Ancient History

Sepenimggalnya khalifah Ali bin Abi Thalib, kekhalifahan Islam dipegang oleh Muawiyah bin Abu Sufyan. Seorang tokoh yang kecewa atas kebijaksanaan yang diambil oleh Ali bin Abi Thalib dalam mengambil keputusan terhadap kasus pembunuhan khalifah Ustman bin Affan. Beliau juga merupakan pendiri dinasti Umayyah. Dinasti Umayyah didirikan oleh cara yang tidak demokratis.
Dengan Berakhirnya kekuasaan khalifah Ali bin Abi Thalib tersebut mengakibatkan lahirnya kekuasan yang berpola dinasti atau kerajaan.  Bentuk pemerintahan dinasti atau kerajaan yang cenderung bersifat kekuasaan feodal dan turun temurun, hanya untuk mempertahankan kekuasaan, adanya unsur otoriter, kekuasaan mutlak, kekerasan, diplomasi yang dibumbui dengan tipu daya, dan hilangnya keteladanan Nabi untuk musyawarah dalam menentukan pemimpin merupakan gambaran umum tentang kekuasaan dinasti sesudah khulafaur rasyidin.
Dinasti Umayyah merupakan kerajaan Islam pertama yang didirikan oleh Mu’awiyah bin Abi Sufyan. Perintisan dinasti ini dilakukannya dengan cara menolak pembai’atan terhadap khalifah Ali bin Abi Thalib, kemudian ia memilih berperang dan melakukan perdamaian dengan pihak Ali dengan strategi politik yang sangat menguntungkan baginya. Jatuhnya Ali dan naiknya Mu’awiyah juga disebabkan keberhasilan pihak khawarij (kelompok yang menentang dari Ali) membunuh khalifah Ali, meskipun kemudian tampak kekuasaan dipegang oleh putranya Hasan, namun tanpa dukungan yang kuat dan kondisi politik yang kacau akhirnya kepemimpinannya pun hanya bertahan sampai beberapa bulan.
Pada akhirnya Hasan menyerahkan kepemimpinan kepada Mu’awiyah, namun dengan perjanjian bahwa pemilihan kepemimpinan sesudahnya adalah diserahkan kepada ummat Islam. Perjanjian tersebut dibuat pada tahun 661 M / 41 H dan dikenal dengan nama jama’ah karena perjanjian ini mempersatukan ummat Islam menjadi satu kepemimpinan, namun secara tidak langsung mengubah pola pemerintahan menjadi kerajaan. Meskipun begitu, munculnya Dinasti Umayyah 
memberikan babak baru dalam kemajuan peradaban Islam, hal itu dibuktikan dengan sumbangan-sumbangannya dalam perluasan wilayah, kemajuan pendidikan, kebudayaan dan lain sebagainya.

Bismillaahirrahmaanirrohiim,
Buku ini mencoba memaparkan secara rinci akan bagaimana pemikiran-pemikiran modern di dunia islam dengan titik berat pembahasan di wilayah Nusantara (Indonesia). seperti khalayak umum ketahui bahwa awal mula dari pembaharuan Islam itu terjadi di dunia belahan timur yaitu Mesir dengan adanya tokoh-tokoh seperti: Jamaluddin al- Afgani, Muhammad Abduh, Rasyid Ridha dll.
Seiring berjalannya waktu, di permulaan abad ke-20 pembaharuan-pembaharuan dari pelbagai gagasan di Mesir, mulai menyebar ke berbagai penjuru dunia seperti Iran, India dan tentu saja Indonesia yang lebih lengkapnya akan di paparkan secara terperinci di setiap lembarannya.
Dalam penyusun buku, Tim Penyusun menyadari dalam proses pembuatan hingga sampai ke tahap cetak masih terdapat banyak sekali kekeliriun dan kejanggalan. Dikarenakan waktu serta berbagai macam alasan pelik lain. Mohon untuk di maklum.
Tim Penyusun tetap sangat mengharapkan berbagai masukan baik kritik atau saran yang membangun terkait kekelirun yang terdapat dalam buku untuk perbaikan di kemudian nanti.
Akhir kalimat, buku yang masuk dalam kategori “daras” ini, alhamdulillah dapat terselesaikan sesuai tempo yang telah di tentukan.

The three Hyksos dynasties (XIV, XV, XVI) ruled Egypt approximately from 1750 to 1530 BCE and then disappear abruptly after the death of Pharaoh Seqenenre Taa. One can notice that Egyptian documents unanimously describe the departure of the Hyksos from Egypt to Palestine in a disaster. Modern Egyptologists pictured a ‘war of the Hyksos’, however no document speaks of war but only that Avaris, Hyksos' capital, was looted and vandalized after their departure. Moreover all accounts of former historians picture the Hyksos as the ancestors of the Hebrews, led into Palestine under the leadership of Moses. In addition both biblical and Egyptian chronologies date the Hyksos departure in 1533 BCE, which implies the coincidence of these two dramatic events. The only way to date the so-called “Hyksos' war” is: gathering all historical and archaeological documents about the Hyksos, establishing a relative chronology of the “Hyksos' war”, identifying who was Apopi and his links with the biblical Moses, determining from where came the Hyksos and where did they go, dating the Hyksos war according to the Egyptian chronology through synchronisms dated by astronomy and dating the Exodus according to the Israelite chronology (based on masoretical text) checked by absolute dates.
According to Egyptian accounts the last king of the XVth dynasty, named Apopi, "very pretty" in Hebrew that is Moses' birth name (Exodus 2:2), reigned 40 years in Egypt from 1613 to 1573 BCE. 40 years later Apopi met Seqenenre Taa the last pharaoh of the XVIIth dynasty and gave him an unspecified disturbing message. The eldest son of Seqenenre Taa, Ahmose Sapaïr, who was crown prince died in a dramatic and unexplained way shortly before his father. Seqenenre Taa died in May 1533 BCE, after 11 years of reign, in dramatic and unclear circumstances. The state of his mummy proves, however, that his body received severe injuries and remained abandoned for several days before being mummified (see Psalms 136:15). Prince Kamose, Seqenenre Taa's brother, assured interim of authority for 3 years and threatened attack the former pharaoh Apopi, new prince of Retenu (Palestine). In the stele of the Tempest he also blames Apopi for all the disasters that come to fall upon Egypt which caused many deaths."

This special issue addresses the possible connections and mutual benefits of examining together two analytic concepts – memory and periphery. These concepts receive much attention in various scholarly discussions, yet they have done so rather independently from each other. The potential applications and utilities of combining memory and periphery and the epistemic insights they provide for various disciplins are presented in the different contributions to this issue.

This book is intended as a commented summary of some of the major trends and most important features that can be encountered when analysing ancient Egyptian society of the Old Kingdom. We have to bear in mind that around 3000 BCE one of the first centralised states in our recorded history rose, and the Old Kingdom represents certainly one of its apogees. Moreover, there is hardly any comparable society that left behind such a wealth of archaeological and literary evidence, a welcome companion for our journey back in time. The goal for writing this book was to outline general trends in the history of the non-royal tomb development of the period. The reason is rather simple and straightforward: ancient Egyptians considered the tomb to be their afterlife residence for eternity. In the afterlife they replicated the life they experienced during the lifetime. Thus the tomb architecture, decoration, inscriptions and equipment paradoxically represent a major tool for our understanding of the everyday life of the ancient Egyptians and enable a better comprehension of the development and dynamics of the Old Kingdom. The book is divided into nine chapters covering, step by step, the development of the Egyptian tomb and society from the Predynastic Period to the end of the first six Egyptian dynasties, a lengthy period of time which covers the Early Dynastic and the Old Kingdom periods. These six chapters are accompanied by three additional chapters on religious aspects of the Old Kingdom society, its economy and environment.

This article discusses Cyrus' policy in conquered territories as regards religion, deportation policy and local autonomy in the light of Ancient Near Eastern history.  Cyrus' policy appears to be in the footsteps of Mesopotamian traditions. The characterization of the Cyrus cylinder as first declaration of human rights is anachronistic and thus not justified (which does not mean that Cyrus couldn't show mercy on occasion). The position of the last Neo-Babylonian king, Nabonidus, and  the conquest of Lydia gain new treatment. Finally a translation of the Cyrus Cylinder is presented with the new fragments discovered in the British Museum by the late W.G. Lambert and Irving Finkel. See for this first of all: I. Finkel (ed.) The Cyrus Cylinder. The King of Persia’s Proclamation from Ancient Babylon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013).
ADDENDUM: For the quoted inscriptions of Sennacherib now consult: A.K. Grayson, J. Novotny, The Royal Inscriptions of Sennacherib, King of Assyria (704-681 BC), Part 1 and 2. Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period 3: 1 and 2. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns 2012 and 2014.
On p. 261: Volume 5 of Rawlinson’s Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia, was edited by Th.G. Pinches and appeared in 1884.

ABSTRACT: Preface to the Guide:

Focus and limitations:
The compilation of this guide began in Spring 2007 as a series of check lists and book requests for the somewhat small collection of Egyptological and related works in M. H. Sterne library at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  During the development of several courses on Ancient Egypt, the Ancient Near East, and other areas spanning Prehistory through to the Roman period (and later), the collection grew, and continues to expand, and began to require a research paper guide for students enrolled in courses dealing with these geographic areas and time periods. The nature of the prime cliental, namely undergraduate to MA students in a North American setting, in conjunction with limited funding, has steered  –of necessity– the building of both Sterne library’s collections and this guide towards mostly English-language sources, less expensive works, and more easily available and more recent publications.

Overall aims:
In order to maximize student and public research usage of the existing, albeit still limited, collections, I have since compiled and incorporated selected journal articles, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and other book titles from Sterne Library’s physical holdings (i.e., non-electronic sources) into diverse categories of research topics/subjects.  In addition, every effort has been made to add a full listing of electronic sources (including links) available to researchers of the geographic and temporal areas covered by this guide (i.e., mainly Prehistoric to Roman period Egypt).  The guide also provides general assistance for more serious/professional scholars (i.e., a quick reference to key articles, chapters, and volumes), but remains a tool aimed at English-speaking undergraduate-MA students and the public, focusing on Sterne’s holdings (note: other emerging Egyptological libraries will also approximate Sterne’s holdings).

Design and usage:
An attempt has been made to obtain sources spanning all aspects of Ancient Egypt and related areas, which have in-turn influenced the subdivision of the guide into general works, time periods, and diverse subject areas. Some of these categories have grown sufficiently large to merit further subdivision, such as the New Kingdom section, which has a general list of sources, materials regarding individual rulers, and a few affiliated topics of interest (Exodus; Sea Peoples).  I have attempted to place each source (i.e., books; book chapters; encyclopedia entries; journal articles) under each pertinent topic category that it covers, but naturally I may have missed some categories, while there may be other complementary and broader works that cover such topics elsewhere.  A list of the pertinent call number ranges has been placed at the end of the guide (see table of contents) to assist in the merits of additional shelf-browsing.

Beyond the guide:
Naturally there are numerous significant Egyptological sources outside Sterne Library’s holdings (including electronic links: e.g., JSTOR) that might be retrieved via interlibrary loan.  Sterne Library’s current Egyptological resources, however, are sufficient to introduce most areas of Egyptological research, and enable the researcher to consult the endnotes/footnotes and bibliographic data listed in recent books, articles, and encyclopedia entries to compile a list of further resources that may either be accessed via interlibrary loan, or possibly by visiting directly a neighbouring professional Egyptological library: e.g., the instructor (UAB); Atlanta (Emory University); Memphis (Memphis State University).

The collections in other Birmingham and Alabama libraries have online links via Sterne Library’s website, and offer many duplicate and different Egyptological works that are often accessible to the public/students: e.g., Birmingham Public Library, Gorgas Library (UA).  Naturally, I encourage students, faculty, and public researchers to see me for further assistance with this guide and their research topics.

Gregory Mumford (UAB)
Update: 15 Jan., 2021

PLEASE NOTE: This resource has received substantial updates in pertinent sections within the guide.  Some additional sorting of various articles/entries is still required, but these articles can be found, unsorted, at the end of the guide (e.g., articles from KMT, JSSEA, EA, etc., listed chronologically and by issue). I anticipate another update in the following year ...

This paper examines changes and developments in the nature and volume of maritime trade between 200 BC and AD 1000. A database of 1462 Mediterranean shipwrecks shows a rise in numbers of known wrecks from the sixth century BC to a peak in the first century AD, with a sharp drop in the second century, and a further decline in numbers from the fourth to seventh centuries. Significant differences between the wreck dataset and evidence from traded goods on land suggest that one or more factors are distorting the wreck dataset, among which are possibly the increase in the use of barrels as a container during the Roman period, and the relative lack of investigation of the North African coast. While the rise in wreck numbers in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods can be taken as a reflection of an increase in the volume and intensity of maritime trade, the reverse is not straightforwardly true for the Roman and late Roman periods.
Evidence from ship construction and harbour technology however supports the idea that Hellenistic and Roman periods saw the highpoint of Mediterranean maritime trade before the sixteenth century AD. Large ships of several hundred tons, with up to three masts and three decks, are known from these period; but not beforehand, and not afterwards until well into the Middle Ages. One enabling technology for such large ships was the chain pump for the bilge, attested from the late second century BC until the seventh century AD, and then not again until the fifteenth century. These largest ships disappear after the collapse of the western Roman empire, reflecting greater insecurity, more fragmented markets, and a breakdown of institutional incentives for investment in large shipping. The smaller lateen-rigged craft of the early middle ages needed neither a bilge pump nor the large area of sail provided by the square rig.
Harbour technology shows a parallel development. Hellenistic harbour works with enclosing moles enabled the protection of much larger areas of water than had, for example, the Phoenician and Punic cothons or excavated harbour basins; Roman hydraulic concrete further increased the potential for building large artifical harbours with large areas of wharfage and warehousing. Hellenistic and Roman mechanical technology was vital to the smooth functioning of these larger ports—cranes for the rapid loading and unloading of heavy cargoes, and dredging vessels to combat silting and maintain the necessary depth of water.
The driving force behind these changes was an economic expansion made possible by the increasing unification of the Mediterranean in the Hellenistic period and then especially under the authority of Rome, accompanied by institutional developments in laws of contract, maritime loans, sea laws, a single monetary system, and state incentives for investment in shipping. With the breakdown of the Roman empire, many of these institutions also disappeared. The period of the Late Republic and High Empire thus saw the emergence of large merchant shipping, on a scale not seen again until the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, that was made possible by a number of factors: technological, political, and institutional.

Feinman, G.M., 2015. Settlement and Landscape Archaeology. In: James D. Wright, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Vol 21. Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 654–658.

Settlement pattern archaeology and the investigation of ancient landscapes, especially when systematically implemented, have been some of the most significant archaeological innovations of the last half century. These studies have shed new light on the emergence of hierarchically organized and urban societies in regions around the world, while also providing new perspectives on the history of human–environmental interactions. This article reviews the roots of these regional archaeological approaches, their theoretical underpinnings, and some of the key empirical contributions.

Preface
Throughout all of Europe we find examples of folk-belief assigning special qualities to the seventh-born son or daughter of a family. At times these attributes were positive, at times negative. However, they always had a magical aura about them (Bloch [1924] 1983). For the most part, these beliefs have been written off as superstitious residue from times past and as a result little attention has been paid to documenting the concrete social practices associated with them. An exception to this tendency is the work of Marc Bloch, who in 1924, called attention to the supernatural powers attributed to the seventh son and at times, to the seventh daughter, born after an uninterrupted series of the same sex, remarking that seventh-born children were credited with a “particular supernatural power” (Bloch [1924] 1983: 293, 296). Writing in 1924, Bloch observed that “La croyance sous cette forme a été et est sans doute encore très largement répandue dans l’Europe occidentale et centrale: on l’a signalée en Allemagne, en Biscaye, en Catalogne, dans presque toute la France, dans les Pays-Bas, en Angleterre, en Escosse, en Irlande […]”  (Bloch [1924] 1983: 294-295).

Specifically, Bloch noted that from at least the 16th century onwards, children born into a seventh position in their family supposedly had the power to heal by touch. Such extraordinary people, often deemed sorcerers, even devils, were also referred to by a variety of expressions such as mahr (German) or murawa (Polish) and consequently they had the ambivalent privilege of tapping into powers that were inaccessible to normal humans. Specifically, they were viewed as having healing and divinatory powers, which could entail shape-shifting (Vaz da Silva 2003). That is, those individuals were endowed with the ability to take the form of an animal. From the point of view of modern Western thought this belief causes the dividing line between humans and animals to become blurred. Nonetheless, that blurring or fusion of two natures would be in accordance with the cosmology of native peoples in other parts of the world, especially contemporary hunter-gatherers, where such animistic beliefs also prevail (Bird-David 1999; Brightman 2002; Ingold 2000; Willerslev 2007).

It is quite clear that the qualities assigned to the seventh-son or daughter harken back to an earlier animistic mindset, notions of nonhuman personhood and social practices that in turn connect back to shamanic modes of healing. At the same time, as noted in the earlier chapters of this study, the fused nature of the Bear Son, the half-human, half-bear being known as Hamalau “Fourteen” in Basque, reflects a similar blurring of the Western human-animal divide and related cultural conceptualizations.

And as Bertolotti has demonstrated in his detailed and extraordinarily well researched study Carnevale di Massa 1950 (1992), European versions of the Bear Son folktales, e.g., Giovanni l’Orso, may well reproduce much earlier beliefs, more in consonance with the cosmovision of hunter-gatherers who inhabited these zones in times past. More concretely, the fact that the figure of Hamalau is grounded in the belief that humans descended from bears allows us to consider the significance and symbolism of this character’s own genesis: he is born of a human female, but his father is a bear. In this sense, he is a double-natured intermediary occupying the ontological ground between humans and bears.

While the author cannot speak for churches of Christ, common among them are unique ways of understanding sacred scripture, believed to have been written by apostles and prophets of the Lord before the destruction of Jerusalem (70 A.D.) and circulated among the early Christian communities (e.g. A letter called First Clement in about 95 A.D., refers to at least ten New Testament books), then collected as a volume by the self-identified Christian community of the second century A.D. or earlier, e.g. the list of Marcion (140 A.D.)

Also see MEANING THERAPY here
https://issuu.com/collegeofmentalhealth/docs/meaning_therapy3

The most original and shocking interpretation of Lucretius in the last 40 years.

Thomas Nail argues convincingly and systematically that Lucretius was not an atomist, but a thinker of kinetic flux. In doing so, he completely overthrows the interpretive foundations of modern scientific materialism, whose philosophical origins lie in the atomic reading of Lucretius' immensely influential book De Rerum Natura.

This means that Lucretius was not the revolutionary harbinger of modern science as Greenblatt and others have argued; he was its greatest victim. Nail re-reads De Rerum Natura to offer us a new Lucretius--a Lucretius for today.

For anyone willing to accept that ancient Israel's presence and burdened subjugation in Egypt could be historical, the question arises as to who this unnamed pharaoh might be, and why he remained unnamed. By comparing the biography of the exodus-pharaoh with the reign of Amenhotep II, the pharaoh who would have sat on Egypt's throne at the time (based on a proper synchronization of Israelite and Egyptian history), an evaluation can be made as to whether this pharaoh fits the many detailed requirements that must be true of the exodus-pharaoh. This paper may represent the most thorough effort yet attempted to identify the exodus-pharaoh with a historical ruler of Egypt.

La reconstrucción de la traza urbana del Cusco como capital y centro del Tawantinsuyu, es en muchos aspectos una tarea arqueológica todavía pendiente. A pesar de los importantes estudios realizados hasta ahora no existe consenso sobre la forma que tenía la antigua ciudad y en consecuencia, las imágenes de los espacios inkas incluidas en ediciones populares, libros de divulgación y guías para turistas son
incompletas y a veces distorsionadas. La percepción que tiene el publico general, sean los propios cusqueños o los turistas que visitan la ciudad, es un conjunto de fragmentos discontinuos de muros, unas veces incorporados a las fachadas de los edificios coloniales o republicanos y otras “flotando” como apéndices inconexos en las terrazas que sostienen buena parte de la Ciudad Histórica.

The Materiality of Magic is an exciting new book about an aspect of magic that is usually neglected. In the last two decades we have had many books and proceedings of conferences on the concept of magic itself as well as its history, formulas and incantations in antiquity, both in East and West. Much less attention, however, has been paid to the material that was used by the magicians for their conjuring activities. This is the first book of its kind that focuses on the material aspects of magic, such as amulets, drawings, figurines, gems, grimoires, rings, and voodoo dolls. The practice of magic required a specialist expertise that knew how to handle material such as lead, gold, stones, papyrus and terra cotta—material that sometimes was used for specific genres of magic. That is why we present in this well illustrated collection of studies new insights on the materiality of magic in antiquity by studying both the materials used for magic as well as the books in which the expertise was preserved. The main focus of the book is on antiquity, but we complement and contrast our material with examples ranging from the Ancient Near East, via early modern Europe, to the present time.

This article examines the interaction between Ay and Horemheb and their attitudes towards one another. Under Tutankhamun, Ay was the fatherly advisor of the king at the court, while Horemheb was the actual governor of all the administration in the country. However, Ay seems to have obtained the title “Vizier,” indicating that he was also capable of governing the country. Ay was indeed on the verge of becoming the successor of Tutankhamun. There was strong antagonism between Ay and Horemheb sometime after Tutankhamun's death. The evidence implies that Horemheb sought to discredit Ay as proper successor to the king. As a result, Ay appears to have excluded Horemheb from greater courtly influence by appointing Nakhtmin not only as his “Generalissimo” but also as “King's Son.” This squabbling even continued after Ay's death as Horemheb endeavored to erase all memory of Ay, his men, and even Queen Ankhesenamun in revenge.

The appearance of the brailed rig and loose–footed sail at the end of the Late Bronze Age revolutionized seafaring in the eastern Mediterranean. The most famous early appearance of this new technology is found in history’s first visual representation of a naval battle, on the walls of Ramesses III’s mortuary temple at Medinet Habu. In this monumental combat scene, both Egyptian and Sea Peoples ships are depicted with this new rig, as well as top–mounted crow’s nests and decking upon which shipborne warriors do battle. The identical employment of these innovative components of maritime technology by opposing forces in this battle suggests either some level of previous contact between the invaders and those responsible for designing and constructing Egypt’s ships of war, or shared interaction with a third party, perhaps on the Syro–Canaanite coast. This article examines the evidence for the development of the brailed rig in the eastern Mediterranean, and explores the possibility that at least one group of Sea Peoples, who may have comprised a key part of the international economy of the Late Bronze Age in their role as “pirates, raiders, and traders” (Georgiou 2012: 527) – Artzy’s “nomads of the sea” (1997) – played a similarly integral role in the transference of maritime technology between the Levant, Egypt, and the Aegean.

The collection "Art and Religion of Ancient Societies" is a continuation of the series of the scientific publications which is devoted to the problems of study of the spiritual culture in the primitive societies. The previous edition "Art and Ritual of Ice Age", that was published in 2005, covered a circle of questions directly connected with the theory and practice of study of the Paleolithic Art. In this collection we also address to the same problematic. However, taking into account that the understanding of the most ancient culture stages of the human society is connected to a wide circle of questions of the study of the traditional communities, we think it is necessity to expand the edition’s subjects. Therefore we have tried to capture not only questions directly connected with field and basic study of the ancient art, but also practical analysis of the cultural and ethnographic facts. The questions of the aesthetics and theory of development of the early forms of art are considered as separately subjects in works. The published materials enable the reader to familiarize with the questions and methods of their analysis more in details, which are submitted in works of the researchers from Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Germany, Canada, USA, Australia.

This article offers a fresh critique of the work of political scientists and historians who have propagated the Eurocentric history of democracy. The paper argues that such work can be dissected and critiqued along several key lines: their reliance on a distinctly patriarchal discourse riddled with prejudices; the assertion that one can understand the history of democracy via the etymology of the word itself; and the deeply Eurocentric
roots of the study of democracy’s past embedded in the canon of Western political thought. The paper concludes by calling on contemporary political scientists and political historians concerned with the history of  democracy to be careful in re-iterating this deeply flawed history of democracy and to instead work towards a history of democracy that retrieves the silenced histories and the forgotten democratic moments that lay behind the roar of Western power.

This volume presents an introduction and nine papers by Roman historians and archaeologists, discussing methods of analysing the organisation and performance of the agrarian sector of the economy of the Mediterranean world under Roman imperial rule in the period c. 100 BC to AD 350. The papers exemplify a range of possible approaches to studying and, within limits, quantifying aspects of agricultural production in the Roman world, and casting light on the structure and performance of that sector of the economy, on the basis of widely different sources of evidence – historical, papyrological and archaeological. The volume aims to move substantially beyond the simple assumption that agriculture was the dominant sector of the ancient economy, and to explore what was special and distinctive about the Roman economy in terms, for example, of state involvement and institutional infrastructure, or the phenomenon of market-oriented surplus production based around the villa system. What is especially new and distinctive about this book is its focus on marshalling a large quantity of evidence, both archaeological and documentary, to address large questions of the structure and performance of the agricultural economy of the Roman world. In particular, it offers a means of analysing investment in agricultural facilities, and tracks variation in patterns across time and across regions within the empire.

ABSTRACT Although Greek contacts with the Southern Levant during the Iron Age have been studied at length, the matter remains controversial in many aspects. The present study provides an overview of East-West contacts during the first half of the 1st millennium BC, suggesting to divide it into five major periods of contact. These periods, involving a different chronological setting, are characterized by different ‘total contexts’, heavily shaped by geopolitical dynamics. It is suggested that every period of contacts (or their absence) requires a different explanation.