Ancient History

The aim of this study is to emphasize the position of France as the Protector of Catholics living on the lands of the Ottoman Empire, starting with Latin Catholics, and the development of this position, in accordance with the articles of capitulations given to this country. France was able to maintain its influence in the region by acting as the Protector of the Eastern Catholics, holding this prestigious and priority title among other European powers, giving the impression of establishing a visible alliance with the Papacy; and through this, the ambassadors of France had ceremonial and honorary privileges in the capital of the Ottoman Empire. With the religious Protectorate of France in the East, the issue of Eastern Christians emerged for the first time, and these communities became a tool to increase France's influence in the East. France represented not only Catholic clergy, but also the Catholic institutions such as schools, hospitals, orphanages and lay people before the O...

This paper presents evidence for the later (mostly Geometric) use of the Μycenaean cemetery at Agios Vasileios, Chalandritsa, at the eastern side of the Pharai plain, 20 km south-east of Patras. This evidence comprises surface material and a burial in the dromos of Tomb 17 (with a preliminary analysis of the human skeletal remains), plus finds from the tomb chamber, and finds from the chamber of Tomb 24.

On 25 September 1904, a military column that had been deployed to occupy the Kwanyama region in southern Angola was attacked and severely defeated by the Kwamatos. Over two hundred Portuguese soldiers are thought to have died in the fight, of which 109 were Europeans and 145 were Africans. The column left Lubango on 22 August and reached the Humbe, the furthest reach of Portuguese influence in the region, on 11 September. The going was slow because of the rugged terrain and the sluggish Boer cars, and the lack of water made the march toilsome, but it was nonetheless conducted in an organized manner, and there were no major incidents. On 19 September, the column, which had meanwhile been reinforced with indigenous companies and auxiliaries, was put in motion, and after 2Kms the troops began crossing the Cunene River. The crossing took a day and a half, with the troops already under Kwamato fire. The Battle of the Ford of Pembe had begun. The forces commanded by Captain João Maria Agu...

The Indo-aryans of ancient India observed stars and constellations for ascertaining auspicious times in order to conduct sacrificial rites ordained by vedas. It is but natural that they would have recounted in the vedic texts about comets. In Rigveda (∼ 1700 -1500 BC) and Atharvaveda (∼ 1150 BC), there are references to dhumaketus and ketus, which stand for comets in Sanskrit. Rigveda mentions a fig tree with roots held up in the sky (Parpola 2010). Could it have been inspired by the hirsute appearance of a comet's tail? Varahamihira in 550 AD and Ballal Sena (∼ 1100 -1200 AD) have described a large number of comets recorded by ancient seers such as Parashara, Vriddha Garga, Narada, Garga, etc. In this article, I conjecture that an episode narrated in Mahabharata of a radiant king, Nahusha, ruling the heavens, and later turning into a serpent after he had kicked the seer Agastya (also the star Canopus), is a mythological retelling of a cometary event.

This article traces the rise of research on children in the Hebrew Bible (HB). While early contributions to the field provided foundational insights, this area of scholarship has gained significant ground over the last ten years. This article begins by reviewing seminal points for studying children in the HB. I explain why this study is critical for our understanding of the Bible, and clarify how we discern who is a child in the text and the ancient world. Since the word ‘childist’ is still new to many in the academy, I discuss the origin of this term, define it, and urge its adoption. Most of the article assesses scholarship on children in the HB, with an emphasis on publications that have emerged recently as well as works forthcoming (at the time of publication). The conclusion sketches some of the many areas in this scholarly field that are ripe for further exploration.

Reform of state administration during the reign of Augustus Roman law reflected in non-legal antic relics Abstract The period of the late republic and the early principate was a time of many political, social and legal changes in the history of the ancient Roman state. In a relatively short period of time, the old state institutes collapsed and were fundamentally reformed or replaced with new ones. This thesis mainly focuses on the issue of reforms in selected areas of public law, namely the areas of state administration, tax administration and financial administration. In the field of state administration, the attention is paid to the reform of the provincial order, which had to be adapted to the new constitutional order of the state in which the princeps dominated, and the beginnings of the centralized offices of the Roman Empire, which were founded by Augustus, and which, under the rule of his successors, were further formalized and expanded into highly specialized bureaucratic b...

The research on "The cult of Deus Elagabalus from I to III century AD through epigraphic, numismatic and literary evidence" deals with the worship of the Syrian god Elagabalus, a native of Emesa that, during the so-called second Severian age, marked by the principality of emperors Heliogabalus and Severus Alexander, had disputed the first place in the Roman pantheon with Iuppiter. Until now, the criticism has focused its attention rather than the worship of the Syrian god, on the princeps which it made official the position of god in Rome: Varius Avitus Bassianus, high priest of the Emesene deity, became emperor under the name of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus in 218 AD. Here we discussed in depth issues unpublished or previously treated in a marginal way, focusing primarily on the origins of the cult and its diffusion in the western provinces of the Empire, everything after the end of Heliogabalus’s principality which proved to be only a step in the affirmation of the god of E...

This book examines the impact of the Roman cultural revolution under Augustus on the Roman province of Greece. It argues that the transformation of Roman Greece into a classicizing 'museum' was a specific response of the provincial Greek elites to the cultural politics of the Roman imperial monarchy. Against a background of Roman debates about Greek culture and Roman decadence, Augustus promoted the ideal of a Roman debt to a 'classical' Greece rooted in Europe and morally opposed to a stereotyped Asia. In Greece the regime signalled its admiration for Athens, Sparta, Olympia and Plataea as symbols of these past Greek glories. Cued by the Augustan monarchy, provincial Greek notables expressed their Roman orientation by competitive cultural work (revival of ritual; restoration of buildings) aimed at further emphasising Greece's 'classical' legacy. Reprised by Hadrian, the Augustan construction of 'classical' Greece helped to promote the archaism ty...

This paper argues that Jacoby’s fragment  of Ephippus of Olynthus’ lost pamphlet on the deaths of Hephaestion and Alexander conceals a malevolently distorted and hitherto unrecognised reference to Alexander’s adoption in / BC of the traditional hunting style of the Assyrian and Achaemenid kings, namely, the use of a chariot and archery in pursuit of lions. The paper puts this startling development into the larger context of, firstly, Alexander’s political and cultural Persianising, and, secondly, the rich symbolism of the royal lion hunter in the ancient near east. Finally the paper asks how far such ‘misreadings’ of the historical Alexander’s Asian monarchy by the first generation of Greek Alexander-historians might have coloured the later ancient view of Alexander’s alleged quest for deification.

The Late Miocene development of faunas and environments in western Eurasia is well known, but the climatic and environmental processes that controlled its details are incompletely understood. Here we map the rise and fall of the classic Pikermian fossil mammal chronofauna between 12 and 4.2 Ma, using genus-level faunal similarity between localities. To directly relate land mammal community evolution to environmental change, we use the hypsodonty paleoprecipitation proxy and paleoclimate modeling. The geographic distribution of faunal similarity and paleoprecipitation in successive timeslices shows the development of the open biome that favored the evolution and spread of the open-habitat adapted large mammal lineages. In the climate model run, this corresponds to a decrease in precipitation over its core area south of the Paratethys Sea. The process began in the latest Middle Miocene and climaxed in the medial Late Miocene, about 7–8 million years ago. The geographic range of the Pi...

Correspondence: Mikael Fortelius (to whom correspondence should be addressed), Jussi Eronen and Diana Pushkina, Department of Geology, PO Box 64, FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland (e-mail: mikael. fortelius@ helsinki. fi; jussi. t. eronen@ helsinki. fi; diana. pushkina@ helsinki. fi); Liu Liping and Zhang Zhaoqun, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Academia Sinica, PO Box 643, Beijing 100044, China (e-mail: cnowliu@ mx. cei. gov. cn; zqzhang@ mx. cei. gov. cn); Alexey Tesakov, Geological ...

In recent years, scholars have drawn attention to the fact that manuscripts are hardly static objects but prone to change over the course of time. Following this line of research, the present paper considers ancient Chinese scrolls as evolving entities and discusses some of the implications for their reconstruction and description.

W interesującej i pożytecznej monografii Tomasza Banacha poświęconej obietnicom umorzenia długów (tabulae novae), którymi Katylina starał się pozyskać przychylność rzymskiego społeczeństwa, czytelnik znajdzie stwierdzenia, w których autor wyraża silny sprzeciw wobec niektórych tendencji "marksistowskich" i "neoliberalnych". Niestety, autor nie wyjaśnia, co rozumie pod pojęciem "marksizm", ani nie cytuje literatury naukowej w celu zdefiniowania cech "marksistowskiego Katyliny". Jest to błąd, ponieważ poglądy polskich przedstawicieli doktryny marksistowskiej na temat postaci i dokonań Katyliny są analogiczne do poglądów Tomasza Banacha.

This bibliographic essay addresses the different approaches to animal sacrifi ce generally with a focus on animal sacrifi ce in ancient Greece specifi cally. As animal sacrifi ce was one of the unfamiliar rituals introduced to western anthropologists by foreign cultures, the ritual of animal sacrifi ce was addressed by anthropologists as early as the nineteenth century. Later, the topic was a trend in other different majors like archaeology, history, sociology and psychology as well.

Mad Honey Disease is characterized by intoxication symptoms secondary to over-ingestion of grayanotoxin found in honey produced from rhododendron nectar. Cardiovascular symptoms are common, but psychiatric and neurological phenomena are rarely seen in this condition. Our case details a patient who presented with florid symptomology in all three aforementioned areas.

Significance This paper analyzes the Late Miocene continental record of hydroclimate from the central Andes and subsequent ecological response to climatic change during this interval. The Late Miocene cooling (LMC) is characterized by a sharp decrease (up to 6 °C) of sea-surface temperatures and has been shown to have driven ecosystem reorganization, leading to conditions similar to Quaternary. We use the stable isotopic record preserved in pedogenic carbonate nodules as a proxy for hydroclimate changes during the LMC. This, combined with general circulation simulations, shows that strengthening of the Hadley circulation in South America during the LMC enhanced subtropical aridification and in turn promoted expansion of C 4 grasses and evolution of high-crowned teeth in mammals.

Paul Strathern's Rise and Fall: A History of the World in Ten Empires is a concise world history analyzing the characteristics and impact of ten empires from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and America. Explaining the spirit of adventure, administration and power of ten of the most significant empires is central to this study. War, subjugation of conquered peoples, and a 'civilising agenda' are linked with this. Broadening the analyzes to include how empires operate hand-in-hand with world civilization (notably long-term social development and technological advances) and the migration of early humans across continents and oceans offers the reader a thought-provoking experience.