the mood would have been opulent but intimate. Further…

UNROLLING HISTORY THE ARTEMIDORUS CONTROVERSY No scholar has ever seen something like the scroll known as the Artemidorus Papyrus. With a length of about two and a half meters and a height of just over thirty-two centimeters, it may date from Roman times. It appears to contain a Greek book on geography, but far more important are all kinds of drawings, from animals to parts of the human anatomy. They are unique. The story that unfolded during the early years of the 21st century, however, was even more spectacular than the object itself. THE THREE LIVES OF A PAPYRUS The papyrus has been used several times. At first, a scribe wanted to use it to make a copy of a work by Artemidorus of Ephesus, a Greek geographer who lived around…

SPECIAL BRONZE AGE ANATOLIAN AND AEGEAN CULT STATUES The Hittites recognized the divine in a variety of objects, including stones, stelae, or objects, but many of their deities were anthropomorphic in shape. Some of these deities may be identified in various statuettes, sometimes made of clay, though others were made of precious metals, such as silver, gold, or even iron. Yet, the plinths in the temples of Hattusa, for example, indicate the likely presence of larger statues. Similarly, Hittite texts indicate that significant quantities of metals were occasionally used for the creation of cult statues. In one exceptional text, Queen Puduhepa even promises a life-sized statue of her husband, Hattusili III, “with hands, head, and feet made of gold”, to the Goddess Lelwani, if she preserves the king’s health. Iconography too,…

Some highly-skilled individuals chose to fight in the arena against wild animals, the fiercer the better, using it as a way to demonstrate their martial skills – and, in some cases, as a good way to make money, particularly in the provinces. Those who were skilled at beast fighting could gain significant popularity, and their fighting skills viewed as close to legendary. One bestiarius, Carpophorus, who was renowned for fighting 20 animals in a single show, was compared by the poet Martial to Hercules, suggesting that he would have had no problem dispatching the monsters slain by the god (On the Spectacles 15). Their fame could sometimes lead to bestiarii getting into trouble outside the arena. A bestiarius named Julius Alexander was executed on the order of the emperor Commodus…

THEME: Hunting in antiquity THEME PACHYDERMS IN THE PTOLEMAIC ARMY Some Greeks were aware of the existence of elephants prior to Alexander’s campaign, but few had encountered them. For many of Alexander’s Greek and Macedonian soldiers, their encounters with them on the battlefields of Asia will have been novel and terrifying, as later historians like Curtius Rufus and Arrian depict. The military potential of elephants was not lost on Alexander, who acquired possibly up to 200 of them from allies and defeated adversaries. Even though there is not much evidence to suggest Alexander ever deployed them in battle, his immediate successors, known as the Diadochoi, certainly did. These elephants became unevenly distributed, either through alliances or seizure after victory in battle. For example, Ptolemy, the son of Lagus (who later became…

The fact that the Helots are named such, rather than simply being called slaves, might partly explain the consistent confusion about their status, despite Classical authors referring to them as douloi and oiketai, both general terms for slaves. What, then, did Helot actually mean? In the ancient world, there existed a tradition that placed the origins of the term Helot, heilotes in Greek, with the capture of Helos and the enslavement of its population during Sparta’s early expansion. This idea first appears in the work of Hellanicus of Lesbos, an historian writing in the fifth century BC, and is reproduced by the fourth-century BC historians Ephorus of Cyme and Theopompus of Chios. Unfortunately, as neat as this idea is, it is linguistically impossible. Another etymology, one found in the Etymologicum…

One reason why inheritance was more important to the Romans than it is for us today is that ancient Rome was a more stratified society. Wealth was more often inherited than acquired and repeated disputes over last wills and testaments led to Roman inheritance law becoming ever more refined and complex. A Roman will was a very specific legal document, and even a small error in drafting could lead to a will being declared invalid. Nevertheless, it was considered the social duty of any competent Roman adult to make a will and to deposit it somewhere safe, often in a temple. Tampering was prevented by the interesting technique of having two copies of the will. There was a ‘public’ document which faced outward and contained all the will’s provisions, and…