BiblioVault - Books about Ancient

The Studia Philonica Annual XXX, 2018

Studies in Hellenistic Judaism

David T. Runia

SBL Press, 2018

Studies on Philo and Hellenistic Judaism from experts in the field

The Studia Philonica Annual is a scholarly journal devoted to the study of Hellenistic Judaism, particularly the writings and thought of the Hellenistic-Jewish writer Philo of Alexandria. This volume includes five articles on topics ranging from preserved fragments of Philo to travel in Philo’s works. Nine book reviews cover recent books on Philo, Josephus, and ancient pedagogy.

Features:

Articles on aspects of Hellenistic Judaism written by scholars from around the world
Comprehensive bibliography and book reviews

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Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Sources, series 4, volume 1

Graham Barrett

Arc Humanities Press, 2025

The fourth series of Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Sources (first published in 1964 as Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History) provides a unique venue for scholars to offer fresh readings of evidence from the period 400–1600. This annual is dedicated to the fundamental scholarship of analysis and interpretation led by direct engagement with the sources—written, visual, or material—in any form, from editions, translations, and commentaries to reports, notes, and reflections. By foregrounding the most basic approach of working outwards from the evidence, the annual aims to foster conversations across disciplines, regions, and periods, as well as to become a reference point for original approaches and new discoveries.

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Studies of Homeric Greece

Jan Bouzek

Karolinum Press, 2018

Studies of Homeric Greece is a comprehensive companion to the archaeology and history of Late Mycenaean to Geometric Greece and the koine of Early Iron Age Geometric styles in Europe and Upper Eurasia, circa 1300–700 BC, in relation to their Near Eastern neighbors. Jan Bouzek discusses this pivotal period of human history—the transition from Bronze to Iron Age, from the pre-philosophical to philosophical mind, from myth to logos—in an attempt to combine archaeological evidence with the words of Homer and Hesiod, and the first Phoenician and Greek trading ventures. In doing so, Bouzek surveys the birth of autonomous Greek city-states, their art, and their free citizenry. Featuring numerous maps, drawings, and photographs, Studies of Homeric Greece is the capstone of a luminary in the field.

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Studies on the Internal Diaspora of the Byzantine Empire

Hélène Ahrweiler

Harvard University Press, 1998

Although ethnicity is a modern concept and would not have been recognized by the Byzantines, throughout its history the Byzantine Empire was a multi-ethnic state. The papers in this volume examine questions of the uniformity and separateness of the various Byzantine populations and the degree and mechanisms of acculturation. The cultural uniformity that the Byzantine church and state pursued through Orthodoxy and the Greek language did not erase all distinct traits of different groups--nor was that their intention. This volume provides examples of the multiple forms of integration and resistance to integration in a society that for a long time functioned as an integral state and an articulated society that accepted diversity.

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The Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa

Vidyākara

Harvard University Press

This edition of the Sanskrit text of the Subhāṣitaratnakoṣa—in the editors’ opinion the oldest known general anthology of Sanskrit verse—is the result of years of work deciphering and comparing the five different versions to arrive at a complete and reliable text. The editors’ aim has been to restore, as far as the sources permit, the text compiled by Vidyākara somewhere between A.D. 1100 and 1130. In the absence of written records from the period, studies such as this one are invaluable as sources of information about the literary and cultural history of eleventh century India, especially about Sanskrit poets, and also about the changes of ideas since the eleventh century as they have affected the versions compiled since Vidyākara’s. Included with the complete Sanskrit text and footnotes to the stanzas is an introductory section in which D. D. Kosambi discusses in detail the various versions in existence, the cultural background, and the authors and sources of individual verses.

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The Sumerians

Lost Civilizations

Paul Collins

Reaktion Books, 2021

The Sumerians are widely believed to have created the world’s earliest civilization on the fertile floodplains of southern Iraq from about 3500 to 2000 BCE. They have been credited with the invention of nothing less than cities, writing, and the wheel, and therefore hold an ancient mirror to our own urban, literate world. But is this picture correct? Paul Collins reveals how the idea of a Sumerian people was assembled from the archaeological and textual evidence uncovered in Iraq and Syria over the last one hundred fifty years. Reconstructed through the biases of those who unearthed them, the Sumerians were never simply lost and found, but reinvented a number of times, both in antiquity and in the more recent past.

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The Sumerians

Their History, Culture, and Character

Samuel Noah Kramer

University of Chicago Press, 1963

The Sumerians, the pragmatic and gifted people who preceded the Semites in the land first known as Sumer and later as Babylonia, created what was probably the first high civilization in the history of man, spanning the fifth to the second millenniums B.C. This book is an unparalleled compendium of what is known about them.

Professor Kramer communicates his enthusiasm for his subject as he outlines the history of the Sumerian civilization and describes their cities, religion, literature, education, scientific achievements, social structure, and psychology. Finally, he considers the legacy of Sumer to the ancient and modern world.

"There are few scholars in the world qualified to write such a book, and certainly Kramer is one of them. . . . One of the most valuable features of this book is the quantity of texts and fragments which are published for the first time in a form available to the general reader. For the layman the book provides a readable and up-to-date introduction to a most fascinating culture. For the specialist it presents a synthesis with which he may not agree but from which he will nonetheless derive stimulation."—American Journal of Archaeology

"An uncontested authority on the civilization of Sumer, Professor Kramer writes with grace and urbanity."—Library Journal

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Surviving Sacrilege

Cultural Persistence in Jewish Antiquity

Steven Weitzman

Harvard University Press, 2005

In a world of relentless and often violent change, what does it take for a culture to survive? Steven Weitzman addresses this question by exploring the "arts of cultural persistence"--the tactics that cultures employ to sustain themselves in the face of intractable realities. Surviving Sacrilege focuses on a famously resilient culture caught between two disruptive acts of sacrilege: ancient Judaism between the destruction of the First Temple (by the Babylonians) in 586 B.C. and the destruction of the Second Temple (by the Romans) in 70 C.E..

Throughout this period Jews faced the challenge of preserving their religious traditions in a world largely out of their control--a world ruled first by the Persians, then by the Hellenistic Seleucid Kingdom, and finally by the Roman Empire. Their struggle to answer this challenge yields insight into the ingenuity, resourcefulness, and creativity of a distinctive period in Jewish history, but one with broad implications for the study of religious and cultural survival.

Detecting something tenaciously self-preserving at the core of the imagination, Weitzman argues that its expression in storytelling, fantasy, imitation, metaphor, and magic allows a culture's survival instinct to maneuver within, beyond, and even against the limits of reality.

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Symbols of Wealth and Power

Architectural Terracotta Decoration in Etruria and Central Italy, 640-510 B.C.

Nancy A. Winter

University of Michigan Press, 2009

Although initially intended for the innovative, if prosaic, purpose of providing waterproof and fireproof cover for earlier thatch-roofed homes, fired clay tiles, in seventh- and sixth-century Etruria and Central Italy, combined with Etruscan love of adornment to create exceptional domestic and religious building decoration. Featuring statues and figured friezes of humans, animals, and mythological figures intended to convey the status of the owner or dedicator, the surviving terracotta roofs provide important insights into the architectural history of Etruria. With Symbols of Wealth and Power, Nancy A. Winter has provided a definitive overview of the evidence for these roofing elements that will enhance our knowledge of Etruscan---and more broadly, ancient---architecture.

Nancy A. Winter is an archaeologist and former librarian of the American School of Classical Studies, Athens. She is the author of Greek Architectural Terracottas: From the Prehistoric to the End of the Archaic Period (1993).

Also of Interest
Role Models in the Roman World: Identity and Assimilation, edited by Sinclair Bell and Inge Lyse Hansen
The Maritime World of Ancient Rome, edited by Robert L. Hohlfelder
Cosa: The Black-Glaze Pottery 2, by Ann Reynolds Scott

Jacket illustration: Tuscania, Ara del Tufo, 560–550 B.C.

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